I have posted time and again about how miy kid is haveing trouble in school. mostly there was a lot of ranting about the teacher. Well, the good news is: that lady is gone. Renée is beside herself with bliss. her old teacher is back. the problem I am now dealing with is that Renée is not doing as she is told. NOT. EVER. It is not that she won't do what you ask her to do. She will simply not do What you tell her to do right away. She starts with saying what she is going to do, making elaborate plans, sometimes gets lost in them. her concetration skilss have deteriorated so badly I am dismayed. After all we have done, she is still unable to call herself to attention at least most of teh time. And this problem will come with her to DC. If we cannot change this now, I have no Idea on how to do anything about it anymore. The classteacher also already noticed. And reacted to a missive that I thoght there was too much homework to do in half an hour (I really wonder on what they base their assessment on what is sufficient/appropriate for half an hour and on who's performance they are basing it) So we are on again. SIGH. I am hoping to have her new Atttention and Writing skill improvment class set up. I wonder, why doesn't she learn this in school?. Can it be right that she has to attend school do all her homework and then go and have additional traing three times a week??? No wonder she has a hard time concentarting. BUt in the end, she has to cope somehow. I am so frustrated, I am almost giving up. WHICH is teh one thing I am not alowed to do. Not with her.  She needs me. I am just so pissed that that is the case. School is supposed to TEACH ALL THAT TO EVERY CHILD!

How come I did make another book. I will show you pictures after Coronation. This one was initially 12 pages (at least that is what my beloved told me. 12 Din4 (roughly but  not actually lettersize). translates into 156 (!) pages of Din A 5 (which would be about half letter sized) with an appropriate font size (12 pt) and the occasional empty line to structure the text and some embellishments (I took the inspiration for my own Letters from Aryanhwy they are gold on red and blue, but I didn't have the white color to keep her lovely lines. So instead I made the golden letters be embellished with green and red. It looks nice, but not terribly A, methinx. But it is overall, nice and tiny.  Now, it is indeed a Handbook. I am not happy with the outside of it, but my beloved is, so, since it is his present, everything should be alright.

I am going to pick up my little one now, so I don't have to go and pick her up by bus, when the others are away. AWAY! buhhuhuh! WIthout me.Buhuh. I am of course envious but at the same time I KNOW this is the right decision. The trip is too much for Manou and thus too much for all of us with her. She is already heartbroken that she can't come, if I left her alone with my MIL she would never forgive me (and I mean never, that kid can hold a grudge).

Too bad, that summer vacation doesn't start until the week after next. If that wasn't so, we could all go, take our time and stay in lovely Sweden afterwards for a little longer. Trust the Schulamt to ruin your day.

OMG, I just saw the Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Despite the cumbersome title I just love that show. Much more than I liked the movies, actually. In the Movies everything had to happen so fast and the character development was neglected in favor of wammo bang buzz!!. In Terminator 2 one could see what she HAD become. The development didn't take place before my eyes.

I think they did everything right with this show so far. I am utterly amazed how they avoid the obvious pitfalls, whereas other shows usually hire a digging crew for additional ones all the time.  I LOVE Tin Miss, and I think that I will come to like John's uncle just as much. Who would have thought the BH 90210 had spawned such a fine actor.
Agent Ellison is played by one of my television favorites too. He was the looker in Judging Amy (another show I greatly admired, well at least most of the time). I am always amazed at these guys, these accomplished actors that make the transition from steaming hot too good to be real to wary, depressed, disillusioned and -but only as an afterthought - nice looking too. (I saw R.Crowe first in the *Insider* and I couldn't believe my eyes when they showed the Gladiator footage. I still don't find him more than moderately attractive but that transition was amazing.)

Why is it that there is such a variety of quality (or lack thereof) out there? I mean why are bad movies with sketchy characters and ludicrous scripts out there while some gems of perfection still lie in the drawers of my fellow writers or even sit on my bookshelves? Why is it that a
 terribly written books, like (personal opinion of course but i could back it up) The Swarm, by Schätzing end up on the bestseller lists? Why is that?

Of course there is the matter of tastes and they do differ, I am still amazed that one of my best friends likes what I write because we never agree on issues of taste or even genre. Then, there is the issue of target group. I mean books make money because they sell a lot. So in Order to make money your product needs to appeal to a large audience. I see that, but why does Television, especially German Television it seems, seem to be hellbent on losing the moderately intelligent watchers?

There have been some great shows coming out of the US recently. I appreciate that after a couple of years of melancholy now shows like Boston Legal, The Gilmore girls, Dexter, most of the current stuff is making light of our daily misery and - who would have thought, BL for instance, uses its platform to address and even discuss very controversial issues. And then there is the British Gem of *New Tricks*.

I have not lost hope, that someday the German television will realize that there is something besides (oddly dubbed) American shows and what is call *Heimatfilm*. Something about a moderately good looking forty-ish physician or a forester, with nice little family problems and a grand setting in front of the alps. And of course then, there is always the ludicrously bad soap operas and Telenovellas.

We had some starts: One show about a an aspiring comic illustrator, called: Berlin Berlin and another thing called Turkish for Beginners, a German turkish patchwork family. But they got wasted in their timeslots and the channels were very timid about marketing, so they didn't make it big in time. When I watch German shows, I realize that they are simply not up to the american standards. The story is meandering,  not tight. The characterization is often crude. The scripts are simply not up to the quality in the US. I doubt that that is due to us Germans not being able to do that. We have just as many creative people here IME. But there might be another thing at work: There is still no viable education for fictional writing of any kind. There are some Script/Drama courses, which are by German standards pretty expensive. Also, it seems to be common, that the script writers have to share *Their* share with the director and the producers if they want to see their stuff air. And the Channels seem to tolerate this extortion. How can they not see, that they hurt themselves by not nurturing the writers. Everything. Absolutely Everything starts with a good idea and a decent write. Then, a capable crew can make gems. But as we are used to mediocre, and we aren't even trying to change a thing. (END RANT)

Well after having read about just how accommodating the German television community is, I have decided against Script-writing. So I am dependent of the WGA for good entertainment it seems.

So keep sending the good stuff my way :D
P.S LJ spell check doesn't know Telenovellas it supplied :Talentless as first option LOL

OK, it is still going a lot slower that it should. And I could blame it on my kids, but I shouldn't. Anyways. I edited upt to page 286, out of still 473 (which is surprising given the rewrites). That makes 41 pages today. maybe I will be done before Johnny Depp is getting his tooth gilded again. :D

Why is it that half way through revisions I feel like this is a bloodless monster?? Well, I hope it is just due to the fact that I read its content about 20 times already, and I am not really reading it. I am going through it line by line.

Then again, maybe, I suck.

I bid you a wonderful rest-day in the hope that I don't
Brooke