Busy, Bloody, Day

I love to sleep in.  I’d rather work on writing to midnight or one in the morning (which I did) and get up later than get up early.  I like the quiet of the night for writing or critiquing.  But because of my job, I can only sleep in on Saturdays.  I can get up forty minutes later on Sunday for church, but it’s not the same as no alarm.  I look forward to the day when I’m a full-time writer and my only alarms are for church, church events and fun stuff like heading out to a con.

I did sleep in yesterday, and then it was non-stop.  I started by making us breakfast.  Scrambled eggs with hashbrowns, bacon and sourdough toast – one of Kris’ favorites.

Then I did my RAPIDPASS – that’s the information to read and questionnaire to fill out before donating blood.  The American Red Cross lets you do that at home now, making your visit to the donation center much quicker.

At 11:45 am I had my appointment to donate at the Red Cross center in Woodland Hills.

This time they were giving out Tetris T-shirts.

After my donation, I stayed around for fifteen minutes to replenish my blood supply.  Who knew blood was made up of apple juice, pretzels and Cheese-its.   

During the spring and summer, we like to go to California State University, Northridge to see the dragonflies in their pond.  I was able to get some good shots with my closeup lenses for my phone.  The trick is you have to find one that’s cooperative, that will let you get close.  For some shots, I’m within two inches of them.  But I guess when you’re an uber predator with 360* vision, you don’t worry about something sneaking up on you.

Afterwards, I reviewed the critiques I wrote for my critique group before sending them off to the authors.  Then at 4:30 pm, I attended my novel critique group meeting.  We meet once a month, usually on the second Saturday of the month and we usually review three different writers’ submissions.  I’m also in a screenplay critique group that usually meets on the last Wednesday of the month.

Then it was time to make dinner.  We had tacos and “Robins Rice” (Mexican rice we named after Kris’ former roommate, Robin, who gave us the recipe).   We watched “Labyrinth” while having dinner.  We had recently watched the documentary, “Jim Henson, Idea Man”, on Disney+.  We had seen, “Dark Crystal” in the theater about a year ago (it was a Fantom Event) but I hadn’t seen, “Labyrinth” probably since it first came out and Kris had never seen it.

That was about the end of my day.  I went to bed early…usually I’m a bit tired after giving blood.  I’m half way to gallon 14.  

Dennis

220th blog completed.

First Steampunk novel:  76,696 words.  ß Past 76,000.  Goal:  80,000.

Second Steampunk novel: 783 words. 

Second Steampunk screenplay:  157 pages.

First Steampunk screenplay:  Need to update with notes from the novelization.

Third Steampunk screenplay:  38 pages.

Went to the Junkyard Café for the first time today.  Full review at a later date, but I had to share this photo of the front door with you.