Saturday, December 18, 2010

Free for a Fortnight!

I don't think kids realize how much teachers look forward to breaks, too.  I am just ecstatic that I can get away from the school ratrace for a couple weeks.  I have a couple more chores to do, such as print up homework stickers and type up a new spelling center, but other than that, I'm out of there!  Whoot!

The last couple days were a zoo, naturally, but I survived and so did the kids.

During this break, in addition to the holiday festivities, I plan to continue working on Bird's Eye, the tale about the parrot and her boy.  The plot has hit the point where I was when I aborted the last attempt, and I'm having trouble with it again.

See, the characters traveling a lot right now, and the story sounds repetitious.  Even shenanigans from the bad guys sound like the same thing.  I have some ideas for breaking the monotony.  One is just to jump forward in time to when the reach the next city and just take a miss on the how-did-they-get-there part. 

Fortunately, drafts are cheap and easy to revise, so I'll keep going, look for interesting ways to make it more interesting, and go back and edit the junk out later.

In other publishing news, I never heard back from either publisher on the two I sent off just before the school year got rockin' and rollin'.  I think that's a "no."  Hey, at least they're both still in business. I've had a few opportunities where I've submitted something ... then the company went out of business.  Oops.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Not Safe for Humans out There

Wow...  So far this month, someone's helped me check my brakes twice, I was almost side-swiped by a grandma who didn't check the next lane before she moved into it, and I've gotten pushed out of the way and all but knocked over by people in a rush while I was doing crazy things like trying to run errands.  People are in a terminal rush to get here, grab that, and get on to the next thing on the list.

Nah, this isn't going to turn into a harangue about the real reason for the season.  Wouldn't do any good anyway.  Everybody's heard it and most give it intellectual assent even if that doesn't show up in their actions.  The rest have bigger problems, like doing the Christmas thing because it's a tradition, not because they have any belief in the little baby born in a manger (probably in September/October, not December, but *shrug*)

There really are 12 months in a year.  How about instead of getting all stressed out and just about killing people in December, spread the holiday cheer out.  Do some of your shopping in January or even June for the following December.  Don't worry, the holiday themed stuff will be available.  After all, in most stores, you can tell it's almost 4th of July when you start seeing the Christmas decorations for sale.

Maybe if folks did that, I wouldn't have to get squashed by lunatics in the store while trying to collect my groceries for the next week.