How to Blog Like Penelope Turner and Hidden in Plain Sight (Early Preview №5)

In the spirit of starting my next series, I would like to go about this in the form that one of my characters would (I'm not pretending to be something I'm not, the whole internet would run on Windows 3.1 or Memphis if I had anything to say about it, actually). Anyway, some of the people close to me know that I'll do any and every absurd thing for accuracy, using a Compaq Presario 1200 with Windows 98 is included in that mix. Put simply, that picture is how I'm doing this post: writing in StarOffice 8 on Windows 98 and (because Google doesn't like Browservice) sending the file to my desk to copy-paste onto the blog with the pictures included. Anyway, enough about my mental insanity (or creativity, if you prefer a different out-of-the-box term) and onto Hidden in Plain Sight!

Put simply, the novella is coming to a close, but it's not as elegant as what I originally wanted it to be. Still, I don't think it's going to end up a terrible finish (there's a timeskip at the end that you can read so far into), but sometimes, our dreams and thoughts aren't feasible in the real world, and there's nothing wrong with that. We might not be happy something turned out the way it did, but there's always a way that it could be worse. To put my dedication to whatever I'm doing with my life out in the open, I'm (mostly) blogging from a Windows 98 computer for the fun of it, writing on it, even sifting through cards that are similar in capabilities to the ones I reference (though they're all pretty basic at this point). Nothing is going to get me to change my mind about this- it's fun this way, end of story.

--

[PREVIEW]

By 8:15, George and Julie were on the interstate. George was going a little slower than traffic was, setting the cruise control at 70. Julie was in the passenger seat, only having gotten rid of her tears about an hour prior. Despite her insistence, George wouldn’t tell her what he was planning, though she came prepared for what might come next, if need-be. While Julie’s new car could easily get 41 miles per gallon on the highway, that number dropped by six or seven points at interstate speeds, assuming the LCD screen on the gauge cluster was anything to go by. Julie didn’t take much notice when George turned off at Exit 1A, she was still wrapped up in her own thoughts about the past eon-and-a-half. The highway he needed to use was, thankfully, near-empty at this time of night.

At one point, it had been the major corridor for the area, but since the metro was kicked into high gear and the 374 was built to bring the network to the metro, the highway operated usually well-under capacity.

“We’re here,” George said, killing the engine at a tiny Chinese restaurant.

“Khue-tsr?”

“It opened a few days after we moved for the first time,” George said, “There was one in Florida that I loved so much, but it’s since closed.”

“O- oh… wow.”

“Yup,” George said as they went inside.

The restaurant held very few tables, though the authenticity of it was unmatched by any Asian place they’d been to before. Of course, they’d never been to China, but when your entire restaurant looks like a Subway with a hotbar of Asian foods, you just know there’s something very much lost. Then again, Panda Express was a fast food joint, so that needed to be taken into consideration too.

“It’s… nice,” Julie said, looking at some of the artwork as they sat down to a table, “I wonder where the name of the place comes from, though.”

“Tell you what,” George said, getting the menu and handing it to her, “When we go up there to order, we’ll ask then.”

“Alright,” she said, picking out her order and handing the thing to George.

Even though she could read Chinese characters to a degree… she still had never seen them written in calligraphy. To Julie, Asian scripts were more art than writing. In Japan, if you want to write the word for “east”, it was basically a picture of the Sun rising behind a tree. “Person” was a person, “mountain” was a stick figure of a mountain- it was beautiful to her, basically art in the same sense as the Anglo Saxon runes, except each character stood for an idea, not a single sound.

Soon, they’d made their decisions, so George went to order, leaving Julie to her own thoughts for a moment.

Round-eyed Japanese chick, that’s funny. Mom had some cousins in Kitakyushu, Okayama, and Hamamatsu, I think. They probably haven’t heard any redneck humor in their lives, they’d love it.

“She said it’s Wu,” George said, setting their drinks down as he came back.

“I thought it was some form of Chinese,” she said as George’s brow furrowed, “Wu is a Chinese language.”

“Oh!”

“Wouldn’t be a normal date if something didn’t go way over you,” Julie chuckled as a plate of rangoons and sauce was brought over to the table.

[END OF PREVIEW]