So, this rolled in this morning:
Great thunderstorm.
Yesterday, Wunderground had told me to look for “violent” thunderstorms today, but this morning Google wimped out with “rain showers.” I pick my teeth at you, Google.
I am reminded to be So. Very. Thankful. that we managed to afford to put new windows in my office, and that I followed through with the new sliders in Steve’s office. The rain is much nicer when it stays where it belongs and/or when I can open an oblique side window and sit in the comfy chair and have the Rain Experience, and taste the ozone on the wind.
The rain’s slowing down, now, which I guess is just as well. I need to go do my duty to the cats and then find something for lunch.
1,255ish new words today, for those keeping track at home, bringing the WIP entire to five-ish words short of 13,000.
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So that was a little less fun. I noticed a puddle on the kitchen floor in front of the oven, figured I’d spilled something and in the process of reaching for a paper towel, saw a big puddle on top of the (happily glass-topped) stove. Seems the rain came in through the vent. That’s special.
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So the big farmhouse up the street from me apparently has an offer on it, asking price in the neighborhood of $525,000. Because I’m incurably nosey, I took the photo tour on Zillow. It’s in pretty good shape, but, as I said, big, also old; and big, old houses are hard to heat. Sits on about 2.5 acres, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, gorgeous library with built in shelves and a fireplace, swoopy driveway that must cost a fortune to keep plowed. Possibly — I’m not as up on neighborhood history as I might ought to be, but as the house bears A Name — it was the farmhouse that had been in place before the land was sold for a development, and here I am, and all our neighbors.
On t’other side of me, down a few doors, another single-level house, though not so Interestingly Configured as, and on a slightly larger lot than, the Cat Farm, about 10 years older, newly fixed up by the people who only bought it a couple years ago. Asking price just about twice what we paid for this house, 8 years ago. I hear it’s a seller’s market. That’s news, I guess.
I’m wondering if Amazon warehouse soon to be built very nearby is going to bring housing prices up or down. When the mall went at Owings Mills, house prices skyrocketed, because all the folks who came down from New York with Macy’s saw bargains, and bought two — one to live in and one to rent, pricing the locals (which Steve and I were at the time) outta the market.
Well. That was interesting. Time to change the second cat fountain, and then make some rice to have on-hand. I’m bumping bread-baking to tomorrow.
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So, I finished reading/listening to Necessity’s Child last night. I very much like Necessity’s Child, though finding out that the one thing I thought was Absolutely Rock Solid going in — wasn’t. That said — wow is that a tight book.
I don’t remember much about writing it — except the ending which fought me because, as above, I was insisting on the wrong ending. I do remember that Toni wanted me to give her a … proposal thingy, which I did to the best of my (very) poor ability, and then, as she and I were discussing what I had proposed in email, I Thought of Something that I had overlooked, which altered the direction of the story, and thus the proposal, threw that into the discussion and said, “And, see? Already it’s changing.”
Toni threw up her hands at that point, I think. And, yeah, the story does bear some small relationship to that proposal: The Bedel and the steam tunnels. And I think the school.
Speaking of proposals — trying to get lesson plans into shape for my class in the fall, I am once again confronted with the inherent dishonestly of classes that promise to “teach” worldbuilding or voice or characterization or any other fiddly little bit of craft. The bald truth is that you can’t just teach one piece of writing a story; you’ve got to teach it all, just like you have to write it all. Characters live somewhere — that’s worldbuilding — characters are doing something, hopefully for a reason — that’s plot. Yes, breaking the Fourth Wall is a Bad Thing. Only? Every single first person story written since the Dawn of Forever breaks the Fourth Wall at the very first “I” — because who is that character talking to, exactly? Herself?
Well. It’ll be interesting.
Time to say g’night, folks.
I’ll see you tomorrow.