I took the sleeping pill about 2am and we wee ready by 3am. The br soured as Anne went off in a verbal tirade mumbling and then passed out. Usual. She most likely didn’t want the br in the first place. Fine. I listened to a bit of Coast on my Walkman and shut it off and past out about 3:45. I woke up about 7:45 all groggy from the pill and went to do the cbi thing and back to bed. I think I got maybe 3 hours the first half and 4 the second half getting up just after noon. I came out to make a coffee and replaced the double A batteries I had salvaged from the TV remote for the Walkman. The finale part to “Batman begins” was on. I rather liked this version of Batman (2005) that was 2 good movies that came out in 2005, “Batman begins” and Star Wars “Revenge of the Sith.” Both 2005. 

Over this weekend Al Gore sponsored his 24- hour Live Earth concert in an effort to prevent “global warming/climate change.” As casual and even long time readers of this blog know, I’m all in favor of each of us doing what we can to help the environment. I do my bit every time when I buy anew piece of computer equipment

And pay an environmental tax. We can all make small steps towards easing the stress us 8 billion of us are doing to this planet. There’s no reason why we have to do anything drastic like Al Gore and his environmentalists buddies would have us do. The Live Earth concert was to bring awareness to the environment that all 8 billion or so of us are doing. I do my bit by buying a monthly bus pass. Anne buys the groceries in cotton bags instead of plastic bags that would ordinarily go into the landfill or worse.

Sometime this afternoon, I’m heading over to Fs to see about getting a quote and getting this Compaq of mine fixed up or even to find out what’s going on with my W/98 machine. They’d want me to bring it over and test it there on one of their monitors. The thing is I don’t want to have to pay anything. I think the problem is also the video card. I’ve got this blue square in the center of my screen. After a bit of checking I find out this is part of “wallpaper”

I’ll probably go into Fs after brunch when Anne gets that going at 3pm. The thing is I don’t want to spend any money on the Compaq when in another 6 months I’m getting that Macbook Pro. Then I can convert and transfer my W/98 files over to the Macbook.

Still no Kevin Lowe movement since Friday’s shock wave that sent ripples through the NHL. This is good strategy; force a team to spend more money on it’s restricted free agent players. It also has the potential to compromise the current cba. Lowe said other teams are talking to him in the wake of Friday’s move to acquire Vanek from Buffalo. Nobody but Lowe and his staff know who’s talking to whom but it is interesting.

Looks like another nice day out there. This week I’m back to work for my 3 afternoons. I decided to do this in light of wanting that Macbook Pro. Also, 6 months of this and I can get on the medical plan. Most likely January 08. Perhaps in Feb/March get my teeth out and dentures. Then once I’ve got that I can go back to just 2 afternoons.

Getting through this first F rewrite is tough going. I’ve still got a couple of spots in the book that is rough around the edges. I really need a hard copy but I can’t do anything about that until I get that toner. Staples would be cheaper then a toner cartridge. I haven’t found the character voices yet in the story but I know what to do to get them.

The trouble I have with reading most science fiction (as good as the writing is) lies in the main character narrative. The writer (as good as he is) has the tendency to make the characters talk like they’ve swallowed Steinbeck. Now I’m no expert. I think story characters need to have their own voices and not talking like the author but like themselves. I like to bring my characters down to earth. I think every author strives to achieve this but ends up failing. It seems to me that this is because of outside influences higher up in the publishing food chain and even outside it. From author to editor and even to some extent the genre itself. Editors are only reacting to the wind of genre expectations. Robert J Sawyer’s characters sound like themselves because he takes great care in developing character voices. I ask myself how often do we as people use words like benign. Most people don’t even know what the word means. In every day conversation we use simple dialogue and not like they’ve got a thesaurus in hand. I strive to make my characters simple. Not simpleminded but simple. They may think in complex terms but talk in simple language. Science fiction and fiction in general doesn’t always need to have characters as physicists and rocket scientists or computer experts. Some of them might be laborers, accountant’s call center employees. Too many story characters sound larger then life. It seems to me story characters should be ordinary people caught in the drama larger then life.