I know we are glad 2020 is in our rearview mirror – I know we are! It’s been almost two weeks since Stu’s unexpected (but needed) surgery. He is doing great and hopes to have all activity restrictions lifted tomorrow at his two week post-op appointment. He’s eating most everything he did before, just smaller quantities and (TMI alert) his bowels are back to normal. No pain pills or stool softeners needed!
We had a quiet new year’s eve – so quiet we were in bed by 10:30! It was cold and rainy so no neighborhood fireworks. Phew!
Not much else is new. We had a lot of rain for a couple of days, icy roads, now it’s back to more normal (for this are) temps of 40-50s during the day (with a couple scattered low 60s) and 30-40s at night. Not having severe winters (or severe summers) is one thing we love about living where we do. Life is good!
Stu did take advantage of a sunny day to take down the outdoor decorations and I spent the next day getting everything back in the totes. It always looks so dull afterward. Stu is antsy to get back to doing “stuff” and I’m trying to clear my backlog of little things so I can get back to writing. I have dabbled a bit with voice dictation. There are a lot of settings that need to be done and I never wrote them down. This time I did so I can recreate the scenario when I give it a go again.
I had one night of no sleep except for the hour between 6am-7am and I started writing a short story that a friend can use in his newsletter. It will introduce one of the characters in my upcoming Red Line Coffee mystery series. I used my iPad and the Notability app with my stylus to write it, then I read it into my Sony digital recorder. That was the easy part. Then I had to figure out how to get it transcribed into text. This was what finally worked…
What you see is the Sony recorder (volume up & playing my recording) with my headset microphone on top of the speaker, transcribing into Google docs. Here is a partial result (ignore the weird spacing, it’s how Google docs handled a new page),
I ended up with about 75-80% accuracy. I think that’s excellent for a first try! I need to speak a little slower but that won’t be an issue when I’m creating from my brain and not reading something I wrote. LOL! The next step is trying to retrain my brain to write out loud…and away from the computer screen. That’s going to take time but if I can master it, I will be able to write books faster. And that’s a good thing for my readers.
And, as usual, the #2doods are just living life their way.
Last piece of news – Tennessee has started the public vaccinations and our age group is projected to be in Feb-Mar timeframe. Based on what happened Saturday in a neighboring county, it may be later than that. Just not enough vaccine to go around, at least yet. (Please, no anti-vaccine comments. This is our decision after weighing all the information. Thank you.)
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Glad you both are doing well after a hiccup with Stu’s bladder? I’m very impressed with you voice dictation writing. I’m on my way to getting my writing mojo back and finishing up Vol 2 in my Roadrunner Chronicles series (Fulltiming). Blessing to you in the New Year!