Sumer is Icumen In
It's been nice to ease into my somewhat more relaxed summer schedule. I've actually been pretty productive at Getting things Done like critiques and planning for TNEO, but I've also done some reading, taking walks, etc. I finally signed up for Netflix and watched "Milk" last night. Good movie. I was young enough when the events in the movie were happening that they weren't really on my radar screen, but my guess and what I've read from an interview with some of the people who were actually involved indicates it's probably a pretty accurate picture.
I haven't managed to do any writing in the last couple of weeks. I'm a slow and long-winded critiquer and I find between the ones for TNEO and the ones for my local group, I've got my plate pretty full with writing-related things. I'm still waiting for a different twist for the ending of my next TNEO story to hit me over the head, but if it doesn't, I'm ok with submitting it as is. The story is now called "In Which Marper Visits a Witch" though I'm not sure if that will stay.
Stephan and I were hoping to do an overnight backpacking trip on the Adventure Trail in southern Indiana on Wednesday and Thursday, but the weather and my knees weren't cooperating. The good news on the knees front is that I'm finally seeing a physical therapist and I think I've got an accurate diagnosis of what's going on and a way to get them better. I've done the exercises for two days and think it's helped already. The exercises the orthopedist had given me actually made it worse, but to be fair, I don't think I had described the pain as accurately as I could so he didn't make the right diagnosis.
We ended up taking a day trip yesterday to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge. I still really wanted to go down and at least check out some of the Adventure Trail, but the weather got worse the further south you went and Stephan hates hiking in the rain. We had a great time at Muscatatuck, though, and hiked several shorter trails carrying our frame packs partially full, to get used to them. We walked through woods, fields, around lakes with lots of Canada geese families, and heard many more birds than we saw. The coolest bird we saw close up was a tree swallow. We found a total of 5 ticks between pulling them off our clothes while walking and finding them on our clothes later once we'd gotten home. None had bitten yet. This must be a bad year for ticks, as I've hiked in Indiana since moving here in 1996 and this is the first year I've found them on me.
I can count part of the excursion as writing research, because I got to visit my favorite elm tree. One of the two point of view characters of my novel is an ancient elm dryad. This is the tree I model her after, only I imagine hers on a more massive scale:
We also visited a restored cabin and barn that are probably similar to the ones in my novella, "For the Love of Trees." Yeah, I need to get back to revising that one as soon as I get caught up on critiques!
I haven't managed to do any writing in the last couple of weeks. I'm a slow and long-winded critiquer and I find between the ones for TNEO and the ones for my local group, I've got my plate pretty full with writing-related things. I'm still waiting for a different twist for the ending of my next TNEO story to hit me over the head, but if it doesn't, I'm ok with submitting it as is. The story is now called "In Which Marper Visits a Witch" though I'm not sure if that will stay.
Stephan and I were hoping to do an overnight backpacking trip on the Adventure Trail in southern Indiana on Wednesday and Thursday, but the weather and my knees weren't cooperating. The good news on the knees front is that I'm finally seeing a physical therapist and I think I've got an accurate diagnosis of what's going on and a way to get them better. I've done the exercises for two days and think it's helped already. The exercises the orthopedist had given me actually made it worse, but to be fair, I don't think I had described the pain as accurately as I could so he didn't make the right diagnosis.
We ended up taking a day trip yesterday to Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge. I still really wanted to go down and at least check out some of the Adventure Trail, but the weather got worse the further south you went and Stephan hates hiking in the rain. We had a great time at Muscatatuck, though, and hiked several shorter trails carrying our frame packs partially full, to get used to them. We walked through woods, fields, around lakes with lots of Canada geese families, and heard many more birds than we saw. The coolest bird we saw close up was a tree swallow. We found a total of 5 ticks between pulling them off our clothes while walking and finding them on our clothes later once we'd gotten home. None had bitten yet. This must be a bad year for ticks, as I've hiked in Indiana since moving here in 1996 and this is the first year I've found them on me.
I can count part of the excursion as writing research, because I got to visit my favorite elm tree. One of the two point of view characters of my novel is an ancient elm dryad. This is the tree I model her after, only I imagine hers on a more massive scale:
We also visited a restored cabin and barn that are probably similar to the ones in my novella, "For the Love of Trees." Yeah, I need to get back to revising that one as soon as I get caught up on critiques!