intermission of assorted thoughts

It looks as if I'll be off to the interior of BC again this weekend, to Oliver this time, for the Tournament of the Golden Swan, a persona development competition (well, challenge, really, as there's not just the one winner). I'll be possibly helping with judging, possibly teaching, certainly visiting with my apprentice Alis.
Undecided whether to take my laptop, but I probably will. Even though the battery doesn't last for even a half-hour.
Mark is just back from doing two swordsmanship (Western Martial Arts) workshops back to back. Rather like sf/f, WMA is a small and incestuous world, and there were even crossovers between those two worlds, with sword instructors talking about DragonCon--oh, and Neal Stephenson was at the second workshop.

I hoped for more writing this past weekend than I was able to achieve. On Saturday I was too crampy and occasionally pukey to sit comfortably at the keyboard, so I curled up with a hot-water bottle and read/re-read four Diana Wynne Jones novels, thus slightly reducing my TBR pile.
On Sunday, feeling better, I went to bookshops to ask if they'd put up posters for V-Con 32, and managed to buy six books, thus increasing my TBR pile. Oh, and one book was Hexwood, a DWJ I've been looking for. Hm, I should do a quick round-up of what I've read recently, too - maybe in another intermission post.

sniffemout over on the ABE Book Forum has been advocating for Nanowrimo, and I'm starting to be swayed. If I got the second draft of Willow Knot cleaned up and read to be beta'd before the end of this month, I could let it rest for November and do Nanowrimo. I could even use the dream-plot I was considering for the 3-Day before the newspaper story supplanted it.
After all, I only managed 18k over 72 hours. I know I can write 1k/hr for a couple of hours at least, and still turn out clean copy. I know that dithering is not productive. I need to work on Not Dithering.
I will look into this further.
While browsing 3-Day t-shirts on Cafe Press, I was led astray, into searching through the other writing-themed t-shirts, and found a slogan which appealed greatly: My goal as a writer is not to achieve fame or fortune, but to have entire fanfic archives devoted to my novels.
Yeah. Sometimes I look at what I'm writing, and consider the potential for fanfic, or slash. M-- writes some scenes so potentially slashy that I used to add the comment 'subtext!' in the margin. I don't have that gift, I don't think. But maybe somebody will do it for me.

The plum tree this year produced three-and-a-half dehydrator loads, which kept me busy for a few days. Plums take a surprisingly long time to dry properly, and by running the dehydrator in the 'laundry room' adjoining the bathroom, I was able to get the bathroom nicely warm before showers, without running the heater. Very economical.
The pear tree, which for the last two years has managed perhaps half a dozen pears, came up with other two dozen this year, and very nice they were too. Four ziplocks of dried pears achieved. I hope this means the tree is recovering, and that it isn't the final flowering before a glorious end. Or final fruiting either.
Since there's still a boxful of dried apples and a freezer shelf full of apple crumble-makings from previous years, I'm more relieved than anything that the spartan and golden delicious are less fruitful this year. I've dealt with as many of the chewed apples (is it a moth? bores through and leaves a sort of mealy brown stuff where it passes) as I could find, and the rest may be about the right number to be eaten fresh without panic or pressure.