The weekend storm finally blew itself out by Sunday evening, taking the wind and rain with it. Yesterday was overcast for much of the day, but quite a bit warmer.
There was a little bit of a breeze and we thought about taking our kites down to the beach, but we were both busy with our projects so we stayed home instead. Terry is deep into a weaving project, and I wrote another 6,225 words, which brings my work in progress to almost 71K words. It’s getting close. I’ve already contacted my cover artist, Elizabeth Mackey, and she’s mulling over some designs now.
I’ve been using my Dragon NaturallySpeaking software to write this book, or I guess I should say to dictate it, and I have to say that the more I use it the more I like it. I still haven’t decided if the version I had on my iMac was the problem, or if it was just the computer itself. But at this point I don’t care, because on my Windows-based Dell computer it’s really increased my productivity tremendously. It’s far from perfect, and not even as good as what the folks on the television commercials would have you believe, but I do find it quite easy to knock out several thousand words in a matter of hours. And background noise like the television or music playing doesn’t interfere with it.
Terry said it’s been kind of weird for her because while she’s busy doing things she’s catching little bits of the story line here and there. Not enough to completely follow it, but enough to be intrigued.
Today starts our one week extension here at the Seaside Thousand Trails. According to the tracking number, the shipment of the new issue of the Gypsy Journal arrived in Portland yesterday morning and departed a few hours later for Astoria. That’s about a hundred miles, but it says not to expect it to get there before Wednesday. I guess they’re building in enough time to lose it again like they did the last time around.
Once we get the envelopes stuffed and delivered to the post office we’ll start our trip south. If the weather cooperates we’ll stop at Whalers Rest in Newport for a couple of weeks. It’s one place we can’t get enough of.
I’ve been looking at routes, checking out places we might want to stop at along the way to get some stories for the January – February issue of the paper. How long we spend in Newport will determine the route we take. We’ve done U.S. 101 along the coast many times, so it’s very likely we will go east from either Newport or Florence and get on Interstate 5 and take it much of the way. If time allows we would like to stop and see our friend Nancy Kissack in Atwater, California, and we may hit some of the Thousand Trails campgrounds in California.
Our reservations in Apache Junction, Arizona start December 1, so from the time we leave here, depending on how long we stay in Newport, we will have somewhere between four and six weeks to make the trip. That ought to give us plenty of time to get into mischief along the way.
Thought For The Day – I want to sleep but my brain won’t stop talking to itself.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
How long does it take to speak that many words?
I can do about 1,000 finished words an hour, after going back and making corrections.