Fueled by Caffeine and Dreams

The highway near my house was re-named the " Highway of Heroes" because when one of our troops die, if they're going between Ottawa and the Toronto area, they are brought home on that stretch of road. People will go and stand on the overpasses and even stop on the side of the highway to watch and pat their respects as they are driven past.

Yesterday was one of the days when one of these events occurred. I had been out of the loop news wise so when I went to go grab some dinner I didn't realize what was happening at first. All I saw was a line-up of cars and some flashing lights from firetrucks.

Then I saw all the people standing there and I knew. Then I saw firemen standing on top of their trucks watching for the the procession, to show support for a fallen solider and their family. Someone who knew what they were getting into and did it anyway. I support the troops, alive and dead, and I paid my respects too.

It doesn't matter if you support the war or not, that's not the point. It's the people who go there anyway and give up their lives for what they believed was right.  So many of the people who are anti-war seem to forget about that.

As much as I wish for a world where we no longer kill each other, I know it may never be...so please support our troops, both past and present..alive and dead.

My sleeping pattern is way out of whack. Last night I dozed off for like an hour at 6am while working at my laptop. That's all the rest I've had for two days now.  My insomnia hasn't been this bad in years. That's probably why I haven't updated in a few days. I'm not doing anything except reading, editing, and writing. Oh, and watching far too much television again. I'm a sucker for the court shows it seems.

On a brighter note the sleep deprivation is opening up some of my creativity. I was talking to a friend who is also a writer and he says it does the same sorta thing for him too. The only problem is I end up having to go back and edit huge chunks of things that either don't make sense or that run on.

And before this blog post ends up running on I'm going to go.

My home office is a mess. It looks like a book bomb went off in there and I can't find anything. I have no clue how this happened either.

So I guess I'm going to be spending the next couple of days trying to re-organize everything so I can find my research files ( I'm old school and keep actual paper files as well as digital ones), and anything else I need or want to find in there.

It's not as easy as you might think. There are three of us that share the office right now so there is a lot of stuff to go through. It's also a pain in the ass because I really need one of my files so I can work on the story I'm trying to re-write.

And people think a writer's life is easy...

I'm both a gamer/geek girl and a crafty girl as well as a writer girl so I spent most of the weekend away from my precious laptop to spend a little time on the other joys in my life.

So while I watched a marathon of Ghost Hunters International I battled a giant ball of tangled yarn so I could make a case for my Nintendo DS.  I'll admit the ball fought a brave fight but in the end I won.

An added bonus of taking time away from writing is that when you're not trying so hard to figure out whatever problem you're having it seems the answer will just float into your mind. This is yet another thing I've heard many times before but I still end up putting pressure on myself and getting frustrated. Maybe I've learned my lesson and I now have a new case for my DS.

Nothing too note worthy happened today but I'm trying to post daily so here I am trying to blog.

Thankfully it seems my mp3 player is now fixed thanks to my tech guy. He had to take the hard drive apart which was no easy task. I have no clue exactly what the problem was but now it doesn't matter, my music is back and that's all that matters.

I ended up spending the whole day running around doing errands. I ended up buying a small cork board for myself at this great dollar store near my house. I also got a few things for some craft projects, paid bills, picked up a few odds and ends, and got stuck in a massive rain storm.

By the way dollar stores are great for office supplies. I go through notebooks, paper, pens/markers/highlighters, white out, file folders, and various other small office things like water so buying them at the dollar store saves me a lot of money. Just make sure that the stuff is good quality.

Besides taking advantage of the fact it's not supposed to rain and finally taking care of the jungle that is my backyard. I'm going to be reworking one of my novel ideas. I have to plot it all out again and then hopefully this time it will flow a little bit better then last time I tired writing it out.

I've never been good at letting my ideas go. They become like my baby that I have to nurture and help grow.  It might sound silly but it's true.

I forgot to post yesterday like I had planned. I've been working like crazy to check up on a few things and I guess blogging sort of slipped my mind.

I think I'm coming down with a summer cold and I hate it. I feel all yucky and stuffed up. My allergy medication makes it a little hard to concentrate so I'm working at a much slower rate. I actually stared at my screen and zoned out for almost half an hour before I remembered what I was trying to do. Hate when that happens.

So there really isn't much to blog about I guess. I'm looking forward to the weekend and my other half had his vacation time next week so hopefully we'll do something fun. I like to take a little time off when he does so that we can hang out, and also so that he doesn't feel ignored when I'm working and he's not. It's one of the downsides of working from home.

Well I have an article to finish and I don't want to bore anyone so I guess that's it.

Not to whine but being with my mp3 player is really messing with my flow. I'm used to writing with music on and because of the massive amount of music I've ripped from my C.D collection I don't keep mp3s on my laptop computer. They're all on the desktop which has a much bigger hard drive and is less likely to get messed up by my lack of luck with technology.

I've learned my lesson after too many mishaps and everything is backed up on that thing. Plus my laptop is older and used so I'm prepared for it to die like my other one did. I was not prepared for the loss of my mp3 player though. I'm really hoping that it can be fixed and soon.

In better news I started a new short story and started imputing the details into this story organizing software I have. I'm becoming very fond of this program because it's so helpful in helping you plan out stories. It's called StorYBook and free to download and use.

I'm to only person I know that could drop their mp3 player and cause it to start skipping. Which is what I did this afternoon. Now it stalls every so often when switching songs and then will randomly play bits of the song that played before whatever song is actually playing. It's mildly annoying and I'm really hoping that it can be fixed. I use my mp3 player a lot and I can't afford to replace it now. This whole being an adult and taking care of your bills before buying things you want is such a drag sometimes.

Other then the tech troubles I spent the day trying to organize my week while watching the news about the explosion in Toronto and a couple of movies. As much as I was concerned about the explosion, since a lot of people could have been hurt and one fireman is dead I couldn't take the constant repetition that happens on the news stations.

I highly recommend The Spiderwick Chronicles and Forgetting Sarah Marshell. They were both great movies and although there are some "adultish" moments Forgetting Sarah was really funny.

After much thought I decided it might be best to start over. I wanted to make this a little more personal and I was sort of avoiding that at first. It can be hard opening up to the whole world when you're used to writing in a journal that's for your eyes only.

I figure it should be easy to balance talking about work and my personal life without giving up too much of my privacy. This is the internet after all. I can control what I say...at least I think I can. I guess I'll find out now won't I?