BH: 1826

I got a good deal of the lucet cord done on the drive back to Portland, upon which we embarked after showering, checking out, and lunching (Reuben sandwich for me, Monte Cristo for Ken). We stopped at a grocery store to buy a nice bottle of wine and a card for Lev, because we were off to our friends Lev & Gayle’s for Lev’s birthday party (another fortuitous event to have happened whilst we were here). We had great fun at the party; it was wonderful to see Lev and Gayle, and we wish we’d had more time to hang out with them.

Then we checked back in to the Hawthorne Suites and our lovely suite for the next two nights. It has a northwestern forest theme, with pine boughs all around the wall at ceiling height, and wooden animals, and clouds painted on the ceiling. There’s an alcove with a jacuzzi tub for two that we plan to make good use of tonight.

But now, I really need to get my cute butt in gear and write. Knowing that afternoons are my slow time, I need to focus on writing this morning. I actually came up with an alternate way to run Chapter 7 before I fell asleep last night, so my first goal is to remember what that was and decide if it’s really better after being viewed under the harsh light of day. [g]

At the event, we kept discussing projects (mostly sewing) that we want to work on, so I started writing them down. It’ll be interesting to see how many we actually get going on.

3 p.m. Only 1K so far, but that doesn’t count a whole bunch of notes or a few paragraphs of another scene that comes later (the dialogue was in my head, so I wrote it down). I started out by typing up my new idea for the middle of Chapter 7 and decided I liked it; then added in my handwritten notes on the rest of the book. I wrote one scene, and by the time that was done, I was starving, so I headed out and walked to Shari’s Restaurant (about half a mile away) and had a BLT and onion rings and a Caesar salad and a pot of tea. And handwrote the next scene, yay me. It’s typed in. The next step is to strip out the old scene, add in the two new ones, and then tweak the transitions so the flow makes sense. I won’t spend a lot of time on this—that’s what the first round of revisions is for—but I want to fix the obvious stuff while it’s in my head. Then I need to write the very end of the chapter—probably just a few paragraphs—and then it’s on to Chapter 8.

I got rained on on the way back, which was actually kind of nice. I’m cramping a bit, which makes a lot of sense if you figure that suddenly the writing is flowing. This was a bad time of the month to be locked in a hotel room to write. It was a really good time of the month to have stayed home and filed things and cleaned and organised. Ah well! By the same token, I’m trying not to get stressed about all the things I have to do tomorrow when we get home. One consolation is that Ken won’t be going into work, so I can hopefully foist a few things off on him. Actually, it would make most sense if he painted the closet in the library and then pulled up all the plastic that’s been protecting the floor and vacuumed, so we can move the sleeper sofa in for our guests this coming weekend.

5 p.m. Starting Chapter 8. Yay me!

10 p.m. Ken and I had a lovely (if a bit pricey) Italian meal tonight, then he left me to my own devices at Powell’s (bwahaha!) while he went to a SCAdian’s house and bought himself a new rapier buckler with his birthday money. Apparently it’s an entirely period buckler (design-wise; construction techniques are modern), but I think it’s unattractive. Apparently it’s also very functional, and that’s more important (or is it to us fops? Hard to say. [g]). It’s a big ol’ curvy/wavy piece of rectangular metal.

I felt rather overwhelmed at Powell’s; no time to browse, just scan my 8-page want list (actually, I only looked at 4 pages of it), pick books that I really wanted or have been hard to find, and check for them. If I felt as though I could spend more, I would’ve have picked up more, but in the end I bought only 4 books:

Never After by Rebecca Lickiss. She went to the original OCW and her husband, Alan, was one of my “classmates”. It’s more humourous fantasy, which I don’t normally like, but I’ve wanted to read this because I almost know her.

Torn Shapes of Desire by Mary Anne Mohanraj. I’ve read some of her erotica online and have several of the anthos she’s edited, and wanted to read more of her work. She has a fascinating journal online as well.

The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. A book I borrowed from Teri and read as a child, and was obsessed with. I re-read it for the first time when we were in South Africa, and was amazed at how Xian it was. I didn’t pick any of that up as a child. (Then again, I never did with Narnia either.) Despite that, it still enchanted me, and I wanted to own a copy.

In the Stone Circle. Don’t remember the author. Another children’s book, more recent, set in Wales.

An odd mix of books. I really wanted to browse the children’s book section more, as I’ve been wanting to read some of the wonderful new fantasies that have been coming out. There was such a dearth when I was of the age to read them—just Narnia, and the Wrinkle in Time series, and Prydain. I never read more of Madeline L’Engle’s stuff and want to. And other Lloyd Alexander stuff. And… I doubt I’ll ever want to write a kid’s book, but I like reading them. Good for that Sense of Wonder that’s so easy to lose as an adult.

So now we’re back in the room, mostly packed, with water filling the jacuzzi tub. Which is definitely my cue to put the computer to sleep.