Hanging out at my brother’s, wishing I’d brought my laptop. I forgot he didn’t have much in the way of lights either. It’s a bit dark here.

Anyways, he’s looking to get some furniture tomorrow and I said I’d go with him. He’s for sure wanting a couch and we’ll figure out anything else once we get there.

In the meanwhile, we ate some pho and now he’s playing video games. It’s maybe a <I>little bit</I> boring. So I’ll work on some story outlines while I’m here.

Uramichi Oniisan 01 at Amazon

Someone switched the dryer setting to High heat. My dad’s clothes must have been cooking. I turned the heat down, but who knows how long it was on High.

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Wash clothes in cold/cold water, unless it’s a load of dirty jeans. In that case, wash the jeans in warm/cold water with some baking soda and vinegar. If there’s any grease or waxy/tarry substances, add a can of Coke to break up the binding agents.

Wash white towels in hot/cold water with either some bleach or some baking soda and vinegar.

I dry on low heat with a fabric softener sheet. (There was a horrible instance where I let a hotel launder my clothes, and they melted the designs on a bunch of tee shirts. I was so mad. I wash my own clothes.) Or if I’ve got a wrinkled shirt, I’ll either spritz it with water before tossing it in the dryer or add a damp towel. It’s great for when you don’t have the time to iron. Throw wrinkled clothes in the dryer while taking a shower and getting ready.
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Today has been one of those days when there was a lot of stuff I could do, but I just didn’t have the energy. I’ve added pages to my writing, but it’s like two pages to ATR, one to Tuesday, one to Jazz, and a bunch of fic stuff that’s turning into a flaming garbage bag of emotion that I’m not sure I want to share with anyone.

The funny thing is that I always feel like I’m being super constructive when I’m wasting time. I have to remind myself to stop screwing around and just write. Unless the research is really necessary to forming the story, put a placeholder (I use —-0000—- for typed words, or [] for handwritten pages) and keep going.

I let myself get bogged down overthinking scenes sometimes. Then I get distracted and drift off into other things. It’s ridiculous.

I’m constantly writing, but sometimes there’s no coherence in what I produce.

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EXCERPT– “Tuesday Night: Part Four”

They were squatting in a small two bedroom apartment. Wordlessly they shared the master bedroom, huddled around each other on the queen-sized bed. The door to the second room stayed firmly shut, the child’s single bed with its cartoon sheets undisturbed.

Tony hadn’t let himself dwell on the rust-colored stains on the playmat or the drag marks on the carpet. Definitely didn’t focus on the small size of the fingers that had made those marks, desperate and clawing.

There wasn’t a lot of food in the kitchen, but they had ration bars in their pockets and they made do. The last thing they wanted was to be wandering the city streets scavenging, not when the hive mind seemed to have changed tactics.

Drones had taken to the streets in roving packs. They hadn’t quite gotten to the point of doing building-by-building searches, but Tony figured it was only a matter of time. The hive mind was adapting.

They’d watched as a family of four was run out into the middle of the street. The woman had bucked and screamed as her husband was pressed facedown on the ground. The angle was bad, keeping Tony from seeing the details, but within moments the man was up, helping to hold down the two terrified children, then his wife.

Fifteen minutes later, the drone pack had four new members. They slunk off into the dusk in search of prey, gliding together as though they shared one spine. It had been a chilling display, one he couldn’t look away from.

“I feel like I’m trapped in a horror movie,” he said. They had fallen into whispers since leaving Triangle Park. It felt strange to be so afraid all the time, but Tony thought that he had forgotten any other way to be.

“There’s a reason why I don’t like horror movies.” Seth turned off the burner and carried the pot of ramen to their nest of couch cushions and blankets. He settled opposite Tony in a crosslegged position.

/EXCERPT

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Uramichi Oniisan 01 at Amazon

It’s weird to think that kids in the future will find our writings and be unable to decipher them. They’ll hold up our papers, turning them in their hands, and wonder what our strange and curling method of producing words is all about.

They won’t know anything other than print. Their lives will be ruled by sans serif fonts and picture messages. Data will enter their brains as memes.

They won’t be taught cursive in schools and might not even be taught to use a pen and paper at all. Everything will be buttons and swype and “Alexa, lights please.”

The future is an as yet undiscovered country. And we’re driving straight into it and our brakes our broken. It’s forward momentum all the way, with no rest stops or chances to acclimate.

It’s like driving your car into a deer on a darkened road in the middle of nowhere.

What do you do?

CDandHBFH
When you have a box full of college ruled paper that has been written from one pink line to the next, how do you find someone to transcribe the words if they’ve never learned to read cursive?

Taking away a child’s ability to read would be a tragedy that parents wouldn’t stand for. But making one method incredibly unpopular? That’s easy.

And in the end, the future could be like in “Idiocracy,” when all anyone can do is point at pictures and grunt. And history isn’t something people bother to rewrite… because it won’t have existed at all. Because the words will be unreadable, language will shift and change, and the instructions on how to survive the apocalypse will be scrawled in a notebook somewhere, in cursive even worse than mine.

Let's Make Dumplings at Amazon

I laid down for a short nap today… and woke up 2-1/2 hours later. I must have been tired out from all the cat food sushi.

Why do I call it that? Because it’s made using cans of tuna fish and kind of looks like cat food. Though it tastes pretty all right.

catfood_sushi1
1. Spread some rice over half of a sheet of seaweed (nori). I flavored the rice with salt, sugar, and vinegar to taste.

catfood_sushi2
2. Add a layer of tuna fish on the rice. I flavored the tuna with sesame oil, garlic powder, and sriracha. This would be a good time to add other toppings if you’ve got them: green onion, egg, yellow kimchi, spinach, avocado, gochujang sauce.

catfood_sushi33. Use the plastic wrap to shape and roll the sushi.
catfood_sushi4The plastic wrap makes it a lot easier to control your roll 😛 You can poke back in anything that comes out the ends and squeeze the roll into a tighter shape.
catfood_sushi54. Wet a sharp knife and slice the roll through the plastic wrap.
catfood_sushi6The pieces maintain their shape and you can pull the plastic wrap off when you’re done.
catfood_sushi7

At this point, you can eat them as is, or enjoy them with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, sesame oil, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, and chopped green onion.

Even if your pantry is a bit bare, you can find tasty food to make and enjoy.

If you’ve got rice, seaweed, and a couple cans of tuna fish, you’re not going to go hungry today. Pair it with some miso soup and you’ve got a filling meal for yourself and your family.