entering the whirlpool

I've been reading back over my unfinished novel of mice, and came across the sentence: Jo felt as if they had become paleontologists, encasing casing fragmenting rock in plaster for the trip to the lab. which makes no sense at all. Aside from a bunch of these small details, I find that my suspension of disbelief works a great deal better while reading than while writing. Or possibly even that some of the forced plot points aren't actually as bad as I thought they were. I may, however, have to tidy up a few of the introductions of characters so that they have less in common with Anyone We Know.

Meanwhile, I have ordered 10 yards of silk, and paid less than half what they were asking for any of the crazy acetate bridal gowns I tried on, and with some luck and attention to detail, I may even end up with something I find far more attractive. We shall see. (oh, plus a matching vest and cravat for grauwulf) It almost looks like progress...

Other than that, about the most I have to report is that I measured my hair and discovered that in fact I have about 3.5 feet of it. In case anyone was wondering. This week *could* have been more productive.

So sleeping in apparently meant two hours, but it's all sunny out, so clearly it's time to be awake. And here I am with my tea, and the internet junkie that I am, I have to check various parts of the world online before sitting down to write. And thus I find the following:

Yes, this is the latest version of my doll. I knew she was a shape-changer, but really? How terribly odd. Although I kind of want the ear-frills. I'll have to make her some at some point. (after, um, all the clothing I haven't started yet...)

Right. Back to the mice. Poor Jo is having a bad day, which may end in her catching her tail on fire (a la one of the more colorful stories from long ago days in two-companies-ago archaeology.)

After spending FAR TOO MUCH time yesterday evening looking at useless things online (after an excellent birthday dinner at an Afghan restaurant) I looked up iPod cases today by way of discovering what was out there and got sucked into ordering one of these. With two tones of drab green and a mayan god for the touch wheel, and at least theoretically field-resistant. (I am saved from becoming a creepy seashell person by the fact that ear buds make my head hurt after a while, and real headphones are worse.)

That and I got a "long" letter from Barrett, who wrote it on about 5 yards of ribbon. It very nearly broke out of the christmas card and escaped. I was highly amused.

And now there is another 4 days of weekend ahead of me, at least some of which I intend to spend ignoring everyone.

(oh, and I worked out why I've been in such a bad mood for the last month-- somewhere in the back of my head Lara Mouse is still worrying that Jameson is about to get himself killed. She's very good at worrying. These characters, you make them up and then they won't leave you alone...)

(as the alarm will be going off at 6 tomorrow morning...)

But the murder mystery is wrapping itself up. Soon several characters will know who did it and why (I suspect Babbage already does, and was merely lying about it to make Martya feel better, but since I still don't quite know what he thinks he's doing, I'm not sure about that.) and then there will merely be the question of what to do about it.

The end of the archaeology will probably have to wait until after, although now that Martya has taken an interest, there's more reason to follow the project through to the end of the lab analysis. But that... well, it may not happen next week. Sadly, there are other things in the world to do, and a doll to put clothes on, and a christmas CD to begin...

Oh, and fishy1 and/or scraun23... is there gaming on tuesday?

I am wandering through dense fog without a map, and I have fallen behind. Originally I was planning on doing about 2-3k today, but have managed so far around 800 words, and clearly I have not read enough detective novels. Probably I should introduce another character and start channeling Philip Marlow (or however he was spelled) but this doesn't particularly appeal. And I would have to come up with a name & species for him (or her... perhaps the private detective should be female?). I'm more inclined to go off on a tangent about gladiatorial punishment systems without adequite segue.

Meanwhile, I have the credit card bill which has the Folger tickets (one show of which we've already quite enjoyed) and the new doll on it, but there is still no sign of when the doll is likely to ship. I mean, I guess I could e-mail the manufacturer and *ask* what their shipping window is, but that would be way too easy... And I find myself feeling tired and out of sorts; I think I need either not to want to hang out with people (ok, well, mainly grauwulf) or to come up with projects that don't involve making everyone else go away first. Only neither of these things is currently applicable, or is likely to be for the next month or so, as when I'm not writing, I'll be recording, and someday the doll will show up and need clothes. And things. Possibly exciting beaded things, using techniques I have not yet tried out, but look easy & glamorous.

And my december is now scheduled, (although preregistration for the event on the 15th would also be helpful,) and I need to talk to heuchera before january fills up completely. Oh, and sleep, which I was going to do about half an hour ago. If only my brain made more constructive use of its time...

20k, although not the real 20k (at which point the murder is discovered) because I wrote almost 3k of a later chapter instead of going in order. Well, the later chapter is a manuscript they discover later on, and so it really happened long long ago, but it isn't chronological in the story.

On the other hand, if all goes as currently planned I won't have much time to write tomorrow, so I ought properly to be doing more now. But I lack inspiration in a serious way. Much rather watch Transformers with the grauwulf.

10.1k, and there are vast amounts of field banter. yay! (normally I am horrible about writing dialogue, and there is too much description punctuated by too little conversation-- or at least this is what I think is true at the moment-- but it is not currently the case!)

The site in the story has gotten to that same horrible, everyone is sick to death of it state that the one I'm on is at, except that they're not finding anything at all, and various characters are writing interesting things in their field notes. Watch me torment my characters! whee! (ok, it isn't really that exciting.)

But what I need now is more peppy writing music. Does anyone have or recommend anything peppy, melodic, and not sung in english? At the moment I've got garden_goth's trashy Romanian euro-dance-pop, but there's only one CD of that, and it's going to get old really fast.

Brainstorming question:

So you're a mouse (part of a sub-species of intelligent mice, who do a lot of the same things humans do, but are mostly unacknowledged by human society)... what kind of bad/off-color jokes would you tell? I'm mainly looking for the story sort, not just one-liners.

And none of them are going to get used in their entirety. (since for some reason I almost always hear less than half of Brian's jokes in the field...)