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Ramblings of the Week, September 04th

As most of you know, our AC was out and in the middle of the biggest heat wave we’ve had in a long ass time.

So we got an appointment for someone to come in and fix it and M took the day off, Thursday, to have it fixed.

FYI, Wednesday night was the most miserable night ever.

Anyway, so they were supposed to come at 10:30 on Thursday but apparently two teenaged boys arrived, according to reports! LOL.

They had no idea what they were doing I guess and ended up leaving without doing squat. The access onto the roof is in a neighbor’s yard and their ladder wouldn’t reach otherwise.

We then spent like an hour and a half driving all over looking for a portable AC but with the heatwave everyone was sold out!

So Thursday evening the neighbor contacted us and said of course they can go in. So we made ANOTHER appointment for Friday. From 2 to 5 and since I was getting off early for the holiday weekend we took the appointment.

I went on Amazon and ordered a portable for our bedroom anyway.  Paid for it to be delivered Saturday because I was taking NO CHANCES.

Dude didn’t show up Friday until almost 6 but he was an adult and knew what he was doing! Yay. Fixed it (needed a starter) and we had the best night sleep we’d had all week. Plus I now have a back up if anything goes wrong

This week is a short work week. On Saturday night we head to the Hollywood Bowl for The Muppets Take the Bowl and Firework Finale. Should be fun. We love the Bowl.

I hope to get a few things updated this week but I won’t say what so that no one blames me if their favorite didn’t make it!

Enjoy!

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Ramblings of the Week, August 14, 2017

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Channel Islands Harbor above

This past weekend, on Sunday, we had a barbecue at the family’s house. Hard to believe August is about half over already. While I won’t be sorry to see the heat go (and yes it will still be hot here in September), I will miss the daylight as it begins to get darker earlier.

This coming weekend on the 19th, I am going to the Chowder Fest in Oxnard (Channel Islands) with friends. The cost is $25 an includes different chowders, wine and beer.

In case you missed it, this week I updated Broken, My Devotion, and Anything. I ended up posting Broken on AO3, but changed the name.

Anyway, be that as it may, my plans for the week are to get a new chapter of Didn’t We Almost Have it All and Where My Demons Hide up this week.  Possibly the conclusion of Broken, too, which is now called First Impressions. That’s it, though.

For anyone who has a tumblr, I now have one. I don’t do a huge amount with it because I am a bit lost, but it’s there. Ivan’s tumblr

 

Me Being Random

My current song obsession that I think goes marvelously with Jim is Believer by Imagine Dragons. Check it out for the full experience but here are some of my favorite lyrics.

 I was broken from a young age
Taking my soul into the masses
Write down my poems for the few
That looked at me took to me, shook to me, feeling me
Singing from heart ache from the pain
Take up my message from the veins
Speaking my lesson from the brain

and

I was choking in the crowd
Living my brain up in the cloud
Falling like ashes to the ground
Hoping my feelings, they would drown
But they never did, ever lived, ebbing and flowing
Inhibited, limited
Till it broke up and it rained down

I love music that inspires me to write.  I have a whole long playlist for Star Trek.

It’s like 90 something degrees and my co-worker is wearing knee high leather boots like it’s fucking January.

Sometimes I wish I could control myself and not write fifty million Spirk stories. And I still want to write that Winter story I’ve been talking about.

Neighbor came over yesterday to say they’d had a massive leak and flood and since we share a wall we should check that wall for drywall damage. Sigh.

My plans for a beautiful romantic weekend at the end of August in Morro Bay may or may not be ruined. I have booked it but now the sister wants to visit. Grrr.

Recent movies I’ve seen and liked: Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, Spiderman.

Movies I’ve seen and didn’t like: I Saw the Light. I love Tom Hiddleston but this movie sucked. Sorry, Tom. Maybe it was the subject matter (Hank Williams).

Movies I still intend to see this summer: Dunkirk and The Dark Tower

I was supposed to get a new computer at work yesterday. The one I have is ancient and unbelievably slow. They set me up to get a new one more than a month ago on yesterday’s date. The one tech copied my stuff to transfer to the new one. And then…he sent me a message saying my computer was missing. I heard nothing else the rest of the day. I emailed him this morning to ask for an update. He responded just now that they still haven’t found it and that he basically has not ETA for me to get my new computer now. Unbelievable.

No writing update today. And I am going to lunch with my co-worker so I won’t even be working on anything. Tomorrow I will have a flash fic up but I warn you, it is short. (and sweet).

Ramblings of the Week, July 8, Saturday Edition

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So yesterday we had some stops to make after work. We needed half and half for our coffee. (random observation, I discovered when talking to someone in Europe that they don’t know what this is there, bizarre). We both drink it with half and half. Years ago I used to drink it with Carnation plain creamer. (off on my first tangent), but one day I taste it and there was a weirdness to it. So I looked at the container and they said “new taste”. I wrote to them and complained. Apparently I was not the only one. They vowed to change it back. It was too late. I had moved on. First to mocha mix (no idea why it was called this because it was just non-dairy creamer) and then eventually to half and half when I decided mocha mix was nasty.

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Smart and Final (don’t know where they are at in connection to the rest of the country, but we have  them, they call themselves the faster, smaller food warehouse) has the best price for creamer. $1.69 per quart. The grocery store we go to charges $5.99 for a half gallon unless you can get some mega deal. Anyway, we both drink it.

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Which brings me to (tangent 2), M is on this kick where he doesn’t want to use animal products. It’s been to varying degrees of success. He declared one day he would be trying to drink his coffee black. Neither of us uses sugar or other sweeteners. I said okay. I gave him his morning travel mug of coffee black. That evening after we came from work he said, nope. He would not be giving up half and half in his coffee after all. HA

Anyway, we are in the parking lot and we wait for this lady in a red car to pull out and she does. And she’s sitting there for a second gathering her bearings I guess, who knows, and all of a sudden this mini-van comes barreling out of his space, backing up at high speed. There is no way he will miss her. She just sits there looking at him. M is blowing his horn at the moron to stop but he just keeps going, right into her. Put a huge dent in her car and scraped up his own. OMG. PEOPLE.

It’s hot. It’s super hot. We  are having a big time heat wave for this time of year. (Tangent 3) One of the local Catholic Churches, St. Rose, does a yearly summer carnival the second week in July. I swear if I were a member of that church I would be suggesting, Spring. Yes, a lovely Spring Carnival in March. Who in their right mind would go today when it is supposed to be well over 100. I hear all the “Oh but it’s a dry heat.” Go turn on your oven. Go on, I’ll wait. Let it preheat. Now crawl in. Yeah, that’s how it feels (don’t really do this, duh).

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Next weekend I am off to Vegas and yes they are a miserable place in the summer. Their low at 11 last night was 108. But you expect that in Vegas and you are mostly indoors anyway.

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My own real picture of Vegas by the way.

This, trust me, is miserable.

Today is going to be a lazy lazy lazy day. Movies, games, hot dogs. No socializing. Sounds splendid.

Ramblings of the Week, June 26, 2017

Another busy week for me.

Tonight is the Queen + Adam Lambert Concert at the Hollywood Bowl

Tomorrow we are going to see Cars 3.

Then Friday is a birthday party dinner for a relative. Then of course after that comes the 4th of July thing. The 4th decided to be on a Tuesday this year and my company decided only to give us that day off even though M has Monday the 3rd off and so does a couple of our friends. And they all work in the same industry as I do. Nuts!

One of the cities around us does their fireworks on the 3rd. I have no idea why, they just always have. This is where M’s cousin lives so that Monday night, we will be headed over to her place to BBQ and watch the works from her driveway on a hill.

Then more family and fireworks on the actual 4th! Too much! HA HA

I am supposed to be updating What Happened to Spock next and I hope to get to it soon but I’d actually also like to update You’re in My Veins. I plan to, hopefully, conclude Forever I Am With You by the end of July.

And nothing is better on a Monday than a pretty picture of Chris

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Pictures from My Trip

So here we go. You must understand that I took hundreds so this is just a small sampling.

Let me start with the boxer shorts I bought. This was on the back end, M was quite amused.Boxer

Next up are just random pictures from the trip. We went on a lake one day for fishing. No, I didn’t fish and nothing was caught. We went to a place in Idaho called Bear World where you got to feed bread to bears who follow your truck. We also went to Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic Springs, and Grand Teton. Enjoy!

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Baby Bears

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Moose at Bear World

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Where’s my bread?

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Lazy Wolf at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center

Grand Prismatic Hot Springs (these kill people, I am reading a book on deaths and accidents at Yellowstone and Hot Springs deaths (basically you are boiled and burned to death, out number bear attacks by far)

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Grand Teton National Park, what an amazing place

Some pictures just around Yellowstone

Some Pictures just around Yellowstone

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Hebgen Lake Day

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It’s harder to get pictures of Old Faithful erupting than you might think! Plus it drenched us where we were. Soaked!

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One of my favorite areas was called West Thumb. Beautiful. As you can see with those pictures. It’s filled with beautiful, colorful hot springs like the one above. Humans cannot withstand them. In that book I mentioned West Thumb happened to an area with frequent accidents and deaths. They used to allow fishing in the area but the lake there itself has lots of these spring and they burned fisherman. Remember, Yellowstone is a super volcano. This pool above that is beautiful and blue? Is called Black Pool. Many years ago it used to be black but the thermal elements of Yellowstone’s volcano made it so hot that all the life that used to live in the Black Pool were killed off and now it looks like this (Ranger told us)

Ramblings of the Week, April 24, 2017

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Let’s see.

Did some cleaning this weekend. Usual laundry crap too. Went to Target and Trader Joe’s. Had an amazing salad we made for dinner on Saturday. Played some of my games.

Got my post date for my T’h’yla Bang story which is June 25, 2017. I also corresponded with my artist and I am excited to see what she will come up with.

I saw on the internet that Zach said Star Trek 4 was not guaranteed, but we already kind of knew that information from Chris when he said he hadn’t heard anything. As pointed out in one of the articles, Star Trek Beyond did not make as much money as the previous installments and given the turmoil going on at Paramount…well…who knows. Whatever happens, I am grateful to have the marvelous three movies we do have that has given me such joy writing about these fantastic characters Gene once created all those years ago. I do love the idea of our guys all reuniting but making another movie has never really been guaranteed. Hollywood holds no guarantee and Star Trek has never been the money maker that other “Star” series has been. So, we will see. As I said, these three movies have given me so much incredible pleasure. And introduced me to some wonderful, talented and HOT actors.

Zach also had to put his dog Noah to sleep this past week and having had to do that with my own pets in the past…it’s incredibly hard and sad.

We had to have one of our cats to the vets this past week too because of vomiting but she seems to be doing much better. We were quite concerned, so that’s a bit of a relief.

This weeks posts should include Where My Demons Hide, and if I can manage to also Who’s the Daddy, and You are the Light Leading Me. We will see.  I’m going to work really hard on making my chapters longer so if that happens I may not get all of that done. Especially if I am also working on my cheating story.

Continuation of Weekly Rambles, 04/17

This is sort of a continuation of my rambles from yesterday, I guess.

So over the weekend, I didn’t post any updates on AO3. Yesterday I posted an update on When it Began (it had been about a month since I’d updated that story) and I lost two subscribers.

I really don’t get it. And I’m tired.

I put a lot of effort into these works and it’s frankly disheartening enough to get radio silence on them with hardly any comments. But when people just delete me (which is basically what they are doing), I can’t help wondering why I bother.

It frankly makes me think I should just stop. If no one’s interested or everyone is sick of me, what the hell am I even doing there? I can write my stories for myself and never post them. Or I can just imagine them in my head, whatever.

Not for the first time, I am considering deleting all works in progress and just leaving my completed work on there for anyone who wants to read my complete stuff.

Will I do it? I don’t know. But I’m depressed and discouraged at this point.

In other news…

I heard a song on a Spirk video yesterday that I simply must have. It’s not a new song or even a new video, but it’s new to me. The video wasn’t particularly good but the song is so perfect for Kirk and Spock, I simply have to buy it. I can’t get it until Friday when I get paid, but I so am getting it. It’s Enrique Iglesias’ Tonight I’m Fucking You. He has a clean version called Tonight I’m Loving You, but there’s no way in hell I am getting the clean version. So come Friday, I will have that song. Can’t wait.

Supposed to be 90 around here this coming weekend. Friday I have plans to go to dinner but over the weekend I think I need to do some cleaning around my house. There are tufts of kitty fur all over so besides vacuuming it just needs overall straightening.

On Netflix now they have Forensic Files. I love that show and have seen almost every episode, if not all of them, but I found myself checking them out most of this past weekend anyway. I got through 15 of them so far.

I guess that’s the rest of rants for now. Probably more than anyone needed to hear really.

Movie Reviews 04.2017 Edition

Here are the recent movies I’ve seen and my review of them:

Spoilers ahead

 

Kong: Skull Island

Man proves how evil they are once again, really. This time in the form of Samuel L. Jackson as a somewhat bloodthirsty colonel. I can see where he’s coming from and I don’t think he’s all bad. It’s sort of ambiguous here. Kong does immediately attack them upon reaching the island and kills several of the men he’s responsible for. Kong has his own reasons, of course, and isn’t the monster Jackson thinks he is. I liked this movie and found most of the characters in it likable. And Tom Hiddleston, who obviously did some bulking up for this role, with his exposed and beautiful biceps was quite the pleasure to ogle I must say.

 

Beauty and the Beast

Casting in this movie was perfection as far as I was concerned. I was a fan of Jerry Orbach and his roles over the years but I still think Ewan was pretty good as Lumiere. And I adore Ian Mckellan in whatever he does. But Emma Watson was a fantastic Belle and Luke Evans and Josh Gads as Gaston and LeFou were genius. Add the guy who played the beast/prince who is the cartoon prince come to life and…well it was great. There were a couple extra songs that I didn’t really think added much but for the most part, it deserves the success it’s been having in the box office and I think if you enjoyed the Disney animated movie, you will quite enjoy this.

 

The Siege

This is an old movie from the late 1990s with Denzel Washington, Annette Benning and Bruce Willis. We saw it as a Netflix movie. I have to say I thought it was really well done and seemed very appropriate to our current times as it deals with terrorist attacks and bigotry toward those of the Muslim faith. Denzel is great in anything he does and the other two are no slouches either. Plus they were about 20 years younger than they are now and were pretty easy on the eyes. There’s a part where Muslims are rounded up and forced to stay in Yankee stadium in NY as part of martial law that I think isn’t all that far off from reality at this point. A striking movie, considering it all happened before 09/11.

 

Arrival

I’d heard good things about this one and finally got a chance to see a DVD copy. Basically Amy Adams is a language expert tapped to talk to aliens who have arrived in Montana. Along the way she sees visions of her daughter who died of a disease. She works closely with a scientist played by Jeremy Renner. I was frankly pretty bored. I think the other two who watched it with me were a little more interested in it than I was, but I found it kind of slow, to be honest, and not the amazing movie all the commercials led you to believe. I think it was nominated for some awards too, though I don’t think it won. The so-called shocking ending wasn’t a shock at all. Everyone who watched it with me said they had figured out that’s what the deal was before the ending came. So, um, yeah.

I remember years ago watching The Sixth Sense, and THAT was how to do a shocking ending.

This? Not so much.

So those are my current movie reviews.

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