Bad Day: Spilled Coffee. Thinking about a writing project
Today was one of those days where I should have stayed in bed with a book and a cup of tea.
I should not have tried to make coffee. Or I should have used a different combination of tools. Instead of the trusty Mr Coffee coffee maker in the kitchen, I chose to use the Vietnamese coffee maker Mike's parents gave me. I've used it before to great effect and it's really convenient for single cup brewing.
Unfortunately, all of my mugs were dirty and instead of washing one, I chose to try to fit the coffee maker over a /dev/mug (which doesn't seem to be available through thinkgeek.com anymore). The /dev/mug is very wide, and the coffee maker fits inside it, not resting on the rim like it should. So I laid a couple of chop sticks across the mug and put the coffee maker on them.
I was also not paying as much attention as I should have, and overestimated the volume of liquid the /dev/mug would hold as I poured more and more water into the coffee maker. I was also doing this in my room, next to my laptop, on a small stack of boxes (the bottom box containing most of my video game consoles and my dvd player).
I soon realized what I'd done (pouring coffee into the box with my game consoles) and restacked the boxes so I could get to the consoles and assess the damage. The good news is nothing was seriously damp and I think they all still work. The bad news is I knocked over the temporary stack and dumped warm, damp coffee grounds into my nest of blankets. The cup of coffee was on the bookshelf and unspilled.
After loading the top most blankets into the washer, I thought it would feel very nice to just curl up in bed and go back to sleep. But there were two flaws in that plan: 1) two parts of my bed were in the washer, and B) there were video game consoles spread over the other parts of my bed.
And, of course, by the time I got things cleaned up and took a sip of coffee it had gone cold.
The day never really got better, but didn't get worse, so that's a plus.
I've also been thinking about offering free short stories to people, probably between 500 and 1000 words, about almost any subject the requester wants to request. I'm thinking of how to phrase it better to post to a livejournal community: Free Stuff Day. I have two goals for this project: to get me writing more (and more often), and to create interest in Alternia Comics. Ideally people would request a story of a character in one of the worlds of Alternia, or a new character/scene that could be added. For that reason I think I would shy away from proprietary characters, creating fan-fiction, and prefer original characters or Alternian characters. But it could be a story about someone's greatest morning ever, or the day my friend Holly realized her iPod was reading her mind and playing songs that fit her thoughts.
What do you readers think? Good idea? Bad idea?
I should not have tried to make coffee. Or I should have used a different combination of tools. Instead of the trusty Mr Coffee coffee maker in the kitchen, I chose to use the Vietnamese coffee maker Mike's parents gave me. I've used it before to great effect and it's really convenient for single cup brewing.
Unfortunately, all of my mugs were dirty and instead of washing one, I chose to try to fit the coffee maker over a /dev/mug (which doesn't seem to be available through thinkgeek.com anymore). The /dev/mug is very wide, and the coffee maker fits inside it, not resting on the rim like it should. So I laid a couple of chop sticks across the mug and put the coffee maker on them.
I was also not paying as much attention as I should have, and overestimated the volume of liquid the /dev/mug would hold as I poured more and more water into the coffee maker. I was also doing this in my room, next to my laptop, on a small stack of boxes (the bottom box containing most of my video game consoles and my dvd player).
I soon realized what I'd done (pouring coffee into the box with my game consoles) and restacked the boxes so I could get to the consoles and assess the damage. The good news is nothing was seriously damp and I think they all still work. The bad news is I knocked over the temporary stack and dumped warm, damp coffee grounds into my nest of blankets. The cup of coffee was on the bookshelf and unspilled.
After loading the top most blankets into the washer, I thought it would feel very nice to just curl up in bed and go back to sleep. But there were two flaws in that plan: 1) two parts of my bed were in the washer, and B) there were video game consoles spread over the other parts of my bed.
And, of course, by the time I got things cleaned up and took a sip of coffee it had gone cold.
The day never really got better, but didn't get worse, so that's a plus.
I've also been thinking about offering free short stories to people, probably between 500 and 1000 words, about almost any subject the requester wants to request. I'm thinking of how to phrase it better to post to a livejournal community: Free Stuff Day. I have two goals for this project: to get me writing more (and more often), and to create interest in Alternia Comics. Ideally people would request a story of a character in one of the worlds of Alternia, or a new character/scene that could be added. For that reason I think I would shy away from proprietary characters, creating fan-fiction, and prefer original characters or Alternian characters. But it could be a story about someone's greatest morning ever, or the day my friend Holly realized her iPod was reading her mind and playing songs that fit her thoughts.
What do you readers think? Good idea? Bad idea?