Patti O'Shea's Blog, page 49

Happy Valentine's Day (In Advance)

 

Coffee Fail

My coffee maker has a timer on it, which is perfect for work days. I set the program button and wake up in the morning to fresh, hot coffee. But there's only one setting. I can't program a separate time for weekends.

Instead, I do one of two things. One, I wake up and wait for the coffee to finish. Impatiently. Or two, I wake up, traipse into the kitchen to press the button, and then go back to bed for a while. Neither choice is optimal because it involves me, getting out of bed. :-(

Then, one morning while I was half asleep, I thought wouldn't it be awesome to grab my phone and say, hey, Siri, start the coffee.

Hmm, what if I bought a smart plug that was compatible with Apple Homekit. So I hopped online while I was still in bed (and sleepy) and wow, there's a smart plug set on a gold box deal. It had decent reviews and a lot of them, so I ordered and went back to sleep for a while.

I'd like to say that as soon as I woke up, I realized why my plan wasn't going to work, but that's not what happened.

My smart plugs arrived, I ditzed around for like a half an hour, trying to get them connected to my iPhone, and once I did, I plugged the coffee maker into one of them. And that's when it dawned on my that my scathingly brilliant idea was an epic fail.

The button to brew coffee isn't going to stay pressed while there is no power to the coffee maker. Sure, I can turn the plug on, but the coffee maker is going to stay dark. No brewing.

Then there are the problems of continually needing to reset the clock and redo the programming for the work week. Sigh.

I've since discovered there are smart coffee makers. I won't be replacing my current coffee maker. It's reasonably new and I actually really like it a lot. But when this one goes to appliance heaven, my next one is going to be able to be controlled from my bed. I want to be able to say, Hey, Siri, start the coffee.

Try, Try Again

Last week, I blogged about not falling in love with that new organizational software I tried. This Monday, I got an email advertising another organizational software with a lifetime license offer.

I tried to resist. After all, I failed with the other software, and from what I can see, this one is very similar. And the other one had a free trial. This offer wasn't free. It wasn't horrible, but yeah.

But hope springs eternal. It's why I keep trying new pens all the time. Maybe there is the perfect pen out there that's even better than my current perfect pen. And maybe my perfect software to organize my writing information--pictures, research, notes, spreadsheets--is one lifetime license deal away.

I fought the pull harder, but I started reading reviews. Everyone loved it. It was the review that said it was better than OneNote that sealed the deal for me. I had to at least try it.

I bought it. ::hangs head::

Everything is downloaded, but I need to watch the tutorials. This is my way of saying, why no, after spending money I shouldn't have spent, I still haven't tried out the software. I will report back--probably--after I test drive this one. I hope I have better luck than I did with the last one.

It's Cryptic

I'm used to getting emails from companies where it's spelled right out who is sending the email. Even the few author emails I used to subscribe to had first and last names to identify the sender. The designers of knitting patterns? Not so much.

At first, I thought it was only one or two doing this, but as I've joined more lists, I've noticed that almost every knitting designer does this. They send the email with only their first name.

Me: Who the hell is Megan?

Opens the email. Read enough to figure out that it's from a knitting designer who sells her patterns under a cute fiber name and not her real name. There is no way I'm going to associate Fun and Fiber (fake name) with Megan. If she'd sent it as Megan from Fun and Fiber, I'd be right there. If she sent it as Fun and Fiber, I'd know immediately, but simply sending it as Megan?

Caitlin does the same thing and a host of others too numerous to mention. In fact, of all the knitting designer newsletters I get, only two send under their full names and a third sends it as her cute fiber name. I know immediately who these emails are from.

Why is this a thing? All it does is leave me confused as to who's emailing me. I see Cute Fiber Name and I get excited. What new knitting pattern is available now? When I see Megan? I'm not excited because I'm too busy trying to figure out who this is. Maybe if she sent monthly newsletters, I'd remember who she is, but designers don't release a new pattern every month. In three or four months, I've forgotten that she only puts her first name on her emails.

As I was writing this blog post, Romance Writers of America sent me an email. It doesn't say RWA. It says it's from "Communications." I guess cryptic is spreading.

Another One Bites the Dust

I blogged back in November about a new online tool for organizing and I thought I'd report back. Sadly, not for me. I might try it again for things that aren't writing related, but for my stories, I prefer my current system.

Part of it is undoubtedly familiarity and I might give this app a try for things that aren't writing related, but the bottom line is what I was/am using works better for me.

This doesn't mean I won't keep trying new apps, programs, options. Just like with pens, I will definitely stray. This gave me a new favorite pen. We'll see if I ever like anything better than my combo of OneNote and Excel.

I have a kanban board app that I never use because I prefer the kanban board on the wall of my office. I have electronic planners that I can use on my iPad, but I prefer my paper planner. There are a large number of project management apps out there that I think I could make work for my writing and yet I default back to spreadsheets and OneNote.

Other writers talk about offline accessibility, but I have my files in the cloud and can pull them up on my phone whenever I want.

I want to love another program, one that will make everything easier, but I haven't found it yet.

Out of the Mist?

Among authors, there are plotters, the people who know everything that is going to happen and their characters follow the outline. Pantsers, who as you might have guessed, have no idea what's going to happen and write by the seat of their pants. And a combination of the two types. Plantsers?

I'm kind of a hybrid, although more on the pantser side of the spectrum. From time to time, I make an endeavor to try being more plotty--after all, if I'm already a mix, why can't I change the percentages of said blend? This is the story of my latest attempt.

I'm a slow writer. Part of the reason I'm slow is that I work full time and have an elderly parent living with me. Another part of the reason is that I usually only have a general idea what's going to happen in the story and I get stuck trying to figure out what is going to happen next. I might even write part of the scene before realizing it's not interesting enough for a book.

I decided to see if I can become more of a plotter so that I'm not lost in the woods, trying to find the next scene. I began by watching some YouTube videos and then I went and bought some ebooks. I also discovered that I already owned some of the ebooks I planned to purchase. They were buried deep in my Kindle app. Oops! I also found I owned some of the books in paperback already. I had a better memory of these, though, since they're in my office.

And I began reading. I bought index cards. I made notes on index cards that I will be throwing away because I didn't understand the system when I filled them in. I wrote more cards, discovered I needed to cut two chapters (sobs) because my characters had gone on strike. When that happens, it's almost always because I wrote something they would not do. Griff insisted that he would never do what I had him doing. I'm hoping I can salvage one of the scenes with a rewrite, but yeah. More index cards to toss.

But it also kind of underlined the reason why I want to be more plotty--if I could have figured out before I wrote those two chapters that they weren't right, I could have saved myself a lot of time. Including the time it took me to figure out why I was stuck.

I don't know if plotting will take hold in my brain any better this time than it has the other times I've tried to learn it, but we'll see. I did find cute little carrying cases for my index cards! They even have little dividers I could label Act 1, Act 2a, Act 2b, Act 3, and Discard.

Coupons! But Not For That

I needed a new pair of slippers recently. You see, with working from home for so many months, I'd worn out the slippers I had. I literally wore them every day instead of shoes. ::bliss::

But there was a hole in the left one and the foam cushioned foot bed was no longer cushiony. I loved these slippers and wanted the exact same pair.

No luck with that, unfortunately. But the same brand had a somewhat similar style on their website, complete with sparkly threads running through the material. But I didn't want to pay full price, so I started looking around online.

And of all the places I've bought shoes in the past, only one had this style. But they had a 20% off coupon on their website. Yea!

My "that's cool" feeling didn't last long. When I tried to use it, they said the coupon didn't work on this brand. I tried other coupons for that store, but none of them were applicable on this brand. Really? Really?

So I searched out coupons for the company's website and found a 25% off coupon. This was even better. I was a little skeptical as I punched it in, half expecting to receive a not applicable on slippers message, but it went through! Even better, I'd apparently already signed up on the website (I have no memory of this), and because of this, I got free shipping.

First online shoe store lost the sale because they wouldn't let me use a coupon, but it ended up working out for the best. I got a bigger discount. Ha!

Review: Romancing the Stone

I saw Romancing the Stone years ago and I remember liking it, but I also don't think that I ever rewatched it. Recently, though, it was used as an example in a writing craft book I was reading, so I watched it again. To my surprise, it mostly held up.

Romancing the Stone was first released in 1984 and stars Kathleen Turner as romance novelist Joan Wilder and Michael Douglas as Jack Colton. It's hard to describe him--maybe adventurer?

***WARNING: There will be spoilers! The movie is 36 years old.***

Joan Wilder is a timid, non adventurous woman who writes characters full of daring. She's just turned in her latest novelist to her publisher when she gets a phone call from her sister who lives in Colombia (and recently lost her husband). She's been kidnapped and the men who are holding her want the envelope the dead husband had mailed to Joan. Though it's the last thing she wants to do, Joan flies to Colombia to save her sister.

Thanks to the bad guy, she ends up on the wrong bus. When she figures out that she's nowhere near Cartagena, she tries to talk to the bus driver who hits a Jeep parked on the side of the road. Everyone on the bus leaves, but the bad guy tells her there will be another bus and she should wait. Luckily for Joan, Jack Colton arrives to save her before she can be murdered.

Joan hires Jack to get her to a phone so she can get to Cartagena and that's when the story (and the romance) start to take off.

Throughout the movie, we see Joan force herself to do things that scare her and she comes into her own, becoming the woman we suspect she wanted to be, but lacked the courage to become without this need to save her sister.

There's Danny DeVito who is also a bad guy, but he's not working with the man that would have murdered Joan. Danny (Ralph) is working with his cousin and things just don't work out for him.

The film has humor. It has action. It has adventure. And it has romance. It's actually exactly the kind of story I like.

There are things that date it. 1984 was a long time ago. But overall, I thought it held up well. Recommended.

Coffee Story

I've cut back on coffee.

Shocking, right? When COVID hit last March, I was drinking two cups a day. It increased to three cups for a while, but then I dialed back down to one cup a day.

Then I had a physical and my doctor wants me to give up coffee. ::shocked face::

I might have had a combination of whine and disbelief in my voice when I said, "No coffee!?!"

Her reply was, well, you can have decaf.

Um, decaf? I'm not drinking coffee because I love the taste more than any other beverage on Earth. (Although I do like my coffee a whole lot.) I'm drinking coffee because of the caffeine. If I'm giving up caffeine, I'd give up coffee completely.

BTW, I am not giving up my one cup of a coffee a day. That early in the morning, I don't want to drink water and I'm not a juice person. And the doctor's suggestion had nothing to do with anything serious. If it did involve a problem, I would give it up.

I suppose there are people who love the taste of coffee that much, that the caffeine doesn't matter to them, but as far as I know, I've never actually met someone with this mindset.

Maybe in the future, I'll actually get enough sleep to give up caffeine, but until that day comes, I like milk in my coffee, thanks.

No Reminders Needed

One of the things making me crazy right now are all the reminders I get. Reminders for doctors appointments, dentist appointments, webinars, etc. They come via email, text message, phone call, postcard, and on and on and on.
Seriously, 99.9% of the time I don't need any reminder. This is the joy of my paper planner. I get an appointment scheduled, I write it in my planner--both on the monthly overview and on the day itself--and I'm good to go.
My dentist's office is the worst! There are postcards, text messages, AND phone calls. Multiple phone calls. Like one reminder isn't sufficient? Seriously? Either this is an indication of how severely disorganized other people are or the dentist is overzealous.
My doctor's network has an app and they send out a message in this one week before the appointment. Once you go in to look at appointments, you can turn off receiving a reminder phone call. I always do this. Do not need it. Do not want it. It's in the planner.
The only glitch in the system is keeping track of my dad's appointments. He doesn't always let me know when they are and I hate surprises. I don't even like good surprises. At Christmas, I would cheat and search for the presents, trying to figure out what I was getting. Then there was the time I tried to take a last minute trip and my anxiety kicked into high gear. I need plans. I need time to research. Do not surprise me. So every now and then, I will bring my planner to the kitchen and sit down with him and compare his calendar with mine.
Reminders do not help me with my dad's appointments because they won't talk to me because of the rules about patient privacy. Besides, I want them in my planner so I know what's coming weeks before the reminders start pinging in.
Spur of the moment people are probably cringing, but I need this.