Journal Entry

Friday, July 13th
Fridays are always slow days at work. Half the office is out on Regular Day Off on any given Friday, and those who aren't are often on leave. Or comp time, from travel. For whatever reason, there's rarely more than a handful of people in the office, and those who are there don't usually expect too get much work done.

Today was no exception. I still have a long-running project to work on, and I made some real progress on my section today, but the hours seemed to drag by. I had a couple hours comp time of my own, so I spent one of them to leave early, when I just couldn't take it anymore.

It wasn't all bad, though. Over my lunch break I worked on King Jason's War, for the first time in over a year, and I got a significant portion written. I had trouble, though. Every time I went to reference the main character by name, I typed "Josh" out of habit. And when I went back to correct it, "Ja" became "James" before I could finally get around to "Jason." I probably spent as much time hitting backspace as I did actually typing.

It felt good to make progress, though. I have a very rigorous outline for that novel (it was an experiment), and it's easy to finish a piece and see just how much progress I've made toward the end. I've got a dozen pieces left to do, and the book will be done. That's probably two weeks' worth of work, if I worked hard at it, but I'm making no promises.

I did spend my whole walk thinking about that story, though. I worked mostly on the ending (since the beginning and middle are written). There's a devastating development in the last third of the book, and in the story I wrote today I set the stage for that. While I was walking tonight, I figured out how to develop it, how to make that scene build from here to the end of the book, and it ought to be heartbreaking. I've never tried to write heartbreaking, so I don't know if I can do it, but it's in the outline. We'll have to see what happens.

We had big plans for tonight. After work we were supposed to go downtown for dinner at Abuelo's, and then to the biggest movie screen in the state (Cine Capre at the Harkins in Bricktown) to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dinner was delicious (it always is there), and K-- and N-- joined us for it. Then we went to wait in line for the movie (for over an hour) and B-- and E-- showed up in time to chat with us a little before the movie started, but after that AB had other plans for us.

Really, the movie was just way too loud for her. T-- had thought she would sleep through it, late as the movie was, but we had no such luck. T-- couldn't focus on the movie, and she was fighting AB the whole time, so we ended up walking out an hour in and heading home. It was frustrating, but no big deal in the long run. We got refunds for our tickets (the lady at the counter was very nice about it), and we'll just have to see the movie another time. I hated leaving our friends there, though.

It was 11:30 when we got home, and I've already told you about my walk. I'm going to finish my water now, and then it's off to bed. I have this feeling, this energy like I could finish King Jason's War before dawn, but I've done that once before, on a different novel, and it turned out awful. I'm going to get some sleep, and pace myself.