Yesterday our new elliptical machine showed up. The delivery guy actually called while I was getting ready for work, and said he could bring it by during the day if someone could be home to meet him. T-- graciously offered to commit to that, and was rewarded with an early delivery. She called me around noon to say he had already come and gone.
I bought it off Amazon last Wednesday, and opted (of course) for the free shipping, because the next cheapest was over a hundred bucks. The free shipping was 5-9 business days, which meant best case scenario wouldn't have it arrive until tomorrow, so that was a pretty lucky break. Also...really glad I didn't shell out a hundred bucks to get it sooner.
Anyway, I got home from work last night and T-- and I immediately set to work building the thing. We put it together out in the living room while AB watched Winnie the Pooh, but she was actually far more interested in what we were doing. It was a lot of work to put together, but not terribly complicated. It's a good design, and the finished product is sturdy and exactly the right size for my stride.
Also, it's about five inches too wide in every direction to get through the door into my office, where we wanted to house it.
So I ended up dismantling it while T-- made us some sandwiches for dinner, then dragged it into the office in four pieces and reassembled it there afterward. I have a little old cheap TV in the office, hooked up to my fileserver so I can watch my media files while I work out. We'll probably replace it with a small wall-mount HDTV (with an actual digital connection to the computer, instead of the cobbled-together S-Video hookup I'm using now), but our finances aren't right to go buying new TVs at the moment.
Anyway, when I had everything set up properly around 8:30, I put on an episode of Newsradio (in spite of Bruce's warning), and did a fast-paced jog through the whole episode. It was killer. My goal is to watch through all the episodes of Buffy and Veronica Mars as part of my daily workout, but I might have to work up to the 40-minute run. Or go slower, but that's not terribly tempting.
When I finished that, I went to the living room to watch Castle and Rules of Engagement with T--. We had four other shows to watch from Sunday and Monday evening programming, but I had to get back to the office and do my writing.
I typed up all the stuff I wrote about in my scribblebook yesterday, which finished out chapter five, then I kept going right into chapter six, and it's about half done now at 2,000 words (or 22,000 total, for the book).
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Journal Entry: March 30, 2009
Wednesday
Last Wednesday night we had dinner at the newly-reopened Moe's Southwest Grill up in Edmond, for the convenience of our Edmond contingent which consists of K-- and N-- as well as my little sister and her family (who live about a mile from the restaurant). Unfortunately my sister was sick, and K-- and N-- had a whole slew of houseguests (including one who flew in Wednesday night), so none of the Edmond contingent made it.
We still had fun dining out with D--, though. While we were there, he informed us that he's embarking on a quest to practice a vegan diet for one month. He read a book about its medical benefits (and specifically advocating the one-month challenge), and he thinks he's up to the task. We're watching with what I would describe as "horrified fascination." I don't think I could ever survive such an ordeal, but I wouldn't put it past D--, and I'm sure even in just the first month he'll start to see some real benefits from it.
After dinner we all split up. T-- took AB to church, D-- went home, and I went over to K-- and N--'s place to grab some DVDs from K--. Then from there I went by the gym and canceled our languishing membership, with a little defense from the guilt-factor in the knowledge that a new elliptical machine was in the mail.
I got back to our part of town around 7:40, and headed to D--'s place. We went for a walk (more guilt-dodging), and talked about our collaborative writing project. It may have been nineteen months since I last mentioned it, but it's not a dead project.
After that we headed to my place, in time to meet T-- for the new episode of Lost. While we were waiting for the TiVo to build up a bit of a commercial buffer, I mentioned that I'd been considering picking up an over-the-air HD antenna, and D-- reminded me that Cox offers free HD channels for the local stations (the same ones I would pick up over-the-air). I checked it out, and sure enough we were able to track down all the major networks (on channels like 74-4 and 106-2), but TiVo was unable to fetch program information for them, so we couldn't set up Season Passes.
A little research revealed that, with a $2/month CableCard from Cox, TiVo could properly recognize and record the channels, so I decided it was a worthwhile investment. I've had an HDTV for five years now, and only actually had HD programming for about eighteen months of that. We didn't discover any of that in time to get an HD recording of Lost, but we should be covered for this week.
After the show, D-- headed home and I went to the office to get some writing done.
Thursday
Thursday morning T-- called Cox and scheduled a service call for Friday, to get the CableCard installed. She also asked if I'd be interested in having pizza for dinner, to which I responded with enthusiastic affirmation. We invited D-- over, and spent the evening watching TV (still standard def, but 30 Rock is funny either way).
I also proclaimed that I would, over the course of my three-day weekend, write three chapters a day (which would put me back on track to finishing the novel in March). There were witnesses, so I cannot pretend I didn't make that claim. I did not, it should be said, follow through on it. Thursday night, I don't think I did any writing at all.
Friday
Friday was my Regular Day Off. I woke up around 9:30, went to my office, and wrote until lunch. I got about 1200 words done, finishing up the scene I'd meant to finish on Thursday night, and setting up to finish off chapter five. I had hoped to finish the chapter before lunch, but the delicious aromas of chicken salad sandwiches lured me out of the office early.
We had lunch together, and then T-- headed out to run some errands while I watched AB. It was about an hour and a half until her naptime, and we spent much of that watching Sesame Street. Then when she went to bed, I took care of some chores around the house, then headed to the office and ended up deciding to bring my laptop out into the living room. I got it set up and got started on the second half of chapter five before T-- got home. Then we turned on an old episode of Lost, and I got pretty distracted, and didn't accomplish much for the rest of the afternoon. Around 3:30 I gave up on writing and instead got started on dinner.
I mixed up a big batch of chili, because the weatherman assured us we were due to be snowed in for the weekend and I wanted plenty of tasty leftovers to keep us nourished. I spent half an hour or so getting it together, and then let it cook all afternoon, and when we finally ate it at 6:00 it was so delicious I had two and a half helpings. There wasn't really a ton leftover for our snowday, but that was okay because the snowday didn't happen.
Saturday
Saturday morning we woke up to a little bit of snow on the ground, mostly decorating the lawn but not really anything on the road. B-- came over around 11:30 to drop off his daughter, who we were babysitting while E-- presented one of her papers at a symposium. That's a pretty prestigious thing, and I'm proud of her for getting invited to present it. She shared a copy with me during the week and asked for markup, but I didn't see anything that needed correcting (apart from some nitpicky punctuation). It was a fascinating look into bilingual education for small children, and the perception of it by parents.
Anyway, B-- slipped out after E--'s speech (though apparently she stayed for the whole thing), and came around 1:30 to pick up Maddy. After that AB went down for a nap, and a few minutes later T-- headed out to do some shopping for her crop, and then go host her crop. I sat down to do some writing, and made about 1,000 words worth of progress on the second scene in chapter five, then D-- came over to hang out and help me watch AB for the evening, and I pretty much stopped work for the day.
Instead I pulled out Too Human, an XBox 360 game. I tried the demo forever ago and really enjoyed it, but the negative critical reviews were enough to stop me buying it. (It doesn't take much.) Back when I was thinking about picking up The Numerati, though, D-- sent me a link to a $20 discount promotion for the game, and free shipping for purchases over $50, so I got those two in a bundle (along with another book of the same sort).
Anyway, the game had been sitting on my shelf for a couple weeks, so I finally broke it out. The multiplayer is only available over XBox Live, so we just played through the single-player campaign, passing the controller back and forth. The first half hour or so of the game is just the demo, which I'd played through repeatedly, so I let D-- do that while I played with AB. Then he got to a rough battle and I took over, and played for a while until AB started getting fussy and demanding supper. I heated up some leftover pizza for her, and D-- ran up to Taco Cabana because we didn't really have anything vegetarian-friendly in the fridge.
Then I think AB took over the TV, watching some WordWorld until her bedtime. After I got her in bed, I started up Too Human again, but D-- headed home. I played until I hit a roadblock, got frustrated, and then I put it away and actually started writing again. I got another 1,000 words done on chapter five, most of the rest of the chapter, but I got distracted right after Katie met the victim's wife but before they actually started talking (which will make up most of chapter six). I was at word count for chapter five by that point, but still needed a few more paragraphs to tie it up.
Instead of doing that, I started playing some stupid game on my laptop, and was still doing that when T-- got home around midnight.
Sunday
Sunday morning, during church, I finished chapter five in longhand, writing out the introduction between the two women in my scribblebook. Then after services we went to lunch with D--, and K-- and N--, and N--'s parents, at Ole. The service was terrible, so I don't think we're going to get K-- and N-- back there ever. Alas. All my favorite salsa places consistently aggravate K-- and N--.
Anyway, after that we went home and spent the whole rest of the day watching Lost. It was delicious.
In case you're keeping track, over the course of the three-day weekend, I just almost completed one chapter. All I've got left to do is type it up.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Last Wednesday night we had dinner at the newly-reopened Moe's Southwest Grill up in Edmond, for the convenience of our Edmond contingent which consists of K-- and N-- as well as my little sister and her family (who live about a mile from the restaurant). Unfortunately my sister was sick, and K-- and N-- had a whole slew of houseguests (including one who flew in Wednesday night), so none of the Edmond contingent made it.
We still had fun dining out with D--, though. While we were there, he informed us that he's embarking on a quest to practice a vegan diet for one month. He read a book about its medical benefits (and specifically advocating the one-month challenge), and he thinks he's up to the task. We're watching with what I would describe as "horrified fascination." I don't think I could ever survive such an ordeal, but I wouldn't put it past D--, and I'm sure even in just the first month he'll start to see some real benefits from it.
After dinner we all split up. T-- took AB to church, D-- went home, and I went over to K-- and N--'s place to grab some DVDs from K--. Then from there I went by the gym and canceled our languishing membership, with a little defense from the guilt-factor in the knowledge that a new elliptical machine was in the mail.
I got back to our part of town around 7:40, and headed to D--'s place. We went for a walk (more guilt-dodging), and talked about our collaborative writing project. It may have been nineteen months since I last mentioned it, but it's not a dead project.
After that we headed to my place, in time to meet T-- for the new episode of Lost. While we were waiting for the TiVo to build up a bit of a commercial buffer, I mentioned that I'd been considering picking up an over-the-air HD antenna, and D-- reminded me that Cox offers free HD channels for the local stations (the same ones I would pick up over-the-air). I checked it out, and sure enough we were able to track down all the major networks (on channels like 74-4 and 106-2), but TiVo was unable to fetch program information for them, so we couldn't set up Season Passes.
A little research revealed that, with a $2/month CableCard from Cox, TiVo could properly recognize and record the channels, so I decided it was a worthwhile investment. I've had an HDTV for five years now, and only actually had HD programming for about eighteen months of that. We didn't discover any of that in time to get an HD recording of Lost, but we should be covered for this week.
After the show, D-- headed home and I went to the office to get some writing done.
Thursday
Thursday morning T-- called Cox and scheduled a service call for Friday, to get the CableCard installed. She also asked if I'd be interested in having pizza for dinner, to which I responded with enthusiastic affirmation. We invited D-- over, and spent the evening watching TV (still standard def, but 30 Rock is funny either way).
I also proclaimed that I would, over the course of my three-day weekend, write three chapters a day (which would put me back on track to finishing the novel in March). There were witnesses, so I cannot pretend I didn't make that claim. I did not, it should be said, follow through on it. Thursday night, I don't think I did any writing at all.
Friday
Friday was my Regular Day Off. I woke up around 9:30, went to my office, and wrote until lunch. I got about 1200 words done, finishing up the scene I'd meant to finish on Thursday night, and setting up to finish off chapter five. I had hoped to finish the chapter before lunch, but the delicious aromas of chicken salad sandwiches lured me out of the office early.
We had lunch together, and then T-- headed out to run some errands while I watched AB. It was about an hour and a half until her naptime, and we spent much of that watching Sesame Street. Then when she went to bed, I took care of some chores around the house, then headed to the office and ended up deciding to bring my laptop out into the living room. I got it set up and got started on the second half of chapter five before T-- got home. Then we turned on an old episode of Lost, and I got pretty distracted, and didn't accomplish much for the rest of the afternoon. Around 3:30 I gave up on writing and instead got started on dinner.
I mixed up a big batch of chili, because the weatherman assured us we were due to be snowed in for the weekend and I wanted plenty of tasty leftovers to keep us nourished. I spent half an hour or so getting it together, and then let it cook all afternoon, and when we finally ate it at 6:00 it was so delicious I had two and a half helpings. There wasn't really a ton leftover for our snowday, but that was okay because the snowday didn't happen.
Saturday
Saturday morning we woke up to a little bit of snow on the ground, mostly decorating the lawn but not really anything on the road. B-- came over around 11:30 to drop off his daughter, who we were babysitting while E-- presented one of her papers at a symposium. That's a pretty prestigious thing, and I'm proud of her for getting invited to present it. She shared a copy with me during the week and asked for markup, but I didn't see anything that needed correcting (apart from some nitpicky punctuation). It was a fascinating look into bilingual education for small children, and the perception of it by parents.
Anyway, B-- slipped out after E--'s speech (though apparently she stayed for the whole thing), and came around 1:30 to pick up Maddy. After that AB went down for a nap, and a few minutes later T-- headed out to do some shopping for her crop, and then go host her crop. I sat down to do some writing, and made about 1,000 words worth of progress on the second scene in chapter five, then D-- came over to hang out and help me watch AB for the evening, and I pretty much stopped work for the day.
Instead I pulled out Too Human, an XBox 360 game. I tried the demo forever ago and really enjoyed it, but the negative critical reviews were enough to stop me buying it. (It doesn't take much.) Back when I was thinking about picking up The Numerati, though, D-- sent me a link to a $20 discount promotion for the game, and free shipping for purchases over $50, so I got those two in a bundle (along with another book of the same sort).
Anyway, the game had been sitting on my shelf for a couple weeks, so I finally broke it out. The multiplayer is only available over XBox Live, so we just played through the single-player campaign, passing the controller back and forth. The first half hour or so of the game is just the demo, which I'd played through repeatedly, so I let D-- do that while I played with AB. Then he got to a rough battle and I took over, and played for a while until AB started getting fussy and demanding supper. I heated up some leftover pizza for her, and D-- ran up to Taco Cabana because we didn't really have anything vegetarian-friendly in the fridge.
Then I think AB took over the TV, watching some WordWorld until her bedtime. After I got her in bed, I started up Too Human again, but D-- headed home. I played until I hit a roadblock, got frustrated, and then I put it away and actually started writing again. I got another 1,000 words done on chapter five, most of the rest of the chapter, but I got distracted right after Katie met the victim's wife but before they actually started talking (which will make up most of chapter six). I was at word count for chapter five by that point, but still needed a few more paragraphs to tie it up.
Instead of doing that, I started playing some stupid game on my laptop, and was still doing that when T-- got home around midnight.
Sunday
Sunday morning, during church, I finished chapter five in longhand, writing out the introduction between the two women in my scribblebook. Then after services we went to lunch with D--, and K-- and N--, and N--'s parents, at Ole. The service was terrible, so I don't think we're going to get K-- and N-- back there ever. Alas. All my favorite salsa places consistently aggravate K-- and N--.
Anyway, after that we went home and spent the whole rest of the day watching Lost. It was delicious.
In case you're keeping track, over the course of the three-day weekend, I just almost completed one chapter. All I've got left to do is type it up.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Journal Entry: March 25, 2009
Friday evening, T--'s parents came in for a weekend visit. After dinner we introduced them to Flight of the Conchords and Castle (and they liked the latter considerably more than the former). We also rewatched Lost, because John hadn't seen it yet.
When it came time for AB to go to bed, she had no desire to leave the party. We had to put her back in her bed nine or ten times, and then during the night she kept waking up. We haven't really had that problem since she started sleeping in her toddler bed, but Friday night was awful, and Saturday night wasn't much better.
I didn't do any office time Friday night (or Saturday, either), because my office is also the guest bedroom. I made up for it Saturday morning, though, when T-- and her parents went to the Science Museum down by the zoo. While they were there, I spent two hours writing and finished up chapter two.
After that I gave D-- a call, and he and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Shortly after we got back, T-- called to invite us to join them at County Line Barbecue for lunch. We did, and it was delicious (as always).
Before any of us had finished our meals, AB started yawning (well short of her usual 1:30 nap time), and then finally put her hands on the edge of the table, and rested her forehead on them so she could go to sleep. I finished up my brisket then pulled her out of her high chair so she could rest in my lap, which was probably a little more comfortable for her.
Then we went home and put her in bed. When she woke up, John and Karla took her to play at the park just down the road, and D-- and T-- and I watched some TV. Among other things, we watched a TED Talk by Aubrey De Grey, who believes we're within about ten years of curing human aging. I'd read some articles by and about him before, but that was my first time to see him on TV. He looks like a crazy homeless man. I like his ideas, though. In fact, I'd spent the morning writing a scene in Ghost Targets: Expectation that took place in a fictional De Grey clinic, named after this guy and his crazy quest.
Anyway, around 6:30 T-- and family had some soft tacos for dinner, and I helped myself to some of the salsa. Then about an hour later D-- and I headed over to B-- and E--'s place (by invitation this time), and B-- made up some pasta and we watched Point Break enhanced by the Rifftrax commentary. I...well, I'd never seen the movie before, and I can't even imagine sitting through it without the Rifftrax dub. But with it, it was hilarious. After that we watched some stand-up, and finally headed home around 11:30.
Sunday morning we went to church, and got to see K-- and N-- and baby JD, but they hurried off afterward to grab a quick lunch and pick up N--'s sister from the airport. We took a more leisurely lunch at the recently-relocated Poblano's, and AB once again fell asleep mid-meal. On the drive home, we spent some time trying to explain to her that she was so sleepy during the day because she kept getting out of bed during the night, but I have no idea how much of that got through to her.
T--'s parents left pretty early in the afternoon, and I spent much of the rest of the day getting our entertainment system rearranged. D-- loaned us an HD TiVo he wasn't using, so I swapped it out with the one in our living room, and moved that one to the TV in the office (which, at the time, wasn't hooked up to cable or even power). While I was at it, I tried to get my fileserver (which is close to that TV) to play video output on the TV, but I had to cobble together a cable out of mismatched adapters, and it's a standard def TV (and an old one and a cheap one, on top of that). So it didn't really turn out well.
Then we spent the evening watching TV, and around 9:00 I headed back to the office to finish up chapter four.
On Monday I slipped out of work a few minutes early so I could grab T-- and rush to our accountant's office before they closed at 5:00. We got there with fifteen minutes to spare, and discovered that, rather than getting a sizable refund as I'd expected, we owed $200 on our Federal taxes. Not too bad, but it was most unexpected. I looked into the paperwork and discovered that we hadn't gotten credit for the most expensive repairs we did on the Tulsa house last year (the carpet and the new air conditioner). So we've got to get that information back to them, and hope they can get our paperwork amended in time for the deadline.
After that disappointing trip, we headed home under a tornado watch, and spent the evening watching TV.
Yesterday T-- had to work in Tulsa, and even with a stop at the bank for babysitter money and a stop at McDonalds for dinner, I beat her home. The babysitter was still filling me in on AB's day when T-- walked in the door, though, and then she took over.
I spent much of the evening working on a programming project for XBMC, trying to build a utility script that could make some plugins considerably more responsive (at the cost of system resources, but on modern PCs that's a cheap cost). We also got several TV shows watched, including Castle (another good one) and Heroes (just waiting for it to die, so I can stop watching).
Then I went back to the office, and got 1,200 words done on chapter 5. Finishing in March is now outside the realm of possibility, but I'm not letting that get me down. As long as I can get 1,000 words done a night, I'm happy. There'll be days I do more (and days I do a lot more), so if I can keep it at 1,000 words a night, consistently, I'll still be beating the pants off anything I've ever managed in the past.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
When it came time for AB to go to bed, she had no desire to leave the party. We had to put her back in her bed nine or ten times, and then during the night she kept waking up. We haven't really had that problem since she started sleeping in her toddler bed, but Friday night was awful, and Saturday night wasn't much better.
I didn't do any office time Friday night (or Saturday, either), because my office is also the guest bedroom. I made up for it Saturday morning, though, when T-- and her parents went to the Science Museum down by the zoo. While they were there, I spent two hours writing and finished up chapter two.
After that I gave D-- a call, and he and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Shortly after we got back, T-- called to invite us to join them at County Line Barbecue for lunch. We did, and it was delicious (as always).
Before any of us had finished our meals, AB started yawning (well short of her usual 1:30 nap time), and then finally put her hands on the edge of the table, and rested her forehead on them so she could go to sleep. I finished up my brisket then pulled her out of her high chair so she could rest in my lap, which was probably a little more comfortable for her.
Then we went home and put her in bed. When she woke up, John and Karla took her to play at the park just down the road, and D-- and T-- and I watched some TV. Among other things, we watched a TED Talk by Aubrey De Grey, who believes we're within about ten years of curing human aging. I'd read some articles by and about him before, but that was my first time to see him on TV. He looks like a crazy homeless man. I like his ideas, though. In fact, I'd spent the morning writing a scene in Ghost Targets: Expectation that took place in a fictional De Grey clinic, named after this guy and his crazy quest.
Anyway, around 6:30 T-- and family had some soft tacos for dinner, and I helped myself to some of the salsa. Then about an hour later D-- and I headed over to B-- and E--'s place (by invitation this time), and B-- made up some pasta and we watched Point Break enhanced by the Rifftrax commentary. I...well, I'd never seen the movie before, and I can't even imagine sitting through it without the Rifftrax dub. But with it, it was hilarious. After that we watched some stand-up, and finally headed home around 11:30.
Sunday morning we went to church, and got to see K-- and N-- and baby JD, but they hurried off afterward to grab a quick lunch and pick up N--'s sister from the airport. We took a more leisurely lunch at the recently-relocated Poblano's, and AB once again fell asleep mid-meal. On the drive home, we spent some time trying to explain to her that she was so sleepy during the day because she kept getting out of bed during the night, but I have no idea how much of that got through to her.
T--'s parents left pretty early in the afternoon, and I spent much of the rest of the day getting our entertainment system rearranged. D-- loaned us an HD TiVo he wasn't using, so I swapped it out with the one in our living room, and moved that one to the TV in the office (which, at the time, wasn't hooked up to cable or even power). While I was at it, I tried to get my fileserver (which is close to that TV) to play video output on the TV, but I had to cobble together a cable out of mismatched adapters, and it's a standard def TV (and an old one and a cheap one, on top of that). So it didn't really turn out well.
Then we spent the evening watching TV, and around 9:00 I headed back to the office to finish up chapter four.
On Monday I slipped out of work a few minutes early so I could grab T-- and rush to our accountant's office before they closed at 5:00. We got there with fifteen minutes to spare, and discovered that, rather than getting a sizable refund as I'd expected, we owed $200 on our Federal taxes. Not too bad, but it was most unexpected. I looked into the paperwork and discovered that we hadn't gotten credit for the most expensive repairs we did on the Tulsa house last year (the carpet and the new air conditioner). So we've got to get that information back to them, and hope they can get our paperwork amended in time for the deadline.
After that disappointing trip, we headed home under a tornado watch, and spent the evening watching TV.
Yesterday T-- had to work in Tulsa, and even with a stop at the bank for babysitter money and a stop at McDonalds for dinner, I beat her home. The babysitter was still filling me in on AB's day when T-- walked in the door, though, and then she took over.
I spent much of the evening working on a programming project for XBMC, trying to build a utility script that could make some plugins considerably more responsive (at the cost of system resources, but on modern PCs that's a cheap cost). We also got several TV shows watched, including Castle (another good one) and Heroes (just waiting for it to die, so I can stop watching).
Then I went back to the office, and got 1,200 words done on chapter 5. Finishing in March is now outside the realm of possibility, but I'm not letting that get me down. As long as I can get 1,000 words done a night, I'm happy. There'll be days I do more (and days I do a lot more), so if I can keep it at 1,000 words a night, consistently, I'll still be beating the pants off anything I've ever managed in the past.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Journal Entry: March 20, 2009
Okay, so my math was off yesterday. I didn't get chapter four finished last night, but I'm still on track to finish it in March, if I can do a chapter a day from here on out. And, y'know, even if I don't, then I finish it on April 3rd or 4th instead of March 31. No great tragedy there.
I'm a little ahead of myself with that, though. After work yesterday D-- brought us some BWW for dinner, and we watched a ton of TV. How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement from earlier in the week, and a new Scrubs, as well as last night's 30 Rock and The Office and My Name is Earl. Also found time in there somewhere to run up to Braums for some ice cream, and we were still done by 9:00.
After that I put in some writing time but, as I said above, didn't quite finish chapter four. I'm about half done with it, actually, having completed the scene where the local police chief picks them up at the airport and delivers them to the mysterious De Grey Clinic, but I have yet to write the scene where they explore the clinic and meet the friendly research assistant Meg.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I'm a little ahead of myself with that, though. After work yesterday D-- brought us some BWW for dinner, and we watched a ton of TV. How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement from earlier in the week, and a new Scrubs, as well as last night's 30 Rock and The Office and My Name is Earl. Also found time in there somewhere to run up to Braums for some ice cream, and we were still done by 9:00.
After that I put in some writing time but, as I said above, didn't quite finish chapter four. I'm about half done with it, actually, having completed the scene where the local police chief picks them up at the airport and delivers them to the mysterious De Grey Clinic, but I have yet to write the scene where they explore the clinic and meet the friendly research assistant Meg.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Journal Entry: March 19, 2009
Well, hmm....
I don't usually talk about work much on my blog, because the life of a Technical Writer is not an interesting one. But this seems worth posting.
Back in December, as you all know, our house was robbed. In addition to every single thing that makes our lives happy (read: electronic toys), I lost a work laptop that I'd accidentally left at the house that day. That was no small source of anxiety for me, given the recent attention paid to losses of government laptops. This one had no sensitive security information on it, but still.
Anyway, everyone at work told me not to spend a lot of time worrying about. There would be paperwork (and, oh my, there was), but apart from that it was just a thing. The Federal regulations are pretty rigorous, and I absolutely had to get the loss report filed within three days of the incident. I turned it in the day after I got back.
Then, on Tuesday just before heading home from work, our property manager at work called to tell me that my report had gotten lost in the paperwork of a massive inventory that was going on at the time, and she was just getting to it. She said she had everything but my Memorandum Receipt (the form that allows me to take government property away from the facility), and the police report.
Now, when it happened, T-- called the police in first thing and we filed a report. The officer gave us a little card with contact information and our casefile number, and that was it. When we filed our claim with the insurance company, we gave the agent a copy of that card, and that was enough for her. So when I filled out the incident report at work, I did the same thing. I figured if that was insufficient, if they wanted me to go through all the hassle of tracking down the actual police report, they would let me know. When I didn't hear back from them, I figured everything was taken care of.
Then of course, as I said, I got that call on Tuesday. I went home and asked T-- if she knew where the card was, and then forgot about it.
Yesterday morning I showed up at work, and my Team Lead came storming out of his office fresh off a phone call to ask me if I had my police report in hand. "Not on me," I said, cursing myself for forgetting to bring the card in.
He said, "Well, you're getting it. Go to the police station if you have to, but you're getting that report right now, because this has gotten ugly." Turns out they're really not kidding about that three-day deadline. I did everything I was supposed to, but because our property manager didn't follow through on it, I'm now going to be the subject of an FBI investigation.
Yay!
Yesterday was an intense day, actually. In addition to that stuff at work, I also wrote an email to the author of The Numerati -- on a whim, not expecting any sort of answer from him -- but telling him I'd written a novel on the same concept and wondering aloud if he'd be willing to give me his reaction to it. To my utter astonishment, he wrote back within an hour saying he couldn't commit to reading a whole novel, but if I sent him the first chapter he would give it a look.
That's exciting. Obviously, I'm hoping he'll like the first chapter enough to ask to read the rest, but just getting an answer at all surprised me, let alone offering to read it. Frankly, if a complete stranger wrote and asked me to read his material, I'd almost certainly ignore the email altogether.
I also started the process of applying for graduate school at OU. Dad's been pushing me to pursue a Master of Fine Arts for a while now, and then Writer's Digest recently spotlighted the unique Master of Professional Writing program at OU, which looks awesome. So, yeah, I'm trying to get in this fall. I'll have to take the GRE before then, and I'll need to do a little bit of leveling (specifically a Stats class and Mass Comm. History or Mass Comm. Law, which I almost took at O.C. just out curiosity). Apart from that, the whole program seems perfect for me.
Then Dad spent some time sounding concerned about me providing a copy of my novel to a published author (who probably has the contacts necessary to steal my material and get rich off of it). I don't see any risk of that with this guy, but he got me thinking about the Copyright Registration process, and I remembered reading a year or so ago about the Copyright Office starting work on an electronic registration system. So I went home and checked it out.
Turns out, it's a pretty simple process (given, of course, that it's government paperwork). Took me about fifteen minutes (and thirty-five bucks) to register Gods Tomorrow. There's an option to register multiple unpublished literary works with a single registration, but I didn't really have my other stuff ready, and I needed to get it done in a hurry before dinner, so for now it's just Gods Tomorrow. It's nice to know how simple it is, though. I'll probably do everything else in a batch sometime later this month.
Then we went to dinner at Johnny's, where we met K-- and N-- (with their baby, of course), and my sister and her whole family. We had a delicious dinner, then D-- and my brother-in-law came back to the house and got caught up on Family Guy while the rest went to church.
After that, T-- and I watched a new comedy, Better Off Ted (which was pretty good) while the TiVo built up a suffiicent buffer on Lost. Then Lost, and immediately after that I disappeared into the office.
I got about two thousand words done last night -- half a chapter, the way I write them -- and then finished up chapter three over lunch today. I'm optimistic that I can get chapter four done tonight, and then I'm still on track to finish it in March with a chapter a day. We'll see how that goes.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I don't usually talk about work much on my blog, because the life of a Technical Writer is not an interesting one. But this seems worth posting.
Back in December, as you all know, our house was robbed. In addition to every single thing that makes our lives happy (read: electronic toys), I lost a work laptop that I'd accidentally left at the house that day. That was no small source of anxiety for me, given the recent attention paid to losses of government laptops. This one had no sensitive security information on it, but still.
Anyway, everyone at work told me not to spend a lot of time worrying about. There would be paperwork (and, oh my, there was), but apart from that it was just a thing. The Federal regulations are pretty rigorous, and I absolutely had to get the loss report filed within three days of the incident. I turned it in the day after I got back.
Then, on Tuesday just before heading home from work, our property manager at work called to tell me that my report had gotten lost in the paperwork of a massive inventory that was going on at the time, and she was just getting to it. She said she had everything but my Memorandum Receipt (the form that allows me to take government property away from the facility), and the police report.
Now, when it happened, T-- called the police in first thing and we filed a report. The officer gave us a little card with contact information and our casefile number, and that was it. When we filed our claim with the insurance company, we gave the agent a copy of that card, and that was enough for her. So when I filled out the incident report at work, I did the same thing. I figured if that was insufficient, if they wanted me to go through all the hassle of tracking down the actual police report, they would let me know. When I didn't hear back from them, I figured everything was taken care of.
Then of course, as I said, I got that call on Tuesday. I went home and asked T-- if she knew where the card was, and then forgot about it.
Yesterday morning I showed up at work, and my Team Lead came storming out of his office fresh off a phone call to ask me if I had my police report in hand. "Not on me," I said, cursing myself for forgetting to bring the card in.
He said, "Well, you're getting it. Go to the police station if you have to, but you're getting that report right now, because this has gotten ugly." Turns out they're really not kidding about that three-day deadline. I did everything I was supposed to, but because our property manager didn't follow through on it, I'm now going to be the subject of an FBI investigation.
Yay!
Yesterday was an intense day, actually. In addition to that stuff at work, I also wrote an email to the author of The Numerati -- on a whim, not expecting any sort of answer from him -- but telling him I'd written a novel on the same concept and wondering aloud if he'd be willing to give me his reaction to it. To my utter astonishment, he wrote back within an hour saying he couldn't commit to reading a whole novel, but if I sent him the first chapter he would give it a look.
That's exciting. Obviously, I'm hoping he'll like the first chapter enough to ask to read the rest, but just getting an answer at all surprised me, let alone offering to read it. Frankly, if a complete stranger wrote and asked me to read his material, I'd almost certainly ignore the email altogether.
I also started the process of applying for graduate school at OU. Dad's been pushing me to pursue a Master of Fine Arts for a while now, and then Writer's Digest recently spotlighted the unique Master of Professional Writing program at OU, which looks awesome. So, yeah, I'm trying to get in this fall. I'll have to take the GRE before then, and I'll need to do a little bit of leveling (specifically a Stats class and Mass Comm. History or Mass Comm. Law, which I almost took at O.C. just out curiosity). Apart from that, the whole program seems perfect for me.
Then Dad spent some time sounding concerned about me providing a copy of my novel to a published author (who probably has the contacts necessary to steal my material and get rich off of it). I don't see any risk of that with this guy, but he got me thinking about the Copyright Registration process, and I remembered reading a year or so ago about the Copyright Office starting work on an electronic registration system. So I went home and checked it out.
Turns out, it's a pretty simple process (given, of course, that it's government paperwork). Took me about fifteen minutes (and thirty-five bucks) to register Gods Tomorrow. There's an option to register multiple unpublished literary works with a single registration, but I didn't really have my other stuff ready, and I needed to get it done in a hurry before dinner, so for now it's just Gods Tomorrow. It's nice to know how simple it is, though. I'll probably do everything else in a batch sometime later this month.
Then we went to dinner at Johnny's, where we met K-- and N-- (with their baby, of course), and my sister and her whole family. We had a delicious dinner, then D-- and my brother-in-law came back to the house and got caught up on Family Guy while the rest went to church.
After that, T-- and I watched a new comedy, Better Off Ted (which was pretty good) while the TiVo built up a suffiicent buffer on Lost. Then Lost, and immediately after that I disappeared into the office.
I got about two thousand words done last night -- half a chapter, the way I write them -- and then finished up chapter three over lunch today. I'm optimistic that I can get chapter four done tonight, and then I'm still on track to finish it in March with a chapter a day. We'll see how that goes.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Journal Entry: March 18, 2009
Last night I came home and crashed on the couch, playing with AB some whenever she wandered close enough. At some point T-- asked me what I wanted for dinner, and I floated the idea of chili cheese dip. She said, "I'll make it if you'll go buy the Velveeta."
I should have jumped up right then and gone. I didn't. I agree to run to the store, but I wasn't in a super hurry. By the time I finally did heave myself up off the couch, she had a whole shopping list for me, on the back of an envelope stuffed with coupons.
Well, okay, eight items on the list and four coupons in the envelope. Even so!
I ran up to the store, and afterward she made a delicious dinner for us. Then she took AB to have a bath, while I cracked open one of my new books.
After AB's bath, T-- and I watched the rest of Kings. It's a fantastic show. Admittedly I've only seen the pilot, but they're setting up exactly the right elements of the story, if you ask me. I regret the absence of a likeable Jonathan (and, yeah, that's exactly the sort of comment I was bemoaning in my post yesterday), but they're diving head-first into some of the more interesting narrative bits of the David story that we sometimes gloss over in our retelling. So that's exciting.
We finished that up at about 8:56, and then I headed into the office. No setup to do yesterday, so I dove right into the writing. By 10:30, I was finished with chapter two of Ghost Targets: Expectation. Long-term, I'm comfortable with the idea of working on different projects every night, but I would really like to push through Expectation in a hurry, if I can. That's still my goal, anyway.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I should have jumped up right then and gone. I didn't. I agree to run to the store, but I wasn't in a super hurry. By the time I finally did heave myself up off the couch, she had a whole shopping list for me, on the back of an envelope stuffed with coupons.
Well, okay, eight items on the list and four coupons in the envelope. Even so!
I ran up to the store, and afterward she made a delicious dinner for us. Then she took AB to have a bath, while I cracked open one of my new books.
After AB's bath, T-- and I watched the rest of Kings. It's a fantastic show. Admittedly I've only seen the pilot, but they're setting up exactly the right elements of the story, if you ask me. I regret the absence of a likeable Jonathan (and, yeah, that's exactly the sort of comment I was bemoaning in my post yesterday), but they're diving head-first into some of the more interesting narrative bits of the David story that we sometimes gloss over in our retelling. So that's exciting.
We finished that up at about 8:56, and then I headed into the office. No setup to do yesterday, so I dove right into the writing. By 10:30, I was finished with chapter two of Ghost Targets: Expectation. Long-term, I'm comfortable with the idea of working on different projects every night, but I would really like to push through Expectation in a hurry, if I can. That's still my goal, anyway.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Journal Entry: March 17, 2009
Yesterday after work we grabbed some pizza from Mazzio's and headed over to K-- and N--'s place. We had dinner together, then watched about 45 minutes of the premier of Kings.
Honestly, I'm disappointed, because it's a story I very much want to see. It's a retelling of the David story from the Bible, but pretty much any Western story depicting a king in a good light is going to be, to some extent, a retelling of the David story from the Bible.
Problem is, they named the kid David Shepherd (son of Jesse, with a ton of brothers), and had him gain his notoriety by taking out a tank named Goliath. They've set up a pretty awesome alternate history (or distant future with relatively current technology) story presenting monarchy in a viable (if not necessarily positive) light, but they're doing it with such direct connection to the Bible story that I don't have much hope for it.
That's because there's going to be people who recognize it as the Bible story, and love the Bible story, who are constantly disappointed at ways in which this story doesn't match. (I saw plenty of that last night, just with my small group.) Then there's going to be people who recognize it as the Bible story and don't love the Bible story, who will be irritated that somebody had the nerve to try to tell a Bible story on prime time television. The only part of the audience that will really be taking the show on its own merits is that subsection that doesn't recognize it as the Bible story -- and the writers significantly trimmed that subsection down with their flagrant, oh-so-clever use of the Biblical names.
I'm disappointed, because (for what it is), the story is already better than I would have expected it to be. And this is exactly the sort of story I want to hear. I want to see it succeed, but just with the naming conventions they've already used, I don't see it surviving. That bums me out.
We got back home around eight, and then put AB to bed around 8:30, and then T-- and I watched The Big Bang Theory -- considerably lighter fare, but always fun. After that I headed back to the office, for my first stab at a new venture.
I'm going to try to learn how to write at home. I've never had any success at that. D-- and I were discussing it Sunday night, and he pointed out that it seems to be a common theme among writers. It's certainly been the case for me, for as long as I can remember. I write during church service, I write on long drives, I write over lunches and during boring meetings at work. I don't write at home. Last time I really remember writing at home was in high school, and back then I didn't have anything else.
T-- and I talked about it on our drive back from Dallas last Saturday, though, and it's a skill I need to have. It's progress I need to make, too, because my work life has been so busy the last few months that I haven't had any of the free (even over lunch breaks) that usually keeps me in the game. I had some high ambitions for this year, and I'm way behind on fulfilling those, so getting some hours in at home might bring some of that back into reach.
And...ultimately, my goal is to write from home. I want to quit my job and be a writer. It's not happening anytime soon, but I'm going to have to learn how to do that at all, before I can really commit to it as my only form of income. So that's my big self help project for the near future.
Last night I started on it. Nine to eleven is my new writing time, so right at nine I headed back to the office. I haven't used my office at all since the robbery, so most of last night was just set up. I got the fileserver moved to a closet (which I'd intended all along, but it had been running at my old desk), and set up a workstation area with laptop, connected to a full keyboard and mouse, and an old CRT monitor that I'm using as a secondary monitor at that station.
It actually didn't take me as long as I'd expected to get a comfortable spot set up, and I ended up getting a couple pages written last night. Not too shabby. If I can do a chapter a day (which is a pretty ambitious goal all by itself, but I've already got the whole book outlined), I can still finish my sequel to Gods Tomorrow this month. That's my goal.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Honestly, I'm disappointed, because it's a story I very much want to see. It's a retelling of the David story from the Bible, but pretty much any Western story depicting a king in a good light is going to be, to some extent, a retelling of the David story from the Bible.
Problem is, they named the kid David Shepherd (son of Jesse, with a ton of brothers), and had him gain his notoriety by taking out a tank named Goliath. They've set up a pretty awesome alternate history (or distant future with relatively current technology) story presenting monarchy in a viable (if not necessarily positive) light, but they're doing it with such direct connection to the Bible story that I don't have much hope for it.
That's because there's going to be people who recognize it as the Bible story, and love the Bible story, who are constantly disappointed at ways in which this story doesn't match. (I saw plenty of that last night, just with my small group.) Then there's going to be people who recognize it as the Bible story and don't love the Bible story, who will be irritated that somebody had the nerve to try to tell a Bible story on prime time television. The only part of the audience that will really be taking the show on its own merits is that subsection that doesn't recognize it as the Bible story -- and the writers significantly trimmed that subsection down with their flagrant, oh-so-clever use of the Biblical names.
I'm disappointed, because (for what it is), the story is already better than I would have expected it to be. And this is exactly the sort of story I want to hear. I want to see it succeed, but just with the naming conventions they've already used, I don't see it surviving. That bums me out.
We got back home around eight, and then put AB to bed around 8:30, and then T-- and I watched The Big Bang Theory -- considerably lighter fare, but always fun. After that I headed back to the office, for my first stab at a new venture.
I'm going to try to learn how to write at home. I've never had any success at that. D-- and I were discussing it Sunday night, and he pointed out that it seems to be a common theme among writers. It's certainly been the case for me, for as long as I can remember. I write during church service, I write on long drives, I write over lunches and during boring meetings at work. I don't write at home. Last time I really remember writing at home was in high school, and back then I didn't have anything else.
T-- and I talked about it on our drive back from Dallas last Saturday, though, and it's a skill I need to have. It's progress I need to make, too, because my work life has been so busy the last few months that I haven't had any of the free (even over lunch breaks) that usually keeps me in the game. I had some high ambitions for this year, and I'm way behind on fulfilling those, so getting some hours in at home might bring some of that back into reach.
And...ultimately, my goal is to write from home. I want to quit my job and be a writer. It's not happening anytime soon, but I'm going to have to learn how to do that at all, before I can really commit to it as my only form of income. So that's my big self help project for the near future.
Last night I started on it. Nine to eleven is my new writing time, so right at nine I headed back to the office. I haven't used my office at all since the robbery, so most of last night was just set up. I got the fileserver moved to a closet (which I'd intended all along, but it had been running at my old desk), and set up a workstation area with laptop, connected to a full keyboard and mouse, and an old CRT monitor that I'm using as a secondary monitor at that station.
It actually didn't take me as long as I'd expected to get a comfortable spot set up, and I ended up getting a couple pages written last night. Not too shabby. If I can do a chapter a day (which is a pretty ambitious goal all by itself, but I've already got the whole book outlined), I can still finish my sequel to Gods Tomorrow this month. That's my goal.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Journal Entry: March 16, 2009
Last Friday was my RDO, as well as our anniversary. After a quiet evening watching TV Thursday, we spent most of Friday morning getting ready for a trip to Dallas.
There's this restaurant, Texas de Brazil, that D-- encountered in his business travels. When T-- went down to Dallas with him and his mom last Christmastime, they had a dinner there and T-- came back talking about how much I would love the place. When T-- was out of town a couple weeks ago and D-- and I were discussing what to have for dinner, he frequently suggested we head down to Dallas, although it was always at 7:00 when we were already starving, so that never happened.
T-- came home from that same weekend in Wichita, and said, "I have an idea what we could do for our anniversary. Would it be completely crazy to drive down to Dallas just to have dinner?" I laughed by way of answer.
Anyway, as she explains on her blog (with pictures) she got us some reservations early in the week and we drove down Friday afternoon, left AB with my grandma, had what will probably be the most delicious meal of my entire life, slept at my grandma's house, and then headed back home Saturday morning (after a brunch at IHOP).
It was a pleasant trip, and that dinner was well worth the trip to Dallas, I must say. I had my doubts, as Friday crept closer, but they were entirely unfounded.
Saturday afternoon we got home and just unpacked the car before Julie and Carlos showed up for a visit. T-- made fajitas and I made salsa, and we all enjoyed a great dinner before retiring to the living room.
T-- inflicted our wedding album on Julie, and Julie fired back with a fancy-schmancy homemade wedding DVD of amazing quality. I've taken stabs at building DVDs from time to time (whether to save old Home Movies episodes or to present T--'s home movies at AB's first birthday party), so I know the basic tools in the box, and I've got to say, Julie did a fantastic job putting them together. It looked professional.
That was a fun wedding, too, but I think I already mentioned that.
N-- and K-- stopped by during the evening, which was the first time I'd really seen them in more than a week (aside from a passing nod at church last Sunday morning). It was nice to have a chance to get caught up. After they left we introduced Carlos and Julie to The Big Bang Theory with the excellent "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" episode, and then we brought out Rock Band and that killed the rest of our night.
Sunday afternoon T-- and I went to Jason's Deli for lunch -- somewhere I'd spent more than a week trying to find an opportunity to go -- and then went back home to put AB down for a nap. While she slept I worked on our finances, and T-- headed up to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping. Shortly after she got home, she and AB headed to Guthrie for Small Groups.
I stayed home, partly because I'd offered to bring K-- and N-- dinner (but also partly because I didn't feel like fighting the social anxiety on a Sunday night). Anyway, K-- told me I could stay home when I contacted him (along with a thanks for the offer), so I had the evening free. I watched Blades of Glory and then Keeping the Faith, and partway through that I contacted D-- to see if he wanted to get some dinner.
We ended up walking over to the Dugout for burgers and whiskey, and that became a whole night. We didn't actually get there until after 7:30, but even so it was nearly ten when I got home. Then I went to bed, and now I'm back at work.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
There's this restaurant, Texas de Brazil, that D-- encountered in his business travels. When T-- went down to Dallas with him and his mom last Christmastime, they had a dinner there and T-- came back talking about how much I would love the place. When T-- was out of town a couple weeks ago and D-- and I were discussing what to have for dinner, he frequently suggested we head down to Dallas, although it was always at 7:00 when we were already starving, so that never happened.
T-- came home from that same weekend in Wichita, and said, "I have an idea what we could do for our anniversary. Would it be completely crazy to drive down to Dallas just to have dinner?" I laughed by way of answer.
Anyway, as she explains on her blog (with pictures) she got us some reservations early in the week and we drove down Friday afternoon, left AB with my grandma, had what will probably be the most delicious meal of my entire life, slept at my grandma's house, and then headed back home Saturday morning (after a brunch at IHOP).
It was a pleasant trip, and that dinner was well worth the trip to Dallas, I must say. I had my doubts, as Friday crept closer, but they were entirely unfounded.
Saturday afternoon we got home and just unpacked the car before Julie and Carlos showed up for a visit. T-- made fajitas and I made salsa, and we all enjoyed a great dinner before retiring to the living room.
T-- inflicted our wedding album on Julie, and Julie fired back with a fancy-schmancy homemade wedding DVD of amazing quality. I've taken stabs at building DVDs from time to time (whether to save old Home Movies episodes or to present T--'s home movies at AB's first birthday party), so I know the basic tools in the box, and I've got to say, Julie did a fantastic job putting them together. It looked professional.
That was a fun wedding, too, but I think I already mentioned that.
N-- and K-- stopped by during the evening, which was the first time I'd really seen them in more than a week (aside from a passing nod at church last Sunday morning). It was nice to have a chance to get caught up. After they left we introduced Carlos and Julie to The Big Bang Theory with the excellent "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock" episode, and then we brought out Rock Band and that killed the rest of our night.
Sunday afternoon T-- and I went to Jason's Deli for lunch -- somewhere I'd spent more than a week trying to find an opportunity to go -- and then went back home to put AB down for a nap. While she slept I worked on our finances, and T-- headed up to Wal-Mart to do some grocery shopping. Shortly after she got home, she and AB headed to Guthrie for Small Groups.
I stayed home, partly because I'd offered to bring K-- and N-- dinner (but also partly because I didn't feel like fighting the social anxiety on a Sunday night). Anyway, K-- told me I could stay home when I contacted him (along with a thanks for the offer), so I had the evening free. I watched Blades of Glory and then Keeping the Faith, and partway through that I contacted D-- to see if he wanted to get some dinner.
We ended up walking over to the Dugout for burgers and whiskey, and that became a whole night. We didn't actually get there until after 7:30, but even so it was nearly ten when I got home. Then I went to bed, and now I'm back at work.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Journal Entry: March 12, 2009
Tomorrow's my anniversary. I will have been married for...well, basically forever. Who's counting?
On Tuesday night, T-- picked up pizza and D-- came over to share it with us. I spent the whole evening working on fileserver stuff. D-- worked on a laptop, trying to replace a bad harddrive, and he hung around late working on the rebuild.
AB had a rough night. She kept waking up crying (just bawling), and I would go in there to check on her and she didn't seem terribly shaken up (she'd come sit in my lap, back straight, and just sort of stare at the wall in front of her), but she was inconsolable. I'd try hugging her for a while, and then eventually put her back in bed and give her a pacifier, which always shut her up.
It was weird. I really wanted to figure out what was making her cry, but I couldn't find any indication. Once she had the pacifier she would fall asleep, though, and stay that way for fifteen minutes or half an hour before she started crying again.
I finally went to bed around midnight, and I'm sure T-- got up to take care of her at least a couple more times during the night. When I got up for work on Wednesday, AB was already awake and she followed me around the kitchen while I got ready, but there was no real indication she'd had a bad night.
Odd.
After work last night, I got home to find my little sister there with her two girls. We decided to go to Ole for dinner (a recent favorite of mine), and D-- and my sister's husband joined us there. Near the end of dinner, when we were all mostly done, AB got down from her chair and started dancing around. I asked her to get back in her chair until we were all finished, and instead she ran for it.
I don't like to chase her when she does that, because then it's just a game. But she ducked around a corner in a busy restaurant and I sure didn't want to let her out of my sight. So I followed her, casually as I could, and guided her back around in a big loop until she headed back to the table.
Unfortunately, T-- missed her opportunity to grab her, and instead of going back to her place at the table, AB darted past it and into the restaurant's kitchen. I was only a step behind her at that point and I used my most authoritative voice to tell her to, "Get back here!" But, yeah, that's not so effective.
So instead I had to make a sprint into a busy restaurant kitchen and scoop my little girl up before she could get hurt. I felt sick for half an hour afterward.
After dinner T-- and my sister took the kids to church, and D-- and my brother-in-law came back to the house. I think we may have bored Jeff, but D-- and I just did what we normally do. I turned on something stupid on the TV, and I worked on my laptop while D-- read something on his iPhone. Probably terrible hosting on my part, but I was still thinking of all the horrible things that could have happened to AB.
T-- got home and we watched Flight of the Conchords before D-- left, then T-- and I watched How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement before going to bed relatively early. For the first time in a while, I got a good night's sleep.
Today at work, I noticed something. I've got about ten friends and family members who I sometimes chat with through Google Mail, and when things get slow at work I'm very much in the habit of opening up GMail to check on their status indicators, see if anyone's around for some idle chit chat.
Today at one point I did that, and saw that half of those people were online, but labeled as Do Not Disturb. And I know that most of them, these days, just leave that setting on by default. Two more use invisible mode to just flag themselves as Offline all the time. Yesterday I had a two-hour conversation with someone, and the whole time the bottom of my chat panel said, "[Name] is offline. They'll receive your chat next time they log on." The Do Not Disturb message says in angry red, "[Name] is busy. You may be interrupting." I get to stare at that the whole time I'm talking with them.
I don't know. If I were in a better mood, it probably would have been a little ego boost knowing that so many people who put up "Do Not Disturb" signs are still willing to chat with me -- or at least a practical recognition that those status indicators are really for the world at large. Something about today, though, it just struck me as lonely. I wish there more green dots around.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
On Tuesday night, T-- picked up pizza and D-- came over to share it with us. I spent the whole evening working on fileserver stuff. D-- worked on a laptop, trying to replace a bad harddrive, and he hung around late working on the rebuild.
AB had a rough night. She kept waking up crying (just bawling), and I would go in there to check on her and she didn't seem terribly shaken up (she'd come sit in my lap, back straight, and just sort of stare at the wall in front of her), but she was inconsolable. I'd try hugging her for a while, and then eventually put her back in bed and give her a pacifier, which always shut her up.
It was weird. I really wanted to figure out what was making her cry, but I couldn't find any indication. Once she had the pacifier she would fall asleep, though, and stay that way for fifteen minutes or half an hour before she started crying again.
I finally went to bed around midnight, and I'm sure T-- got up to take care of her at least a couple more times during the night. When I got up for work on Wednesday, AB was already awake and she followed me around the kitchen while I got ready, but there was no real indication she'd had a bad night.
Odd.
After work last night, I got home to find my little sister there with her two girls. We decided to go to Ole for dinner (a recent favorite of mine), and D-- and my sister's husband joined us there. Near the end of dinner, when we were all mostly done, AB got down from her chair and started dancing around. I asked her to get back in her chair until we were all finished, and instead she ran for it.
I don't like to chase her when she does that, because then it's just a game. But she ducked around a corner in a busy restaurant and I sure didn't want to let her out of my sight. So I followed her, casually as I could, and guided her back around in a big loop until she headed back to the table.
Unfortunately, T-- missed her opportunity to grab her, and instead of going back to her place at the table, AB darted past it and into the restaurant's kitchen. I was only a step behind her at that point and I used my most authoritative voice to tell her to, "Get back here!" But, yeah, that's not so effective.
So instead I had to make a sprint into a busy restaurant kitchen and scoop my little girl up before she could get hurt. I felt sick for half an hour afterward.
After dinner T-- and my sister took the kids to church, and D-- and my brother-in-law came back to the house. I think we may have bored Jeff, but D-- and I just did what we normally do. I turned on something stupid on the TV, and I worked on my laptop while D-- read something on his iPhone. Probably terrible hosting on my part, but I was still thinking of all the horrible things that could have happened to AB.
T-- got home and we watched Flight of the Conchords before D-- left, then T-- and I watched How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement before going to bed relatively early. For the first time in a while, I got a good night's sleep.
Today at work, I noticed something. I've got about ten friends and family members who I sometimes chat with through Google Mail, and when things get slow at work I'm very much in the habit of opening up GMail to check on their status indicators, see if anyone's around for some idle chit chat.
Today at one point I did that, and saw that half of those people were online, but labeled as Do Not Disturb. And I know that most of them, these days, just leave that setting on by default. Two more use invisible mode to just flag themselves as Offline all the time. Yesterday I had a two-hour conversation with someone, and the whole time the bottom of my chat panel said, "
I don't know. If I were in a better mood, it probably would have been a little ego boost knowing that so many people who put up "Do Not Disturb" signs are still willing to chat with me -- or at least a practical recognition that those status indicators are really for the world at large. Something about today, though, it just struck me as lonely. I wish there more green dots around.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Journal Entry: March 10, 2009
Thursday
I left off last Thursday with a tale of woe concerning our garage door opener. Thursday afternoon when I got home, I immediately set to work on that. I climbed up in the attic to figure out where the mounting bolts actually came through the ceiling, and it turned out they're actually driven into studs. That gives me a little more hope for the one that I replace. I went back down, got out the ratchet, and tightened it down until it wouldn't budge (something I'd been afraid to do when I thought it was only anchored in drywall).
After that I put some weight on it, and the bolt held. I've also got the line now to put in two more bolts on each bracket, so it should be well and truly secured soon.
I also mentioned that the button was broken. Seems like that was actually because of the bolt giving -- the (very old, very thin) wire connecting the opener to the button by the door runs down from the ceiling, and it was pretty much taught. When the bolt gave and the opener fell, it tore the wire free.
Once I figured that out, it was a simple enough matter to scavenge some electrical wire and splice it together to get the button powered again (and add a little slack to line, in the process).
Later in the evening D-- brought us some supper from Buffalo Wild Wings. I'd requested the Blazing sauce (their hottest) to try for the first time. It is, indeed, hot.
Then we all watched some TV and the night sort of disappeared.
Friday
Friday night I had a mandate. And as soon as you read that, you're probably thinking, "man-date," because you're so juvenile, but no. I mean a mandate: a purpose, a quest, a compulsion to do something of personal and moral significance. In this case, my mandate was to go see The Watchmen, a screen adaptation of what is widely considered the best graphic novel on the market. The story is powerful evocative, and the adaptation was incredibly well done. It's probably the most meaningful movie that I've actually enjoyed since watching Stranger than Fiction (and if I had to eliminate comedies, it's probably the only really meaningful movie I've ever enjoyed, but I haven't put a ton of thought into that evaluation, so don't hold me to it).
Okay, and as it happens, yes, I did go to the movie with D--. But that's beside the point.
Before that, T-- and AB and D-- and I had dinner at Belle Isle at 50 Penn Place (yeah, I was just there a week ago -- you've got a great memory). I stated my intention of ordering the same steak again, but T-- pointed out that my leftovers from the last time were still in the fridge, so I had a Theta Burger instead. Phenomenal.
Then the movie, as I said, and that took the rest of the night.
Saturday
Saturday I slept late, and spent much of the afternoon programming. I'm sure there was something else, but I don't really remember it.
In the evening, T-- went to scrapbook with her friend Rebecca, so I watched AB. D-- came over to help out, and we ended up taking AB to McDonalds for dinner. There's one nearby with a big indoor playground area, that we'd gone to visit last time Mom and Dad were in town, so I took AB up there to let her play. She made friends with the other two little girls who were there, and spent a long time climbing up, going down the slide, then shouting "Again!" and doing it again.
At one point, she'd come running over to the table to eat two fries before rushing back, and she wasn't looking, and she smashed the side of her face into a table. She was over it a minute later, too caught up in having fun, but she had an angry red line drawn down her cheek for the rest of the night.
Later, she was trying to climb up the slide, on hands and knees, and her hands went out from under her. When that happened, her face smacked down into the slide, and she busted her lip open. I could barely get her to sit still long enough for her lip to start bleeding before she rushed back into the fray.
Last time we went, she was scared of the big slide. I'm not sure it's the slide itself, but there's a lot of climbing around in high-up, enclosed spaces, and she didn't have the same zeal for that as some of the older kids. I was surprised she was so excited to do it this time. Then, when I was ready to go, I watched her climb up and then I crouched down just inside the bottom of the slide so I could catch her when she came down.
I could hear her climbing above me, then sitting down at the top of the twisty slide (so out of sight), and then nothing for a moment. I waited, and then I heard a tiny voice saying very definitely, "Careful. Be careful. Be careful." She was psyching herself up. A few seconds later she finally came zipping down, and laughed in delight when she saw me waiting for her.
I put her to bed around nine, and a little bit later T-- showed up and reminded us that it was Daylight Savings Time, so we'd just lost an hour on our sleep. A little after that she headed to bed, but D-- and I stayed up watching I Heart Huckabees (and him reading, and me programming), and then afterward we talked existentialism and purpose until two or three in the morning (depending how you want to count it).
Sunday
So I woke up late on Sunday, but made it to church before they'd finished the first song. The sermon was on Fasting, and a pretty good one. Oh, and N-- and K-- were there! It was fun to see them, if only briefly, but I'd told T-- I would take AB home for a quick lunch and an early nap right after services, so I didn't hang around.
I grabbed her some food, then ran up to P. F. Chang's for some take out. AB was able to eat her quick lunch while we were in the car, so by the time I got home, she was ready for her nap.
I worked on some fileserver stuff while AB napped. Then T-- got home and started getting ready for their afternoon. Shortly after AB woke up, Diana got to the house and then the three of them went to see Sesame Street Live (T-- has it documented on her blog).
While they were out, I worked. Mostly I'm getting my media files sorted out so that we can watch them on the HTPC. I've also got a handful of little projects I'm working on, and I'm constantly spending five minutes here and ten minutes there, making gradual progress.
D-- called around 5:00 to ask about supper plans, and I told him we'd be eating whenever T-- got home, and he was welcome to come over. T-- ended up making some chicken parmesan for us, and it was awesome.
We watched a movie, and then the new SNL, and while that was on K-- caught me on GMail chat and asked if I could take a look at the HTML parser for our current XBMC project. I opened that up, and ended up working on it for hours. I stayed up after the show ended, and T-- went to bed, and D-- left, and it was probably midnight before I got to bed. But I got the parser rewritten, and it's a lot more powerful now. So that's something.
Monday
Then last night T-- brought home the stuff for me to make chili, and then she ended up making the chili (because I was distracted with one of my little projects, and she was hungry). It was fantastic, though, so I can't feel too bad about my laziness. It paid off in the end.
We watched The Big Bounce, which we'd been excited about but then never saw because of the terrible reviews. Turns out...it's not that bad. It's slow (especially for a heist flick), but the characters are strong and the story is good. Maybe it's just a good one to have on in the background, because neither of us was paying full attention to it. There were some laughs, though.
After that AB got to watch a movie while we ate dinner, and after she went to bed we started on the Monday night TV shows. We watched Heroes and Chuck before we gave up and went to bed. Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement are all still waiting for us.
How did people watch TV before TiVo? Seriously.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I left off last Thursday with a tale of woe concerning our garage door opener. Thursday afternoon when I got home, I immediately set to work on that. I climbed up in the attic to figure out where the mounting bolts actually came through the ceiling, and it turned out they're actually driven into studs. That gives me a little more hope for the one that I replace. I went back down, got out the ratchet, and tightened it down until it wouldn't budge (something I'd been afraid to do when I thought it was only anchored in drywall).
After that I put some weight on it, and the bolt held. I've also got the line now to put in two more bolts on each bracket, so it should be well and truly secured soon.
I also mentioned that the button was broken. Seems like that was actually because of the bolt giving -- the (very old, very thin) wire connecting the opener to the button by the door runs down from the ceiling, and it was pretty much taught. When the bolt gave and the opener fell, it tore the wire free.
Once I figured that out, it was a simple enough matter to scavenge some electrical wire and splice it together to get the button powered again (and add a little slack to line, in the process).
Later in the evening D-- brought us some supper from Buffalo Wild Wings. I'd requested the Blazing sauce (their hottest) to try for the first time. It is, indeed, hot.
Then we all watched some TV and the night sort of disappeared.
Friday
Friday night I had a mandate. And as soon as you read that, you're probably thinking, "man-date," because you're so juvenile, but no. I mean a mandate: a purpose, a quest, a compulsion to do something of personal and moral significance. In this case, my mandate was to go see The Watchmen, a screen adaptation of what is widely considered the best graphic novel on the market. The story is powerful evocative, and the adaptation was incredibly well done. It's probably the most meaningful movie that I've actually enjoyed since watching Stranger than Fiction (and if I had to eliminate comedies, it's probably the only really meaningful movie I've ever enjoyed, but I haven't put a ton of thought into that evaluation, so don't hold me to it).
Okay, and as it happens, yes, I did go to the movie with D--. But that's beside the point.
Before that, T-- and AB and D-- and I had dinner at Belle Isle at 50 Penn Place (yeah, I was just there a week ago -- you've got a great memory). I stated my intention of ordering the same steak again, but T-- pointed out that my leftovers from the last time were still in the fridge, so I had a Theta Burger instead. Phenomenal.
Then the movie, as I said, and that took the rest of the night.
Saturday
Saturday I slept late, and spent much of the afternoon programming. I'm sure there was something else, but I don't really remember it.
In the evening, T-- went to scrapbook with her friend Rebecca, so I watched AB. D-- came over to help out, and we ended up taking AB to McDonalds for dinner. There's one nearby with a big indoor playground area, that we'd gone to visit last time Mom and Dad were in town, so I took AB up there to let her play. She made friends with the other two little girls who were there, and spent a long time climbing up, going down the slide, then shouting "Again!" and doing it again.
At one point, she'd come running over to the table to eat two fries before rushing back, and she wasn't looking, and she smashed the side of her face into a table. She was over it a minute later, too caught up in having fun, but she had an angry red line drawn down her cheek for the rest of the night.
Later, she was trying to climb up the slide, on hands and knees, and her hands went out from under her. When that happened, her face smacked down into the slide, and she busted her lip open. I could barely get her to sit still long enough for her lip to start bleeding before she rushed back into the fray.
Last time we went, she was scared of the big slide. I'm not sure it's the slide itself, but there's a lot of climbing around in high-up, enclosed spaces, and she didn't have the same zeal for that as some of the older kids. I was surprised she was so excited to do it this time. Then, when I was ready to go, I watched her climb up and then I crouched down just inside the bottom of the slide so I could catch her when she came down.
I could hear her climbing above me, then sitting down at the top of the twisty slide (so out of sight), and then nothing for a moment. I waited, and then I heard a tiny voice saying very definitely, "Careful. Be careful. Be careful." She was psyching herself up. A few seconds later she finally came zipping down, and laughed in delight when she saw me waiting for her.
I put her to bed around nine, and a little bit later T-- showed up and reminded us that it was Daylight Savings Time, so we'd just lost an hour on our sleep. A little after that she headed to bed, but D-- and I stayed up watching I Heart Huckabees (and him reading, and me programming), and then afterward we talked existentialism and purpose until two or three in the morning (depending how you want to count it).
Sunday
So I woke up late on Sunday, but made it to church before they'd finished the first song. The sermon was on Fasting, and a pretty good one. Oh, and N-- and K-- were there! It was fun to see them, if only briefly, but I'd told T-- I would take AB home for a quick lunch and an early nap right after services, so I didn't hang around.
I grabbed her some food, then ran up to P. F. Chang's for some take out. AB was able to eat her quick lunch while we were in the car, so by the time I got home, she was ready for her nap.
I worked on some fileserver stuff while AB napped. Then T-- got home and started getting ready for their afternoon. Shortly after AB woke up, Diana got to the house and then the three of them went to see Sesame Street Live (T-- has it documented on her blog).
While they were out, I worked. Mostly I'm getting my media files sorted out so that we can watch them on the HTPC. I've also got a handful of little projects I'm working on, and I'm constantly spending five minutes here and ten minutes there, making gradual progress.
D-- called around 5:00 to ask about supper plans, and I told him we'd be eating whenever T-- got home, and he was welcome to come over. T-- ended up making some chicken parmesan for us, and it was awesome.
We watched a movie, and then the new SNL, and while that was on K-- caught me on GMail chat and asked if I could take a look at the HTML parser for our current XBMC project. I opened that up, and ended up working on it for hours. I stayed up after the show ended, and T-- went to bed, and D-- left, and it was probably midnight before I got to bed. But I got the parser rewritten, and it's a lot more powerful now. So that's something.
Monday
Then last night T-- brought home the stuff for me to make chili, and then she ended up making the chili (because I was distracted with one of my little projects, and she was hungry). It was fantastic, though, so I can't feel too bad about my laziness. It paid off in the end.
We watched The Big Bounce, which we'd been excited about but then never saw because of the terrible reviews. Turns out...it's not that bad. It's slow (especially for a heist flick), but the characters are strong and the story is good. Maybe it's just a good one to have on in the background, because neither of us was paying full attention to it. There were some laughs, though.
After that AB got to watch a movie while we ate dinner, and after she went to bed we started on the Monday night TV shows. We watched Heroes and Chuck before we gave up and went to bed. Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother and Rules of Engagement are all still waiting for us.
How did people watch TV before TiVo? Seriously.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Journal Entry: March 5, 2009
When we were robbed last December, the most crushing loss by far was the information that was taken. I think T-- would readily agree to that. We lost a bunch of electronics and some of T--'s jewelry, but they also got all the movies T-- had recorded on her camcorder and a year's worth of family photos (more than that, even, but most of the pictures prior to 2008 were backed up on CDs). I also lost all the family papers that I'd scanned in over the course of the last year (a major project, which I talked about more than once on this blog).
So we're pretty much recovered from the robbery now, settling back into our lives, but I'm more concerned than ever with data integrity. In support of that, I decided that I really wanted to make a dedicated fileserver and tuck it away in a back corner somewhere, so if we get hit again it's much less likely they'll take our information. They can take the HTPC and the laptop if they must, but I would hate to lose all my writing again.
I ordered the parts for the fileserver about a week ago, and they came in last night. And when I say "the parts," I actually mean "about half of the parts," but we hadn't entirely thought through that at the time.
I got a CPU without a fan or heatsink which was the biggest problem. By sheer luck, D-- had one tucked in the back of a closet that fit. I also forgot I would need a CD or DVD drive to load my OS, but I was able to find a working one in my closet. We were stuck for a while when it came to finding a hard drive for the OS (I could have used one of my big new media drives, but it makes everything MUCH easier if data and OS are on completely separate drives). I had said offhand that I would just use the drive from one of my XBoxen, but when it came time to get them I ran into a problem.
Cracking open an XBox requires a specific Torx bit, and I searched the house high and low for half an hour before I finally tracked down the screwdriver that could do it. Then I opened up the box I'd gotten at a garage sale and pulled out its hard drive, only to discover it was a stock hard drive in an unmodded XBox -- meaning it was locked, and unusable unless I could get it installed in a modded XBox to unlock it. Problem is, neither box is working anymore. I finally cracked open my modded box, which I'd been half hoping to preserve, and scavenged the old 15 GB drive out of it. Mercifully that one had been left unlocked, so I was able to get my system up and running.
It took all night. Finally finished up around eleven, and it was after midnight before I completed the cleanup. Now I've got a fileserver in a closet, an HTPC in the entertainment center (with just the OS drive, which makes it quieter and cooler), and access to all my media on any machine in the house.
After eleven, as I said, I got to work cleaning up. As part of that I took a big box of XBox remnants out to the trash, and when I went to close the garage door afterward the button wouldn't work. I walked over to the car to use the remote to close it, and as the door started rumbling down I got a rain of drywall dust on me, and stepped out of the way just as a half-inch bolt fell from the ceiling. It was the one bolt holding up the right-side brace for the opener, which immediately began sagging from the ceiling even as it was still closing the door.
I pushed it back up frantically, and held it in place until the door was safely down, then retrieved a stepladder and did what I could to screw the bolt back into place, but I was just reusing the hole it had already jiggled out of, so I don't think that's a long-term solution. Now I'm going to have to figure out how to secure my garage door opener (and figure out what's wrong with the wiring, too). I'm just glad nothing catastrophic happened when it came loose.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
So we're pretty much recovered from the robbery now, settling back into our lives, but I'm more concerned than ever with data integrity. In support of that, I decided that I really wanted to make a dedicated fileserver and tuck it away in a back corner somewhere, so if we get hit again it's much less likely they'll take our information. They can take the HTPC and the laptop if they must, but I would hate to lose all my writing again.
I ordered the parts for the fileserver about a week ago, and they came in last night. And when I say "the parts," I actually mean "about half of the parts," but we hadn't entirely thought through that at the time.
I got a CPU without a fan or heatsink which was the biggest problem. By sheer luck, D-- had one tucked in the back of a closet that fit. I also forgot I would need a CD or DVD drive to load my OS, but I was able to find a working one in my closet. We were stuck for a while when it came to finding a hard drive for the OS (I could have used one of my big new media drives, but it makes everything MUCH easier if data and OS are on completely separate drives). I had said offhand that I would just use the drive from one of my XBoxen, but when it came time to get them I ran into a problem.
Cracking open an XBox requires a specific Torx bit, and I searched the house high and low for half an hour before I finally tracked down the screwdriver that could do it. Then I opened up the box I'd gotten at a garage sale and pulled out its hard drive, only to discover it was a stock hard drive in an unmodded XBox -- meaning it was locked, and unusable unless I could get it installed in a modded XBox to unlock it. Problem is, neither box is working anymore. I finally cracked open my modded box, which I'd been half hoping to preserve, and scavenged the old 15 GB drive out of it. Mercifully that one had been left unlocked, so I was able to get my system up and running.
It took all night. Finally finished up around eleven, and it was after midnight before I completed the cleanup. Now I've got a fileserver in a closet, an HTPC in the entertainment center (with just the OS drive, which makes it quieter and cooler), and access to all my media on any machine in the house.
After eleven, as I said, I got to work cleaning up. As part of that I took a big box of XBox remnants out to the trash, and when I went to close the garage door afterward the button wouldn't work. I walked over to the car to use the remote to close it, and as the door started rumbling down I got a rain of drywall dust on me, and stepped out of the way just as a half-inch bolt fell from the ceiling. It was the one bolt holding up the right-side brace for the opener, which immediately began sagging from the ceiling even as it was still closing the door.
I pushed it back up frantically, and held it in place until the door was safely down, then retrieved a stepladder and did what I could to screw the bolt back into place, but I was just reusing the hole it had already jiggled out of, so I don't think that's a long-term solution. Now I'm going to have to figure out how to secure my garage door opener (and figure out what's wrong with the wiring, too). I'm just glad nothing catastrophic happened when it came loose.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Journal Entry: March 4, 2009
I haven't posted in a week, so here's my big update.
Wednesday
Last Wednesday, I mentioned that I'd just finished a major rewrite of Gods Tomorrow. I got two copies of it printed up, and had T-- take them to church Wednesday night to share with a couple folks who had asked to see some of my stuff (one among them being our preacher, Rob McElroy).
I usually don't hesitate to share my material with others (quite the contrary, I force it on them), but in this case it really freaked me out. I think that was because I couldn't have the same confidence that these two gentlemen knew who I was, or what I was about, as they delved into the book. Rather, it was much more like a real reader picking up the book off a shelf at Barnes and Noble. I had only the material itself to defend the book.
It was terrifying.
Thursday
Thursday, T-- left during the day to head to Wichita, taking AB up there for the monthly Charboneau birthdays party. I stayed home (my reward for putting up with the recent remodeling project), and made some progress on several of my projects.
Thursday night after work I got a haircut, then headed over to K-- and N--'s for dinner. T-- had made enchiladas for them, and they were willing to share. Afterward we watched Lost (which I had already seen with T--, but it was worth a repeat viewing), and chatted some. Even with the late start because of my haircut, I was home a little after eight.
Before I went to bed I watched a movie (I don't remember which, but something stupid), and then spent a couple hours working on a detailed plot outline for Ghost Targets: Expectation.
Friday
Friday was my Regular Day Off, and I made good use of it. I spent most of the morning working on writing stuff. I finished up my outline, which essentially maps every significant scene in the novel, start to finish. I also got a start on an outline for the overarching series. I had already roughed out some stuff in my scribblebook, but I started the process of setting down my major story arcs into a discrete list.
Then I spent the afternoon programming. K-- caught me in GMail chat, and we collaborated on an XBMC plugin that's replacing MovieHoard (as described on my projects page). This new one is called LibraryCompare, and I'll reserve the excruciating details for the other page, but it essentially lets each of us browse the other's XBMC media library, as though we were browsing material on our own machines. Obviously we can't play the files, but it's going to be a great tool for checking quickly what we do and don't have available between us.
Friday night D-- came over and we tried to crash in on B-- and E--, but they proved uncrashable (and the same again Saturday night). We ended up going to On the Border instead, and had appetizers for a surprisingly satisfying (and cheap) dinner. After that we watched stupid movies until stupid late. D-- played on his guitar some, and I messed around with the XBMC plugin.
Saturday
Woke up around nine Saturday morning, and had to drive D-- up to Edmond to drop off his car so they could finish installing his new stereo. We grabbed some breakfast at McDonalds, and headed back to the house for more of the same. Got D-- caught up on Flight of the Conchords, and I watched some Dr. Katz, all while programming with Kris via GChat.
Around four we ran back up to Edmond to pick up his car, and scrapped plans to grab some dinner on the way home when we both decided we weren't really hungry yet. Instead we went back to the house, and installed the new grill D-- had gotten for the front of his car. It attached directly to the existing one, but it was still easily a two-hour project getting it put on.
After that we were ready for dinner. We tried Texas Roadhouse, but at 8:00 on a Saturday we were looking at a ninety-minute wait. We ended up going to Belle Isle at 50 Penn Place, which was immediate seating, better food, and about the same price.
It was eerie being at 50 Penn Place, because I used to go there a lot in college (for Creative Writing assignments that took me to the fantastic Full Circle Bookstore there), but hadn't been back since then. On the other hand, I have set a scene in one of my Sleeping Kings novels there, and it involves a car bomb and a pillaging mob. I spent some time walking the scene trying to iron out the differences between the floor plan in my head and the one that exists in the real world, and it was a truly unsettling experience. We also spent some time browsing the shelves at Full Circle, and D-- ended up buying a book.
After that, we went back to the house and watched some more stupid movies while I finished up my outline. That's right -- I now have a complete outline for a 25-book series. It's madness.
Sunday
Sunday morning I went to church, then over to K-- and N--'s for lunch. We had leftovers, which for me consisted of chopped brisket from Steve's Rib (my favorite), and some of T--'s brownies. I've really cashed in on her generosity towards them.
We talked some, and then just before I headed home I got a call from T-- saying she was feeling sick, and wouldn't make it back that afternoon.
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon painting the shelves for T--'s new kitchen island, which was a real pain. I needed to paint the top and bottom of each of them, with two coats for each, as well as the front lip of it, and there was just no convenient way to paint a coat and then let it dry without the wet paint coming into contact with something. I could have done one side at a time, but with dry time and multiple coats that would've taken days (and I just don't have the attention span for that). The method I settled on left the bottom side looking pretty shabby, but the rest of it came out well. (And who's going to see the bottom side, anyway?)
I got that done, and then D-- and I grabbed some dinner from Qdoba. It was fantastic. Really, good eats all weekend. The evening was more movies and more programming, but it ended much earlier than the previous ones. I was probably in bed by 10:30, but I don't think I fell asleep until about midnight.
Monday
Monday morning T-- called me to tell me she was heading home, and we were able to meet for lunch at Freddy's. It was fun to see both of them, and a real high point in my day.
She also called me later in the afternoon to tell me that she'd been in touch with our preacher's wife, and they (the McElroys) would be coming over for dinner Tuesday night. I got to spend the next two days constantly reminding myself, "It's only been a week. He probably hasn't read the book yet. We'll just find something else to talk about."
Monday night I got in and AB was really happy to see me. I played with her while T-- took care of some errands, running up to the mall and then stopping by Mazzio's on the way home to pick up some dinner. We ate kinda late, and then once AB was in bed we had time to watch two new Flight of the Conchords before bedtime. We went and stayed up to watch Big Bang Theory, though, because we're naughty.
Tuesday
Then Tuesday after work I caught a quick nap before our guests came over. Rob walked in the door holding his copy of the book, and told me he had taken it home from church the previous Wednesday and read 30 pages before he had to go to sleep. Then he spent all day Thursday looking forward to getting home so he could read more. He finished it Thursday night.
That's high praise right there. Then he added to it by spending the rest of the evening talking about the book. He wanted to discuss the ideas in the book, some of the main plot elements, and my writing style, too. I'd already told him that it was a NaNoWriMo book, so he wanted to know how exactly that goes, and how much of it had changed since the rough draft, and as all of you know, those are precisely the sorts of things that I like to go on about. At length.
T-- made a pork tenderloin for dinner that was a huge hit (and a cherry cobler dessert that was even more popular), and when Rob asked about the plastic drum set in the corner we got to introduce them to Rock Band. But the bulk of the evening, by far, was Book Club.
They hung around until nearly 9:00, so after they left and we got AB in bed, we had just time to watch a couple TV shows, and then went to bed.
There's a week in my life.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday
Last Wednesday, I mentioned that I'd just finished a major rewrite of Gods Tomorrow. I got two copies of it printed up, and had T-- take them to church Wednesday night to share with a couple folks who had asked to see some of my stuff (one among them being our preacher, Rob McElroy).
I usually don't hesitate to share my material with others (quite the contrary, I force it on them), but in this case it really freaked me out. I think that was because I couldn't have the same confidence that these two gentlemen knew who I was, or what I was about, as they delved into the book. Rather, it was much more like a real reader picking up the book off a shelf at Barnes and Noble. I had only the material itself to defend the book.
It was terrifying.
Thursday
Thursday, T-- left during the day to head to Wichita, taking AB up there for the monthly Charboneau birthdays party. I stayed home (my reward for putting up with the recent remodeling project), and made some progress on several of my projects.
Thursday night after work I got a haircut, then headed over to K-- and N--'s for dinner. T-- had made enchiladas for them, and they were willing to share. Afterward we watched Lost (which I had already seen with T--, but it was worth a repeat viewing), and chatted some. Even with the late start because of my haircut, I was home a little after eight.
Before I went to bed I watched a movie (I don't remember which, but something stupid), and then spent a couple hours working on a detailed plot outline for Ghost Targets: Expectation.
Friday
Friday was my Regular Day Off, and I made good use of it. I spent most of the morning working on writing stuff. I finished up my outline, which essentially maps every significant scene in the novel, start to finish. I also got a start on an outline for the overarching series. I had already roughed out some stuff in my scribblebook, but I started the process of setting down my major story arcs into a discrete list.
Then I spent the afternoon programming. K-- caught me in GMail chat, and we collaborated on an XBMC plugin that's replacing MovieHoard (as described on my projects page). This new one is called LibraryCompare, and I'll reserve the excruciating details for the other page, but it essentially lets each of us browse the other's XBMC media library, as though we were browsing material on our own machines. Obviously we can't play the files, but it's going to be a great tool for checking quickly what we do and don't have available between us.
Friday night D-- came over and we tried to crash in on B-- and E--, but they proved uncrashable (and the same again Saturday night). We ended up going to On the Border instead, and had appetizers for a surprisingly satisfying (and cheap) dinner. After that we watched stupid movies until stupid late. D-- played on his guitar some, and I messed around with the XBMC plugin.
Saturday
Woke up around nine Saturday morning, and had to drive D-- up to Edmond to drop off his car so they could finish installing his new stereo. We grabbed some breakfast at McDonalds, and headed back to the house for more of the same. Got D-- caught up on Flight of the Conchords, and I watched some Dr. Katz, all while programming with Kris via GChat.
Around four we ran back up to Edmond to pick up his car, and scrapped plans to grab some dinner on the way home when we both decided we weren't really hungry yet. Instead we went back to the house, and installed the new grill D-- had gotten for the front of his car. It attached directly to the existing one, but it was still easily a two-hour project getting it put on.
After that we were ready for dinner. We tried Texas Roadhouse, but at 8:00 on a Saturday we were looking at a ninety-minute wait. We ended up going to Belle Isle at 50 Penn Place, which was immediate seating, better food, and about the same price.
It was eerie being at 50 Penn Place, because I used to go there a lot in college (for Creative Writing assignments that took me to the fantastic Full Circle Bookstore there), but hadn't been back since then. On the other hand, I have set a scene in one of my Sleeping Kings novels there, and it involves a car bomb and a pillaging mob. I spent some time walking the scene trying to iron out the differences between the floor plan in my head and the one that exists in the real world, and it was a truly unsettling experience. We also spent some time browsing the shelves at Full Circle, and D-- ended up buying a book.
After that, we went back to the house and watched some more stupid movies while I finished up my outline. That's right -- I now have a complete outline for a 25-book series. It's madness.
Sunday
Sunday morning I went to church, then over to K-- and N--'s for lunch. We had leftovers, which for me consisted of chopped brisket from Steve's Rib (my favorite), and some of T--'s brownies. I've really cashed in on her generosity towards them.
We talked some, and then just before I headed home I got a call from T-- saying she was feeling sick, and wouldn't make it back that afternoon.
I spent much of the rest of the afternoon painting the shelves for T--'s new kitchen island, which was a real pain. I needed to paint the top and bottom of each of them, with two coats for each, as well as the front lip of it, and there was just no convenient way to paint a coat and then let it dry without the wet paint coming into contact with something. I could have done one side at a time, but with dry time and multiple coats that would've taken days (and I just don't have the attention span for that). The method I settled on left the bottom side looking pretty shabby, but the rest of it came out well. (And who's going to see the bottom side, anyway?)
I got that done, and then D-- and I grabbed some dinner from Qdoba. It was fantastic. Really, good eats all weekend. The evening was more movies and more programming, but it ended much earlier than the previous ones. I was probably in bed by 10:30, but I don't think I fell asleep until about midnight.
Monday
Monday morning T-- called me to tell me she was heading home, and we were able to meet for lunch at Freddy's. It was fun to see both of them, and a real high point in my day.
She also called me later in the afternoon to tell me that she'd been in touch with our preacher's wife, and they (the McElroys) would be coming over for dinner Tuesday night. I got to spend the next two days constantly reminding myself, "It's only been a week. He probably hasn't read the book yet. We'll just find something else to talk about."
Monday night I got in and AB was really happy to see me. I played with her while T-- took care of some errands, running up to the mall and then stopping by Mazzio's on the way home to pick up some dinner. We ate kinda late, and then once AB was in bed we had time to watch two new Flight of the Conchords before bedtime. We went and stayed up to watch Big Bang Theory, though, because we're naughty.
Tuesday
Then Tuesday after work I caught a quick nap before our guests came over. Rob walked in the door holding his copy of the book, and told me he had taken it home from church the previous Wednesday and read 30 pages before he had to go to sleep. Then he spent all day Thursday looking forward to getting home so he could read more. He finished it Thursday night.
That's high praise right there. Then he added to it by spending the rest of the evening talking about the book. He wanted to discuss the ideas in the book, some of the main plot elements, and my writing style, too. I'd already told him that it was a NaNoWriMo book, so he wanted to know how exactly that goes, and how much of it had changed since the rough draft, and as all of you know, those are precisely the sorts of things that I like to go on about. At length.
T-- made a pork tenderloin for dinner that was a huge hit (and a cherry cobler dessert that was even more popular), and when Rob asked about the plastic drum set in the corner we got to introduce them to Rock Band. But the bulk of the evening, by far, was Book Club.
They hung around until nearly 9:00, so after they left and we got AB in bed, we had just time to watch a couple TV shows, and then went to bed.
There's a week in my life.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
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