*Muses and motivations and (weekend) madness, oh my!*

Words

The fog of a new vehicle has been obscuring my interest since December. I thought nothing would lift it; not my spouse or or books or even blogs. Gasp!

But on Friday, during lunch, I discovered I had left all my car mags at home. Drat, I thought, as I searched my car for reading material. I was at my favorite restaurant and I was solo and wanted some distraction from people watching.

So I picked up the latest issue of Writer's Digest from its stack at the bottom of the passenger side footwell and proceeded inside. After gobbling a quarter of the tasty appetizer, I opened the issue and began to read about genres.

The Muse struck.

I can write a romance, I mused after I finished reading the description. Hmmm. Shall I write in the paranormal sub-genre or a more typical mystery/suspense? How's this for a basic story...

I read the next genre. What about a mystery? I think I've read enough to be familar with them to write a credible one. R. can even help me with the structure. How's this for a basic story...

And on and on more thoughts emerged from my mind. And not just thoughts: wisps of dialogue, character descriptions, authors I had admired but had not thought about for months, many, many things. This was no proverbial dam but a flashflood. My hand hurt as I wrote them down in my personal digital assistant (PDA).

I rose from my chair to use the restroom. While waiting for my hands to be dried from the blower, I realized I had not thought of cars since those first few words in Writer's Digest. I was smiling when I returned to my table.


Weights

Friday I checked out the new gym in my membership. As I swam in the pool, I thought about an article I had earlier in the week in the magazine, Writer's Digest. The author of the article had written about using one's blog to generate not only material for magazines but for short and long works (such as novels) as well.

I knew (and have met) writers who had successfully achieved notoriety. I sat in the steam room for the third time, wondering about the legal issues they must have dealt with. A common one: since blogs are--in a sense--published in a public medium, how are first rights affected? I remember one writer mentioning in a forum how publishers are leery of accepting articles from blogs.

I opened my eyes. In the enveloping steam, I become uncomfortable and yet, tantalized, from things I thought I saw. I padded out to cool myself. After a quick gargle with mouthwash provided by the club, I cleaned myself off. The thick carpet in the locker room of this gym was sharp contrast to the normal linoleum of the other facilities.

I paused, nude, in front of the wooden locker door. Contrast? I looked around and returned to drying myself. Is there an article here? On fitness? I thought I had read every article, every viewpoint, every take there could be on fitness.

But not this one, I thought, excited. Now fully dressed, I gargled one more time. I greeted the cool night's air with a smile, my mind racing with words on fitness and motivation.

(Image found on the Internet and all rights belong to its owner.)

Ahhhh....


Whatever

All couples develope routines. One which--admittedly, I've recently added--is checking out used cars from Carfaire.

Normally, when R. and I eat out for lunch, we visit the nearest Barnes and Noble (or Borders if we're at The Block of Orange) to help walk off our meal. But this weekend I drove us down to the Carfaire instead. I admit it: I'm still fascinated by cars and some of the amazing (and not so amazing) purchases out there.

We enjoyed the looking and speculation. Better yet, the weather--bright and sunny--was perfect for casual browsing. R. had developed a rapid means of figuring out if a car's a bargain or not. On Saturday, we were applying that method to the various cars when we came across...The Jag.

"Look!" I said. "They had lowered the price by three thousand!"

R. nodded. "Are you interested?"

"We've discussed this before." I paused, my eyes gazing over the sleek lines then the price. A line crossed out the old one and the new price--in bold--lay beneath it. "There's too many problems. There's the reliabilty issue...."

"That's not what I've heard."

"Oh?"

"I've talked to many of my co-workers and peers and they haven't had the problems you've mentioned."

I shook my head. "Huh. So different. I wonder--Oh!"

"What?"

"You're sister has a Jaguar, right?"

"Yes. Ah. I see. Why don't you give her a call?"

"I will...just for information's sake."

R. just smiled.

We didn't see the car on Sunday or the less expensive one I had spotted a couple of weeks earlier. As I pulled out my car from the parking lot, I thought about the yellow contact tag I had taken from The Jag.

I need to give R.'s sister a call this weekend....