Weekend Roundup

There’s been enough stuff going on, but not enough time to post mid-week. I hate when that happens, so I’ll just dump everything in one post…

The Boy and I replaced brake pads on both my Civic and Mrs. Fetched’s on Monday afternoon (which was a paid holiday in the US). Doing this without a C-clamp — or rather, being unable to find any of several C-clamps I should have around the manor — to push the brake piston into the caliper can be rather difficult. After a lot of frustration, I hit on the idea of using this gigantic ancient screwdriver I found laying on the highway to pry against the brake pad, and that worked. The next three calipers combined took us less time than the first.

But I’d been hearing some disturbing rumors, and decided to come right out and ask The Boy about it: “Are you and Snippet back together?”

“Yeah.”

AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHH!!!!!!

Fortunately, what goes up must come down, and The Boy came in from work this morning in a sour mood. Seems that Snippet is “still confused about whether she loves me, so I made it really easy on her, I’m done with her.” WOOHOOOO!!! I hope it’s permanent this time. Snippet may have made threats about getting custody of Mason (not gonna happen) because he’s talking about having him “legitimized.” Seems like since Mason’s family name (on his birth certificate) is the same as The Boy’s, it shouldn’t be difficult. Besides, the paper granting Mrs. Fetched guardianship obligates her to make sure he’s cared for. Snippet didn’t care enough to get her skinny @$$ out of bed in the afternoon to take care of him when she was here, so why would things be different when nobody’s trying to get her to do anything at all?


Excuses for not writing:

1) Your grandbaby snatched your pen and Moleskine out of your shirt pocket. (See, I’ve got proof!)

2) The rest of the family thinks that watching TV is infinitely more important than taking care of said grandbaby, so they drop the kid on the one person who has better things to do than watch TV.

3) Feline interference.

Actually, I’ve been doing some writing… mostly #FridayFlash stories. I just haven’t had much time to dedicate to a serious edit of White Pickups, which is needed to fix various issues. There’s also a sequel to attend to. I wasn’t planning to serialize that one here on the blog, but if that’s what it takes to get me to finish it… I’ll need lots of urging in the comments as I post episodes though. Ideas come fast and furious these days, and even if they don’t, there are various writing prompts to try. Not to mention ideas I’ve shelved…

There are various “collectors” out there, and I’ve started submitting White Pickups to the Tuesday Serial collector and my flash stories to the FridayFlash collector. I had what I think is a wicked-cool idea for a flash collector: send a story link, it strips out everything but the story and compiles all submissions into a weekly anthology (or magazine if you prefer) in both ePub and MOBI formats. The whole thing could be automated — probably would have to be if it caught on — and would give people who have eReaders and long stretches of time offline the chance to keep up with the many good stories being blogged out there.

Some people put audio versions of their flash stories on Audioboo. My test run with that suggests the story needs to be around 750 words maximum to fit in the 5 minutes provided there. But I might try it. I do occasionally write something really short (I have one that’s less than 200 words in current trim) so I do have some fodder to work with.


I would love to take a vacation. Daughter Dearest is home for spring break, which would have been a good time to go. Oh well, I hope it means I’ll get a little relief from the near-nightly (and all weekend) Mason-sitting for a couple weeks. The Boy and I did take him over to the park this afternoon, among other things, and he didn’t want to go back inside when we got home. He needed a nap, and refused to take one, then finally demanded a bottle. He usually only gets a bottle at bedtime now, but we were both tired and cranky and I figured it was worth a try. He was out in ten minutes.

Oh, and the battery died in my motorcycle — at work, naturally. Fortunately, it’s light enough to push to the top of the driveway and I was able to roll-start it and get home. But with gas prices going through the roof all of a sudden, this wasn’t the time. (But is there ever a good time to have your battery die?)