Me and My Jammies

Here we are, me and my jammies -- well, me in my jammies -- hanging around the house, drinking gen mai cha and soup, watching Miss Congeniality, feeling like Sandra Bullock's "Before" picture, only older. This ought to be a good day to get some writing done, but somehow it isn't. Not yet, anyway.

My accomplishments for the day:

1. Making a pot of Knorr Vegetable Soup. "Instant" sounded good, but by the time I had started with cold water and the soup mix, brought the mixture to a boil over moderately high heat while whisking it constantly, then simmered it for ten minutes, whisking it occasionally, it occurred to me that it might have been easier just to make the soup from scratch.

2. Installing a counter on my blog, for some reason.

3. Moving some things around on the sidebar so that I can find what I'm looking for.

4. Adding a widget that connects to NaNoWriMo.

5. Keeping up with the dishes.

6. Entering Angie's Book Title Contest over at Gumbo Writer. That was fun.

What I should be doing:

Analyzing my Master List, the one I'm supposed to have made yesterday. It's part of the NaNoWriMo prep work I'm doing with the help of Alexandra Sokoloff. What did I do with it? It's all a little hazy. I know I started the list, but I'm not at all sure I finished it.

Okay. What I'm going to do now:

1. Start another Master List.
2. Finish it.
3. Analyze it.

Friday Photo Shootout - all about a building



Well, several buildings. When I visited my sister Gracie in Casper, Wyoming this summer, we visited a few of the local places of interest. The first was Fort Caspar (or Fort Casper, depending on who's writing). The 19th century fort has been preserved as a museum. The display consists of log buildings - barracks, mostly -







and the stables,



as well as a group of tepees



and a section of bridge.













Oh - and there was a covered wagon.







Altogether, the folks who look after the museum have made Fort Caspar look like rather a cozy place, but I suspect that the men who lived there didn't find it so. I meant to post these photos way back in July, when the visit was fresh in my mind, but time flew, and I missed my cue, so I'm glad that this subject came up at Friday Photo Shootout. This week's topic was assigned by the Town Blogger Team. You will find more photo shoots right here.

Theme Thursday - Flight

Thanks to Roy for this assignment. To see more Theme Thursday posts, click here.

It has been a long time since I last posted my favourite poem, Adrienne Rich's Vertigo. When I saw today's assignment, the first thing that popped into my head was Rich's line "The flight of wings surprises empty air." As it always does, that line made me stop, catch my breath, and say "Ah!" The world is not just a stage on which we act. Suddenly, even the air around us is sentient. Anything is possible.

I will post the poem over on the sidebar, so that it can linger awhile. There was a time, a year or more ago, when I thought I had lost my only hard copy. I have since found it, and it hangs on the wall right under the dry-erase board, where I can find it easily.

I had several plans for this post, including a photo essay about my walk - our walk - on Duke Point today. The problem with long, woodsy, watery walks, though, is that they give you plenty of time to think. What did I think about while I was walking? I thought about my story - the same story I was talking (and thinking) about yesterday.

I thought of a title - at least a working title. My WIP will be called Fly Away Home. I just googled that title, and there is a book by that name at Amazon, but it's a children's book dealing with homelessness - nothing like mine - so for the time being, at least, that's the title.

I thought about my main character, Bridget, which led me to think about her role model, her heroine, Amelia Earhart. Lady Lindy - The First Lady of Flight. Bingo.

The opening scene of Fly Away Home will take place on May 20, 1932, Bridget's twelfth birthday - and the day that Amelia Earhart takes off on her first solo flight across the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Ireland. In preparing to write the story, I find myself drawn to read more about Earhart, who was an interesting and controversial woman. Her fascination with flight began when she was twenty-three years old. Her father and she visited an airfield in Long Beach, California. She took a ten-minute (and $10) ride in an airplane. At the end of the ride, she said "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly." She immediately set about finding a way to realize her dream, and she took her first flying lesson on January 3, 1921.


Six months later, Earhart bought a second-hand Kinner Airster bi-plane, which she named "The Canary." The photo on the right shows Earhart and her flight instructor, Neta Snook, standing beside The Canary. By the time Earhart obtained her pilot's licence in 1923, she had already set a world record for female pilots by flying The Canary to an altitude of 14,000 feet (4,300 m). I've taken these photos and snippets of information from Wikipedia. I would encourage you to read the entire article, as it is fascinating reading. Just click here.

And/or - have a look at these videos, which will give you more insight into Amelia Earhart's life.




As you can see, flight is much on my mind. I must go now (See? I resisted the temptation to say "I must fly!" Aren't I strong, though?) to stare at my office wall and think writerly thoughts.