It takes me a while to recover my stride after a diversion. Thank goodness for outlines. We were, for one thing, diverted by a spate of really cool weather, making it foolish to wait to do certain outdoor jobs which would have to be done in potential 100 degree weather, when we had a run of 75 to 85 degrees. Not being fond of sunstroke, we got to it, and wore ourselves out. Plus the hot weather we had had plus the breakdown of the UV filter made the pond an unexpected tough job…
But we have finally gotten to the far side of that crisis, and the fact we are physically exhausted makes it clear we can’t work outside tomorrow, so we are declaring we have to take a few days off from physical labor and get some brainwork done.
It’s been July, what can I say? I like cloudy weather. I like overcast. While I love a clear night sky, I am not fond of days and days for several months of blue sky in the daytime. Thank goodness for the lower temperatures…but we are at that time of year when forests catch fire, the air gets smoky, there are no clouds to relieve the sun, and, ugh! it’s high summer. We’d like to go skating, but we have too much to do. Jane and I both conclude we need to do this job on the lawn, because it is heavy work, and we are both getting a little less able to heft 50 lb sacks and timbers about. So…after I load up 300 retaining wall stones at 27 lbs apiece (don’t anyone do the math: it’s depressing) and get the side wall built, we get to till out the grass and actually start shaping the yard into hillocks and our ‘dry stream’ bed leading from the water feature.
Then we lay the weedcloth and the mulch, transplant 20 little shrubs, and wish them luck.
You wouldn’t like here; 105.9 and now only down to 103.6. OKC is usually worse than us here in TUL.
Oh,me. Take up figure skating. I’m sure Tulsa has a rink. I’ll give you long-distance lessons! So well I remember that heat, and I wish I’d known how to persist my way into the OKC rink: they’re all a bit arcane. Even if you aren’t ready to figure skate, go sit in the bleachers, read, and watch hockey practice.
110 here in Vegas. It was 98 last night at 10:00 when I walked my dog. I’d like to move up to the pacific northwest to get some cooler weather, like what you’re experiencing right now.
Overcast here; after the brush fires since Independence Day, I’m about ready to go out in the parking lot with beads and rattles to try to summon some rain!
Out here in California, it’s been hitting over 100 for the last 5 days. Down to the 70s at night, but that’s late… I’ve actually been running the AC instead of my normal routine of just opening up the windows at night to let the cool air in. Although I will do that if the dogs get me up in the middle of the night and it’s cool enough to make it worthwhile.
One of my friends remarked that the news said that Las Vegas was undergoing a heat wave and had temperatures of 110. Funny, isn’t that “normal” for Las Vegas in high summer? When I was out there 2 years ago, the temperatures were in the 114 range in the middle of the afternoon. I don’t know what they were in the evening as I didn’t go outside.
Yeah, one cool summer and everyone gets all wimpy about the next summer’s hot temps!
CJ I just got back from the store – had run out of food. I’ve been reading newspaper archives and found such goodies as my Dad’s Junior High School grades, myself in the paper when I was 11 (one of those contests for kids that they used to have with the funnies), a traffic ticket in 1938 for a distant relative for going over 20mph!
Oh, that’s good. 20 mph.
I hate this July. Way too hot and humid — and every single rain storm has broken apart and passed to the north and south of us! Ugh!
Ha! Just as I was typing that, Weatherbug came up with a Severe Thunderstorm Watch until 3 am.
On outlines — I’m working on rewriting an older series now that I think I have the ability to tell it well. I am taking older stories and stripping them down to outlines, changing things, etc. It’s been a lot of fun to do so far. I do love outlines. So much easier to correct a problem in the outline than in the book.
Outlines are where you see/develop structure. My outlines run like…
Chapter One…
Sally goes to the bank…
Robbery in progress.
Sally, arguing on cell phone with her ex, Fred, accidentally backs into getaway car while parking on street, damaging car which is bone of contention in messy divorce…
Third car, Fred’s, who is also on cell phone with Sally, rear-ends Sally out of spite, locking bumpers.
Bank robbers exit bank.
The lead bank robber decides to carjack Bob, but Bob is on sidewalk yelling at Sally, who is yelling at him. Bank guard exits bank and takes shot at robbers…
…who fire back…
etc., etc.
That’s an outline. No numbers. No letters. Just an expandable mess of what-happens…
Good luck on that thunderstorm alert. Back up often!!
I don’t hate July….at lest I’m not shoveling myself out of 18 inches of snow to get to the end of the 200 foot driveway, only to have the snowplow seal the end of the driveway with a 3 foot barrier of ice, snow, slush, and gravel. Weather like this, I can take things off, when it’s cold outside, I have to burn fossil fuel (heating oil) to stay warm and to keep the cats from freezing.
No, I’ll take July over February….
Ugh, sounds too much like Sissyphus. (My spelling may be off, there, and pun-mode is trying to make it sound like “sissy.”)
I am fairly sure after carrying a few 27 pound stones, I’d be sore in places I don’t even know about. Who said scraping your skin and getting a sore back or muscles, banging your knees, etc., was manly — or womanly? It might develop character and muscles and work off fat, assuming there is any, and it might even develop colorful multi-lingual vocabulary. Heck, I’d bet you’d even invent brand new words for the occasion! Oh, all right. Yes, if I were so motivated, I’d move rocks around for decorative purposes. There’s probably a good Zen discipline in there too. I won’t envy you two ladies, though. I should probably be embarrassed that it doesn’t sound like my first choice for a few days of exercise.
Heh, and no sympathy here either, for lower temps. Anything *below* 90 to 95 is *abnormal* for the daytime in summer, here. Over 90 to 95, and sometimes over 100, is all too normal. But I prefer that to below freezing any day. Never mind that the past few summers, I’ve been rethinking the wisdom of going about fully clothed. No, I haven’t quite gone in for that nekkid rain dancing yet, but in theory, it sounds like it could work. The last few summers, I think some of my neighbors might even join in. — Haha, as if! Actually, I’m on the conservative and shy side of that spectrum. I’m just outspoken enough in writing to be, uh, outspoken. (And a bit circular, apparently. LOL.)
Congrats on getting all the yard work and pond work done. Congrats also on getting more writing done. — I’ll be reading more in Foreigner 1 tomorrow. Yay! But that means the next book will probably be out long before I’m anywhere near caught up with reading the series. (Not complaining here!) — Heck, I’ll be glad to see new novels outside Foreigner too.
Last night, I read part of your short story in the Swords and Dark Magic anthology. Enjoying their dilemma immensely so far. Willem has just returned to their little tenement with the loaf of bread. — Unintended side effect of the story’s spell: I now want to fix pinto beans and cornbread. 😉
I’m with you, BlueCat. The last couple of summers I have kept the AC set at about 90°, which means it comes on FAR less often than at 78°, and has major advantages to my power bill. A couple of fans keep the air blowing around, and my indoor attire is fairly minimal, and not suitable for answering the door in! I keep an easy-to-slide-into sundress handy for quick donning when needed. It’s amazing how hot a single layer of fabric can be (of course, the damp T-shirt model is also useful, if the humidity is not too high.)
I do different outlines for different stories — but in this case, it sounds like yours, but with numbers. I seem to do well if I have number goals. So if I have an outline with 300 entries (usually just a line or two at most) and I want a 90k novel, then I know that those entries are going to have to average about 300 words in the finished draft. It rarely really works that way, but it gives me an easy number to look at and see how I’m doing.
The storms have passed us by. Which is unfortunate since the temp (after midnight) is still 83f, the humidity is 95% and the heat index about 90f. I am NOT going to be sleeping any time soon.
We normally, in the Inland Empire (NW), run about 20% humidity. In Oklahoma, where I lived for many years, standard was 40%. Most people would guess the reverse. But typical July Oklahoma temperature of 100 or so with 40% humidity promotes the Oklahoman to drive his air conditioned car from store to store in the shopping strip, so that it is always as close as possible, at no time walking a full city block.
In the NW, with a standard July temperature about 10 degrees less than Oklahoma at any given time and half the humidity, you don’t tend to get danger-warnings from the weather department for physical activity but for a few days a year, during the annual over-100 week. We may not have that week this year: we’ve been mostly about 85, which is wonderful.
On the tother hand, we ain’t seen August yet, either. Mother Nature may be planning revenge.
I’m with Joe. Definitely summer over winter. I like the long days and the heat. I find it much easier to stay cool than to stay warm. I like stuff growing outside, watching the hummingbirds. I love summer light, the way early morning sun hits the tops of the trees turning them gold, the green light in the woods. Winter is a battle of survival as far as I am concerned. May be better this year since I retired from my day job……. 😉 we’ll see…
I think I got heatstroke too often as a kid. Over 80, and I am miserable; over 72, and I’m not happy. I don’t need a coat for a short trip out until it’s the bottom of the 40’s. We did get a snowblower, finally, in the middle of our big winter: it’s an electric. But I know what you mean, Joe, about just getting dug out, and then having the plow come through and make an instant ice berm blocking your drive. We live on a snow route, and the only thing that will move one of those berms is a 4-tined mattock: *good* thing to own!
For those of you inexperienced with ice, what happens if you move slightly sloppy snow with high velocity is that just about as fast as it clears the plow blade, it sets up like concrete (studded with gravel, just for fun)in a very short time, and is very heavy due to the energy that has gone into moving it: meltwater. Solid ice if you aren’t on it fast, because I’m talking minutes. It’s the same phenomenon that makes avalanches so deadly if you get buried: once disturbed snow stops moving it’s inclined to go very, very solid. An ordinary shovel can’t budge it once it’s set up, and a pick is inclined to rebound.
But I’ll still take berm-chopping over a hundred degree day!
Cold over heat: dry over humid. I’m not liking New England’s past many weeks in the 90’s with high, high humidity. At least today, while hot is also breezy and relatively dry for late. I was watering plants (and baking bread) at 6:00 this morning and then cleaning our bunnies’ two cages and letting them air-dissenfect in the sunshine afterwards.
On outlines: I’ve finally gotten back to playing with/writing my novel after a major hiatus of teaching and advocacy ate up most of my time outside my day job. And, I’m finally confronting the plot movement devices that I hadn’t really figured out before. When I started the work, I knew and still know where I want my major characters to go emotionally/developmentally and also where I want them to move across the Scottish landscape as they wrestle with inner demons. What I was uncertain on but am beginning to coalesce is “why” they do what they do and for what larger, outside reason than simply emotional development.
How do my two characters meaningfully interact and effect bigger, outside events that matter in their world? I’m finding it helpful to think in terms of a mystery novel and the teaser questions that blurb writers put on the backside of a book: How did the king survive Flodden? Why has he suddenly turned on the wizards when he seemed to support them so well after the battle, etc. I’m trying to weave in clues, ties and situations that build up to answers to these and other questions, which means going back and inserting bits and altering scenes so that they build up information and speculation in the reader’s mind. We’ll see how it goes, but thinking of the plot in terms of the dramatic, uber-questions has really excited me. The character development, provides, I hope, the pleasure of reading the story but plot elements/answers to the questions are what I suspect drive the reader to keep turning the pages to find out “what’s next?”