Friday, October 19, 2007

mutterings and nothing much

I’ve been rightly accused recently that I shouldn’t mutter about the lack of update on my friends’ blogs when I can’t even keep up-to-date with my own. But yeesh. It’s so much more easy to read OTHERS’ blogs rather than write my own….’specially when not much is happening and I don’t want to bore the heck outta the 3-4 people who might be reading this.

Ok. Updates. Um….I’ve started working on my writing again. Got a title for the piece…don’t know if it’ll be a book or a short story. I’m aiming at book-length because I personally don’t usually like short stories….but then I’ve never written a book, so we’ll see. The title is “Gone Missing” and the main character’s name is Rae. That’s all I’m gonna confess right now, as it’s still going through a heck of a lot of thought and development.

Other things….I’m going to Las Vegas for the first time, in a couple of weeks. My friend is turning 40, and I convinced her she needed to do something wild or fun, so she chose Las Vegas. Neither of us has ever been there. We’re staying at Circus Circus, and have tickets to go see the show Thunder From Downunder…hehehe…..Hey, it’s HER birthday!! The “bonus” is that we’re flying in on Halloween – so not only will we see the “typical” Vegas crazies, but all the Halloween celebrants too!! This should surely blow my little mind. I’ll take pictures and maybe post one or two – if they’re not too incriminating!!

We’ve discovered we can’t remodel the bathroom the way we want (or even the way it NEEDS), so we’re going to look into alternatives….One thing’s for sure, we MUST prevent any pipes from bursting this winter, and we refuse to run a heater in the unmonitored crawlspace!! That’s just asking for a burnt down house. So we’ll see how much it’ll cost to - at the very minimum - cut off the pipes and cap them at the house’s edge….and maybe next year we can afford to make that bathroom useable again. Sigh. All this house drama is making a VERY good case toward either renting or buying a condo with a maintenance schedule!!!

I’m still stuck at my suck-arse job. And my boss is still a weasel. Not much more to say on that subject, unless I want to rant, and I shouldn’t at this time. sigh.

Hope your day is filled with good things and laughter.

Cheers!

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

End of times....

I've just finished reading Dies the Fire by S.M. Stirling.

[WARNING - spoilers here]

The plot is centered around "The Change" - a moment when everything from a simple battery on up to the mechanics of a 747 just STOPS WORKING. Cars, electricity, digital watches, gunpowder, steam engines...it all stops. The aftermath is well depicted. But even though I'm a pagan, I found the heavy stress of Wicca a bit distracting. I understand that people would need to latch onto some positivity amidst the disease, death, and violence that others would run up against, but I dunno....it seemed to distract me more than I expected.

As for the thought of the end of life "as we know it" - I'm all for it. There are too many people on this planet, and to have something from "outside" the human race (unlike a war or a human-started plague) come through and thin the herd without regard to race, religion, or politics, sounds like a great idea.

This isn't a new feeling of mine. I've read books like this before....there's even a movie we own (The Quiet Earth) that follows the theme really nicely.

I admit to being a bit cynical about human beings. I mean, I see cruelty, selfishness, rudeness, mean-spiritedness, and arrogance every single day - and most of it (I can't say all, because one never really knows what's happening in another's world) is totally and completely un-called-for and un-necessary. But it just keeps happening. It's very sad. And YES, I know that there is also a whole heck of a lot of niceness, unselfishness, and kindness happening too....but it always seems outshone by the negativity.

I was raised in the Christian church. I know the Episcopalian service very very well. I was even a born-again Christian in high school. But in my mid-20s I chose to head in a different direction. My pagan-ness has brought me great joy, as well as some sadness, but I wouldn't change my direction - it fulfills me. And too often I see the negative side of Christianity.

But I see my mama earth - Mother Goddess - suffocating. Something has to give. I don't want people to suffer, but they already ARE suffering!! Too many people = environmental disasters; famine; wars and conflicts; rich over poor...We can't keep going down this road and survive.