Updating with some pix.

Song of the day: “Gypsy” by Shakira, but yesterday I literally woke up with “Something Stupid” by Robbie Williams and Nichole Kidman. Weird. It sounded like the stereo was pounding inside my head while I went through the morning rituals.

But anyway, I would like to say that I have some splendid news, but except for just the daily stuff, there really isn’t much going on over here. Still looking for a publisher for “NEFRS:SN” actually got a negatory response this morning which is probably going to depress me later on, but for now I’m fully ignoring it. Hah.

Writing has been going on a low flame of late, don’t know what the heck is going on, but I’ll sit down at the end of the day, turn on the computer and gaze at the screen, wondering if I could get away heading to bed, like, *sniffs in a really cool way* three hours early. Hah. How bad must it be, if I (night owl to the core) contemplate an early bedtime with actual shivers of anticipation down my back, when I could be friggin’ writing? ‘Tis weird, I tell ya.
So, like I said, it’s going a little slow at the moment, I find myself distracted and unfocussed, which is definitely not a good sigh when you’re trying to get a book out of your head and into a computer.

Okay, enough whining, it’ll get there, they always do, and it’s not as if 51K words in less than a month is bad, or anything.
Yeah…what else has been going on? I don’t have a clue, what did I write the last time…? I can’t recall. Hmmm. Well, anyways, the new shelving is done, statues are in and…it looks bloody splendid. I’ll try to put on some pictures.

This is the new shelving, 3 cm MDF painted in yellowish Marvil. It really makes the statues jump out, I think.




The bookshelves. They actually fit, so I'm thrilled. Nothing looks better in a room than a wall filled with books, and I can just stand in front of it, staring like an insane person. Hah.




Seeing as the shelving is all done, and I actually got to cleaning my cabin a bit…swept the floors, took a rag to the dust etc. etc., it sounds so easy, doesn’t it, but it is so terribly hard to find the time for it. But, I get sidetracked, where was I…oh yes, the shelving all done, I figured I might as well start on little brother’s trundle bed (with his help, of course).

There were some hilarious moments there, since at some point he said, really deadpan (or so I thought) that he could probably sleep in his new bed this time next week.
Figuring he was kidding, I was like: “Well sure. It’s always good to be optimistic about such things,” all the while knowing that if we don’t come up on any hiccups it should take three days at most.

When it became clear that he had no idea why I was laughing so loud, it turned out that he was quite serious and thought it was a rather optimistic view from his perspective. Uh-huh. Okay, glad to know there’s no pressure whatsoever. Hah.

Not a lot of progress (at least it doesn’t seem that way) and we only managed to get the trundle done before nightfall.
I would have like to be able to report that I managed to squeeze in a quick trip for rocks (we still need so many) but since I really had to get to work on “ATOL” this wasn’t an option. Big brother and grandpa did it instead. Did go the evening before, so it's not like I'm sitting on my butt all day.

Only added a page of two after all, but who cares? I do...and I don’t; it’s a tad contradictory, isn’t it?

Hmmm. The dogs are making a racket, and I still have to get my messages dealt with, so I’m going to leave it at this and get the heck outta Dodge, so to speak.

Faking it...

I really am; I'm running way behind.

Song of the day: “Spice up your life” by (gulp) the Spice Girls...I know, I’m embarrassed, really. Hah. Just kidding, they’re not THAT bad, just…well The Spice Girls.

So yeah, I’m sitting her trying to think of what to write about today, and I’m drawing a complete blank, very annoying that. I mean, I know that yesterday’s weather was a tad disappointing, but since we had a friend visiting it wasn’t all bad. Chattered a lot, showed off all the work, naturally. ‘Tis the beauty of visitors, of course. You really can’t do a good show off towards those who are there every day, so you gotta wait for the right occasions (such as this one) every time.
She was of course properly impressed, which made it worth the waiting. Hah.

Seriously though, project wise we didn’t complete any massive ones in the last couple of days. There was painting, sanding, planing and general woodwork going on all over the place.
The new balustrade for the patio is almost done, and my new shelving (hung it the day before yesterday and it was almost disastrous…I’ll get to it later on…maybe) has been painted during the course of the past three days.

There were several more trips for rocks, the piles are growing again, two nights with too little sleep, because the days just don’t have enough hours in them, and one night of trying to sleep in (only getting an extra twenty minutes or so). There was laundry, of course, I cooked dinner, like, twice…today fried rice with veggies on the side. I loved it. Very dry kernels in curry spices with onion, garlic, mustard seeds and coconut shavings and a really big helping of chopped peanuts. Seriously, just thinking back of it is making my mouth water all over again.

We had an emergency trip with Njanna (Golden Retriever) did I mention that before…gawd my brain is like mush today…and the vet removed a tumor/infection the size of four hamburgers. Poor Njanna, he really didn’t like it that we left him at the hospital for the night, but with a big row of stitches on his hip he is back at home and all is well again.

Other than that, nothing interesting going on really…well, except for big brother and going off the road almost. Phew. That was a close call. Somehow we ended up going up a steep rock incline and just barely made it back to the road. I blame it on the rain really. Could hardly see more than ten feet ahead of the car. Luckily we had 4x4 Land Rover, ‘cause any normal ditzy car would have either crashed and burned against the rock wall, or toppled over. Now all we have to show for it is a few scratches on the bumper and a sore knee for me. *sigh*

There was very little writing these past few days, like I said before, just not enough hours in the day, darn it.

I should really get to it right now, so I’m cutting this short. Who knows, I might actually manage some pictures soon. *sigh*

Crotchety.

Song of the day: “Not As We” by Alanis Morrisette. It was going through my head all day yesterday and it drove big brother bonkers, hah. From sheer desperation I started singing Krezip’s “Sweet goodbye” and ended up with that one in my head instead.

But yeah, I was about to start on my Blog last night when I got the news that Njanna (Golden Retriever) had a lump the size of…ehm, half a football on his hip, which meant we had to take him to the vet’s. He’s spending the night, so they could operate the spot that looked like a big abscess but turned out to be the cover of a tumor. They’re going to remove the lump and hope that that will remove the bad tissue as well.

Hit an absolute low (daytime temperature) the other day, 2 above freezing, Yikes. It was a little freaky, there we were, working steadily under the cover of the carport roof, since it was pouring again, and every time you thought you’d adjusted, the cold seemed to hit you in the face anew. The temperature just kept dropping while we were working in the carport, and in the end we decided to just head inside and wait it out while working on the computer.

Seeing as the project are all pretty much waiting for the weather to turn for the better a bit…the rain really isn’t helping…I decided to start on the last closet for my cabin three days ago. Three centimeter thick MDF, which I’m gonna paint a bright yellow, in high shelves that are going to hold my statues. So the whole turned out to be two inches longer than I’d intended, exactly 199.2 cm so I had to check the wall against which it will be hung. 199.2 phew…almost gave myself a heart attack there, almost went completely wrong there. Hah. But anyway, if all works it should go in today, after which the sisters, or mom, are going to paint it.

Writing has been going a little slower these past few days…I’m distracted again, and that without good reason…so I’ve brought the manuscript up to 164 pages, which is about half of the total. It’s still working out well, I guess, I just can’t remember all I wrote so far. Seriously, I’ve written approximately 35.000 words this past month, and the amount of information in my head would take up less than 10.000. I’m starting to get a tiny bit worried about the manuscript, it might be just crap. Hah. Not that it matters, though. Any problems that are there will have to be dealt with during the edit.

We had an extra batch of dog food delivered, considering the bad weather is interfering with transportation across Spain a bit, which mean that we had to haul another twenty bags or so down the mountain for storage under the carport roof. Seeing as we needed our exercise anyway, big brother and I decided to try it under fifteen minutes and ended up finishing the task under ten minutes. With that in mind, the next time it’s going to be a little trickier to beat the score. Hah.

Little sister made a wonderful blackberry, raspberry, yogurt whipped cream cake for my birthday, and I enjoyed it for two whole days. My own apple pie, baked the day before, wasn’t bad either, so we had lots of sweets this past week, yay. It is going to last me at least two months. Hah.

Mom made one of my favorite for dinner, red beets baked with potatoes and cheese, which I enjoyed for a solid two days too, and last night little sister made tomato soup, which went down really well after a long day working on the shelving, helping our tenant with her exercises, getting rocks (yes, didn’t I say it before? We’re hauling rocks again) and then taking Njanna to the vet.

As to the rock hauling, we’ve done four trips so far (combined one with the run) gradually adding to the slowly growing pile. What with all the project lying in wait, we really should get to it. There’ll be many trips in our future yet, hah.

Okay, some chitchat; who heard about the coming ice age thingy? Isn’t it marvelous? Here we were worrying about Global Warming, and before you know it, we have to shift it all around and start worrying about the cold (darn it!). I heard scientists are now cautioning for a 30 year cooling period. Crap, that would mean that the temperatures aren’t going to improve much until I hit my sixties. Aaaargh.

So, all the cooling most likely has something to do with the sun purportedly being dead. They’re still not seeing any activity “up there”, so…yeah, that’s a pickle. I can see it happen. Remember 2010, Sunshine. Oh, my, God. All the movies are coming true. Heck I even heard something recently that distinctly reminded me of The Core with Hillary Swank. Very disturbing, I’ll admit. I remind myself every time: “I don’t care about things that I cannot change…and…everything is changeable,” and it calms me down considerably, hah.

Then of course I remember the other stuff that’s going on. I mean seriously, why worry about something as long term as Global warming/cooling with the whole debacle in Iran going on? Soon those typically…ehm, human eejits are going to have nuclear weapons, all because no one wants to jump in and say: “Eh there, now wait just a second.”

Honestly, who on earth believes that they are just using uranium for energy? Since when are those folks in the east, any more enlightened than the eejits in the west. Really, why would they be any better at using such massive power for energy when it would make such a splendid weapon to show off to the rest of the world? I find that those who actually believe such drivel need to look back at human nature a bit and realize that when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, people just can’t get enough of them. Personally I prefer they’d just whip it out an measure the length, if you get my meaning, rather than screw up our sole source of life, but what the hey; Can’t change it from where I’m standing, now can I?

Ah well, better stop this rant before I start foaming at the mouth…which reminds me, in Scandinavia a group of no less than 1000 hunters went out to…yes, hold onto your hat…kill the “Overpopulation” over 27 wolves. Now, doesn’t that just make your heart go pitter-patter? Such joining of forces against such a formidable foe, it just warms me all the way. *snort* I swear, all the rescuing of extinct species is just a way to gather money, ‘cause first we gotta pay to save some hapless animal from extinction, and then two decades later we gotta watch some bureaucrat decide that there are at least 27 too many. Who decides that? What the hell is 27 in the bigger scheme of things. So what, they shoot them down, the remaining pack gets a disease, only three survive and before you know it they’re extinct again. The bloody eejits are doing the same with the elephants, seals and whales. They’re driving me friggin’ bonkers.

And dog taxes. Seriously, what is that all about? I am forced to pay taxes (everyone is) so the mess dogs make gets cleaned, right? But, if my dog does a #2 on the street I have to clean it up or get fined a massive amount. What are the friggin’ taxes for then. I mean, heck, even in areas where people aren’t allowed to have pets they pay dog taxes. How’s that for insanity? I could earn money like that too. Jeez.

Well, I better stop now. Guess old age is making me crotchety. Hah.
Time to put up the new closet in my cabin and see how it looks.