If I weren’t so worried about my better half, everything would be good. My oldest and middle daughters and I took a weekend trip to Las Vegas that was a lot of fun and I’m feeling relaxed and reenergized now that I’ve caught up on my sleep a little. Doing an 850-mile road trip in two days is pretty exhausting, but I’m really glad we went.

My youngest daughter, her fiancee and I met yesterday with the woman minister who will be serving as the officiant for their January wedding. The woman was very nice and my daughter seems pleased with her so I feel good that we have taken care of another detail of the planning process. Even a supposedly “simple” wedding is an awful lot of work.

Yesterday was also the first day of my first semester of college for more than five years. I’m taking a couple online classes through our local university that will take me a little closer to my ever-elusive quest for a Bachelor’s degree. My hope is that I can finally finish within the next few years so I can switch careers; I’d really like to be an elementary school teacher (probably second or third grade) and I think now is a good time to fulfill that long-term wish of mine. I do enjoy my current job quite a bit, but I’ve really wanted to teach school since I was back in the second or third grade and I’m very sorry I let myself get talked out of the idea when I was younger. Of course, I’ll probably be a better teacher now than I would have in those days so I think things worked out for the best.

And now I should stop procrastinating and get back to reading my textbooks. My first assignments are due on Friday and Saturday and I’ve promised myself that I will buckle down and work hard this semester.

Daughter and I also decided to go out to an early movie.  Our choice this time was The Dark Knight - the third time for each of us - and we both enjoyed ourselves just as much as we had at the previous two showings.  Many people have written excellent reviews of this newest installment in the Batman franchise so I don’t really feel a need to go into too much detail here.  I would like to say that The Dark Knight takes movies, especially the superhero sub-genre, to a whole new level of artistic excellence.  From the opening shot of two men in clown masks riding a zip line from a skyscraper window down to a rooftop, we are drawn into a gritty world of fear and depravity; a shadow realm of gray that obscures the identities of everyone so that we are never quite sure who is lurking behind a mask in the darkness.  Here there is no good or evil, no right or wrong, only unhappy choices that must be made in order to ensure the safety and security of the masses.  Here dwell flawed characters who express the true nature of the human race.  This city of Gotham is a place well worth visiting in the safety of a dark theater, but is not a place we’d like to inhabit in our real lives.

Movies can be a good way to examine the thoughts and emotions we don’t always experience throughout the course of our day-to-day lives.  Seeing movies with members of my family tends to spark interesting conversations about what we’ve seen that go far beyond the artistic elements involved.  We are a group who enjoys discussion and debate on a wide range of topics and I think our movie-going experience is a reflection of that.

I highly recommend The Dark Knight - a movie as different as night and day from its predecessors.

The weekend went much too quickly, of course.  We barbecued on Saturday evening as a belated birthday celebration for hubby (kabobs made of chicken, lean turkey sausage, pineapple, and various veggies).   The temperature was too high and the sky too smoky for us to eat outside, but that didn’t lessen our enjoyment of the meal and we’re planning to have another barbecue next weekend.  Sunday afternoon, middle daughter and I met youngest daughter and her fiancee (and some of his family) in Virginia City so we could take a ride on the V&T Railroad past Gold Hill on the track that will eventually extend down to Carson City - much of the line following the original route used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I highly recommend the ride to anyone who happens to be in this area.

I’ve also wanted to visit Virginia City so that I could do some writing-related research for a paranormal romance manuscript that I’m working on.  While the main part of the story is set in the present, some of the background deals with the Virginia City fire of 1875.  My hope was to wander around the area where the fire started to see if I could find a location to use as a setting - and I was thrilled to find a place that matched what I had envisioned almost exactly.  Now I’m eager to get back to work on the manuscript and think that the story will really start to come together.

Here’s to weekends and writing…two of my favorite things.

Party on!

The movie was supposed to start at 11:59pm, but was about ten minutes late and we assume that was due to the men in suits communicating by walkie-talkie (trying to start all three showings at the same time, we think).  Shouts and whistles erupted from the audience when the lights finally dimmed for our three trailers: Terminator Salvation, Watchmen, and Tropic Thunder.  Then started the main event.

At this point in time, I don’t plan to write a detailed review of the movie, but I will say that it was well done and I don’t regret the loss of sleep caused by my attendance at the midnight showing.  Much of the hype leading up to this movie is well-deserved and Heath Ledger’s performance was excellent.

If you haven’t yet seen the movie and are a fan of Batman, superhero flicks, or good movies in general then I do recommend going to this one.  You won’t consider your time and money to have been wasted.

Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time “writing in my mind” and I’ve participated in Nanowrimo a few times, but I haven’t really done any serious work on my own projects.  That’s about to change because I’m feeling the itch to get my thoughts out again in a big way.  The difference now is that I’ve learned a bit more about the business side of writing so I think I can do a better job in that area.  I’ve also grown as a writer and I’ve learned more about the mechanics of sharing a good story.  Hopefully all this will gel enough so that I can complete a work of which I’ll be proud.

Whether or not that work is picked up by a publisher is secondary.  Now, I’m writing more for me than anyone else - though I’d love to be able to create something that others would enjoy as much as I’ve enjoy my favorite authors.

My thoughts and best wishes go out to everyone being affected by the California fires, especially the home and owners and firefighters.  I hope these are under control soon so everyone can safely get back to “normal” life, whatever that may be.

I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday.

How come I didn’t get an invitation?

Yet I can go online and find a lot of other people online using my name.  They range from a twenty-year-old musician/author/student who got a contract with a major publisher (something I desperately wanted at one time) to an 85-year-old grandmother fighting for the environment.  Many of the women are in artistic or creative fields such as drawing or cooking while others work in real estate or counseling.

I sometimes wonder about the lives of the women who share my name; not just the ones online, since they’re a small percentage of the women using the same common name I have, but all of them.  How odd is it that we have such a personal thing in common, but that we’ll probably never meet.  Would we get along if we did?

My point here is that many of us do share many things: names, ancestry, interests, and physical characteristics.  At times, we like to get together with similar people because we may often feel more comfortable when we fit in.  At other times, like when I Googled myself this morning, I wish I were more unique because I have tried to do a few things (like run for office and get published) that might be easier to accomplish if my name stood out from the crowd.

The important thing is that I’m not unhappy with either my name or myself and, even though I share the label with so many other people, I finally have a good idea of who I am.