Monday, July 25, 2016

Monday --- 143 weeks

8:45am                         Writing Practice                        63°  Boise

Been a while since I used my blog for writing practice. I've been writing in my journal pages and I've been too busy to write every day this month. The last two weeks, I've probably missed at least five or six days. I just got out my head gear so that I can practice speaking what I want to say instead of typing.  I'm not at all sure how this is gonna work that I can at least try practicing.

I got out Auntie Jan's book last Friday and began transcribing it into a word document using this method of reading it using my speech recognition software. So far it's going very slowly.  Granny wrote the prologue and it's challenging. I'll have to do research and probably rewrite the whole thing, but I'll try to do it using her voice. I remember her voice very well as if I heard it just last week.  Auntie Jan's voice, too.  In fact, I can hear everyone's voice in my head.  My mother is loud and clear and so is Stephen. I have this idea that if I just continued to work on transcribing the work that they did, Granny and Auntie Jan, along with everything I've written so far, somehow along the way all come up with something.

Hardman, Oregon is a ghost town now and I'm sure someone over there remember some history, so I think all plan a trip over and do some research.  Also Cousin Jodi K reminded me that years ago Granny had purchased six graves at the Hardman graveyard and as far as we know, only three of them have been used. I would like to find out who manages that graveyard and arranged to use one of the graves four myself, Stephen, my mom and dad, and my brother  Gerald.  I haven't mentioned any of this to Mark yet but I plan to tell him all about it once I find out more and invite him to join us if he wants to.

Well, using this speech recognition program is tricky and it's going to take practice. Also, I just figured out that each sentence begins with an automatic double space. I'm not sure how to turn that feature off but I don't want a go back and fix every double spaced sentence and this whole document. I'm sure with patience I'll be able to train this thing, but for today it's quite a challenge. Like anything other skill, with patience and effort it will become easier over time.  Also, I will try using it when I write emails and when I do Facebook. That way I can train both of us and practice at the same time.

Well, that was tedious. I lasted a while and then hung it up. It's easy to use that speech recognition program to read handwritten work into a document but it's hard to compose and create fresh, unique material. But like I said, practice will help and I'll get plenty of that as I transcribe all the things I need to do.

Stephanie is coming over soon to plot strategy and she may move in here for a while. That means I'll have to clean this place and pack up stuff. At the least I'll have to empty out the guest room and make room for her there. We can start there and see where this goes. If it comes down to it, I would be willing to pack up and move out (mostly) and let her move in. If we rented a storage unit for under $100 a month, we would still both save tons of money by combining our forces here in this little house. I still have my studio and would probably spend a lot more time there. $813 + $154 + $100 = $1067 divided by 2 = 533.50. Add the utilities at about $150 a month average and that gives us about $600 a month total living expenses. Right now I pay all of it so that would be great ... no job needed! And motivation for going to work in my studio every day. Well, we'll see what happens after our talk today.

Right now I need to go get my face washed and get dressed. I have Auntie Jan's book with me, I can work on it here at home. I also need to back up my files and take this laptop to Steve at Aardvark so that he can clean it up and install Windows 10. The free version goes away this Friday but I don't get paid until Wednesday and the whole thing will cost me over $100. Sheesh, it's been such an expensive summer already!

No comments:

Post a Comment