What a week! My
brain is all spinny at the moment because I have an abundance of work projects
in my inbox. I love having a full calendar. That said, I need about five more
hours in each day, please and thank you.
Honestly, the
overflowing inbox comes at an excellent time for me. I have several things that
need attention, one of them being the brakes on my car. Now to buckle under and
get the work done.
Weather in Ohio is
typical for March. Maybe a little on the extreme side, but March always seems
to be whiplashing back and forth between winter and spring. Today is springlike
with temps in the fifties. Yesterday we barely broke freezing for our high.
Another very
limited week for viewing. I'm not kidding when I say five more hours each day
would be helpful. Just saying.
I did finish up the
Death in Paradise episode I started last week. So sad to see Florance
leave again. But what a way to go out. And pretty sure we'll see her again.
Also started a Beyond
Paradise episode, which will finish out the first season. I'm really
enjoying this show.
That's pretty much
it for the life update this week. Tonight's post is from Viable Options,
a novella that brings a couple together under intense circumstances.
Here's the miniblurb:
Karlin Hex and Jay Shaliman are trapped high in the
mountains when their planet is attacked and left for ruin. Jay decides plan A
is to find a ship, get off the planet and find their way to the military fleet
or a viable spaceport. Karlin finds the notion admirable but wonders what his
backup option is. That's easy—plans B through Z are the same as plan A.
And a sneaky peek…
Karlin couldn't escape the stench
of failure. "How the hell does an attack occur with zero notice? What the
hell is the purpose of a remote outpost if it can't capture an advance
warning?" Her shoulders slumped.
Okay, she didn't personally fuck up.
Not really. But an attack on the scale of what they suffered should have had
some kind of chatter, right?
She rewound the last twenty-four
hours and scrolled through the audio looking for anything she could've missed.
"There's nothing." With a sigh, she signed off the base system.
"No one out there to hear me anyway." She couldn't leave to try and
get to a base until morning. "And what good will it do?" The closest
one lay in ruin and everyone who could get off the planet would be gone within
twelve hours.
Geez. Everything tilted a little
sideways. The crushing weight of despair tried to swallow her whole.
She pushed the weight of reaction
back. Couldn't deal with or wrap her head around the idea she'd be dead soon.
Getting up, she grabbed a bottle of alcohol and decided to drown her misery in
whiskey.
Twisting the cap off, she took a
long swallow. "Here's to the end of … well … the world, I guess." She
tucked the bottle under her arm and left the comm station area.
Crossing into the small living
space, she walked through and ended up out in the garage area. Setting the
whiskey on the workbench, she pulled several of the storage bins down from the
shelves and poked through them. Lots of odds and ends that could come in handy.
She grabbed another quick drink then wandered to the first aid station, pulling
supplies out of their containers and stuffing them into another crate.
She followed up by digging through
the fresh food supply. "Plenty here … not that I'll be around long enough
to worry if this stuff goes bad." No doubt they would.
Rifling through the rest of the
cupboards, she found several cases of MREs. Meals ready to eat might not have
gourmet quality, but they traveled well and provided nutrition in convenient
rations. Absently, she gathered a decent supply—she had no idea why—then stowed
them in the garage with medical supplies.
After making a quick dinner of eggs
on toast, she bedded down with the whiskey for comfort and a loose plan to spend
the next day weighing her very limited options for survival.
I love to take a
bleak outlook and sprinkle little glimmers of hope, even if they're
subconscious sparkles.
That's it for this
week. Catch everyone on the flipside.
ML Skye
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