Sunday, 24 June 2001

We were instructorless for several hours today. Jim left around 10:00 in the morning. Pat Murphy arrived around 5:00 this afternoon. The interregnum was a very difficult period.

Prairienet's website was down for (at least) several hours today. I seem to be able to get to the site via ftp, so I can upload subsequent entries. If it stays down, I'll get my journal up someplace else and try to spread the word to the other Clarion journalers. But, I'm hoping that Prairienet will be back up sometime Monday.

I got just a bit of writing done in the morning, bringing the word count to 1050. I know several of the scenes coming up, but I don't quite have my plot yet. That means I don't know what the next scene ought to be. Maybe I'll skip the next scene and continue on with what I do know.

I got out for a run. It wasn't a great run, but it was, at least, non-pathetic.

Today was Lister's party. Most of us went, despite the fact that most of us really wanted to do some writing. We cooked food on the grill, slept in the hammock, talked about stories and generally had a good time. Lister lit a big bonfire. People played with sparklers. There was a brief water fight, but I avoided it.

Pat Murphy started learning people's names. (A group of eight or ten introduced themselves while I was elsewhere, then switched places to see if she could still get their names. I was dragged in at that point to act as a ringer. She still got them all, though, and realized that I wasn't one of the ones whose name she'd learned. I was impressed.) Pat talked to people about what had been covered by the previous instructors so she could think about what to teach.