Monday Meanderings - 10.15.2018

motivation

noun

mo·ti·va·tion | \ˌmō-tə-ˈvā-shən\

Definition of motivation 

1 : the act or process of motivating. Some bloggers need motivation to help them write a post.

Okay, I made up that part about bloggers. Merriam-Webster had a more general definition, but mine fits the situation better. I need some motivation - and good material - to get back in the blogging groove. To be fair, there have been 1,242 posts in this blog so far. This is number 1,243, and in the 11 years of this blog's existence, I have written down almost everything I know, and most things that I have done (there are some notable exceptions and that's all I have to say about that).

And I have been busy. I have been trying to wrap up the marathon audio recording project known as "the (expletive deleted) Alaska book." It came in at 14 hours and 40 minutes of narration. I don't keep records of how much time I spend producing a book; industry guidelines suggest a 6-to-1 ratio (6 hours work for every finished hour - or in this case, about 88 hours) is a good goal. Hah! I spent more than 88 hours trying to find the pronunciation of words like "promyshleniki" and "Revillagigedo" and "Kwakwaka’wakw." For the record, it's pronounced  "kwalk-walk-yah-walk."

Interesting story about the pronunciations. Early on I had raised a flag for help with the publisher. My contact finally got me in touch with the author, and I sent him a long list of words I could not find. After some prodding, he did respond, and said, "I don't have a clue. I never heard them pronounced. I just copied them out of the source material."

But this past week I clicked on the "I Am Done" button and put the finished product in the publisher's hands. Barring major problems, it should be available for sale in a few weeks.

It's trying to be Fall here - but not very hard. True, there are no more really, really hot days, but it hasn't exactly cooled down, either. There's a "cold" front coming this week that may make a difference. Maybe that will also shake some pecans loose. The trees are loaded, but very few nuts are actually making it to the ground, and those that do are much smaller in size than normal.

That hasn't stopped the little old Vietnamese lady; she checks regularly, and thanks to our motion-sensing doorbell, we know every time she comes around. She's hard to run off, so if I want some pecans, I'm going to have to be diligent. Assuming they ever fall out of the trees. At least no limbs have broken off (yet) this year.