RE: Plain Mike's Writing Prompt Challenge - Bionica
Hi Kiligirl. I take my cues from you regarding my writing. Just kidding. You are much more elequent with your words. It is fun when something just pops into my head and the words come to life.
We are experiencing very slow connectivity this evening. Probably due to the traffic on the internet being crowded with evacuees. We are slightly north of Ocala. Have seen freeway I -75 packed with people coming north all day today. The forces of Irma are pretty powerful right now. Miami looks like it is in for direct hit.
I have a Sister on the east coast near West Palm that I am very concerned about. They should be coming this way within a couple of days.
Been prepping since Labor Day. We are on high ground, got the essentials. Generally power is the problem. We can cope if it isn't for too long. Work will not stop. I am certain of that. Gas already a problem, though unnecessarily since we are literally 4 days out from this storm. It is at times like this when I do wonder why things don't run a little more smoothly. Lots of panic over water, but still plenty coming out of the taps! Lol
Keeping up with all of the latest reports. Remember that here in US the news does tend to sensationalize just about everything.
Been too busy to do much posting. I do get on and check out what has been going on with you. Guessing you are back to a routine of your own. The steemit community in your area is growing quickly.
Also take cues from your resteems as to what works on here.
Hope you and yours are happy and well. Will keep you posted as to life on the little peninsula of Florida as we learn more.
Much Love to you! Your friend Ellie Mae🐓🐓
The End!
Hi Ellie Mae, I think I must have replied to you in my head instead of in real life. Sometimes I wait until I'm at my computer because replying from my cell phone in that teeny little box that Steemit gives you is just a recipe for expressing things badly.
First, I want to say I'm really relieved to learn you're on higher ground in the central north. I'm glad to hear your sister is joining you shortly. While the media may sensationalise, when I see the Governor of the State and the Mayor of Miami both saying essentially the same thing - get out! - then I realise it's deadly serious. For the last two mornings I've been waking up to coverage of Irma's handiwork over Barbuda, Anguilla, Sint Maarten/St Martin, the British Virgin Islands and other Caribbean paradises, and it's hard to absorb the scale of destruction. This is a time for the world to pull together to help those people...ok, technically, once Jose has ambled through leaving his Category 3 calling card just to polish off any infrastructure still standing. I saw reports of people in the south of Florida fighting over a few remaining water bottles (ok, that might be some of the sensationalising you're talking about). Anyway, Floridians who prepare, like your family, are wise Floridians. I suspect as a seasoned homesteader you will be better prepared than most. I really hope you and your neighbours are safe and sound during and after the storm, and that Jose dies out before he gets to you.
I love reading your posts because your ideas are so good and you express them well. A teeny hint for you - there's a free online tool called Grammarly which picks up editing issues. I find it really helpful but haven't figured out how to use it in Steemstyle, which is where I usually do my initial post preparation. I post the final draft into Word, have Grammarly do a quick final check, then paste it into Steemit where I usually find some other editing problems (usually with the images). Poor Tim - when he asks how far I am from posting I say, "Should be five minutes now!" - then I find an image has refused to show up in the final post and I have to figure out how to get it to work or edit the story to leave it on the cutting floor.
This series about our holiday might not be typical of what I do on Steemit in the long run - these posts take a REALLY long time to put together as I also put quite a lot of energy into finding the photos from Emma's and Tim's social media feeds (ask me sometime about saving a photo from Moments on your phone to Dropbox - it's unnecessarily difficult), selecting the final contenders in line with the story I prepare, doing a bit of post-processing on them to clean them up then uploading them to Photobucket. I do appreciate the practice writing because I can feel it getting easier. Someone else can tell me if it's getting better! Your support and reactions once I finally get the post out of me and into Steemit make a world of difference. In between all this writing, I'm working on building two companies so it really is a question of optimising how I spend my time and thinking about what's good for the short term and what's good for the long term.
I'm really committed to posting well about this holiday not just for Steemit, but because it's a record of an extremely special holiday for me and our family. We've asked Emma to scrapbook it and provide her photos as she's an extremely creative and artistic person (scrapbooking is far from my skillsets), but let's face it, when you're 22, long projects about things in the past aren't necessarily going to win the battle against getting together with friends over the weekend.
On resteems: no strategy there at all. I resteem what I enjoy and find interesting and relevant. I also like resteeming new entrants to Steemit as you'll never know who else might pick them up. I was lucky as a minnow to start early and have support from a good Steemit friend in real life to encourage me to persevere. I've said it before but will say it again - this is a great place to pay it forward. I might be a bit haphazard and unstructured about it (and couldn't put together a bot to support Steemians I love if my life depended on it) but I can be faithful in my own little way.
So there we are, Ellie Mae, my first novel to you. Hope you were in the middle of looking for a decent book to read and found this instead. 😄 First and foremost, I wish you safety and health during the days to come, and I'll be watching on the news how Ocala is faring.
Much love and friendship 😊😊
Dearest Friend from the other side of the earth, thank you for all of your kind words and support .
I would be lying to you if I said we weren't scared about Irma. It looks like it may be coming straight up I-75 which is a little over 2 miles from our home. The sustained winds of this monster scare me. The lovely yet shallow rooted oaks will no doubt be uprooted. It happens all of the time. We are not in a mobile home like many of our neighbors. We built a strong structure to withstand all kinds of forces, not that we are trying to test it. I am hoping the winds die down some before they arrive in this area.
Most of the people that are on the freeways should have left days ago to reach a safe destination, my thinking is that they have not experienced a hurricane before and so it goes.
I guess there are no short cuts to writing and posting. It seems to take forever to pull everything together to get the actual post onto the page. Will look into the editor. Some options we don't have because we post from an I Pad.
I understand you wanting to get everything documented about your trip. It is way easier than scrap booking which I just would not bother with or it would be strewn from one end of the house to the other. I did realize not long ago that we are actually documenting our lives here.
In can't even imagine your committment to 2 projects plus the steemit. When you are safe to reveal then perhaps you can say more in laymans terms. As I am certain I won't understand a great deal of what your projects entail.
Like you, I feel that bots would be easier, but we have a nice base of friends that we enjoy. The human aspect is what drew me to this platform. I try to be true to that. It just means more to me to interact personally.
As for discord..... we have tried repeatedly to get on so we can chat with others about what works for them and to make new connections . We are just doing something wrong, but will figure it out soon I hope.
That's it my friend. Should know more about this storm later today. I can hear the traffic moving so that is a good sign.
Love you and thanks for the genuine care you take in your every word. It means so much to me. Time for a little joe and to hit the road. Your friend Ellie Mae. 🐓🐓
Glad to learn you're in a sturdy structure.
I looked up Grammarly free for iPad and found this weird answer in a help feed:
"Grammarly does work on an iPad using the Chrome app. You can launch grammarly.com and write your document there and then copy and paste it."
That makes about as much sense to me as Sanskrit, but maybe it could be useful to you.
And yes on all the rest - we are so alike in many respects. Just stay safe, my friend. Look forward to hearing little cheeps from @mother2chicks while the
winds rage, if she can post, otherwise a cheep of triumph when the sun shines
again 💚💚
Oh, the grammarly link looked a lot weirder on the site I copied it from. I didn't even catch that it was a link. Yippee!