Life Transplanting

Both stories from The Enchanted Bakery series have been loaded and are ready to drop tomorrow. I just need to update the series pages with the retail links.

I also need to edit Death Goddess Walking and finish writing A Cup of Conflict. I'm at roughly the halfway point of ACoC. It'll be a downhill crazy rush to the finish as nobles and citizens collect in Chengzhou for Emperor Bao Quan Po's coronation with various opponents looking to assassinate whoever they can to destabilize Jing.

Except I need to fit in some work on the flower beds. This time, it's not just weeds.

The crazy squirrels and chipmunks have decided they don't like the current floral arrangements, and they've taken it upon themselves to change things.

A hyancinth bulb was moved the the succulents bed. Roses have been transplanted to all four sides of the house. (Which actually make sense, since they like sunshine, and the north side wasn't a good place to begin with.)

Strawberries were eaten from their planter, and their seeds scattered along the eastern beds for additional early summer treats. Dandelions were planted in the box on the northeast side of my office, replacing the inedible pink flowers that grew there.

So far, the rodentia haven't touched the daffodils and tulips, probably because the bulbs are too big for them to dig up and move. Instead, the critters are planting oaks in those beds, which will eventually wipe out my flowers if I don't dig up the saplings.

While I can appreciate the squirrels and chipmunks needs and wants, they don't mesh with the previous owners, or my, artistic visions.

So, the battle for the beds and boxes has begin!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

I'm pissed, and I'm not going to take it anymore!

When a Company Does Too Much For You

Some of you might remember my joyous experiences of installing a new hard drive in my work computer last month.

In the process of reinstalling Windows 11 and MS Office, Microsoft decided to update with the latest versions instead of the ones I purchased.

Okay. Fine. Wasn't expecting it, but hey, I didn't have to purchase new copies, right?

OH MY FUCKING GODDESS!!

In their efforts to help me, they tried to shove everything through OneDrive and forced through the IMAP email protocol.

It's taken a lot of extra time to root out the OneDrive by hard links. I'm still working on it.

But even worse was IMAP. It wants to download all of my email folders and files back to the original email servers so I have copies available to all my devices. Sounds like a good idea.

In theory.

In reality, IMAP copied THOUSANDS of emails I need to keep for business reasons. The worst was my main author email address. When I got the domain email address years ago, I didn't need too much space. I still don't. And it's really not worth upgrading to the next largest package offered because I clean out that address's server on a regular basis.

But when fourteen years of business communications get copied back the email server, it maxed out my allocated space in very quick order.

I think I've finally got everything fixed. *fingers crossed*

However this is the same email address where your contacts from my websites' contact page sends your notes. So if you've tried to send me any communication through the websites' contact page, your message is in the ether and unretrievable.

Please contact me again, unless your question is about A Cup of Conflict. I swear I'm working on it!

A Late Monday Movie Mania - The Amateur

This review is late because The Amateur wasn't as simplistic a story as the big-time reviewers believe it to be. DH and I went to see it Sunday afternoon, ironically as a break from our Vin Diesel marathon. However, I like a good puzzle, and this certainly provided one!


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SPOILERS!


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PROS
1) I swear Rami Malek can do anything and do it well! His CIA nerd was a guy you could root for because the odds are so stacked against him. This is the American remake of Canada's The Amateur from 1981, so you know the good guy was going to win. But the question is how.

2) I loved the MacGyver-esque quality of Malek's character Charlie Heller. He quickly learns he can't shoot anyone in cold blood, but he jury-rigs traps for his opponents that they could get out of if they stop and think instead of panicking.

3) Laurence Fishbourne is also someone who can perform any role he puts his mind to. As Henderson, Charlie's CIA trainer, his brutal assessment as to Charlie's lack of fighting skills spurs Charlie to use his brains for vengence.

4) The secondary plot is the battle of wits between CIA Director O'Brien and her Deputy Director Moore with both of them using Charlie as a pawn in their headgames. This one was much more intense and personal than the political battles in the Jason Bourne series.

5) Personally, I think the dissing of this movie is based on Charlie breaking down and sobbing at home over his wife Sarah's death. Again, I loved that Charlie wasn't a typical strong, silent, unemotional hero.

CONS
1) Jon Bernthal was criminally underused as Charlie's CIA oreative friend codenamed Bear. It would have made more sense for him to be the one Moore sends to stop Charlie rather than Henderson.

2) The fridging of chicks in movies to spur the hero into action is really pissing me off. The same vengence motivation could have been used if Sarah had been kidnapped instead. And I would have accepted Sarah's death a little better is the writers hadn't whacked Charlie's Russian contact Inquiline for being a woman.


Overall I loved The Amateur! I give 10 out of 10 stars for clever traps and not wallowing in the typical spy-movie crap.

Another Monday

The weekend was spent editing and making bookmarks while DH watched Vin Diesel movies which bled into the XXX series. There was a brief interlude where we went to see The Amateur. (The review for this flick will be Wednesday's post because I'm still thinking about it. Rami Malek is an excellent actor, and I'm reflecting on his performance.)

Anyway, I'm back to writing. It's sad that I have to go to Starbucks and turn off my phone to get any peace and quiet. Do you want to hear something funny? I'm finally not getting hit on by men. It took until the year I turn the big 6-0, but it's a relief.

Of course, it helps that most of the people also going to the neighborhood Starbucks are also women. Plus, the few men I've seen are either with females or keep to themselves. It's one of the few good things in this world today.

Anyway, I'm trying to wrap up an Enchanted Bakery story if you're reading this before 3PM. *fingers crossed* If I do, I start back on A Cup of Conflict later tonight. It's Anthea so I know where the tale is headed. It's a matter of writing it all down.

It's not all work. I've been rewatching Supernatural while I work on the beaded bookmarks. I need to rewake my urban fantasy chops in order to finish The Books of Apep series this summer. The next thing will be to set up the Kickstarter.

I'm getting things accomplished, just slower than I would like.

Health, Loss, and Fascism

It's been a rough week. Watching the disintegration of the American legal system while fighting a severe bacterial infection has not been fun.

I swore oaths to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America three times in my life: when I was sworn in as an attorney in Texas, when I was sworn in as an attorney in Ohio, and when I was sworn as an attorney in to the Eastern District of Texas Federal Court.

To watch the total disregard of our rule of law by the clown circus in D.C. is heartbreaking and rage-inducing at the same time.

Maybe the chaos is why I started writing more stories in The Enchanted Bakery series.  I needed something humorous in my soul to get through this week.

But what happens after Easter?

There are already men on the streets snatching people in broad daylight for saying the things we are all thinking. Unmarked planes are carrying people to other countries.

"But those are illegals!" I hear some of you cry.

Are you absolutely sure about this? There's rarely any evidence. Even fewer court records. So the talking heads are spinning these people's stories any way they see fit. This is exactly why the current adminstration is denying independent reporters access to government briefings. Heaven forbid anyone question the god-king!

The American legal system isn't perfect by any means. But it stood as a beacon of the possibilities of a fair system. There was a time I truly believed total fairness could be achieved.

Not any more.

While I was on my road trip at the end of March, a friend asked if I thought the U.S. was becoming fascist. My answer was "We already are."

I'm just not sure how we can stop it without a tons of blood shed in the process. But I do know hate isn't the answer. That's how we ended up here in the first place.

Monday Movie Mania - A Working Man

Hey, if a movie stars Jason Statham, I'll drag DH kicking and screaming to see it. Not that I have to drag DH. Nor does he kick and scream. Jason always delivers on everybody's fantasies.


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SPOILERS!

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PROS
1) Actually, there's not a lot to spoil here. This is a standard Statham action flick. Violence, mayhem, and the bad guys getting what they deserve.

2) The stand out is Arianna Rivas as Jenny. She's the victim Statham's character is trying to rescue. However, Jenny is no damsel in distress. She delivers her own abuse to her captors and nearly escapes on her own except for a bit of bad luck.


CONS
1) Michael Pena as Statham's boss and David Harbour as Statham's blind friend were horribly under-used in this film. They could have provided some needed humor in this film.

2) The editing was a little weird in the action scenes. Jason is two years younger than me, and I think the editors were trying to disguise that Jason, like me, no longer has the sharpness and range of motion he used to.


Overall, A Working Man is a fun weekend B-flick. I give it 8 stars out of 10.

Wednesday Got Away from Me

I hate upgrading to a new computer, but upgrading my solid state drive has been been a royal pain in my butt.

For the record, I get the idea of the IMAP protocol. It's nice to have all your devices seeing the same e-mails. However, I rely on having an e-mail on a second device if I accidentally delete something important.

Even if I didn't have that option, having my devices syncing by copying my thousands of old e-mails that I HAVE TO KEEP FOR THE IRS back to my e-mail service providers is NOT A GOOD THING!

Seriously, one of my business e-mail accounts has less space on that provider's servers than other business and personal accounts. So, IMAP kept copying everything back to that particular server and maxing out my allocated space.

To the point, I couldn't send or receive any e-mails. ARGH!

This is the account I use to keep in touch with my cover artists and formatter. It was a very necessary account to keep up and running.

Unfortunately, I wasted the last two days figuring out how to stop IMAP from doing this. Unfortunately, I can't turn off the copying function of IMAP. Nor would Outlook recognize my old PST file as a valid e-mail data file. The issue meant creating a brand-new POP account on Outlook and copying everything from the old PST file to the new PST file.

But after the hair-pulling and chocolate-eating, everything's sorted. I can now send my files for April releases to my formatter. And I was able to retrieve the e-mails with cover art attached from my cover artists.

I still need to go through and unlock the rest of my files because apparently my backup software couldn't handle copying subfolders. When I did a manual copy, both my backup hard drive and Microsoft thought I was stealing from myself so there's a ton of files and folders with permissions stripped from them.

 ARGH!

But that's a bitch session for another day.

It's Definitely a Monday!

Things are getting back into their normal groove at Casa Harden. My body's recovering from the two-week road trip. The pups and husband aren't quite so needy, though they all come check to make sure I'm still here every couple of hours or so. And I'm slowly catching up on work related things.

However, everyone but the Grandpuppy has medical appointments this week. Today was Princess Bella's annual check-up. Everything's fine, just typical middle-age crap. We both have arthritis in our knees.

Over night, the dang robins built a dang nest in my Ostara/Easter wreath on the front door. This year, DH didn't trim down the freakin' bush you prefer, you mini-dinosaurs. Stay out of my wreaths! Thankfully, no eggs had been layed yet, so I didn't feel bad about removing the next.

Saws have been humming or growling through the area as homeowners and cleaning crews are dealing with the fallen branches and downed trees from last Wednesday's extreme storms. However, the neighbors directly behind us are not one of those dealing with the wreckage. I'm thankful none of the debris landed on our side of the fence, but I miss privacy provided by the downed or damaged trees.

And now, I'll head over to Starbucks to get some actual drafting done. Tonight, I'll be editing the stories that are scheduled for release next week, plus March's release that wasn't finished in time.

I may be a turtle, but I'm still running this race!

Music I've Been Listening to Lately

A little more Ms. Swift for you!