Sunday has apparently become movie day. So here we are another Sunday at the movies. Same cinema, different theater. This time we went all out and got soda and popcorn… it’s that kind of movie.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Terminator or any of its sequels. I liked Terminator, thought it was cool at the time, but couldn’t really count it as one of my favorite movies. I seem to remember Terminator 2: Judgment Day being pretty good, but being slightly annoyed at the idea of a terminator being a good guy, although that was balanced by the cool liquid metal terminator effect. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a decent action flick, but felt weak too me and the ending was unsatisfying. I don’t know that I’ve actually sat down and watched any of those on TV or DVD since I saw them the first time. The television series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, I didn’t watch and only saw bits and pieces of assorted episodes, it never felt like I was missing anything by not watching it. So I went into Terminator Salvation with a pretty open mind and no real expectations.

Pretty good. Definitely a big-budget summer movie. I liked it. Lots of things blowing up. Lots of guns and shooting. A couple chase scenes. Some fighting. And even a little hint of romance amongst the ruins of humanity and the resistance.

It’s pretty obvious that they’re setting us up for a few more of these, probably a trilogy, they always make these things in three’s. And I think they might be able to pull it off. This movie stands alone nicely, but acknowledges what has come before it and leaves plenty of open space for something to come after. Christian Bale does alright as John Conner, but he is not the focus of the tale, which is just as well because my opinion might change if I had to watch him storm around more than I did. But the characters that the movie does focus on are interesting and if not likeable, they are at least captivating.

As with any movie of this sort it does something’s that make me ask why? And there’s plenty there that I would have written differently. But all in all it was a good, entertaining movie. I wouldn’t pay to see it again, but I just might sit through another watching or two on cable. My recommendation, go see it. Everybody else is going too, and you may as well be able to talk to them about it. Besides, it’s a summer popcorn movie and it’s hard to go wrong with those.

Still not doing all that great. Staying home from work again today. As a bonus I’ve added muscle soreness to the coughing, nose blowing, and congestion. Again, no post for you.

I’m sick, for real! Stay home from work and sleep all day sick. No post for you today.

It’s Sunday and Sunday means movies, or at least it does lately. So today we hit the Celebration Cinema (theater 4) for yet another movie that Tasha wants to see, Angels and Demons.

I liked it. Tasha thought it was decent. Of course we both agree that the book was better than the movie, but the book is always better than the movie. It was far and away better than The Da Vinci Code, which was boring as hell. And not as good as the book. But then I thought Angels and Demons was the better of the two books.

Tom Hank’s hair was better. The movie was paced better and flowed quickly from one scene to the next. And was better focused, though it wasn’t until we got home that I remarked to Tasha that there was no romantic plotline. Which seems odd since every movie seems to feel the need to include a romance no matter the circumstances. Of course they left out a lot of the science stuff and focused more on the religion aspects of the story. Not surprising given the title and the hoopla that surrounds the previous book and overshadows this story.

My folks saw it, separately from us, and commented that they had problems following the story and that they thought Tom Hanks managed to get around the city pretty easily for as crowded as it was. I listened to the audio book so following the story wasn’t a problem and I thought the train of police cars careening through the city explained the timely arrival of Mr. Hanks.

I would have no problem recommending this one.

We actually came home Saturday night, got home late, and slept in. After lazing around a bit on Sunday we went to see Star Trek. Tasha loved it. I thought it was an entertaining movie, but I had issues with it, as I do with every movie I see. I’m just not a movie fan. The whole time thing being my biggest peeve. Kinda annoys me that Star Trek uses that crutch as much as it does.

Monday I came home from work, felt a little off, had dinner, and was in bed by 8:00 pm.

Tuesday, yesterday… I think I sat right here and surfed until I had exhausted the entertainment potential of the internet. It took surprisingly little time. We walked the dog and took our new tennis rackets down to the courts and chased the balls around for 45-minutes. It was fun. Then I made Tasha play some Xbox360 with me. Then she watched the Red Wings.

Now that you’re up to speed, did you notice that I didn’t mention writing in there at all? It’s shameful, I know. I can’t say that I left out the writing, because I’m completely guilty of not having done anything with it since last Wednesday. Bad Ronn. Lazy Ronn. Tonight’s writing call didn’t happen. Not sure why, but I’m guilty of not calling/emailing to confirm that it was on. Ah well, perhaps we’ll get it later this week.

I finished listening to Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead. It’s the second book in what I believe is a trilogy. I haven’t read or listened to the first book, Hood, but I don’t feel like I needed to. Which is always a good thing. I’m a big Robin Hood fan, but some of the things I’d read about this take on the legend turned me off. Like I said, I like my Robin Hood, so I gave it a go when I found it at the library. I must say that I enjoyed it, and the historical aspects of it that I expected to turn me off, didn’t. In fact, I will probably seek out the first book and when I’m done with that read or listen to the third, Tuck. If you like Robin Hood give it a try, there have certainly been interpretations of the story that were far worse than the one that Mr. Lawhead has put together for us… and his is actually plausible.

Ok, so the above is why I don’t do reviews. Anyway, that’ll do it for tonight. Later.

There was no post last night because I wasn’t feeling all that great. It was a combination of the blahs and a slight fever sort of thing. I mean, really, I played solitaire for almost two hours. It was a very sad time in my life. Needless to say, I did no writing or working on my writing or planning for writing. It was a nonproductive evening.

Today, I’m off to the eastside of the state to pick up Tasha’s car and go to a birthday party and who knows what else. Should be a day full of driving and more driving. Sounds like big fun doesn’t it. Woo hoo.

Since I don’t have much for you today I’ll give you a joke, not mine.

A prosperous old dairy farmer from someplace cold finally sold out to the local agribusiness giant and retired to Florida. Being a farmer, he liked owning lots of land, so he had to buy a big place with a large pond down near the swamp. He fixed up the pond a bit, dumped a few truckloads of sand to make a little beach, and kept a small swimming area cleared of weeds and scum. Nearby he had some picnic tables, horseshoe pits, and a stone barbeque. Shading it all was a mixed grove of fruit trees.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond to check his fruit trees, so he grabbed a five gallon bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of pretty young women skinny-dipping in his pond.

As soon as they noticed him standing there watching, they all shrieked and went deeper into the pond. One of the women shouted to him, “We’re not coming out until you leave, you dirty old man!”

The old man thought for a moment, and then said “I didn’t come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or to make you get out of the pond naked.” Holding the bucket up, he said “I’m just here to feed the alligators.”

And a picture, also not mine.

Scary Angel

That’ll tide you over until I return with my tales of wonder from the magical lands of the Detroit suburbs.

Later.

I am beat today. Not sure why, it was just another day at work. Nothing particularly grueling occured, but I’m sitting here trying to write this and yawning like crazy. Very weird.

So we’ve moved in, bought some new furniture, and gotten the place looking pretty good. Other than the noisy neighbor things are pretty sweet. Well, toss that all on its head and give it a good shake. Tasha has a lead on a job. A good lead. A solid lead. Straight to  her email from her old boss lead. If she wants it she’ll get it sort of lead. And it’s probably a good job, no real details as of yet. Full time. Benefits. Doing what she wants to do. Good stuff. But it’s in Detroit. Not the western suburbs. Not near Detroit. Right downtown on the river Detroit.

It’s not the location, mind you. It’s the fact that we’re talking about a 155 mile commute. Two and a half hours one way without traffic commute. We’re talking about her moving back to the other side of the state  kind of commute. A what the fuck do we do now kind of commute.

When she called to ask/tell me about it (the job) I wasn’t about to tell her no. I know she hates her job now and doesn’t think much of this area and we did the long distance thing before. I told her if it sounds good send them your info. I don’t like it much, but I’m not going to hold her back from a good opportunity. We’ll survive and make it work somehow. If it goes through I’ll talk to my people about getting moved back to that side of the state. We’ve got lots of engineers over there. I’m sure I could find something, eventually.

So yeah, that’s what’s going on here. Best part is, if this happens it’ll probably happen as fast as it did when I went to work for Jones Lang LaSalle. I’m thinking within a month. So change is in the air yet again. You’ve gotta take the good with the bad and make it work for you. So that’s what I’ll do.

My boss mentioned that the Blessing of the Bikes is this weekend in Baldwin, MI. Sounds kinda cool, I guess he and Rob (another guy I work with) and another friend of thires are going. I’d probably have gone to check it out, but I found out about it late and I’ve already got plans. So maybe next year. Speaking of bikes, I’ve gotta get mine out more. I was gonna ride it a couple times this week and last, but every time it was nice I took Karin driving. Oh well, she’ll be gone come Monday and then I can drag Tasha out and go check out the lake shore. You know, now that I’ve figured out where I can go to see the lake without having to pay for it

I am so glad tomorrow is Friday. Give me the weekend, please.

Tonight’s writing call was a strange duck. Doug came to it after a day of personal combat with his child’s principal and was subsequently less focused on the writing. Understandable. Halfway through the call my computer shut down. No warning, just chatting away and BANG! it was off. After I restarted and got back on the call I realized that my camera wasn’t working… which created a distraction on my end as I tried to listen, give my thoughts, and figure out what the hell was going on with my camera. But even with all that, we did talk about writing and we did so for nearly 2-hours. So we must have had something to say.

Our goal for the previous week was to have our scene’s laid out. As I said last night, I pretty much had all my scenes. Doug had fewer. The difference being that the scenes that I had were like road signs on the highway of storytelling; one-line scenes that probably weren’t actually fleshed out enough to deserve the title ’scene’, more like mile markers to keep me on track with the story and let me know what I’m writing toward. Doug’s scenes on the other hand were more like full-service truck-stops on that same highway of storytelling.  His scenes were far more fully realized and more like scene summaries. I’m hoping to have something similar to what he’s got after I build a story outline from my scene skeleton.

Next week’s goal is to have our plot actualized so that we can start writing. I say actualized because I look at my skeleton outline and it doesn’t make me want to write the story. I see the story there, but it doesn’t call to me.  I need to tweak it around and make it something I want to write. So that’s the plan.

I think I could be ready to write on Monday if I was going to be home this weekend to do this outline/scene work, but such is not the case. We’re going to take Karin back to the eastside this weekend, then there’s a birthday party for a friends child, and the obligatory visiting with the family while we’re on that side of the state. So I imagine that I’ll not make it home until 5pm on Sunday. And then I’ll be trying to do all the usual weekend stuff. It’ll be a bit chaotic.

Apartment news… there’s an asshole in my building and it’s not me. One of the tenants in my building is a young guy who has lots of loud visitors, likes gangster rap and thrash metal (and likes it loud with much bass), and has enough bass in his rusted-out, piece-of-shit car to rattle the trunk lid. In the two weeks we’ve been here we’ve had three nights without being entertained by his music, and he plays it late. We’ve tried to ignore it. We’ve asked him to turn it down. We’ve complained. Other neighbors have complained. Basically, it’s making this new apartment experience everything we didn’t have to deal with on the other side of the pond. It kinda sucks.

I got my 20 scenes for Malach, they came pretty easily.  I then laid out all my notecards on the kitchen counter and started moving them around to establish an order. The kitchen counter was the only place, other than the floor, that was long enough for them all to be laid out in a line. Putting them in order was more difficult than I imagined it would be. I ended up getting rid of a couple of Lucy’s scenes, then adding two new ones in, and then I added one for Kaleb. I wrote extra cards for each character and tossed the ones that I felt were the weakest and/or didn’t move the story forward. My final count was 36 scenes, 19 for Malach, 10 for Lucy, and 7 for Kaleb. But as I write this I’m thinking that one of Malach’s scenes isn’t true to his character and will have to be reworked.

The whole process has been unnatural for me. I’ve had that sinking feeling throughout that I’m doing it wrong. I know my scene descriptions are weak and I’m afraid that I wasn’t thinking story while I came up with scenes, I was thinking of how many scenes I needed. I just have to remind myself that nothing in front of me is set in stone, it’s all malleable clay for me to work. But where I thought having the scene order would be cathartic and leave me feeling good. I ended up feeling more  …insecure…  with my results.

I’m not sure where to go with what I’ve got, it’s not that what I have is bad, it’s just that I’m not sure that the story that I’ve outlined is the story that I initially set out to write. I’m thinking that I’ll flesh out what I’ve got and see what happens with that, perhaps I’m not seeing the forest because I’m too busy looking at the trees.

Changing tracks here, I still can’t find a WordPress theme that I love, but there sure are a lot of them that I don’t much care for. And I hate that some of the widgets and plugins break the theme or just don’t work. Seems like the WordPress site could have a better system of searching for these things. Like for example, let me search by the version of WP I’m using…. ah well, you come here for my delightful ramblings, you don’t care about the rest of that stuff.

I just finished listening to His Majesty’s Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik. I’d heard good things about it on the interwebs, but really didn’t think it sounded like anything I’d be interested in reading. It’s an alternate history novel  set during the Napoleonic Wars where there’s a draconic air force, which sounds both interesting and corny to me. But when I saw it at the library I figured, what the hell.  I liked it quite a bit. I thought the author did a good job of making the dragons seem like reasonable and realistic additions to the period. I liked the main characters; a dragon rider, of course, but one that is new to the air force and his newly hatched black dragon. It was very well written and the narration was well done as well. I’d recommend it to anyone that likes fantasy novels. Up next is Scarlet by Stephen R. Lawhead.

Tonight I took all the scenes I wrote down over the last couple of days and started dividing them up and sorting them out. I figure that I need 36 scenes. Initially I was thinking it would be divvied up with 15 scenes for Malach, 15 scenes for Lucy, and maybe 4 scenes for Kaleb, with a couple of scenes that would be outside these three characters; I’ll call them background scenes. But that’s not how it’s playing out as I put them on note cards and flesh them out a bit. I realized that those ‘background’ scenes aren’t necessary, they can be addressed using Malach. So I’m now thinking my scene division will look more like 20 scenes for Malach, 10 scenes for Lucy, and 6 scenes for Kaleb.

I’ve written 7 cards for Kaleb and 12 cards for Lucy. I gave myself two extras for each character just so that I would have some wiggle room to set this thing up. As an added bonus, I’ve developed an interesting take on my nephilim that I think will go a long way toward the old axiom that everyone is the hero of their own story. I like what I’m coming up with. I decided to refocus the story on Malach, because to me, he is the story.

Doing this notecarding thing is new to me; it’s not the way I usually do things. Typically I’m an outline kinda guy. I don’t think in scenes and this is causing me to break my chapters down. I realize that some of my chapters are a single scene and some are as many as four scenes. It’s odd. I know I write scenes, because I use scene breaks in my writing. It’s a good thing. Additionally, yWriter is helping me think about scene goal, scene conflict, and scene outcome; or more simply what is the change in the scene.

Tomorrow I need to tackle the 20+ scenes that are focused on Malach. I don’t know that I’ll have the order of all my scenes done by the time my next writing call rolls around, but I would like to have all my scenes notecarded. I’d like to have accomplished my goal for this week and be ready to start writing this bitch down.

On another note, I bought this laptop to use for my writing and I’ve been using it tonight to get used to working on it. I’m hoping that this gets better. I miss my big monitor and not having to look down past my big ol’ hands to see the screen. Gotta say, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. But then I can take this thing anywhere in the house to get my writing done… I’m in bed now… delicious.

Things are good. Progress is being made. I’m feeling productive. Later.

Ug. Someone called me this morning at 7am and left no message. Then they called again at 8:30am and again left no message. I don’t recognize the number, but a look-up on it shows it as a Pontiac cell phone. This same number called my GrandCentral number and left no message. So not only did I get woken up way too early for a Sunday morning, but also I don’t know who the hell the culprit is. Thanks.

I found a note on my desk when I came downstairs this morning. Seems that Karin was looking at my notes for Malach and liked what she read.

Ronn,
If your intention was to write a scary/creepy story I think this is an awesome plot. I love scary stories and this just seems to spew suspense out the seams! Just thought you’d appreciate an outside opinion! (I watch scary movies constantly, it’s in my blood!)
–Karin

Thank you, Karin. Always good to know that I’m not completely out of touch with you young folks.

No movie last night, but we’re all going to go see a show tonight and then follow it up with dinner. No word on which movie we’ll be seeing or where we’ll be going for dinner as of yet. But we’ll be out of the house and having fun. Happy Mother’s Day to us.

- — — Flash forward a few hours  — — -

So we all went to BD’s Mongolian Barbeque for dinner and then went and saw X-men Origins: Wolverine. I must say that while I’ve never been a big Wolverine fan, or Hugh Jackman fan for that matter, I do enjoy a good origin story. I liked it. Quite a bit actually. Of course, anything would be better than what I say last night… I saw the last half of the latest Hulk movie and that was a stinker. Pee Yew. Here’s a clip for Wolverine:

That unknown number called again at 4:30, so I went online and checked my call logs for GrandCentral. Turns out that I’ve had quite a few calls, just they’ve all ended before the voicemail kicked in. So maybe it’s nothing. As a bonus I was allowed to upgrade to Google Voice. I got that all set up with a personalized message and everything, so maybe whoever is calling will realize I’m not who they’re looking for…. or am I? And just because I can, I added a link here in the sidebar in case you need to reach me to tell me how great I am, or whatever.

Writing-wise I wrote up two pages of background for miss Luciana Maria Bianchi, my heroine in Malach. Got some good stuff. I started using yWriter today; entering characters, setting up wordcounts and deadlines, and generally playing around with the software’s features. So far, so good. I kinda like it.

And of course I can’t slip out of here today without sending out a Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s that are reading this. None of us would be here today without one, so be good to the one you got. Later.

I went shopping at Holly Lisle’s store this morning and picked up a couple of her pdf’s; How to Write Page-Turning Scenes and her Create-A-Plot Clinic. They’re not the first products I’ve bought from her store, I’ve also picked up her Create-A-Character Clinic and Way of the Cheetah by Lynn Viehl. I was very pleased with both of those products and I’m expecting to get some good stuff from these two new ones. I’ll let you know as I work my way through them.

I also downloaded yWriter at the recommendation of the esteemed, Brent F. and the insistence by Doug that I need to get away from Microsoft. I thought I’d give some software focused on novel writing a chance to impress me, and since I don’t have a Mac and can’t use Scrivener I figured this’d do the trick. Again, I’ll let you know my thoughts as I use it. Though my initial thoughts on the matter is that Word has done me just fine up to this point and it’ll take something impressive to get me change.

Karin has decided to stay another week and last night we all went out for a Mexican dinner. Today, I’ve heard rumors that we’re going to see a movie. My choice would be Wolverine (and I’m not a fan) over Star Trek (which I never had much use for), but I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t get a say in the matter. I’ve been teaching the girl how to drive and we’re hoping to get her permit before she goes home next weekend. There was talk of her staying with us, but I don’t foresee that happening. Not just because I don’t think she’s ready to follow the rules that would be in place quite yet, but also because all her friends are on the other side of the state and I think that’s where her priorities are. I will say that I think gypsying around a bit has helped her grow up… she’s just not there yet.

I changed the look of the blog, again. I haven’t found a template that quite works for me yet, but at the same time, I’m not willing to put the time and effort into making it do exactly what I want. So this’ll do just fine for now. I added info to the About link and beneath that you’ll find a page about my cars and my jobs, both of which aren’t finished but give a good outline of their respective subjects. I also added some pictures to the character posts and the City of Heroes post just to brighten things up around here. And lastly, I responded to a few comments.

Have you been following Doug’s blog? He’s supposed to be talking about his experience with this whole writing thing, but I’ve not seen a post in more than a week. I wonder if he’s actually busy working out the plan for his novel or if he’s just busy doing all the other stuff he does at night, you know, like watching TV. Oh well, I’m sure he’ll post something in response to this and then we won’t hear anything more from him until I give my next update on the writing call. Pathetic.

Until tomorrow. Later.