Arrival

This morning I left the Easterwood Airport to fly to Ames, Iowa for some work training.  I always forget how awesome clouds look from above. This isn't as well lit as I'd hoped but you get the idea. It was pretty sweet.

I'm not sure what you think of when you think of Iowa, but I honestly was hoping for something like this:

This was not the case. 

It's cold and rainy here.  It's as though by going north I went back in time to January or something. Oh well.  I do have a very nice room.  Here's my humongous bed.  This is bigger than our bed at home.  That's my backpack in the middle so you can have a frame of reference. It's pretty swell other than the howling wind outside my window. But I can overlook that.

And also I have a large desk and wifi.  You probably already knew that though because we both know that I wouldn't pay extra just to have internet at my hotel.  I'm cheap.  Anyway, I got some writing done on Bellezandra on the way from DFW but it's surprisingly hard to write or draw during turbulence.  I was thinking Um...hello? I'm trying to shade with a bic pen here. It's difficult enough as it is without you shaking the whole plane Mr. Airpocket!  I'll try to post some later and then put the link on here sometime this week to the site.

Today I don't really have much to do. Just get here and get settled.  And get some sleep too.  Tomorrow I have to start training.  I have to shower in and shower out every time I enter/exit the lab this week.  In my head I see something like Andromeda Strain.  But knowing how glamorized CSI is for lab work, I assume government diagnostic facilities aren't much nicer than mine.  I couldn't find the book I wanted to bring this morning and I almost grabbed Richard Preston's Panic at Level 4, but then thought Nah, I don't want to have nightmares about giving everyone Ebola or something because I'm clumsy.  I won't be able to take my phone into the lab so I'll update this tomorrow evening.  Well, my tummy's getting angry and I'm tired so I'm going to find some food and a nap.  Catch yall on the flip side!


(....what does that even mean?)


****UPDATE*******
I forgot to give a shout out to MW, who may as well be my sister.  Thanks for keeping my baby girl company this week.  You're awesome.

Writing

For the one of you actually following this blog (thanks Heather), sorry I've been a little AWOL.  I have managed to get an electric fence up around my raised bed, but we've been out of town a lot and haven't had time to actually put anything in there.

My main project right now is finishing up my medical school application as well as my public health school application.  The med school app will be for fall 2011 admission and the public health app will be for this coming fall. I'm going to try to take a few classes to get some foundations for med school as well as improve my grades.

Interspersed between that I'm working on a couple of stories.  Yep, I'm trying my hand at writing.  I get all of these neat (at least I think so) ideas in my head but I never write them down so eventually they just shrivel and die in my brain.  But I've started writing bits and pieces down this time so these may actually get written out.  They probably won't ever get published but I'd at least like to write them out for myself because I really like my characters and think their stories deserve to be told. Is that weird?

One is about a group of teenagers in semi-post-apocalyptic America making their way from L.A. to New York.  That one I'm keeping pretty tight reigns on because I've written the most on it and if possible I would like to see it in print one day.

The other is just an idea right now that I'm trying to flesh out.  Here's a really basic synopsis of my thoughts so far:

An apothecary searching for his lost king, a military hero framed as a traitor, a pair of thieves looking for their big break and a young adventurer looking for his place in the world.  Their journeys will bring them together in the land of Kaladea where the land gives way to endless sky, and they may find the answers to all of their questions in a mysterious air ship, a behemoth of unexplained origin, known only as the Bellezandra.

I'm trying to decide how to write this one.  I think it might be a fun experiment to do it as a serialized blog, a chapter at a time.  But then I question the quality because I know that I'll get to the end and go "I wish I'd done this at the beginning so I could that at the end."  Do I write it and publish a chapter at a time, write it all out and then release it one chapter at a time or just write it all and release it all at once?


Thoughts?