I was motivated yesterday

I got so much done yesterday. I was quite proud of myself. I was up at 7 and drove Liam to work, then I came home and fixed the car backseat thing that River sits on. The straps holding the attaching clips had frayed. They had become really brittle in the sun, and I had to cut out the frayed bits and attach the remains back together. It was quite fun figuring out how to best attach them. I ended up sewing them together and reinforcing the join with duck tape.

Next up was the hammock - our old one's ropes had also become sun-frayed and we replaced it. So I got to mess around with more bits of rope. But we have a hammock again. Yeay.

I went bra shopping - unsuccessfully - but even that didn't kill my motivation.

Then I got 1,500 words written. I'm doing an online writing course and am working on an entirely new story. I'm really enjoying it. I'm trying "discovery" writing, so I have absolutely no idea where the story is going beyond the next few scenes. But the characters are fun. The side-kick is a bit psycho-homicidal and those type of characters are always fun to write.

And after all that I fixed the brakes on Liam's bike. This bike is my newest project. It's been a mess since we moved here - flat tires, chain covered in sand, brakes that were so tight the bike didn't move. I haven't looked at the gears yet, but I imagine they are in an equally sorry state. I've always wanted to learn how to maintain / fix a bike and I'm using this as my learning bike. It's funny how not mysterious a bike is when you actually start learning about how all the pieces work. I used think the brake and gear wires were set with some kind of techno-magic-precision-engineering, but it's nothing more complicated than a nut / bolt you can tighten and loosen. And the wire tension you just fiddle around with until it's right. Crazy.

So I cooked dinner then, and after that we went to the shop and bought random things (I got a Nalgene bottle), and then I played Skyrim until bedtime. Ahh Skyrim - I am, once again, entirely addiced. I even got a funny buzz in my solar plexus region the other day I wanted to play so badly. Oh my god. How do Bethesda do it? How do they makes games that do this to me?

Anyway. I must go get some writing done. I'm on scene 6 and I'm supposed to be on 9.

Spring in Arizona

I've never really had a favourite month. When I was younger and people would ask I'd always say August because that's the month I was born, therefore it is special. But living in Arizona I finally have a proper favourite month and it is February (it'll go back to being August once we move back to Ireland). I remember loving February here last year and I've kind of been spending the whole year waiting to see if my memory was correct. And it was. I just went for a walk with River and it is the most perfect day out there. And that's what February in Arizona. 28 (or 29) days of pure perfection.

I also want to jot down (for posterity) that I fixed my mouse today. Ever since I got it (over a year ago) the scroll wheel has been a bit sticky. It just never scrolled smoothly. So yesterday I finally got annoyed enough at it (can't even remember what pushed me over the edge) to go buy some small screwdrivers and open it up. It took me about half an hour just to work up the courage to yank off the outer casing. I didn't want it to break. Anyway I got it down to circuit boards and pried off the wheel eventually. And sure enough, the grippy part of the wheel was loose and floppy and altogether bad.
I cleaned it up a bit (lots of gunk floating around it) and put it all back together. But it was even worse after being poked and prodded. So today I opened it up again (it took about 1 minute this time), cut off the offending grippy circle and stuck a new piece of grippy rubber on with superglue. And oh my god, it's like super-duper-extra-responsive scroll wheel. It's like having been crawling and now I'm flying. Everything goes up and down so fast.
I kinda love that I fix things. I don't think that happens much any more. People tend to take the easy route and throw the thing out and buy a new one. But I love fixing things, and even more when I make them better than they had been.

Catching Flies

You know the way, in children's cartoons, they make a fly catcher out of a bit of stick and a cobweb? Right - keep that thought in mind.

I have a problem with little black flies on my plants. I think they may be gnat-flies, but their larvae are little round white things, not little wormy-looking things. So I’m not sure. Anyway, the flies have been annoying me over the last few days, especially. I think a bunch of them just hatched, because there are more than before. So today, I decided to do something about it.
I cut the top off a plastic cup to form a hoop, stuck a stick onto the end of it, brought it outside and swiped it through a cobweb (carefully). Voila, a perfect fly catcher. (You may now release that thought you've been holding, if you haven't done so already.)
The only problem is, it's not a perfect fly catcher. It catches flies, but they get away. They don't stick to the web. I don't know how spiders stay alive at all. Clearly, their webs are inefficient at trapping flies.

Anyway - I have a photo.


In other news: there are now two tomatoes, with possibly more on the way.
And: I have a strawberry plant. Putting it in the fridge for a month totally worked. It’s about 3mm tall at the moment :)

Book Binding

It seems drafts are not good only for books.
My book binder draft 1 didn't work out. The clamp bar was too small and the drill killed it. Book binder draft 2 is amazing, however. It’s 20 billion % better, in fact. It’s a nicer colour, it works, it looks cool. Woo! I spent the morning working on it. I kept two pieces from the original and sawed out new pieces from an old bit of shelf we had lying around.
Yea. Book binder cost €3.50 (the price of the carriage bolts and wing nuts - all the wood came from scrap). The glue was €4.50, and whatever paper costs, and printing costs, but it's definitely less than getting novel drafts professionally printed and bound. I haven't glued anything yet. I’m a bit scared about how that will turn out.

I’m not sure if I’m allowed tell the great wide public, but it looks as if me and lordkilljoy will be moving. More on that in the next few weeks. People who know what I’m talking about can't say anything in their comments (except lordkilljoy. If he says it's ok to mention it, then other people can talk about it).

Oh - I totally forgot to say: I finished draft 3. Well, I need to go back removing all the 'arounds' and 'backs' and sentences starting with 'and', but that doesn't count.

Yea. I think that's it.

DIY day

it's my birthday and i've gotten hardly any writing done. first thing this morning, i walked to the shop to cash the lotto tickets mammy and daddy had gotten me (i got €40). then i sat down for a bit of writing. then i looked up diy book binding. i found a very cool article:
http://www.persistenceunlimited.com/2006/03/fun-and-easy-how-to-guide-to-binding-your-own-paperback-books-at-homefast/
and then i spent the rest of the day making the 'jig.' That involved a trip to barrett's to buy gorilla glue. i was very surprised they had it. and now i'm thinking of going back to get wingnuts and carriage bolts. and possibly a bit of wood for the clamping bar. i couldn't be bothered sawing out two lengths. sawing with a pen-knife-tool thing is really hard.
yea... it's possibly a bit premature, considering i've not finished draft 3.1 yet, but i hope to have copies to the people of taleweavers on the weekend. it's no big deal if i don't get it done by this weekend, though. i'll be around the next weekend as well.

and because this is a day of procrastination: here are some photos i've taken of stuff over the last few weeks.




i made banana bread in the slow cooker (aka crockpot). it turned out yummy.

the book binding devise. half finished. i couldn't wait to paint it - perhaps i should have waited. anyway.

my tomato is taller than me.

the pepper a few weeks ago.

this is not zoomed in - this is them grown.

tomato flower.