Debbi's New Car!

Wednesday, after a little delay, Debbi picked up her new Honda Civic from the dealer. She got a pretty decent trade-in on her old Saturn, and the price was right. The delay was because there just aren't many stick-shift cars sold these days, so they sometimes have to be brought in from elsewhere, as was the case here. But, she did get exactly what she wanted!

We went out to dinner Wednesday night so I could be her first passenger, and then yesterday we took it out for a real maiden voyage: We drove down to Santa Cruz and up Route 1 along the coast to San Francisco, where we got ice cream at Ghirardelli Square. This is close to the route I took on my own car's inaugural drive, though I didn't go all the way up to SF. The coastal weather was not as nice yesterday, as it was cool and cloudy (as opposed to warm and sunny in the valley), but we had a nice drive anyway. Even stopped at Pescadero Beach to watch the huge waves rolling in.

I am envious of Deb's car in some ways, such as the lovely blue color, which was not available in the 2000 model year. On the other hand, I'm glad to have a mechanical - rather than a digital - odometer, and I have more storage space around the passenger compartment than she does. But overall I guess it's a wash. They're both good cars - considering by and large they're nearly identical.

Debbi is very relieved not to have to worry about her Saturn suddenly giving up the ghost on her. And I am too!

Stupid Cat Stories: This morning we noticed that someone had chewed the laces on our slippers - thoughtfully chewing one lace from a slipper on each pair. And when I say "chewed", I mean "the last few inches of each end of the lace were gone". We're pretty sure it was a little black furry someone. Hopefully they will pass harmlessly through his body, and hopefully I can take the slippers to a shoe repair place and get new laces put in. It did prompt me to go around and tie up many other cords around the house to keep Blackjack (or possibly Roulette, but probably Blackjack) from getting into trouble. Argh.

On the plus side, we cooked corned beef and cabbage today, with potatoes, carrots and parsnips, in Debbi's slow cooker. It was pretty yummy, although it took longer to cook than expected, and more than filled up her fairly large slow cooker. But it turned out well anyway, and we each had seconds. (I loooove corned beef. So does Deb. She wonders why it took us three years to learn this about each other.) And we have plenty of leftovers. Mmmm, meat.

In The Ongoing Adventures of the Writer Who Never Finishes Anything, my novel seems to have stalled. On the other hand, Thursday I started writing something else, which looks like it will be a novelette. It has a few advantages:

1. I've written 4,000 words since Thursday.
2. It feels like I'm about 1/3 done.
3. The gestalt of the story just sort of came to me all at once, and hammering out the details has not been too tough.

One thing I've noticed is a sticking point for my writing is that I'll write a scene or two, then leave off at some point and later, while thinking about it, realize that I've spent 300 words going down the wrong path, or that I need to hammer out a scene more carefully so that either people end up where I want them to be, or so the characters' actions make sense. And pulling out 300 words and either editing them or rewriting them from scratch is a drag.

I spent part of this afternoon reworking a crucial scene to make sure my heroine ended up where she needed to be to head towards the story's climax. That was kind of tedious since I had to convincingly rearrange the pieces in the scene to achieve the desired result (not quite as manipulative as it sounds, since few of the people in the story are particularly skilled at resolving the problems they're confronted with), and the most fun thing to come out of it was figuring out how I wanted to present the one piece of high tech present in the scene. In the end, though, it was a bunch of work for about as much story as I'd had before. That it was the right story was only somewhat encouraging. (I did then write another 500 words to get into the next sequence, so that was rewarding.)

I guess this is what an outline is for, although this would have required a fairly detailed outline. I suspect that partly this is just a lack of skill on my part, and that I need practice for it to get easier.

It is, however, a better experience so far than the false start after false start which my stories have seen in the past. This start doesn't feel false at all, and I'm genuinely looking forward to getting to the climactic moments of the piece. So I'm taking that as a good sign.