Sense of Adventure

So I had the German Bomber Channel on for electronic wallpaper a little while ago, and they were showing their Engineering an Empire show on Rome. And I was struck by a wonderful vision. (Thud.)

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, lean, distinguished-looking professor points to some projection or exhibit and in his characteristic deep, slightly nasal, slightly metallic voice asks, “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

And I’ll pipe up in my best Professor Hikita accent, “It’s your hand, Buckaroo!”

Enough whimsy. Okay; like that’s gonna happen.

Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot written. Annja’s current exploit’s really picking up steam, and The Dinosaur Lords are going great guns. Plus I did a lot of necessary world-building on DinoLords, which helped the writing a great deal.

The key there was that I actually wrote story, not just typed notes and drew maps, both of which I also did. I know way too well what kind of a trap that note-making thing can be: a whole novel, The War for America, wandered off into the swamps and bogged down because, in large part, I devoted so much time to writing reams of notes. That and not having an actual synopsis, but rather an idea in my head where I wanted to go. Not so good an idea. It turns out that, while I have a great gift of improvisation, I need a certain amount of structure both to activate it and to direct it usefully. Who’da thunk it? Anyway that’s why I’ve got upwards of 700 pages of novel and am not half done - and have, I judge, upwards of a million words of notes. Seriously.

(Someday I’ll go back and finish that. If events don’t overtake it first. Which is a major possibility.)

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… but Hell no.

Usually Emma Dog goes outside when I get out of bed and stays out all day (for some reason she won’t stay out if I’m not up, at least in the daytime.) She does her business, gets fed, explores, lies in the sun, all those outdoorsy dog activities. Today she started whimpering to get in after maybe half an hour. So I let her inside.

A few minutes ago, a little after 1:30 PM here in the Mountain West, Emma got up off her fleece on the couch and went to the back door. Which I’ve got propped open for ventilation. At the screen she stopped and stared out a few moments. It’s a standard way she petitions to go outside.

Then she turned, went back to her couch, and curled back up to go to sleep.

The reason’s not hard to divine: today really blows. Literally.

It’s our second day running of nasty wind. Today it hasn’t got up to really scary winds, which we attained around 5 PM yesterday. But its bad enough.

Today’s redeeming feature is that it’s a cool wind. It’s actually effectively aerating my house, which for some reason has the ventilation characteristics of a sealed bank vault even with all windows and doors wide open. I don’t even have the ceiling fan on in the living room, where I sit on the (other) couch - yes, it’s got an Emma Fleece too - writing this with the Cubs-Brewers game on in the background. (Oh, good. The Brew Crew just tied it on a home run.) Yesterday it just blew hot air everywhere. It was the very sort of day which makes me much prefer Fall to Spring. They’re my two favorite seasons; Fall mostly omits the killer winds.

Another annoyance is that there’s nothing I want to do in my yard right now that the wind won’t render impossible. Or at least make prohibitively unpleasant.

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