Back from Vacation, sort of

Well, we're back from Myrtle beach and hating it.

Not that we didn't have a good time but it takes so long to get back into the groove of your life again. Don't get me wrong; I LOVE my life and wouldn't change anything.

I guess my head being blank for so long while I floated around in a pool or lazy river, watching my kids play and contemplating the horizon of the Atlantic Ocean, didn't prepare me for the real world. Kind of like college.

But here I am faced with deadlines and committments that involve actual thought and it's taking too long to figure out how it all went together in the first place.

Next year, I might stay home and avoid all of this.

Or I might just bring my laptop and actually look at it!

Joyce Lavene
Ghastly Glass
September 2009
www.joyceandjimlavene.com

I'm Back

I took a week off from writing to vacation in Nashville with my husband and my parents. Even though this vacation was special, I don’t have anything special to write about, other than the high cost and low availability of gasoline. After all, just about everyone’s been on vacation somewhere. Millions of people have already been to Nashville. Who needs to hear about my visit to the Stingray Reef at the Opry Mills Mall where I fed overpriced shrimp to huge stingrays that splashed water all over me? I also rode on a carousel at the Stingray Reef since it was included in the price and I like carousels. And I did the usual Nashville tourist things—attended a country music performance at the Grand Ole Opry, toured the Country Music Hall of Fame, visited a plantation, walked around Centennial Park and the Parthenon replica, and took an afternoon cruise on the General Jackson Showboat. Those are the types of things that everyone visiting Nashville does--fun, but not especially newsworthy.
What makes this vacation special is that it may be the last time my father gets to join us on our annual road trip. Dad is eighty-four-years old now. He’s a disabled World War II vet and it’s getting harder and harder for him to get around. He says he may not be able to make the drive from Florida to North Carolina next year. I hope he’s wrong.
My father is a born story-teller, so I’ve got a lot of his stories warehoused in my memory for when he can’t tell them anymore. The family has been after me for years to write down and publish some of Dad’s stories and I probably will--someday. But not now, not yet.

Death Before Coffee

Monday morning blog.

I've given up coffee.

It wasn't a good morning for it.

I'm behind a few stories for the Small Metropolitan Newspaper I write for in my spare time. Those are due this afternoon or early tomorrow morning. The paper goes to press on Tuesday afternoon. Cutting it short, but it was nice having some time off to catch up from my vacation last week.

I love vacations but it's hell on my schedule. I'd like to say I could just go without a schedule but nothing would ever get done.

Fortunately, the new mystery book is in good shape so I don't have to think about that.

I drive around thinking what I'm going to write about and who the lucky person will be to fill in that gap for me. Could be a county or city official. They're easy targets because they want to talk as long as you say what they want their constituents to read. Could be someone with a really big watermelon or whose storage shed was torn apart by something the Weather Service doesn't want to call a tornado. We call these Micro Bursts now. I haven't had a complete definition for this, but I'm sure there's a story somewhere.

I'm passing coffee shop now. I managed to get out of the house without one but will I make it into town with only water in my cup? It's a challenge.

The Mayor calls me about a possible story but it won't make it past the editor. Everyone knows the Mayor has a way of stretching the truth. Better luck next call when a driver calls me to say a man is trapped in a ditch under some heavy equipment. If I get there right away, I might be able to catch it for the paper.

I reach the scene and ditch my car to walk between the dozens of medics and EMS trucks along with fire fighters and police officers. I see a friendly face and ask about the man in the ditch. We walk behind the barricades and I can see where they're digging. The tunnel where the man was working collapsed on him. There's an apparatus that could've been used but they didn't want to take the time. No one knows who the man is yet or no one is saying.

I'm there at nearly the end of the project. The man has already been underground for too long. By the time he's brought up, he's pronounced dead at the scene. All that's left is to talk to the police chief then the construction supervisor. No, he didn't tell the man to go down without the proper equipment. Of course not.

I talk to everyone I can at the scene and take a photo of the man on the stretcher under a blanket as they make room for him to be moved. I take another photo of the trucks and cars beside the open hole which now marks where this man died, in case the editor is too disturbed by the first shot.

I wanted a story and I got one. Maybe not the one I wanted. I head back to the coffee shop before I go on to the office. I'll try to give up coffee again tomorrow. Maybe.

Joyce Lavene
www.joyceandjimlavene.com

What to Blog About

I’ve been reading blogs by different writers (1) to see what they’re writing about (2) to get an idea of what I should write about (3) To see if I really want to write a blog (4) I like to be entertained and (5) I’m nosy.

After all this research I find that some of the things writers are writing about are:

(1) Their personal life (birthdays, anniversaries, a black dress, husbands, wives, family, children, parents, holidays, remodeling the house, buying a house, empty nest, cleaning a closet, having a wreck, a car break-in, and on and on. Anything that happens in life seems to be fair game for a blog. I can do this.

(2) Their pets (this could probably go with personal life, but since pets are such a big thing I decided to give them a paragraph of their own.) Of course there are dogs and cats of all shapes, sizes and breeds; then there are the exotic pets – A monkey (I had a friend years ago who had a monkey. It bit her husband’s hand and he almost lost it.), A snake (Never mind what kind, I’m in that large group of people who shuts their eyes when a snake appears on television. I hate snakes.), A llama (Yes someone had a llama. The only llama I ever met spit at me.), An iguana (To me they look like a tiny dragon or a big lizard. I have no desire to meet either.), and then there are the big pets, horses, cows, and assorted farm animals. Again this list could go on and on so I suppose writing about animals is okay. I’ll keep an eye on my lazy cat, Jefferson and if he does anything exciting I’ll report on it. At this point his life seems to consist only of eating twice a day and sleeping on the foot of my bed.

(3) Their travels. Writers seem to be going everywhere. Hawaii is a choice spot. (I’ve never been there so that’s out.) Cancun is another favorite destination. (I went there one time, but if was a quick day trip from a cruise ship and I didn’t see much of the place.) The Greek Islands (One can only hope..someday.) Cruises both in the Atlantic and Pacific (I went on one – see Cancun – but that was over twenty years ago and my husband, now ex-husband was so busy taking care of two retired women in our group that I probably saw him a total of an hour a day. I didn’t have good time and I’m in no hurry to ever take another cruise.) New York, LA, Chicago and many cities in between. (I wonder if anyone would be interested in the fact that my little town has a Wal-Mart and I went there the other day. I bought a pile of cat food because it’s 7 cents a can cheaper there than the grocery store. Today I made it to the Post Office and tomorrow I’m going to a Mexican restaurant to meet with my critique group. Not a lot happens in my little town. One of these days I’ll take an exotic vacation...maybe.)

These are only a few examples of the 437 things I found that writers write about on their blogs. When it comes down to it, I have decided I can write about anything I want to and I’ve decided I’ll do just that.

The day my computer died

Jim Lavene
Tuesday, July 22

It never fails. When we go away to a mystery writer's conference or on vacation, when I come back, something terrible has happened. It's almost not worth going away anymore because I can't afford the repairs when I get back.

Take this year's Malice Domestic in DC. Gone for three days and two water pipes burst. So I get home Sunday afternoon and there's no water and I spend the rest of the night crawling around in the dirt fixing the pipes.

We take our whole family to Myrtle Beach each summer(kids, grandkids, in-laws). We stay at one of those big, high rise hotels with the ocean front balcony up so high all the people look like ants. The kids love the amenities like the pools and stuff. This year, it was the Dune's Resort with elephants whose trunks shoot out water and giant water slides. The kids dig in the sand too but mostly, it's the other stuff they want. Dune's was nice; clean and nice people. We all came back exhausted and happy. It's a great time to spend with everyone, having time to talk and sit on the balcony and watch the sun rise and set.

We got home late on Sunday and everything seemed to be fine for once. I smiled and went into my office, thinking I must've beat the curse.

WRONG!!!

I pushed the button to start my primary computer. Nothing happened. I kind of glanced at it then tried again. Nothing happened. I jiggled a few cables, checked the power supply. Nothing!

I spent the next hour trying everything I knew and nothing happened. By that time, I was sure the mother board was fried. I told myself not to panic. I have a laptop and all my info is stored on a server separate from the main computer. It would be all right until I could get something else set up.

We worked hard on the new book(Ghastly Glass, book 2 in the Ren Faire series) before we left so we wouldn't have to take it with us but it had been four days and I knew we'd want to get back to it Monday. My laptop is okay for emergencies but it's slow.

So I got online and ordered some memory. It would be a while before I could get a new main computer. Just looking around in the catalogues to get an exact fit takes a few days and then ordering. I can't get what I want from Best Buy or Circuit City. Since they closed the Comp USA store in Charlotte, I have to get everything online.

But we're up and running again with the laptop and the next chapter of GG is in the can. I know now that I can't beat the curse and I've resigned myself to it. Something has got to be whacked out or screwed up when I come back after a few days. It's just one of those laws of nature.