So I spent some time whining about my situation last Thursday, and instead of complaining you all gave an outpouring of sympathy and encouragement. What can you say about such guys? You're all awesome.
I went home Thursday night and talked with T--, and got permission to really take it easy over the weekend (I had a Regular Day Off on Friday, so it was a long weekend), and over the upcoming holiday. Sort of a week and a half of Father's Days. Something along those lines.
Anyway, I did. I was up late Thursday night, but I didn't spend a lot of time worrying about it, because I didn't really have any demands Friday morning. I got up, played some WoW, maybe watched a movie with AB in the afternoon (while I was messing around on a laptop), then watched the new Muppet Christmas Special with T-- in the evening. We ordered some pizza, and I played some more WoW.
I called it quits at 11:00, and got a good night's sleep. T-- was surprised how early I got up on Saturday (although it wasn't until 8). I spent the morning same as Friday. Then around 11:00 we tried to get some Christmas pictures with AB that did not go well. After that, I took her with me to pick up some lunch and left T-- to sort through the wreckage of our photoshoot.
After lunch, T-- went out Christmas shopping and AB went down for a nap. I played some more WoW (big surprise), and then at 2:30, when T-- got home, I headed over to K--'s place. We went to the gym -- basically my first time back there in six months -- and did forty minutes of strength training and twenty of cardio. I'd intended to do the opposite, but that was mostly because I didn't expect to be able to handle much strength training. Instead, I did almost exactly the same workout I was doing back in June. That surprised me, and it's pretty encouraging. When I was in Chicago (back in October), I spent some time in the hotel gym and learned I wasn't too far behind on the cardio, too. So that's pretty much all my good excuses demolished. I need to get back, and regularly.
Anyway, N-- was working all day Saturday, so after the gym K-- and I played Gears of War through to the end of the second act. Then she got home, and we invited T-- and D-- to join us for Jason's Deli for dinner. That had to be at K-- and N--'s house, because the Cowboys game on Saturday evening was only showing on the NFL network, and among those three households, K-- and N-- are the only ones with access.
Dinner was awesome, the game was not.
Sunday morning we went to church, then came home and had leftover pizza for lunch. I played a little in the afternoon, then the Huddlestons came over a little bit before 5:00. Bill and D-- hung out at my place for an hour or so, and we turned on the Falcons/Vikings game because it had playoff implications for the Cowboys. And, y'know, because three dudes in a living room need to have a football game on, if they're not playing video games.
Meanwhile, the womenfolk went to North Pole Village or something of the sort to get pictures of AB playing with Christmas stuff. I guess it went better than our Saturday shoot. At 6:00 we met them at Irma's for dinner (awesome), and then they all came back to our place for desserts and drinks, and we exchanged gifts and watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Everybody left at 10:15, and I was in bed by 10:30. I was probably asleep by 11.
All told, I had a pretty relaxing weekend. I certainly feel more rested than I have in about a month. If I can keep the same sort of pace for the next week, I may just be back up to normal by the time the new year rolls around.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Journal Entry: December 18, 2008
I'm tired.
Last time I posted was December 5th. Back then, I was complaining about sleeping problems, and mentioned obliquely "drama with our Tulsa house."
This year, we've paid $8,400 in mortgage payments on the Tulsa house. We have also spent that much more money repairing the house (the bulk of that going into a new air conditioner and new carpet when we were trying to sell the house). So we're easily looking at more than $15,000 spent on that house in 2008 (although, to be fair, $5,000 of that is still sitting on a credit card, slowly piling up).
We spent a month working on the house, three months with it sitting on the market (and only 4 or 5 people ever looked at it), and then another couple months while we waited for an incompetent property manager to get it rented out. It's been occupied since September, but we've only seen $475. Word is there's another check in the mail, our portion of the November rent, but we're not holding our breath.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, T-- sent off an email to our incompetent property manager, asking why we hadn't yet received November rent, or any messages from him. Three days later, he wrote back to say that he'd been buried under a massive list of complaints from the tenants, and listed out enough problems that he'd clearly been collecting them for a while (without informing us or, apparently, doing anything to correct them). So we learned all at once that our tenants were being abused, that we weren't going to see any money for the month, and that once again our property manager was shirking his job and avoiding contacting us with crucial information.
T-- wrote back right away, expressing her displeasure that he'd waited so long to contact us (and that only in response to her emailing him), and, at the same time, giving him consent and encouragement to get those problems resolved. We have no interest in being slumlords.
So he wrote right back the next day and said, "This is too hard. I don't want to do it anymore." Although he did it with significantly less punctuation and poorer spelling. And that was that, he'd quit.
He claims, at this point, to have done about $950 worth of repairs (at the tenants' insistence, and with our approval), but we haven't seen any receipts yet. He also owes us at least $500 which, as I've said, is supposably in the mail.
And he quit. Sure, he was incompetent, but it's not exactly like we can take care of the property from OKC. T-- worked her ass off researching a new guy, finding someone with impeccable references and experience this time, and getting us a contract with him in no time. He waived the usual "first and last month's rent" fee, because that is generally used to defer the cost of advertising and running background checks on tenants, and we already have tenants -- tenants who have apparently regularly paid on time, even if we've barely seen any of the money.
So that's...not resolved, but probably better. Exhausting, though. That was the big stressor in my life last time I posted, and probably what was keeping me from getting enough sleep.
Then, four days later (on Tuesday the ninth), I was waiting in line to order my lunch at Taco Bueno when T-- called and said, "Aaron, we've been robbed. I am not joking. You need to get home now. I'm calling the police. Bye."
And that left me with a frantic thirty-minute drive home -- plenty of time to imagine all the horrible things that could have been implied by T--'s brief message (and unable to call for more information, because she'd said she was going to call the cops).
As it happened, none of the nightmare scenes in my head were necessary. The truth was exactly what I'd imagined in the first few seconds. T-- had taken AB out to do some Christmas shopping around 10:30, and by the time she got home at noon the house was cleaned out. XBoxes, the 360, the Wii, two laptops, my computer and monitor, digital camera, movies and games. All light, expensive, highly portable stuff. I got home around 12:30, and a cop showed up about 15 minutes later and took down our statements.
N-- was in the area, having lunch with K-- who works just up the street, so she came over when she heard the news. D-- showed up a little later and brought me a laptop so I could get back online and restore a little bit of my sanity. Mostly we just sat around dazed, after we'd gotten the better part of the mess cleaned up.
T-- has taken it really well. We have okay insurance, but we're probably not going to try to replace everything that was lost. Financially...I don't know. We've had a couple blessings, and that's helping with the sanity a little too, but we weren't looking rosy beforehand, and this certainly doesn't help.
The stuff isn't that big a deal. It was all toys. But we lost data that can't be recovered. I'd gone on a kick for the last year scanning in all our important family records, and throwing out the originals. I kept all of our financial accounts on spreadsheets on the laptop. T-- had all her pictures for the year, and all the videos of AB she'd recorded on her camcorder on her laptop. All of that is gone, now.
It's been a rough couple weeks. T-- has done a ton of work, getting a new bank account set up, filing our report with the insurance company, taking care of AB. She's always done most of that, but she's doing more than usual these days. I've been worthless.
I really have. I go to bed at midnight or one, and don't sleep. I wake up feeling miserable, always late, and rush to work where I spend most of the day staring dazedly at whatever project I'm working on. I've got a couple distractions that cheer me up some, but they're just distractions. As soon as I turn them off, I'm right back where I started.
So...bah. I haven't been blogging regularly this month, as I'd intended to, but it would have just been page after page of this complaining. In the end, this incident isn't that big a deal. If it's over, we got off easy. Still, I spend hours worrying about the possibilities for identity theft, the hassles that could come from losing our passports or tax records or titles. I think about the possibility of the bastards coming back. They say that happens sometimes -- the thieves will wait three to six months, give you time to replace everything with insurance money, and then come clean you out again. What if T-- is home next time?
If it's over, we got off easy, but it still weighs on me. I wrote a poem earlier in the year about being a kid pretending to be a grown-up, hoping no one notices. Everyone I showed it to agreed with the sentiment, maybe it's something about this generation, or just something everyone goes through during the transition from 20s to 30s. I don't know.
But for me it's not just that. For me, it's being a selfish, irresponsible, starving artist-type pretending to be a husband and father. That's not really who I am. I love T-- and AB absolutely -- I have no trouble doing that. But then, artist-types don't often have trouble finding genuine emotion. I don't come naturally to making wise investment choices, though. To balancing a budget and paying bills on time, and addressing problems early when they're cheaper to fix, and putting in a hard day's work. Those are things I can do, and things I work hard at doing, but it's just that. It's hard work.
I know people, like K--, who seem to come naturally by that. Being responsible, making good decisions, just makes sense to him. And then I know people like D-- who have paid the price for bad decisions often enough that it's just easier to make good decisions, so he does. For me, it's all playacting. My parents raised me to know what a decent man should do, so I try to do those things, but it's not anything inside me saying, "This is important." It's just a desire not to let down the people who depend on me.
It feels like treading water. Not the relaxing sort, where you don't feel like swimming so you just sort of lay back and float. No, I mean when you get to the point where you're far too tired to swim, too exhausted to even tread water, but you know that the only other option is to drown, so, weary as you are, you keep kicking. Every day when I go put in a day of work to pay the family's bills, it's a kick. It's not a bad job -- in fact, it's a great one -- but it's not what I want to be doing. Everytime I pay down the credit card instead of adding on to my computer or upgrading to HD cable, it's a kick to keep afloat. To keep seeming like a good guy.
It's exhausting. And then when I think I have it in place, when I look at my budget out to next June and see that we could get the credit card and the car loan paid off, then we get a deadbeat property manager and never see any rent money. Or somebody breaks into our house and steals the budget along with all our stuff.
I don't have the energy to deal with it. I'm tired, all the time. There is so much that needs to be done right now: paperwork for the insurance company, for the police report, paperwork for my work since I lost a government laptop, paperwork for the bank and all the credit cards that were taken. I need to rebuild our financial records, and figure out exactly where our money is going as we get these piddly checks from our property managers, and I have a little Christmas bonus check come in, but then we're also spending big chunks here and there, trying to put our house back together. I have projects at work that need to be cleared up before the end of the year, but I just sit at my desk, eyes glazed over, too tired to even think. I go home and sit on the couch and lose myself in WoW, a distraction for a few hours. I watch the calendar and wait for Christmas, and hope I can deal with anxiety of leaving the house empty for three or four days while we're in Wichita.
It's...we're not that bad off. We had some toys stolen. We're failing to turn a profit on our summer home in Tulsa. It's not like we're missing meals or anything. Most of this nightmare is all of my own making, but I can't shake it. And the people close to me are suffering because I'm no frame of mind to make good decisions, or be a decent person. That's the worst of it.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Last time I posted was December 5th. Back then, I was complaining about sleeping problems, and mentioned obliquely "drama with our Tulsa house."
This year, we've paid $8,400 in mortgage payments on the Tulsa house. We have also spent that much more money repairing the house (the bulk of that going into a new air conditioner and new carpet when we were trying to sell the house). So we're easily looking at more than $15,000 spent on that house in 2008 (although, to be fair, $5,000 of that is still sitting on a credit card, slowly piling up).
We spent a month working on the house, three months with it sitting on the market (and only 4 or 5 people ever looked at it), and then another couple months while we waited for an incompetent property manager to get it rented out. It's been occupied since September, but we've only seen $475. Word is there's another check in the mail, our portion of the November rent, but we're not holding our breath.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, T-- sent off an email to our incompetent property manager, asking why we hadn't yet received November rent, or any messages from him. Three days later, he wrote back to say that he'd been buried under a massive list of complaints from the tenants, and listed out enough problems that he'd clearly been collecting them for a while (without informing us or, apparently, doing anything to correct them). So we learned all at once that our tenants were being abused, that we weren't going to see any money for the month, and that once again our property manager was shirking his job and avoiding contacting us with crucial information.
T-- wrote back right away, expressing her displeasure that he'd waited so long to contact us (and that only in response to her emailing him), and, at the same time, giving him consent and encouragement to get those problems resolved. We have no interest in being slumlords.
So he wrote right back the next day and said, "This is too hard. I don't want to do it anymore." Although he did it with significantly less punctuation and poorer spelling. And that was that, he'd quit.
He claims, at this point, to have done about $950 worth of repairs (at the tenants' insistence, and with our approval), but we haven't seen any receipts yet. He also owes us at least $500 which, as I've said, is supposably in the mail.
And he quit. Sure, he was incompetent, but it's not exactly like we can take care of the property from OKC. T-- worked her ass off researching a new guy, finding someone with impeccable references and experience this time, and getting us a contract with him in no time. He waived the usual "first and last month's rent" fee, because that is generally used to defer the cost of advertising and running background checks on tenants, and we already have tenants -- tenants who have apparently regularly paid on time, even if we've barely seen any of the money.
So that's...not resolved, but probably better. Exhausting, though. That was the big stressor in my life last time I posted, and probably what was keeping me from getting enough sleep.
Then, four days later (on Tuesday the ninth), I was waiting in line to order my lunch at Taco Bueno when T-- called and said, "Aaron, we've been robbed. I am not joking. You need to get home now. I'm calling the police. Bye."
And that left me with a frantic thirty-minute drive home -- plenty of time to imagine all the horrible things that could have been implied by T--'s brief message (and unable to call for more information, because she'd said she was going to call the cops).
As it happened, none of the nightmare scenes in my head were necessary. The truth was exactly what I'd imagined in the first few seconds. T-- had taken AB out to do some Christmas shopping around 10:30, and by the time she got home at noon the house was cleaned out. XBoxes, the 360, the Wii, two laptops, my computer and monitor, digital camera, movies and games. All light, expensive, highly portable stuff. I got home around 12:30, and a cop showed up about 15 minutes later and took down our statements.
N-- was in the area, having lunch with K-- who works just up the street, so she came over when she heard the news. D-- showed up a little later and brought me a laptop so I could get back online and restore a little bit of my sanity. Mostly we just sat around dazed, after we'd gotten the better part of the mess cleaned up.
T-- has taken it really well. We have okay insurance, but we're probably not going to try to replace everything that was lost. Financially...I don't know. We've had a couple blessings, and that's helping with the sanity a little too, but we weren't looking rosy beforehand, and this certainly doesn't help.
The stuff isn't that big a deal. It was all toys. But we lost data that can't be recovered. I'd gone on a kick for the last year scanning in all our important family records, and throwing out the originals. I kept all of our financial accounts on spreadsheets on the laptop. T-- had all her pictures for the year, and all the videos of AB she'd recorded on her camcorder on her laptop. All of that is gone, now.
It's been a rough couple weeks. T-- has done a ton of work, getting a new bank account set up, filing our report with the insurance company, taking care of AB. She's always done most of that, but she's doing more than usual these days. I've been worthless.
I really have. I go to bed at midnight or one, and don't sleep. I wake up feeling miserable, always late, and rush to work where I spend most of the day staring dazedly at whatever project I'm working on. I've got a couple distractions that cheer me up some, but they're just distractions. As soon as I turn them off, I'm right back where I started.
So...bah. I haven't been blogging regularly this month, as I'd intended to, but it would have just been page after page of this complaining. In the end, this incident isn't that big a deal. If it's over, we got off easy. Still, I spend hours worrying about the possibilities for identity theft, the hassles that could come from losing our passports or tax records or titles. I think about the possibility of the bastards coming back. They say that happens sometimes -- the thieves will wait three to six months, give you time to replace everything with insurance money, and then come clean you out again. What if T-- is home next time?
If it's over, we got off easy, but it still weighs on me. I wrote a poem earlier in the year about being a kid pretending to be a grown-up, hoping no one notices. Everyone I showed it to agreed with the sentiment, maybe it's something about this generation, or just something everyone goes through during the transition from 20s to 30s. I don't know.
But for me it's not just that. For me, it's being a selfish, irresponsible, starving artist-type pretending to be a husband and father. That's not really who I am. I love T-- and AB absolutely -- I have no trouble doing that. But then, artist-types don't often have trouble finding genuine emotion. I don't come naturally to making wise investment choices, though. To balancing a budget and paying bills on time, and addressing problems early when they're cheaper to fix, and putting in a hard day's work. Those are things I can do, and things I work hard at doing, but it's just that. It's hard work.
I know people, like K--, who seem to come naturally by that. Being responsible, making good decisions, just makes sense to him. And then I know people like D-- who have paid the price for bad decisions often enough that it's just easier to make good decisions, so he does. For me, it's all playacting. My parents raised me to know what a decent man should do, so I try to do those things, but it's not anything inside me saying, "This is important." It's just a desire not to let down the people who depend on me.
It feels like treading water. Not the relaxing sort, where you don't feel like swimming so you just sort of lay back and float. No, I mean when you get to the point where you're far too tired to swim, too exhausted to even tread water, but you know that the only other option is to drown, so, weary as you are, you keep kicking. Every day when I go put in a day of work to pay the family's bills, it's a kick. It's not a bad job -- in fact, it's a great one -- but it's not what I want to be doing. Everytime I pay down the credit card instead of adding on to my computer or upgrading to HD cable, it's a kick to keep afloat. To keep seeming like a good guy.
It's exhausting. And then when I think I have it in place, when I look at my budget out to next June and see that we could get the credit card and the car loan paid off, then we get a deadbeat property manager and never see any rent money. Or somebody breaks into our house and steals the budget along with all our stuff.
I don't have the energy to deal with it. I'm tired, all the time. There is so much that needs to be done right now: paperwork for the insurance company, for the police report, paperwork for my work since I lost a government laptop, paperwork for the bank and all the credit cards that were taken. I need to rebuild our financial records, and figure out exactly where our money is going as we get these piddly checks from our property managers, and I have a little Christmas bonus check come in, but then we're also spending big chunks here and there, trying to put our house back together. I have projects at work that need to be cleared up before the end of the year, but I just sit at my desk, eyes glazed over, too tired to even think. I go home and sit on the couch and lose myself in WoW, a distraction for a few hours. I watch the calendar and wait for Christmas, and hope I can deal with anxiety of leaving the house empty for three or four days while we're in Wichita.
It's...we're not that bad off. We had some toys stolen. We're failing to turn a profit on our summer home in Tulsa. It's not like we're missing meals or anything. Most of this nightmare is all of my own making, but I can't shake it. And the people close to me are suffering because I'm no frame of mind to make good decisions, or be a decent person. That's the worst of it.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, December 5, 2008
Journal Entry: December 5, 2008
Last night, on the way home from work, I stopped by B-- and E--'s on an impulse. While in Little Rock I'd picked up a bottle of beauj nouveau for them, and it had been kicking around in my floorboard since we got back. The weather being what it is (and extreme temperatures being so bad for wine), I decided I needed to get it delivered sooner rather than later.
So I turned left at my exit instead of right, and got to see a couple of my best friends for a few minutes.
Then D-- brought over Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, and T-- made up some delicious mac and cheese (not Kraft, this time). After that I played WoW while we watched Prince Caspian which was better than I expected it to be.
A pretty good night. I didn't get to sleep until midnight, but I was still up on time for work today, and then left work for an hour and a half to get a dental cleaning. Looks like I'm going to need some more work soon, most notably the removal of a couple wisdom teeth. Ugh.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
So I turned left at my exit instead of right, and got to see a couple of my best friends for a few minutes.
Then D-- brought over Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, and T-- made up some delicious mac and cheese (not Kraft, this time). After that I played WoW while we watched Prince Caspian which was better than I expected it to be.
A pretty good night. I didn't get to sleep until midnight, but I was still up on time for work today, and then left work for an hour and a half to get a dental cleaning. Looks like I'm going to need some more work soon, most notably the removal of a couple wisdom teeth. Ugh.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
November 2008
Which is fundamentally different from NaNoWriMo 2008. Somehow.
November was a busy month for me, quite apart from my writing. Work was hectic, but nobody wants to hear about my work, so I'll let it slide.
I got back into WoW sometime in October, which was pretty foolish. The expansion called to me, though, and I started playing three or four weeks early so that I could be "ready" when the expansion finally came out.
T-- and AB went to Wichita for a special family thing on Thursday the sixth, leaving me here because I had to work. I was well taken care of, though. Thursday night I spent playing WoW, and then on Friday and Saturday I hung out with K-- and N--. My birthday was on Sunday, the ninth, and T-- came home late Saturday night so she could be there for my birthday.
We didn't do anything extravagant then -- had lunch with K-- and N-- and maybe D--. Then I spent most of the afternoon being lazy, which was awesome, but not much different for me than most Sundays.
The following Thursday was the release date for Wrath of the Lich King, the WoW expansion, and I took off work Thursday and Friday. In case that seems outrageous, bear in mind that one of those was my Regular Day Off, so it wasn't a full two days of vacation just for a silly game. One day, but not two.
Anyway, after spending all evening Wednesday playing WoW, D-- and I ran up to Wal-Mart at midnight to get in line for our copies. My sister's husband joined us there, too. The dork factor was through the roof, but we survived unscathed, and got out after about an hour's wait with fresh copies of the new game.
Then we went home and discovered that the installation process was going to take several hours, so I gave up and went to bed. I think D-- stayed up late, and played some during the night.
I spent some time Thursday morning with T-- and AB, but then spent pretty much all of the next 24 hours playing WoW. I must have slept, but I'm not sure how much.
Friday afternoon my parents arrived, visiting for my birthday, and we had a big party that Friday night (thus the low-key celebration on the preceding Sunday). We had barbecue from Steve's Rib (my current favorite), and everyone brought treats, and we played Rock Band for hours on end. It was awesome.
Oh! I didn't do any writing during all of that. I'd gotten a couple thousand words done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday over lunch, but as of the time I got home on Wednesday afternoon, I was all about WoW. And then my family came in, and I was busy hanging out with them until late on Sunday, and Sunday evening I got back to WoW.
So Monday morning I was way behind on my writing, and I didn't do a lot to get caught up. Tuesday was a holiday, and also server maintenance for WoW, so I couldn't spend the whole day on the game, but I never get any serious writing done at home. After that, though, I really kicked into gear. Four thousand words a day, regularly, and I had eight thousand-word days on Thursday the twentieth and Wednesday the twenty-sixth -- that last being the day I finished the book. That was pretty exciting.
I know something important happened that weekend after my birthday party (the weekend of the twenty-first), but I can't remember what for the life of me. Sometime in there, probably on the nineteenth, I took T-- to an art opening at the OKC Museum of Art. That was a lot of fun. Pretty sure I'm forgetting something else, though....
Anyway, then Thanksgiving came the week that I finished my book. Actually, I wrote "The End" over lunch on Wednesday the twenty-sixth, then three hours later left work, picked up T-- and AB at home, then got on the highway Arkansas-bound. We got to my parents' place a little after 10 p.m., then sat up talking until midnight.
The plan for Thursday was a late Thanksgiving dinner -- not my favorite tactic, but it gave us leisure to sleep in, and Mom and Dad took us out to IHOP for a big hearty breakfast. Then we got back home and Dad said he needed to clean up the leaves in the yard, but after that he was hoping to get some writing done. He really wanted to hit the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month, but he was still in his low thirties, and he was going to have family to entertain starting that afternoon.
So, more because I'm a good writing coach than because I'm a good son, I offered to take care of the leaves for him if he would promise to spend the time writing. Turned out they have a high-power leafblower (new since the last time I offered to help them with their leaves). It was a major convenience, but they have a major lawn. I spent a couple hours on the project, on got about 2/3 of the leaves taken care of (if you don't count the back yard). I got the most important bit done, though, and around the time my back started killing me, family was showing up, too, so I called it quits and nobody complained.
My dad's brother Perry and his whole family came to visit, making this year by far the most time we've ever spent with them. My older sister and her family was in town, too. They came by for supper, hung around late, then went back to his parents' place for the night.
Friday Mom and T-- went out shopping some. I played WoW, and Dad worked on his book. We all went out to dinner Friday night, and then I watched AB until her bedtime so T-- could do some scrapbooking with Mom. After that, of course, I WoWed.
Saturday we headed home, right after a lunch at On the Border. It's a brutally long drive, and T-- spent a couple hours of it napping, but I passed the time working on a programming project in my head, and it went pretty well. When T-- was awake, we talked about my book, which she'd finished reading just a day after I finished writing it. Egotistically, my books are easily my favorite topic of conversation, so that was fun for me.
Then we got in late enough, exhausted enough, that we just went home, foregoing standing plans to watch the Beldam game with K-- and N--, and the rest of N--'s family who was visiting for the holidays. Turns out they had some drama of their own, but even without that we would have bailed. The game was amazing, though. Dallas won on Thursday, the Sooners won on Saturday, and they got their shot at the National Championship when the polls came out on Sunday. It was a good weekend, footballwise.
Well, all around, really. I played a lot of WoW, spent some fun time with family, and finished a novel all in that last week of November. I didn't have anything to complain about.
Oh! And then I was up Sunday night, playing WoW and trying to bully myself into going to bed because I had work tomorrow, late in the evening when I got a call from Dad to let me know he'd hit the mark. 50,000 words and then some. His book wasn't done, but that's not part of the rules. He made 52k within the 30-day span, and he's pretty confident that, just like last year, he'll have his book done sometime around mid-December.
Awesome. I'm so proud of him.
This week I've been back to work, and that's a drag. I'm also feeling some of the letdown of being done with the novel, and not in a good way. We did have some drama come up with our Tulsa house during that last week of November, and that's pretty stressful, and work remains demanding. So I'm not sleeping great, and I've been feeling pretty out-of-it, but I'm sure that's all swift-passing problems. Overall, life is good.
And, hey, tomorrow's Friday, with the promise of a whole weekend of WoWing afterward. How could I not be glad of that?
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
November was a busy month for me, quite apart from my writing. Work was hectic, but nobody wants to hear about my work, so I'll let it slide.
I got back into WoW sometime in October, which was pretty foolish. The expansion called to me, though, and I started playing three or four weeks early so that I could be "ready" when the expansion finally came out.
T-- and AB went to Wichita for a special family thing on Thursday the sixth, leaving me here because I had to work. I was well taken care of, though. Thursday night I spent playing WoW, and then on Friday and Saturday I hung out with K-- and N--. My birthday was on Sunday, the ninth, and T-- came home late Saturday night so she could be there for my birthday.
We didn't do anything extravagant then -- had lunch with K-- and N-- and maybe D--. Then I spent most of the afternoon being lazy, which was awesome, but not much different for me than most Sundays.
The following Thursday was the release date for Wrath of the Lich King, the WoW expansion, and I took off work Thursday and Friday. In case that seems outrageous, bear in mind that one of those was my Regular Day Off, so it wasn't a full two days of vacation just for a silly game. One day, but not two.
Anyway, after spending all evening Wednesday playing WoW, D-- and I ran up to Wal-Mart at midnight to get in line for our copies. My sister's husband joined us there, too. The dork factor was through the roof, but we survived unscathed, and got out after about an hour's wait with fresh copies of the new game.
Then we went home and discovered that the installation process was going to take several hours, so I gave up and went to bed. I think D-- stayed up late, and played some during the night.
I spent some time Thursday morning with T-- and AB, but then spent pretty much all of the next 24 hours playing WoW. I must have slept, but I'm not sure how much.
Friday afternoon my parents arrived, visiting for my birthday, and we had a big party that Friday night (thus the low-key celebration on the preceding Sunday). We had barbecue from Steve's Rib (my current favorite), and everyone brought treats, and we played Rock Band for hours on end. It was awesome.
Oh! I didn't do any writing during all of that. I'd gotten a couple thousand words done Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday over lunch, but as of the time I got home on Wednesday afternoon, I was all about WoW. And then my family came in, and I was busy hanging out with them until late on Sunday, and Sunday evening I got back to WoW.
So Monday morning I was way behind on my writing, and I didn't do a lot to get caught up. Tuesday was a holiday, and also server maintenance for WoW, so I couldn't spend the whole day on the game, but I never get any serious writing done at home. After that, though, I really kicked into gear. Four thousand words a day, regularly, and I had eight thousand-word days on Thursday the twentieth and Wednesday the twenty-sixth -- that last being the day I finished the book. That was pretty exciting.
I know something important happened that weekend after my birthday party (the weekend of the twenty-first), but I can't remember what for the life of me. Sometime in there, probably on the nineteenth, I took T-- to an art opening at the OKC Museum of Art. That was a lot of fun. Pretty sure I'm forgetting something else, though....
Anyway, then Thanksgiving came the week that I finished my book. Actually, I wrote "The End" over lunch on Wednesday the twenty-sixth, then three hours later left work, picked up T-- and AB at home, then got on the highway Arkansas-bound. We got to my parents' place a little after 10 p.m., then sat up talking until midnight.
The plan for Thursday was a late Thanksgiving dinner -- not my favorite tactic, but it gave us leisure to sleep in, and Mom and Dad took us out to IHOP for a big hearty breakfast. Then we got back home and Dad said he needed to clean up the leaves in the yard, but after that he was hoping to get some writing done. He really wanted to hit the 50,000-word goal by the end of the month, but he was still in his low thirties, and he was going to have family to entertain starting that afternoon.
So, more because I'm a good writing coach than because I'm a good son, I offered to take care of the leaves for him if he would promise to spend the time writing. Turned out they have a high-power leafblower (new since the last time I offered to help them with their leaves). It was a major convenience, but they have a major lawn. I spent a couple hours on the project, on got about 2/3 of the leaves taken care of (if you don't count the back yard). I got the most important bit done, though, and around the time my back started killing me, family was showing up, too, so I called it quits and nobody complained.
My dad's brother Perry and his whole family came to visit, making this year by far the most time we've ever spent with them. My older sister and her family was in town, too. They came by for supper, hung around late, then went back to his parents' place for the night.
Friday Mom and T-- went out shopping some. I played WoW, and Dad worked on his book. We all went out to dinner Friday night, and then I watched AB until her bedtime so T-- could do some scrapbooking with Mom. After that, of course, I WoWed.
Saturday we headed home, right after a lunch at On the Border. It's a brutally long drive, and T-- spent a couple hours of it napping, but I passed the time working on a programming project in my head, and it went pretty well. When T-- was awake, we talked about my book, which she'd finished reading just a day after I finished writing it. Egotistically, my books are easily my favorite topic of conversation, so that was fun for me.
Then we got in late enough, exhausted enough, that we just went home, foregoing standing plans to watch the Beldam game with K-- and N--, and the rest of N--'s family who was visiting for the holidays. Turns out they had some drama of their own, but even without that we would have bailed. The game was amazing, though. Dallas won on Thursday, the Sooners won on Saturday, and they got their shot at the National Championship when the polls came out on Sunday. It was a good weekend, footballwise.
Well, all around, really. I played a lot of WoW, spent some fun time with family, and finished a novel all in that last week of November. I didn't have anything to complain about.
Oh! And then I was up Sunday night, playing WoW and trying to bully myself into going to bed because I had work tomorrow, late in the evening when I got a call from Dad to let me know he'd hit the mark. 50,000 words and then some. His book wasn't done, but that's not part of the rules. He made 52k within the 30-day span, and he's pretty confident that, just like last year, he'll have his book done sometime around mid-December.
Awesome. I'm so proud of him.
This week I've been back to work, and that's a drag. I'm also feeling some of the letdown of being done with the novel, and not in a good way. We did have some drama come up with our Tulsa house during that last week of November, and that's pretty stressful, and work remains demanding. So I'm not sleeping great, and I've been feeling pretty out-of-it, but I'm sure that's all swift-passing problems. Overall, life is good.
And, hey, tomorrow's Friday, with the promise of a whole weekend of WoWing afterward. How could I not be glad of that?
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, December 1, 2008
National Novel Writing Month 2008
I finished Gods Tomorrow last Wednesday afternoon. It came in at 60,080 words, or about 240 pages.I've done a read-through, and T-- and Toby have both read it as I was writing it, and it seems to be good. I've got some little changes to make in the first rewrite (and a couple big changes, in the last chapter), and I hope to get that done this week.
All in all, though, I'm excited about how it went. Early October, I wasn't at all sure I would even participate this year, and then this book just came together. It was a new idea for me, with a brand new setting and a mix of genres I'd never written for before. I'm amazed it came out as well as it did.
Thanks for all the support, from everyone, as I worked on it. Particularly, thanks for letting me talk about it all month.
If you're interested in reading it, drop me an email. I'll be glad to hook you up.
I also intend to resume regular journal entries as soon as possible.
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