Category: writing

The terrorists stole my plot line!

Was sitting at my desk at work, drumming my fingers on the faux wood surface wondering, “What on earth can I post about in my blog today”…and not finding many answers.

That’s when nature (and two cups of hot tea) called and I was forced to rise from my desk and use the facilities. I walked along thinking, “I need a topic, I need a topic, I need a topic”.

I went over to the other half of the building since the loo near me was being serviced by the faboo janitorial team.

When I went into the “other side” I noticed that the door to what I thought was a janitorial closet (and is always tightly closed) was slightly open. It’s NEVER open. Being the nosy Nellie that I am, I peeked in there.

Little did I know that there’s a shower and a small set of lockers in this building! I looked over the lockers and noticed that all you gotta do is slap a lock on the locker of your choice.

Nice.

So *immediately* my fiction writer brain thought “god…what a great place to stash something…”

Remember when airports and bus stations used to have lockers where, for the fee of one quarter, you could stash your suitcase or whatever for a bit while you did something else?

Whatever happened to those? They made for GREAT plot points in MANY a mystery story.

How the bad guy would stash the murder weapon there and thought he got away with it but no, he couldn’t resist going BACK to the locker and by now the police were tailing him and he gets flat *busted* there in the Greyhound station, red handed, red faced, red wristed when the cuffs get slapped on.

It was fun. It was convenient! It was a great hiding place.

Why don’t we have them anymore? 9-freaking-eleven, that’s why.

Ok, so no more in bus station and airports, but now THIS find. I bet they don’t check these lockers here at work all that often. I could put damning evidence like receipts from surreptitious wire transfers and plots to take over the world with my fleet of robot drones!

Ah hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Oh, @#$%…..I guess I can’t do it now. I just published my idea on the interwebs.

*sigh*

Back to work.

The Topic Fairy Has Left the Building.

The Muse is ignoring me today.

The stark white blank Word page stares at me…mocking.

I usually am chock full of ideas.

Today, the brain, she no wanna create.

Since I normally comment on my life (hell, I made an entire post about breaking my jump drive) you’d think there would be plenty to discuss.

It’s all just kind of *meh* today.

Oh well. Check this space.

I’m gonna go hunt the Topic Fairy and drag her back by her wings.

Utter distruction.

I have this fabulous little SmartDisk drive that I adore.

It has this great form factor that rocks. It’s one inch by one inch square with a little flip out arm for the USB connector.

It is twelve nice-and-roomy GB’s. I admit when I bought it, I thought 12GB was an odd size, but whatever.

Been carrying this around in my backpack for about a year now. It has all of my blog post drafts, lots of photos, a couple videos, much of my writing and various other things. I just dig this little guy.

It’s what I use at work so no personal stuff ends up on the work machine. All safely put away on a jump drive. And I can take work files home on it and not have to carry my entire laptop.

About a month ago, my Little Drive turned up missing. I was distraught. I had gone sailing out of the office late for the shuttle bus and was just sure it had fallen out of my handbag as I ran.

I was heartsick. I had made that major IT error. I had failed to back it up. It had several original files on there, including the beginnings of a new novel. I was 6,000 words into it, and sure, I could recreate, but who wants to!?

Highly depressed, I went back to the online store where Little Drive was procured only to discover they no longer make the 12GB version. The best I could do was an 8GB, so I bought one.

I was too depressed to even fire up this new drive. Unsure what to do, I soldiered on. Until I got a call from security at work . Seems they found Little Drive on the shuttle bus. I almost wept with joy. I ran over the security department and retrieved my creative soul. I immediately brought it back to my desk and backed it up to my Big Daddy firewire drive.

Whew.

So, reunited, we began again, writing together, saving interesting tidbits. A letter to the editor. A draft of an entry to a local poetry contest. Yes! We were happy again, side by side.

Then there was yesterday…

For the past several days I’d had that odd back of my mind feeling that I needed to backup Little Drive. Paranoia, I think, after being parted. But when I got to work, I got out Big Daddy drive and backed Little Drive up.

Then I plugged Little Drive in and started working on some stuff.

Later, I had to attend a “lunch and learn” meeting that I’d rather have poked my eyes out than sit through…

So I decided to take my MacBook and “appear” to be working while really working on my own stuff. I had Little Drive attached to the MacBook. In a rush to get to the meeting, I hurriedly picked up my MacBook and whacked Little Drive on the underside of the shelf right above the laptop stand.

Broke the USB connector, yes I did. Well, it was connected…but hanging there by its blue and red and green and yellow wires…

I was able to gingerly plug it back in and it mounted. Yes! I pulled off the files I’d worked on that day (that didn’t make the morning backup) then I ejected the drive.

I peered into the little arm and thought “well, it’s connected, I’ll just push this back in and it will work fine.”

I’ll spare the suspense. I did and it didn’t. Meaning I fixed it but it no longer worked.

So I yanked the USB connecter back out. My “fix” had snapped off all the wires.

Damn.

I pried open the cracked plastic a bit and took a look. It didn’t look good. But I thought maybe I could take it home and fiddle with it. Ok, to be fair, since I’d backed it up, there was no need to resuscitate this drive…I’m just…emotionally attached to it.

Owing to being “raised by engineers” (an honor bestowed on me by the engineering team of which I was a part of…as their financial analyst…right out of college) I figured I could figure this out.

I mean, my dad could make a toaster last for thirty years, I could fix a damn USB connector!

The Good Man suggested that even if I fixed it, odds of “data loss” were high with my kludgy fix.

Well, he needn’t have worried.

In one of those bits made for sitcoms, the more I tried to fix it, the more I broke it. I kept trying to pull the wires out a bit more. Trying to take the shielding off so I could get more space. All I did was fray the wires to unrecognizablility.

Then I thought maybe I could pop out the 12 GB drive and put it in the 8GB case! The one with the working USB connector!

After busting it wide open, I discovered that, yeah, those wires were attached to the drive in such a way as to not be easily removed.

Basically, I pulled a big ol’ Bull in a China shop on this poor little drive. It’s now in many, many pieces on my desk at home.

*sigh* Gonna miss you, old friend…

So the new 8GB has gotten the call to the bullpen. You’re up, fella. Let’s see what you got.

Observations

Subtitled: The World According to Karen

On the CalTrain this morning coming in to work (commuting always the best place for random observations of human behavior):

A very mild mannered looking Asian man in tweed coat with elbow patches was seen white-knuckled-clutching a thick stack of bright red paper slips. I wondered what they were.

As I passed the racks holding maps and schedules, I saw the red slips. “Customer Complaints” they said at the top and featured several inky black lines down the page.

I wondered. What did that quiet well-dressed man have to complain about? In quantity.

I envisioned him at home angrily scratching out all his perceived failures of the CalTrain system, feeling better as each slip is completed, shaky hand taking a drink of a whiskey neat as he does so.

At the Semi-Well-Known sorta Italian chain restaurant on Sunday:

A schlumpy dressed man escorts a *gorgeous* leggy woman dressed to the nines through the front door. His eyes dart around the room. When the hostess asks how he may be helped, he says, “It’s busy here…we’re going next door, they have a bar!” To her credit, the hostess just smiles and says, “Have one for me…”

As The Good Man and I had our dinner, we observe the place next door is having a special night and is *packed*. More so than the place we’re at. So schlumpy man and hot chick (clearly dressed for a date) wouldn’t have stayed there either.

I envision them darting from place to place, schlumpy man never satisfied with the situation. This one too bright. That one too loud. That one over there has a funny smell. An evening long quest.

Woman’s feet are now tired in her four-inch platforms. She thought she’d be sitting more, sipping a nice Cabernet. Schlumpy man finally settles on International House of Pancakes and calls it a night. Beautiful and usually well-kept woman calls it an early night.

I envision that Schlumpy man’s phone doesn’t ring, no email in the inbox. And he wonders why.

At the local chain drug store:

A large man of what appears to be the Italian persuasion walks through the store, talking to himself. At first I think he’s on a mobile phone. He is not.

He’s got all the stereotypical accoutrements of a Guido from Joisey. He’s wearing dark sweatpants with rounded boiler belly pushing at a stained button down shirt worn under a nice looking navy blue blazer. With gold buttons. I can’t tell, but I think little anchors are imprinted into those buttons.

Hair is slicked well back. Tarnished gold-rimmed dark-lensed sunglasses in place over his eyes. It is early evening.

He toddles off to collect his requirements. I forget about him.

We find him again on line behind us. I have to return an item. When I got in line, there was no one else. Now there is a long line. Clerk is confuzzled about the return process. So everyone waits. On me.

Guido has set down his purchases on the rolling belt. It consists solely of a large bag of potato chips and two fo’ties (fourty ouncers of Coors. I’d have placed him as a Miller or Bud man. Maybe Coors was on sale.)

I’m currently reading a novel about a guy who is a hit man for a “made man”. This colors my outlook. I’m thinking, “I’m gonna get popped for making this guy wait.” My eyes go shifty.

Guido cracks a joke. About the cake mix on my pile of purchases waiting on the cashier. He says, “That takes too much work, you can just buy that already made!” and laughs a too-loud belly guffaw. I laugh nervously. My Brooklyn-born fiancée kibitzes with Guido. They laugh together. Guido isn’t mad, just impatient.

I discover Guido is probably just another lonely guy in suburban California. Happy to have had a few moments interaction with some other people.

I envision him driving off in a battered black Lincoln or Caddy, body in the trunk thumping as he whips around the corner on his way home to watch Sopranos reruns.

I remind myself not to take the fiction I read so literally.

At the well-known trendy natural and organic foods market:

The muzac is playing over the PA system. On this day they’ve chosen 80’s hits. Clearly appealing to the Gen X crowd that makes up much of their clientele.

Loverboy is in the air. “Only the Lucky Ones”

Soon to be middle-aged Girl remembers how her sister used to LOVE that band. She had the album on vinyl. The cover replete with the buttocks of Mike Reno clad in red leather pants with crossed fingers. Album titled “Get Lucky“.

Girl used to borrow her sister’s album and play it over and over and over. All those burgeoning teenage giggly thoughts about gazing at Mike Reno’s arse come bubbling up in her soon to be middle-aged mind. She remembers.

And she begins to sing along. In public.

She finds her mate. And decides to entertain him by doing a full air guitar solo while singing along.

And people walk by…unnoticing. Intent on finding their steel cut oats or their Kombuchi drinks.

I envision the Girl and her mate having a long happy life together.

Mainly because The Good Man is tolerant of my antics.

I love making character studies from the world.

You can’t make this sh*t up.

Memories, dancing demons and lost fragments of thoughts

There’s a lot going on in my head. None of it related to work. But here I sit at my pressed wood cubicle shelf desk-like device absorbing EMF’s from my monitor…and pondering.

If I tip my head up a bit, I can look over the top of my monitor and see the actual outside.

Here it is:

That photo doesn’t tell the tale. There is an oppressive haze hanging over tree tops.

I say haze, it’s really smoke. The heavy winds have brought a taste of the fires up this way.

Taste, as in literally. If you go outside your eyes and nose sting and you get that campfire flavor in the back of your throat.

It was weird, when I arrived at work this morning, I opened my car door and took in the first inhale of this dirty air, you know what it reminded me of?

New Mexico.

Yeah. Odd huh? But for the people who live(d) there, you’ll be able to relate.

You know how when the first cold of fall sets in and people start using their fireplaces and wood burning stoves? The smell of burning cedar and piñon is distinctive. You can taste it. The cold crisp to the air and that smell permeates.

So odd, that the smell of burning forest made me homesick.

I’m reading “Curse of the Chupacabra” by Rudolfo Anaya right now. Last night as I was reading, the main character was back home in Santa Fe and talking about being outside and smelling that distinct wood smoke.

Must have been in my brain then, this morning.

Me and Rudolofo, same page today.

That’s the magic of a really good author. You and he are there together, touching across space and time in that moment you read the words. You find a common ground. Anaya is one of my favorite authors, so that synchronicity is cool.

Inspired by something really tough, a raging fire.

Memorial Weekend lies ahead. Memories. I know this weekend is about remembering military veterans, and I do.

Maybe it’s also about airing out old memories of all sorts. Spring cleaning for the closets of the soul.

Been thinking a lot about old things. Old hurts. Old scars.

The woo-woo minded among us would suggest that this is due to Mercury going retrograde on Monday.

I’d say it’s because I’m the kind of girl who likes to shake up her thoughts like specks in a snow globe just to see where they land.

The Good Man said I might be entering the water hazard known as “middle life crisis”.

Whatever.

Either way, I’m thoughtful.

Ah well, off to a holiday weekend. Three days off sounds like a little slice of heaven to me today.

To all, Happy Memorial Day. Enjoy the weekend, be safe and remember those you love!