R & R

I decided to take a couple of days of Rest and Relaxation before tackling the task of finishing the rough draft of my novel. I read a chapter to a tiny writer's group I belong to at work and they were very complimentary. The problem is I'm reading this stuff and thinking it just isn't good enough. I have never been good at rewriting and I'm worried that I won't be able to polish it up as well as I need to so that it can find a publisher. I also worry that I can't retain all of the great advice I have been reading lately and I won't be able to apply it even if I remember it. It sucks being a perfectionist.

I found a game that Harley likes even more than the laser pointer. I dragged out a toy I bought for him last year and he went nuts. It looks a little like this. It is basically a horse's longe whip with a bit of sheepskin at the end. It acts like a doggy fishing pole with me dragging the sheepskin lure along the ground around me and Harley dashing around to get it. If I go in circles long enough, he cuts right through the circle and tackles it. A few times he hit it so hard that he rolled over, but he always came up with the toy in his mouth. We played for a looong time today, and he has been more quiet tonight than he ever is, usually. I wish I had video to show you just how much he loves it.

I have been really disappointed in American Idol this year. Only Chris Sligh shows any promise at all, everyone else is boring, boring, boring. I wish I had Season 2 on tape, I'd just watch it instead. I know that no one will ever compare to Clay Aiken, who could, but I keep hoping that someone will come along that is almost as good or as interesting. It's not happening this year, I'm afraid.

As long as I'm on the subject of TV... what do you think of Lost and/or Heroes? Isn't it fantastic to have two shows on TV that get it right? For some reason TV really lets us down when it comes to Fantasy or Science Fiction. For ever Twilight Zone there are a dozen My Favorite Martians or Battlestar Galactica. Other than Quantum Leap, which really was more about the people's stories and less about fantasy or sci fi, I can't remember any show I've liked better. I don't know why everyone is complaining about having to wait for the answers to all the mysteries. I'm enjoying it exactly the way it is. I just wish there were more episodes in a year... would one a day be too many?

Weekend Over - Still Behind

I can't believe the weekend is over already. I got about 3,500 words done today so I'm still over two days behind. I just couldn't write anymore. I'm not sure of the exact number because I spent a lot of time rewriting some of it so that it would fit better with my new ending. I'm at 17,600 words or so for the month so far and over 70,000 on the book overall.

I quit around five or six and spent the rest of the night updating my LibraryThing list. I had ordered a Cue Cat from them. It is a barcode reader thingie, and all I have to do is pass it over the barcode on my books, and it adds them to my list. I have over 400 books in my list now and I haven't even really gotten started. Most of the books I added tonight are the joke, trivia and quote books that I keep near my computer for the Giggles. Soon I want to take the laptop into my bedroom and scan in all of the fiction and writing reference books as well as the other odds and ends I keep in there. I don't know why I'm spending all of this time, except it is fun in a very geeky way.

I feel bad that I did not make my word goal today, but on the plus side, I finally watched the Lost episodes that have been sitting on my TiVo since November. Now, if I can only get caught up on Desperate Housewives...