YAY! I found a shaded relief map online. One that shows hiking trails and its free. I can find what I want and print it. Since I can read a map, unlike most people, that makes this easier.
I don't have to pay for a fancy GPS now. I can get one that's simpler and cheaper, fitting my budget. When I look at them, I keep bouncing up to better receivers, though, for features or screen size. I need to get control of that urge and remember minimalism. I can get a waterproof Nexus someday, for GIS updating of Google Maps and Wikimapia. I don't need that right now. One with GPS built in. I'll get an altimeter and thermometer separately. They even put those in a watch or an instrument like a stopwatch on a cord. I was already good at spotting trails, and with boots, as long as I'm above the Poison Oak, I don't mind tramping through brush. As long as you've got water, its all good.
The 4th was hot. I went to the parade with my Dad and about 2000 locals. Floats, marching bands, local theaters advertising their plays or musicals, the boy and girl scout troops, and political organizations chanting for the unreasonable. There's a lot of variety around here. Not all of it sane. It was really hot, over 90'F and 100% humidity with virga falling and the sky full of thunderheads and clouds which eventually moved east and dumped big rain in the high Sierras and Nevada. Nevada got hammered with rain yesterday. Kind of impressive. Since temps rose to 100'F on the 4th, I spent most of the rest of the day indoors after a long satisfying shower, and allowed my laundry to take advantage of the heat out on the clothesline. Sun dried clothes smell good, despite being covered in lint and crackling when you take them off the line, being so stiff.
The weather this morning is 69'F, much cooler with a Delta Breeze from the ocean 200 miles away. You can taste the cool sea humidity on your tongue, smell it deep in your nostils. I always enjoyed the caress of fog when I lived in my home town. We'd get heat waves that would eventually break when the fog surged in. The sound goes wonky in the fog. The fog itself is silent, a blanket that covers roads, trees, the sky, and drops the temperature 30 degrees in a moment. The difference is startling. It can kill, too. Hypothermina happens rapidly in fog. Locals raised there, like me, always carry a sweatshirt/sweater and jacket, even if its 100'F at the moment because around 5-6 PM, the fog will come and it will get painfully cold. Go out to dinner or a movie or into a department store or mall in the heat, come out into fog and visibility measured in tens of feet. One of the things I disliked about unPton is they rarely got fog. I was used to it, I liked it. I'm fond of it. Fog is great. It is something to enjoy but also respect. Ignoring fog on the road can kill you, missing a turn. Happens often. Fog is frequently a cause of car crashes and road fatalities.
I would move home if the people living there weren't such corrupt bastards. My prayers for a plague is yet more proof that Atheism is the truth, that religion is the big lie. I'm so glad I came up with that gimmick to my novel about becoming gods. Offending peoples sensibilities is great. And when you publish, all press is good press.
I recently read several chapters of an incomprehensible story about Keitaro and company of Love Hina crossed over with Urusei Yatsura, which is one of those unwanted harem space monster stories. Urusei means "shut up!" in Japanese if you didn't know. The author, who apparently worked with a partner on this, forgot to describe much of anything, especially the characters, so if you didn't know them intimately, it read flat. It was a failure. I'm tempted to email this person and explain where they're getting it wrong, since my own Love Hina story has 25,554 fans and counting, as of a couple days ago when I last looked at the hits. I'm still impressed that writing Keitaro seriously, and fleshing out the guy into someone more real, into a person with feelings that could be hurt after all, was so compelling to readers.
I want to write more characters like that in future, and that's what I plan with my story about the father who becomes a god, lowercase g. I keep coming up with ideas for that one, little tidbits and scenes and character interactions. This is part of what makes me a good writer. Not a hack. I'm tempted to reference Haruhi Suzumiya directly, as curses for example. "Haruhi's ghost!" or "Suzumiya, defend me!". And perhaps some Kyon quotes. He is wonderful, after all. Haruhi is God, capital G. And Kyon is her boyfriend. A long-suffering boyfriend. I encourage all readers to watch that anime: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. In Japanese with subtitles. The voice acting of the original cast is exquisite. It was world famous for good reason.
I want more details for my other story, for Heart of the Awl, which is slightly based on Love Hina, but with believable characters in America, post collapse, living in the Cascadia trade bloc. How those different affiliations don't change too much daily living, just removes some strain of supporting a bloated cancerous parasite called Washington DC or its sibling, New York City. Remove them from the equation and life in America gets more bearable. I have lots of ideas for that story. Its hard to write, though. I've put a lot of research on that one into scooters, since the hero rents them as a job, which means he has to maintain them. His hands are often soaked in oil and grease and he's often fighting frustration over how dead end his life is, and the girls who rent from his boarding house while attending the college down the road. I want to describe a local shop that builds beautiful Deus-like rebuilds, beautiful and functional, and how the hero is jealous of their success and quality. One rarely gets to write a character who is jealous of someone else doing BETTER. Worse, I'm going to make the craftsman nice and friendly to the hero, conscientious and kind to the struggling rental company. When you're on top, you can afford to be kind. Its one of the more subtle messages lost to gamer-culture folk who apply gamer cruelty to real life business and get shocked when it doesn't work.
Then again, I always liked fishing in my video games with sword and sorcery. Fishing is hilarious. Its an abrupt left turn of mentality in a game about notching up a database. In the real world, most men fish to get away from their wives, around once a month. I'd say that was an idle comment but I'm divorcing so its really not. I enjoy fishing but I don't do it very often. I don't see much fish in the rivers and lakes here. My Dad disagrees with me, but he usually does, mostly to be disagreeable. I didn't become contrarian spontaneously. Fishing is simple. And smelly. Don't fish with a woman who won't bait her own hook. And don't date fussy women if you can help it. It doesn't matter how good they look. They're already nuts, and this is the tip of the iceberg. I speak from experience.
I sometimes wish I had a laptop for the sole purpose of writing. For that to work, it needs at least 20 hours of battery life and only requires enough computing power to run Word-equivalent word processor. My language skills in ENGLISH are the very best. 25K fans, remember. It would be helpful if this laptop has a big Backspace key so my short pinky can hit it easily, and that it's waterproof and shockproof so I don't have to worry about bumping it or sudden downpours or humidity. You didn't know that humidity can fry a lithium battery? Yep. Frequent cause of death was leaving a cellphone in a bathroom while showering. That was enough to fry it. An upside to writing Scifi is you can include these sorts of almost-fantasy gizmos as "of course" technology that are ubiquitous and cheap. Anyway, that laptop doesn't exist yet. Maybe someday it will. So I can sit down somewhere with an inspiring view and write a scene I've been struggling with. Evocative description sells books. And I want to get PAID.
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