Beautiful

It's so nice I had breakfast on the patio just now. It's amazing what sitting on a slab of cement in the sun can do for a bowl of Special K with skim milk and another one of strawberries and mangoes on the side. Nirvana (no, not the grunge band) D'you think anyone'd notice if I skipped work today? Yeah, you're right, they probably would complain to Mrs. Boss tomorrow and then I'd get fired and where would I get my writing camp and yarn money then?

I just finished reading a paperback thriller and it occurred to me that it wasn't literary and was very predictable, there'd be a break and poof! the setting would change or a new character would leap onto the page. I think I'm going to spend some time this weekend going through it and making an outline of the main points of the story, maybe I can plug one of my ideas into a similar framework and get some publishing traction going here. I'm not too proud to write fluff; I think it's what I mostly write anyway.

April 14--Great Barrier Reef. Gale was glad to be wearing the headphones as the seaplane flew over the pale yellow shoreline and out to sea. The color of the water changed fast from pale turquoise to teal to dark navy to the deepest blue black of the abyss. She had been diving for years and had never lost her enthusiasm for jumping into the nearest water with a tank on her back. The thought of all the life that teemed under the surface of any body of water make her itch to put her face in to see. This was the first time that she had been in a seaplane and she thought that it was the perfect combination of two things that she loved--flying and diving. In other, younger days if she'd had the money she would have learned to fly. A one-time discovery flight was the best she could manage, but learning to scuba dive and doing her best to swim in every ocean was something she could do. She was so wrapped up in her passion for diving that she wondered what people who didn't dive did on their vacations.

I've never been to the southern oceans--yet, but I'm determined to get there someday. Oh, and happy Tax Day! You've filed, right? Tonight's writer's and we've got guests coming. Ooh, I'm excited; I hope they like us and want to join.
--Barbara