The response to the current draft of the Untitled Cleveland Drama TV pilot script came in and it was: Really, really good. Lovely writing. Really strong. LOVE it.
I only need to trim some dialogue from Act 1, because the page count is running over. And then we are good to GO!!!!
Here’s a shot of Weenie yesterday, saying “Yippee ki yi yay!!”
OOPS! This is actually Weenie, doing what he does best: Living the life of Riley!
Plus, right now, things are looking very promising re: the home loan. Still tons of paperwork to fill out, so I will keep you posted! But I might just be able to unpack all of my boxes one day soon and stay put in the Hinterlands for a long time!!
Here are Huckleberry, Weenie, and Lucie, saying: “Yay!! We are so excited, we can’t WAIT!!”
OOPS. Wrong again…
I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it: We couldn’t be more excited around here!
Plus, by some miracle, I still have enough money in the bank to get to NYC for a few days to see Sandra in her show. I have no clue how this happened, however, we won’t:
LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH; WILL WE??!!
No! We will just keep moving happily ahead!! Keeping our eye on the prize.
Life’s good, gang.
Now I must take care of those final edits to the TV pilot. I hope you have a really great weekend planned, wherever you are in this world! Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with this (play it loud).
Weenie on my pillow in the sunlight this morning. (That’s Huckleberry, his mom, in the background.)
(As always, if you click the image, it gets larger — and, in this instance, it gets sweeter, too, because he has such a precious face.) (I don’t think I’m biased!! ha ha)
Loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that I often post photos of Weenie and Huckleberry sleeping on the bed. Well, Weenie’s tummy made it onto today’s Tummy Rub Tuesday post over at Katzenworld in the UK, leading to world-wide fame!!
We couldn’t be more excited!! To celebrate, we’re all hanging out in the windows, staring at birds in the yard!
Oops! Wait — no. That’s what we do everyday! Well, they do; I don’t.
Anyway. I was pleased as punch to see my little sweetie’s face & tummy staring back at me in an email this morning. Yay. Go visit the post and see all the adorable cats showing off their tummies today!
In other cool news related to cats (& dogs): My long-time friend and collaborator, Val in Brooklyn, has gotten her Paws for Thought Comics strip syndicated online!! She will be publishing a new comic Monday through Friday on the Comx Box Comics Syndicate. Yay, Val!!
In other totally non-cat news… I’ve put my Biblical Hebrew studies on hold temporarily because I’m now taking the Shonda Rhimes TV Writing Masterclass for the next few weeks. I thought it could be cool to take the course while in the throes of re-writing the MOW TV Pilot for The Tea Cozy Murder Club: A Murder At Parsons Ridge. I’ll keep you posted as to whether or not that turns out to be, in fact, a cool idea…
I hope everyone enjoyed a splendid Easter (or a happy Passover)! (Or, if you’re neither Jewish nor Christian, I hope you just felt happy to be alive!) For the most part, we had gorgeous weather out here in the Hinterlands — and perfect driving weather for me and my new little Honda Fit!
You know, yesterday, I parked my car in the parking lot of the Granville Inn, and to my surprise, there were 5 Honda Fits, including mine, in that small parking lot. Truly, there were less than 20 cars parked there. Clearly, the Fit could be the new trend. (Instead of just having a fit, which used to be my fall-back trend. haha) It was so weird. While I have always owned very popular cars, I always owned them decades after they were popular. To be perched on the absolute leading edge of a trend like this is a heady experience!
All right, all right. I gotta scoot. Time to write. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you’re enjoying this Tummy Rub Tuesday wherever you’re getting your tummy rubbed! See ya!
One thing I can say about life in the hinterlands of Ohio, is that the weather never stops!
Good lord.
Tonight, we’re expecting yet another ice storm. A few nights ago, we had no ice or snow but winds of over 45 mph and it took off a piece of my car! I have no idea where the piece sailed off to. The same wind, with a little whipped-up rain, caused the power to go out for 5 hours… You can always tell which neighbor is smart enough to buy a generator because their well-lit house is the only light you can see for miles… When the power goes out late at night in the hinterlands, it is really, really dark outside.
I don’t plan on buying an expensive generator, for gosh sakes, because I’m not planning on living here that long. However, I don’t have any clue anymore what “for that long” means. All I know is that I wake up every morning and I’m still here and I don’t know for how long I’m staying and time goes rushing away from me.
But back to the topic of weather….
Late one night, a few weeks back, I was out on Highway 16, only 10 minutes from my house, when dense fog suddenly fell all around the highway. Really and truly, seriously dense fog. All you could see were headlights coming right at you. Then, within the fog, torrential rain started. I didn’t think it could rain when you were inside of a dense fog, but apparently weather is not my strong suit. Then the torrential rain turned to sleet, then hail (!!), then back to sleet, back to rain, then just dense fog again… and by the time I reached my street, everything — fog, rain, sleet, and hail — had cleared.
Perhaps the most uproariest ten minutes of my life.
I am really, really, really getting tired of driving in so much weather!
That said, some of my roommates seem particularly unfazed by the weather here in the hinterlands:
Huckleberry sleeping with Weenie’s paw on her head.
If you click the photo it will enlarge and you will no doubt see that Huckleberry has a really rough life… hahaha
All right! On that happy note, I’m going to study some Biblical Hebrew around here and then maybe contemplate life before the ice storm arrives. Have a great Friday, wherever you are and whatever the weather brings your way. Thanks for visiting, gang! See ya.
As excited as I was for my Halloween night at home, I spent it entirely differently than I had thought I would. (See post from Thursday.)
Yesterday morning, I decided that I was going to be diligent and do homework all afternoon, but that plan lasted until about 12:15 PM when I found I could no longer resist the temptation to go down to the family room and watch the episode of Father Brown that I had DVR’d the night before. And once that happened, I was not going back to that homework idea…
However, none of the Halloween movies appealed to me this year. And when I noticed that Amazon Prime was offering free streaming of Radio Days, one of my most very favorite Woody Allen films, I dropped everything and watched that. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen that movie since it came out in 1987; I have lost track. But I never get tired of it. IT is so charming and uplifting. And the soundtrack is to die for (for me, anyway — someone who loves to live in the past!)
Which reminds me that another one of my favorite films is on tonight — on Turner Classic Movies: Dame Margaret Rutherford in Murder Most Foul!! I have to say that Dame Margaret had the strangest take on Miss Marple ever, but it is still really fun to watch her movies. She made 4 Miss Marple movies — this one is the one where she joins a local theatrical troupe in a small English village in order to, of course, solve a murder. It is really fun — made in England in 1964.
Murder Most Foul starring Dame Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple, 1964
Even though I’m going to DVR this, I will probably stay up and watch it tonight, since tomorrow we set the clocks back anyway. I won’t miss any sleep.
This weekend is the final weekend of the course I’m taking in school, so I have a final project to write, plus 3 other shorter papers to write. Then I have one last course to take and I graduate (still on track for magna cum laude!). Kind of hard to believe that, come Christmas, I will suddenly have so much free time. I am going to spend all that free time packing and throwing stuff away and getting ready for yet another out-of-state move. This will be my 4th long-distance move and hopefully it will be my last. (Well, I don’t mind if I move to another house, I just don’t want to move out of state again. It is a lot to deal with, especially now that I will be transporting a colony of feral cats with me.)
Although, I have to say, they get less feral all the time. Here is a shot of Weenie on my bed last night, while I was watching Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. He is very comfortable around me, although most of the time, he won’t let me pet him. He’s getting better about that, though.
Weenie, relaxing on my bed last night!
Okay, I guess I better close this and start working. I’m going to make a pot of butternut squash soup (the easiest soup ever — boil the squash, an onion, celery and a carrot, 4 small peeled potatoes, sea salt and a dash of red pepper flakes for about 30 minutes, then puree it!), finish the laundry, then get crackin’ on all that homework.
Have a wonderful (meaningful?) All Soul’s Day, wherever you are, gang! Thanks for visiting. See ya!
[Fantastic opening credit music to Murder Most Foul!]
I’ve named the spider Brad. Since he clearly has no intentions of relocating anytime soon, I thought that giving him a name that was harmless-sounding , Ivy League-ish (dare I say “WASP”-y, since he is clearly an arachnid??) — it would make the enormous spider near my bed a lot less frightening.
So far, it’s working. I plug in my iPhone to re-charge it, catch a glimpse of Brad hanging out in the corner with his super-creepy long, brown legs and I say, “Hey, Brad. How’s it going?” And he does seem less frightening. In fact, he seems to belong to me now that I’ve named him.
“I am looking for friends. What does that mean — tame?”
“It is an act too often neglected,” said [Brad]. “It means to establish ties.”
“To establish ties?”
“Just that,” said [Brad]. “To me, you are still nothing more than a [crazy lady] who is just like a hundred thousand other [crazy ladies]. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a [spider] like a hundred thousand other [spiders]. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world….”
And so goes the story of me and Brad.
Brad, just moments ago…
On other fronts.
I sent the re-writes of Act One of the TV pilot to one of the producers to see if I am anywhere near on the right track. We shall see. If we are, then I will write like a demon to get Acts Two through Four re-written by next Friday and then move on to the play I need to edit. The fabulous play that will cause me to travel to New York City and back many times this fall! And — yes! — see that guy I used to love! (Well, I probably still love him because every time I speak to him on the phone, my heart zings off somewhere far beyond the moon, but we shall see…)
However, if Act One still needs work, everything mentioned above will remain the same, except that I will write like a super-demon instead.
In case you’re curious (and keeping track) the new course I’m taking in school, Church Administration, is just about as indescribably unexciting as I had anticipated it would be. Arrrrgggh. However, only 2 more classes after this, and I am home free, as they say. A divinity graduate, Magna Cum Laude. Yippee ki yi yay.
The other course I’m taking, Pastoral Care and Hospital Visitation Training, is already intense, and it only started this past Monday night. The course includes such effervescent topics as: People in Crisis & Illness; Care for those with Mental Illness; Grief & End of Life; Ministry to the Elderly; Care for those with Disabilities, and the ever-popular Ministry in the Midst of Addictions. (And by that, I think they mean that Addicts will be in our Midst, not that we, as ministers, will be in the midst of our own addictions. But you know, you never really know, until you really know.)
So that’s life around here. I must get back to the dry-as-dust world of Church Administration. (The textbook makes me feel like I speak English as a second language. Honestly, the sentence structures are so convoluted, I have to keep re-reading the same sentences over & over & over until they finally start to make sense. By then, I’m dead asleep and have to snap out of it and start over.)
All right. I will leave you with a shot of Weenie in the planter shaped like a small wheelbarrow. Weenie is the twin brother of Skipperdee, who got adopted. They are both named after characters in the Eloise books. (You can see the original Skipperdee and Weenie pictured with Eloise at that link.)
Marilyn's Room 