I worked a little bit late yesterday, but still got home with enough time to do a short stint on the elliptical while checking out my new monitor. I played an episode of Comedy Central Presents, and watching TV on this screen is so much better than watching it on the laptop monitor was.
Then we rushed off to meet D-- for dinner at El Chico. Afterward T-- took AB to church, and I headed up to Books A Million to meet my little sister for a discussion of the Ghost Targets series (which she had just finished).
It was a fantastic discussion, and took a good portion of three hours. I've been feeling more and more anxious to write the third book in the series lately, but I've been trying to fight down the urge because I just have too much to do. I don't think my resistance will last long, though. You can probably expect a review copy by mid-July.
Anyway, I got home around ten, and ended up playing Civ for an hour or so, with more Comedy Central Presents on the second monitor. That was fun, too. I'm definitely glad of that purchase.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Journal Entry: May 27, 2009
I've got an eventful five-day recap, so prepare your scrolling finger!
Err....
Thursday
Last Thursday was the 21st, so I did another 24-hour fast. Much easier than the first, because I had a really good idea exactly what to expect. I'd considered going for a 36-hour this time, but decided not to because I had work to do, and going all evening without eating would have just put me in a bitter, useless mood. I guess overcoming that is really the point of the ordeal. I'll have to work on it in the future.
I did get some work done, though. Moved all my computer stuff out of the old office and into the new one, and started working out the new layout. We also got a good start on arranging the stuff in the old office to get it ready for painting.
Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I put it to good use. I woke up early and started gathering the painting supplies. In the old office we'd painted the ceiling and doors a light grey, all the woodwork a dark, dark grey, and the walls dark green. The goal was to take the woodwork (and doors) back to the same flat white in the rest of the house, the walls to the same light green we had in AB's nursery, and then the ceiling to the tan color on the walls in the rest of the house. For the most part, that meant taking very dark shades and painting over them with very pale shades. Luckily we'd been through that process once before, when we last got the Tulsa house ready to sell, and learned that primer really does work.
So we started Friday morning with the woodwork, got it all primed, let that dry, and then put the white on. While that was still drying, I started putting up primer on the walls, but I only got two of them done before I ran out of paint. I waited half an hour for the first wall to dry, and then got a coat of the light green up, and used up all of that that we had leftover, too.
That was most of what I hoped to accomplish on Friday anyway, and I ran out of paint at the same time I ran out of day off, which is to say about three in the afternoon. I got cleaned up and then made a trip to Byron's Liquor Warehouse to stock up for our party that night.
Friday was our second Poker Night, and we spent it playing Heroscape instead. We had five there this time, including the same group from last time plus Toby, and I think we all had a pretty good time. B-- wrote mid-week, in response to my final email saying that the party would be on Friday, to say he could come any night but Friday. We all took it for a joke, but it turned out he really meant it. Hopefully he'll make the June meeting, though.
Anyway, we officially broke at midnight, but then a few of us stuck around talking for a bit, and after everyone cleared out I cleaned up the mess and finished off my last Tatoo and Redbull, and it was around 1:30 when I finally went to bed and realized I had just slammed half of a Tatoo and Redbull. Ugh.
Saturday
Still, Saturday came around in spite of me. I got up around 7:30 (at the insistence of my delightful little daughter) and then T-- took her away for her own safety to do some garage saleing, while I got started on the room.
I was about halfway through putting primer on one of the two remaining walls when B-- showed up to lend a hand. Mindful of my sore back (and my weekend's work did nothing to help with that) he graciously offered to do the hardest work (specifically, the ceiling), so I handed over a roller to him and got to work on some edging.
I also rigged a laptop and some speakers to play King Baby, Jim Gaffigan's latest stuff, while we worked. That was pretty awesome.
Essentially, before B-- offered to come over, my goal for Saturday was to get the primer up before lunch, then do the walls in the early afternoon and hope that I still had the time and energy to do the ceiling before bed. With his help, we got it all primed and then both walls and half of the ceiling done before lunchtime. It was incredible.
I ate and then T-- came in to do the trim work while I finished off the ceiling, and by mid-afternoon the painting was done. AB woke up from her nap and the two of them went out to play in the yard while I swapped out stuff from the closet. We also moved a ton of AB's furniture from our room into AB's new room, which was nice to get done.
Sometime in the midst of that we went out to dinner with my sister's family at Taco Cabana, and afterward we brought her two girls back to the house to play with AB while they (my sister and her husband) went to Lowe's. So obviously it was a busy and exhausting day.
Sunday
Sunday after church we went to K-- and N--'s for a delicious quiche lorraine sans oignons (or something like that). AB behaved really well, and it was a perfectly pleasant visit. It's weird to think how little time we've spent over there since the baby was born, but that probably has as much to do with it being the football offseason as it does with parenthood. I'll guess we'll find out in September.
Anyway, we went home and AB went down for a nap and so did I. I actually crashed on the couch, then ended up on the floor somehow, and only really woke up when I heard T-- closing the garage door on her way to Wal-Mart for groceries. I was just talking myself into getting up and going to my bed when the phone rang. It was Dad, calling about some comments I'd sent him regarding his novel. We talked for right at an hour, discussing his book in specific and writing in general.
Then he got off the phone at the same time T-- got home and AB woke up from her nap. They went outside to play again, but not before T-- gave me more work to do. She told me to take care of dinner.
So, an hour later, I ran up to P F Chang's to pick up our order.
D-- came over to join us for supper, and brought back a bunch of my computer games that he'd borrowed and finished a while back, so after we ate I spent the evening installing games and got caught up in a Civ game that took up a lot of my time over the next three days. It pretty much ate my whole evening, anyway, but I did take time to fix a loose hinge on one of our cabinet doors in the kitchen. So I did accomplish something on Sunday. I was up until 2:00 playing, though.
Monday
Monday morning I woke up around 9:30 and mowed the lawn, then got cleaned up in time to head over to my sister's place with T-- and AB for a Memorial Day party. A real crowd showed up in, and instead of flooding this page with even more dashes I'll let you look at T--'s or my sister's blog for more details and prettier pictures.
I played a Magic game with Toby and my brother-in-law before social pressure forced us to put it away. Then I spent some time outside in the accursed sunlight until T-- requested a snowcone and Toby and my brother-in-law and I all fled the party to see if we could find an open stand. We picked up seven snowcones and brought them back to much rejoicing.
I don't really remember much else from Monday, but that's probably because I spent the rest of the day fighting off Vikings and Frenchmen with a horde of Mechanized Infantry. I won.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning I woke up too sore to get out of bed, and eventually talked myself into skipping work. I finally got out of bed sometime between nine and ten, and watched AB while T-- ran some errands. Then we had some lunch, and I went to my office to work on some of my old poetry stuff while AB took a nap. Around three she woke up and I agreed to watch her again while T-- went grocery shopping.
We had some fantastic pot roast for supper, and we were just getting ready to play AB's memory game when UPS rang the doorbell to drop off some new computer stuff. I got a couple UPSs to protect my equipment from our frequent power outages, a new hard drive for my fileserver (which seems to be dead on arrival), and a new monitor to use as a TV in my office. It's beautiful.
I got it all unboxed, then sat down at the kitchen table with T-- and AB to play memory. She has a bunch of cards with Disney characters on them, and we narrowed the seventy-two cards down to a more reasonable twelve, and played the traditional memory game with AB. She's far more interested in placing the cards in the plastic storage tray than in actually matching, probably because the motor skills present her with a real challenge. She has no trouble at all remembering where the cards are.
We went through through the six-card game several times, with slightly different sets, and then came up with a more complicated version using the storage tray and twelve cards, and she excelled at that, too. We were so impressed that T-- pulled out the camcorder to get a record of AB's ability, but by then she was tired of the game and decided to argue instead of showing off. Alas.
We put the game away, then, and I went to the office to work on my computer. I spent about an hour trying to get an old hard drive to work (only to discover it was a bad drive), and finally gave up on that and just installed my new drive (only to discover it, too, was a bad drive). When that was done, I put it back in the top of AB's closet, and then tucked her in and wished her goodnight.
Then I spent another half hour rearranging the entertainment center in the living room to install a UPS there, and finally sat down on the couch to watch the second half of Charade with T--. That's one weird-ass movie.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Err....
Thursday
Last Thursday was the 21st, so I did another 24-hour fast. Much easier than the first, because I had a really good idea exactly what to expect. I'd considered going for a 36-hour this time, but decided not to because I had work to do, and going all evening without eating would have just put me in a bitter, useless mood. I guess overcoming that is really the point of the ordeal. I'll have to work on it in the future.
I did get some work done, though. Moved all my computer stuff out of the old office and into the new one, and started working out the new layout. We also got a good start on arranging the stuff in the old office to get it ready for painting.
Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I put it to good use. I woke up early and started gathering the painting supplies. In the old office we'd painted the ceiling and doors a light grey, all the woodwork a dark, dark grey, and the walls dark green. The goal was to take the woodwork (and doors) back to the same flat white in the rest of the house, the walls to the same light green we had in AB's nursery, and then the ceiling to the tan color on the walls in the rest of the house. For the most part, that meant taking very dark shades and painting over them with very pale shades. Luckily we'd been through that process once before, when we last got the Tulsa house ready to sell, and learned that primer really does work.
So we started Friday morning with the woodwork, got it all primed, let that dry, and then put the white on. While that was still drying, I started putting up primer on the walls, but I only got two of them done before I ran out of paint. I waited half an hour for the first wall to dry, and then got a coat of the light green up, and used up all of that that we had leftover, too.
That was most of what I hoped to accomplish on Friday anyway, and I ran out of paint at the same time I ran out of day off, which is to say about three in the afternoon. I got cleaned up and then made a trip to Byron's Liquor Warehouse to stock up for our party that night.
Friday was our second Poker Night, and we spent it playing Heroscape instead. We had five there this time, including the same group from last time plus Toby, and I think we all had a pretty good time. B-- wrote mid-week, in response to my final email saying that the party would be on Friday, to say he could come any night but Friday. We all took it for a joke, but it turned out he really meant it. Hopefully he'll make the June meeting, though.
Anyway, we officially broke at midnight, but then a few of us stuck around talking for a bit, and after everyone cleared out I cleaned up the mess and finished off my last Tatoo and Redbull, and it was around 1:30 when I finally went to bed and realized I had just slammed half of a Tatoo and Redbull. Ugh.
Saturday
Still, Saturday came around in spite of me. I got up around 7:30 (at the insistence of my delightful little daughter) and then T-- took her away for her own safety to do some garage saleing, while I got started on the room.
I was about halfway through putting primer on one of the two remaining walls when B-- showed up to lend a hand. Mindful of my sore back (and my weekend's work did nothing to help with that) he graciously offered to do the hardest work (specifically, the ceiling), so I handed over a roller to him and got to work on some edging.
I also rigged a laptop and some speakers to play King Baby, Jim Gaffigan's latest stuff, while we worked. That was pretty awesome.
Essentially, before B-- offered to come over, my goal for Saturday was to get the primer up before lunch, then do the walls in the early afternoon and hope that I still had the time and energy to do the ceiling before bed. With his help, we got it all primed and then both walls and half of the ceiling done before lunchtime. It was incredible.
I ate and then T-- came in to do the trim work while I finished off the ceiling, and by mid-afternoon the painting was done. AB woke up from her nap and the two of them went out to play in the yard while I swapped out stuff from the closet. We also moved a ton of AB's furniture from our room into AB's new room, which was nice to get done.
Sometime in the midst of that we went out to dinner with my sister's family at Taco Cabana, and afterward we brought her two girls back to the house to play with AB while they (my sister and her husband) went to Lowe's. So obviously it was a busy and exhausting day.
Sunday
Sunday after church we went to K-- and N--'s for a delicious quiche lorraine sans oignons (or something like that). AB behaved really well, and it was a perfectly pleasant visit. It's weird to think how little time we've spent over there since the baby was born, but that probably has as much to do with it being the football offseason as it does with parenthood. I'll guess we'll find out in September.
Anyway, we went home and AB went down for a nap and so did I. I actually crashed on the couch, then ended up on the floor somehow, and only really woke up when I heard T-- closing the garage door on her way to Wal-Mart for groceries. I was just talking myself into getting up and going to my bed when the phone rang. It was Dad, calling about some comments I'd sent him regarding his novel. We talked for right at an hour, discussing his book in specific and writing in general.
Then he got off the phone at the same time T-- got home and AB woke up from her nap. They went outside to play again, but not before T-- gave me more work to do. She told me to take care of dinner.
So, an hour later, I ran up to P F Chang's to pick up our order.
D-- came over to join us for supper, and brought back a bunch of my computer games that he'd borrowed and finished a while back, so after we ate I spent the evening installing games and got caught up in a Civ game that took up a lot of my time over the next three days. It pretty much ate my whole evening, anyway, but I did take time to fix a loose hinge on one of our cabinet doors in the kitchen. So I did accomplish something on Sunday. I was up until 2:00 playing, though.
Monday
Monday morning I woke up around 9:30 and mowed the lawn, then got cleaned up in time to head over to my sister's place with T-- and AB for a Memorial Day party. A real crowd showed up in, and instead of flooding this page with even more dashes I'll let you look at T--'s or my sister's blog for more details and prettier pictures.
I played a Magic game with Toby and my brother-in-law before social pressure forced us to put it away. Then I spent some time outside in the accursed sunlight until T-- requested a snowcone and Toby and my brother-in-law and I all fled the party to see if we could find an open stand. We picked up seven snowcones and brought them back to much rejoicing.
I don't really remember much else from Monday, but that's probably because I spent the rest of the day fighting off Vikings and Frenchmen with a horde of Mechanized Infantry. I won.
Tuesday
Tuesday morning I woke up too sore to get out of bed, and eventually talked myself into skipping work. I finally got out of bed sometime between nine and ten, and watched AB while T-- ran some errands. Then we had some lunch, and I went to my office to work on some of my old poetry stuff while AB took a nap. Around three she woke up and I agreed to watch her again while T-- went grocery shopping.
We had some fantastic pot roast for supper, and we were just getting ready to play AB's memory game when UPS rang the doorbell to drop off some new computer stuff. I got a couple UPSs to protect my equipment from our frequent power outages, a new hard drive for my fileserver (which seems to be dead on arrival), and a new monitor to use as a TV in my office. It's beautiful.
I got it all unboxed, then sat down at the kitchen table with T-- and AB to play memory. She has a bunch of cards with Disney characters on them, and we narrowed the seventy-two cards down to a more reasonable twelve, and played the traditional memory game with AB. She's far more interested in placing the cards in the plastic storage tray than in actually matching, probably because the motor skills present her with a real challenge. She has no trouble at all remembering where the cards are.
We went through through the six-card game several times, with slightly different sets, and then came up with a more complicated version using the storage tray and twelve cards, and she excelled at that, too. We were so impressed that T-- pulled out the camcorder to get a record of AB's ability, but by then she was tired of the game and decided to argue instead of showing off. Alas.
We put the game away, then, and I went to the office to work on my computer. I spent about an hour trying to get an old hard drive to work (only to discover it was a bad drive), and finally gave up on that and just installed my new drive (only to discover it, too, was a bad drive). When that was done, I put it back in the top of AB's closet, and then tucked her in and wished her goodnight.
Then I spent another half hour rearranging the entertainment center in the living room to install a UPS there, and finally sat down on the couch to watch the second half of Charade with T--. That's one weird-ass movie.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Fair Notice
To anyone who has need to call me, ever:
As a general rule, unless I have reason to suspect an emergency, I don't answer my phone while I'm in a conversation.
That's what caller ID is for. And voicemail. I'll call you back when I get a chance. And if you're the caller, just know I'll extend you the same courtesy when I'm in a conversation with you and somebody else calls. Socializing is difficult enough without constant technological interruptions.
Stop pretending to be surprised or making jokes that I never answer my phone. It's usually deliberate, and for good reason.
That is all.
As a general rule, unless I have reason to suspect an emergency, I don't answer my phone while I'm in a conversation.
That's what caller ID is for. And voicemail. I'll call you back when I get a chance. And if you're the caller, just know I'll extend you the same courtesy when I'm in a conversation with you and somebody else calls. Socializing is difficult enough without constant technological interruptions.
Stop pretending to be surprised or making jokes that I never answer my phone. It's usually deliberate, and for good reason.
That is all.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Journal Entry: May 21, 2009
Yesterday after work I rushed home to get started on more work.
Instead of exercising for the day, I toiled. T-- had cleared off a bookcase for me during the day, so I dragged the empty bookcase from the old office into the new one, found a space for it on the wall, and then made a bunch of trips (with T--'s help) carrying books from one of the full bookcases in there, clearing it off in the process.
That worked pretty well, and I think we moved the second bookcase in there before dinner. We got them both set up in the back corner and fully loaded. Then we darted up to McDonalds to grab something for AB before meeting my sister and her family, D--, and K-- and N-- at Quiznos.
I've never been a big fan, but I always try to get the Quiznos version of my favorite sandwiches from other places. That, or something weird. Last night we split the classic club, and that was better than anything I've had there. Delicious.
Afterward D-- drove me back to the house, and I put him to work. We dismantled AB's bed (in her room) and the futon (in the old office), and swapped rooms. Then, once the futon was reassembled in the new office, D-- asked about my plans for the eventual layout and immediately suggested we could probably do something better with the bookcases. Turned out he was right, but to prove it we had to go ahead and move the desk, which wasn't really ready for that.
We did it anyway, and once the desk was in place there was clearly enough room beside it to put the bookcases there (on the inside corner instead of the outside one), which freed up the back corner for just the elliptical. There'd been enough room as it was, but it was cramped. This works a lot better.
It meant clearing off the bookcases again, moving them along the wall, and then reloading them. It was also a pretty significant chore to get the elliptical taken apart and moved, and we had to find places for the rest of AB's stuff in our bedroom, to keep the old office clean enough that we can paint it over the weekend.
Anyway, that was my whole evening. I've got all the furniture moved into the new office, though, and I think I'm going to take a stab at wiring it tonight. I had lots of time to think about that while I lay in bed last night, because I couldn't sleep at all. I went to bed at 10:30 and it was after midnight before I fell asleep, and only fitful rest after that. Ugh.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Instead of exercising for the day, I toiled. T-- had cleared off a bookcase for me during the day, so I dragged the empty bookcase from the old office into the new one, found a space for it on the wall, and then made a bunch of trips (with T--'s help) carrying books from one of the full bookcases in there, clearing it off in the process.
That worked pretty well, and I think we moved the second bookcase in there before dinner. We got them both set up in the back corner and fully loaded. Then we darted up to McDonalds to grab something for AB before meeting my sister and her family, D--, and K-- and N-- at Quiznos.
I've never been a big fan, but I always try to get the Quiznos version of my favorite sandwiches from other places. That, or something weird. Last night we split the classic club, and that was better than anything I've had there. Delicious.
Afterward D-- drove me back to the house, and I put him to work. We dismantled AB's bed (in her room) and the futon (in the old office), and swapped rooms. Then, once the futon was reassembled in the new office, D-- asked about my plans for the eventual layout and immediately suggested we could probably do something better with the bookcases. Turned out he was right, but to prove it we had to go ahead and move the desk, which wasn't really ready for that.
We did it anyway, and once the desk was in place there was clearly enough room beside it to put the bookcases there (on the inside corner instead of the outside one), which freed up the back corner for just the elliptical. There'd been enough room as it was, but it was cramped. This works a lot better.
It meant clearing off the bookcases again, moving them along the wall, and then reloading them. It was also a pretty significant chore to get the elliptical taken apart and moved, and we had to find places for the rest of AB's stuff in our bedroom, to keep the old office clean enough that we can paint it over the weekend.
Anyway, that was my whole evening. I've got all the furniture moved into the new office, though, and I think I'm going to take a stab at wiring it tonight. I had lots of time to think about that while I lay in bed last night, because I couldn't sleep at all. I went to bed at 10:30 and it was after midnight before I fell asleep, and only fitful rest after that. Ugh.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Journal Entry: May 20, 2009
Is it the twentieth already? Ugh.
Yesterday after work I did forty minutes on the elliptical and finished off the first season of Dollhouse, which ended fantastically. I'm really looking forward to seeing where they go with the story (and, in the same vein, really stoked to learn that they are renewing it).
Then after that we had steaks for dinner, and then started the process of moving AB out of her room. We brought all her toys and most of her furniture out of her room and set them up in the back corner of our living room as a temporary play area.
Our goal is to swap the nursery and the library, and put both kids in the larger room. It's a temporary fix, but it should buy us a few years.
Unfortunately, it's no small task. In addition to all the furniture that needs to get moved, the office is done up in my personal color scheme (which is to say, dark), and T-- thinks it would be bad for the children's psyches to grow up that environment, so we get to repaint them to happy meadow green and white. I did a pretty thorough job when I painted it in the first place, so that's a lot of work to take it back.
And, as I implied above, I figure I've only got a few years left of having an office at all, so I'm not going to bother repainting the smaller room. I'll just leave it happy meadow green and hope it doesn't get on my nerves too much when the only light in the room comes from a computer monitor.
We'll have to move the network equipment and fileserver out of the old office closet, to protect it from curious little hands, and we'll need to drop cable and network connections in the new office because there was no need to have them in that room when it was a nursery. That's an unpleasant afternoon's work, but not much more.
Anyway, last night all we did was move AB's toys out to the living room, and then I started the process of condensing my library down from three bookcases to two, because that's all I'll have room for. It wasn't quite as painful as I'd expected it to be, but it's still a bummer.
Of course, by the time I went to bed I was still working out details and planning exactly what needed to be done, and it was hours before I actually fell asleep. That was irritating.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Yesterday after work I did forty minutes on the elliptical and finished off the first season of Dollhouse, which ended fantastically. I'm really looking forward to seeing where they go with the story (and, in the same vein, really stoked to learn that they are renewing it).
Then after that we had steaks for dinner, and then started the process of moving AB out of her room. We brought all her toys and most of her furniture out of her room and set them up in the back corner of our living room as a temporary play area.
Our goal is to swap the nursery and the library, and put both kids in the larger room. It's a temporary fix, but it should buy us a few years.
Unfortunately, it's no small task. In addition to all the furniture that needs to get moved, the office is done up in my personal color scheme (which is to say, dark), and T-- thinks it would be bad for the children's psyches to grow up that environment, so we get to repaint them to happy meadow green and white. I did a pretty thorough job when I painted it in the first place, so that's a lot of work to take it back.
And, as I implied above, I figure I've only got a few years left of having an office at all, so I'm not going to bother repainting the smaller room. I'll just leave it happy meadow green and hope it doesn't get on my nerves too much when the only light in the room comes from a computer monitor.
We'll have to move the network equipment and fileserver out of the old office closet, to protect it from curious little hands, and we'll need to drop cable and network connections in the new office because there was no need to have them in that room when it was a nursery. That's an unpleasant afternoon's work, but not much more.
Anyway, last night all we did was move AB's toys out to the living room, and then I started the process of condensing my library down from three bookcases to two, because that's all I'll have room for. It wasn't quite as painful as I'd expected it to be, but it's still a bummer.
Of course, by the time I went to bed I was still working out details and planning exactly what needed to be done, and it was hours before I actually fell asleep. That was irritating.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Lyrics
Because it's only fair. After all, I did the same for AB:
v.1
A and L and E and X
Alex, Alexander
v.2
X and A-N-D-E-R
Xander, Alexander
v.3
L-E-W-I-S
Lewis, Alexander
v.4
P and O and G-U-E
Pogue, Alexander
refrain
A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R
Alexander
(We'll usually just do verses one and two, but you've got to hit the refrain at the end.)
v.1
A and L and E and X
Alex, Alexander
v.2
X and A-N-D-E-R
Xander, Alexander
v.3
L-E-W-I-S
Lewis, Alexander
v.4
P and O and G-U-E
Pogue, Alexander
refrain
A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R
Alexander
(We'll usually just do verses one and two, but you've got to hit the refrain at the end.)
Journal Entry: May 19, 2009
Yesterday I finally got a Google Profile built for Aaron Pogue. There's a basketball player of the same name who was some sort of phenomenon in high school, so this is the first time typing my name into Google has ever revealed a single result related to me. (I'm right there at the very bottom of the first page, and it's just my Google Profile).
I have grand plans for my personal website, but web design sounds too much like work to me, so I never really get around to it. Still, that's the purpose here. If I ever do get a real website up, I'll need some way to direct people to it rather than sports articles about some high school kid from five years ago.
My evening yesterday was pretty quiet. T-- and AB were at the mall when I got home, so I went ahead and did my workout. By the time I was done, T-- had soft tacos on the table. I mixed up some salsa, we all had a delicious dinner, and then we went for a quick walk through the neighborhood. After that AB went to bed, we watched Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother, and then it was pretty much bed time.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
I have grand plans for my personal website, but web design sounds too much like work to me, so I never really get around to it. Still, that's the purpose here. If I ever do get a real website up, I'll need some way to direct people to it rather than sports articles about some high school kid from five years ago.
My evening yesterday was pretty quiet. T-- and AB were at the mall when I got home, so I went ahead and did my workout. By the time I was done, T-- had soft tacos on the table. I mixed up some salsa, we all had a delicious dinner, and then we went for a quick walk through the neighborhood. After that AB went to bed, we watched Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother, and then it was pretty much bed time.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Journal Entry: May 18, 2009
Thursday
Last Thursday night I came home from work, played with AB a little bit, and then T-- and I settled in to watch the rest of Lost as soon as possible. When that was done we still had The Office and Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to watch, so it was a busy evening and swiftly done.
D-- caught me on Google Chat around nine and suggested we go for a walk, so that kept me up even later. It was worth it, though. We figured out Lost.
Friday
Friday I got to leave work an hour early to pick up T-- and AB for T--'s ultrasound, which was the big one. You've all heard by now, but I learned then that we're expecting a boy. Awesome. As T-- mentioned on her blog, we went out for celebratory ice cream at Freddy's.
Then we had dinner with D-- and K-- and N--, as well as her visiting dad and his wife and...mother-in-law? I think that's right. Anyway, we went to Papa Dio's, a fantastic Italian place right around the corner from our place. The food is incredible there. We all had a great time.
Saturday
Saturday I slept late, and didn't really get cleaned up and going until after ten. Shortly after that Diana showed up to take AB to the zoo so T-- and I could go watch a movie. We went with D-- to see Angels and Demons. I'm not a Tom Hanks fan (unless he's starring opposite a young Meg Ryan or two or three) and I'm not a Dan Brown fan, so my opinion on the movie is heavily biased. But the movie didn't really do anything to change my bias. For what it's worth.
Shortly after the movie B-- and E-- came over to drop off their little one with T-- so the rest of us could go play laser tag. E--'s...umm...sister-in-law's brother (or some such) was in town visiting, and he wanted to get the true American experience. Or E-- just didn't want him to be bored the whole time. Whatever, she came up with plans, and we followed through.
K-- met us there, too, so we had a whole crowd. It was only the second time I'd ever done laser tag (and I don't remember the first time at all, except that it happened), and...not really what I expected. Way more fun. More exhausting, too. We only played one game, and we old men couldn't have done more than that. Out of 34 people, K-- came in second, and E-- seventh. We were quite proud of them. The rest of us landed between 15 and 20.
After that everyone went there separate ways, although D-- came back to our place and bought us pizza. We started Hellboy II (at long last) and got about 30 minutes into it before T-- decided she was ready for bed. I stayed up a while later playing Fallout.
Sunday
Sunday morning I got up and mowed the lawn before church. I also got to deliver a copy of Ghost Targets: Expectation to our preacher, who read and loved Gods Tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some great feedback from him.
T-- and I picked up some fajitas to go from On the Border, for lunch, and then afterward I ran up to the mall to grab some new shorts (and ended up with a full shopping list). When I got home, I helped T-- rearrange some furniture (in preparation for setting up the new nursery), and we were about halfway through with that when B-- showed up for another of E--'s planned activities.
This time it was just B-- and the sister-in-law's brother and D-- and me, but we went to Bricktown to watch a Red Hawks game. That's minor league baseball, in case you don't regularly follow the team. The display of athleticism was pitiful and not worth the price of admission, but the weather was perfect, and it was a nice afternoon out with the guys. Not too shabby.
After that D-- and I ran up to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, since T-- was at Small Groups at the church. When she got home I put AB down to sleep, and then we watched a little TV.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Last Thursday night I came home from work, played with AB a little bit, and then T-- and I settled in to watch the rest of Lost as soon as possible. When that was done we still had The Office and Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to watch, so it was a busy evening and swiftly done.
D-- caught me on Google Chat around nine and suggested we go for a walk, so that kept me up even later. It was worth it, though. We figured out Lost.
Friday
Friday I got to leave work an hour early to pick up T-- and AB for T--'s ultrasound, which was the big one. You've all heard by now, but I learned then that we're expecting a boy. Awesome. As T-- mentioned on her blog, we went out for celebratory ice cream at Freddy's.
Then we had dinner with D-- and K-- and N--, as well as her visiting dad and his wife and...mother-in-law? I think that's right. Anyway, we went to Papa Dio's, a fantastic Italian place right around the corner from our place. The food is incredible there. We all had a great time.
Saturday
Saturday I slept late, and didn't really get cleaned up and going until after ten. Shortly after that Diana showed up to take AB to the zoo so T-- and I could go watch a movie. We went with D-- to see Angels and Demons. I'm not a Tom Hanks fan (unless he's starring opposite a young Meg Ryan or two or three) and I'm not a Dan Brown fan, so my opinion on the movie is heavily biased. But the movie didn't really do anything to change my bias. For what it's worth.
Shortly after the movie B-- and E-- came over to drop off their little one with T-- so the rest of us could go play laser tag. E--'s...umm...sister-in-law's brother (or some such) was in town visiting, and he wanted to get the true American experience. Or E-- just didn't want him to be bored the whole time. Whatever, she came up with plans, and we followed through.
K-- met us there, too, so we had a whole crowd. It was only the second time I'd ever done laser tag (and I don't remember the first time at all, except that it happened), and...not really what I expected. Way more fun. More exhausting, too. We only played one game, and we old men couldn't have done more than that. Out of 34 people, K-- came in second, and E-- seventh. We were quite proud of them. The rest of us landed between 15 and 20.
After that everyone went there separate ways, although D-- came back to our place and bought us pizza. We started Hellboy II (at long last) and got about 30 minutes into it before T-- decided she was ready for bed. I stayed up a while later playing Fallout.
Sunday
Sunday morning I got up and mowed the lawn before church. I also got to deliver a copy of Ghost Targets: Expectation to our preacher, who read and loved Gods Tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some great feedback from him.
T-- and I picked up some fajitas to go from On the Border, for lunch, and then afterward I ran up to the mall to grab some new shorts (and ended up with a full shopping list). When I got home, I helped T-- rearrange some furniture (in preparation for setting up the new nursery), and we were about halfway through with that when B-- showed up for another of E--'s planned activities.
This time it was just B-- and the sister-in-law's brother and D-- and me, but we went to Bricktown to watch a Red Hawks game. That's minor league baseball, in case you don't regularly follow the team. The display of athleticism was pitiful and not worth the price of admission, but the weather was perfect, and it was a nice afternoon out with the guys. Not too shabby.
After that D-- and I ran up to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, since T-- was at Small Groups at the church. When she got home I put AB down to sleep, and then we watched a little TV.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Journal Entry: May 14, 2009
Tuesday night I got home late from work, but I still ended up doing thirty minutes on the elliptical before dinner. D-- came over, and T-- made this peppercorn turkey breast that was phenomenal.
After that we watched the Biggest Loser three-hour season finale (while D-- read a novel and I played the original Fallout), and then it was time for bed.
Yesterday T-- had to work, so AB went to the babysitter's. We have a couple ladies at church who are great with AB and are willing to watch her for free, but the price we end up paying is her missed nap. They have too much fun with her to try to make her go to sleep, so she just spends all afternoon running around and rolling in the dirt.
T-- picked her up and had her home by 5:00 and she put her down for a quick nap before church, but when she tried waking her up at 5:45 to get ready for dinner, the girl threw an almighty fit. It was crazy. She's always cranky when she wakes up mid-nap, but this was nuts. T-- ended up putting her back in bed, and I went to dinner without them.
I met D-- and K-- and N-- at Qdoba, and D-- and K-- ended up spending most of the time talking about work stuff. That gave me a few minutes to get caught up with N--, which was nice.
While we were there, we started watching the severe weather coverage on the TVs, and by the time D-- and I got back to the house it was pretty clearly Lost was gonna get preempted. We held out hope anyway.
With the same level of faith, K-- and N-- came by after church, and when we switched to the show (after AB went to bed a little early), it was actually on. They saved the weather reports for the commercial breaks, and opened them all with, "Don't worry, you're not missing any Lost." It was a two-hour season finale, and we were an hour and twenty-eight minutes into it when I guess they found some rotation or maybe it was because the metro area was threatened, but they finally decided we could just miss Lost after all. So we saw a chunk of it, but didn't actually get up to the Incident. Lame!
We watched the actual weather for another half hour or so, and saw the tornadic system split in two and neatly dodge Edmond and northwest OKC. Nice that. The winds we got yesterday were crazy anyway, though -- there's limbs and trees down all over our neighborhood, and one neighbor ended up with a whole tree toppled out of his front yard and right across the drive. Nasty stuff.
Anyway, no actual damage at our place, and apart from the disappointment of missing the end of the show, things are going pretty well.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
After that we watched the Biggest Loser three-hour season finale (while D-- read a novel and I played the original Fallout), and then it was time for bed.
Yesterday T-- had to work, so AB went to the babysitter's. We have a couple ladies at church who are great with AB and are willing to watch her for free, but the price we end up paying is her missed nap. They have too much fun with her to try to make her go to sleep, so she just spends all afternoon running around and rolling in the dirt.
T-- picked her up and had her home by 5:00 and she put her down for a quick nap before church, but when she tried waking her up at 5:45 to get ready for dinner, the girl threw an almighty fit. It was crazy. She's always cranky when she wakes up mid-nap, but this was nuts. T-- ended up putting her back in bed, and I went to dinner without them.
I met D-- and K-- and N-- at Qdoba, and D-- and K-- ended up spending most of the time talking about work stuff. That gave me a few minutes to get caught up with N--, which was nice.
While we were there, we started watching the severe weather coverage on the TVs, and by the time D-- and I got back to the house it was pretty clearly Lost was gonna get preempted. We held out hope anyway.
With the same level of faith, K-- and N-- came by after church, and when we switched to the show (after AB went to bed a little early), it was actually on. They saved the weather reports for the commercial breaks, and opened them all with, "Don't worry, you're not missing any Lost." It was a two-hour season finale, and we were an hour and twenty-eight minutes into it when I guess they found some rotation or maybe it was because the metro area was threatened, but they finally decided we could just miss Lost after all. So we saw a chunk of it, but didn't actually get up to the Incident. Lame!
We watched the actual weather for another half hour or so, and saw the tornadic system split in two and neatly dodge Edmond and northwest OKC. Nice that. The winds we got yesterday were crazy anyway, though -- there's limbs and trees down all over our neighborhood, and one neighbor ended up with a whole tree toppled out of his front yard and right across the drive. Nasty stuff.
Anyway, no actual damage at our place, and apart from the disappointment of missing the end of the show, things are going pretty well.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Journal Entry: May 12, 2009
Sunday morning, I woke up early enough to have a delicious breakfast and then write a rather extensive blog post before rushing off to church with T--'s family.
Afterward we celebrated Mother's Day with the whole clan by throwing a cookout at her parents' place. The men provided and prepared the food. For me, that consisted of buying a couple bags of chips and some soda. To legitimize the process a bit, I let AB choose the chips.
Anyway, the party lasted a couple hours and then people started slipping away. Around 3:00, when the house was finally empty, we put AB down for a nap and then left her in her grandparents' care while T-- and I headed up to the mall.
I'd bought her some clothes for Mother's Day and, of course, got the wrong size. Further, the place I got them from (Motherhood Maternity or something along those lines) has a demonically brutal return policy, so instead of a present I basically got her an errand. We turned it into a positive, though, by taking the afternoon for some shopping time together. We ended up a Town West mall which was a real blast from the past. (For me it was the first time since high school.)
Then we picked up a Papa Murphey's pizza on the way home, had that for dinner, and headed back to OKC around seven. That put us in a little after nine, and by the time we got AB in bed and all our stuff in from the car, we basically had time to watch an episode of Scrubs before going to bed. We ended up watching three.
Monday morning I woke up sore again, and when I got home from work I decided to try a different tack. I spent forty minutes on the elliptical machine -- no resistance, and at a relatively slow pace -- and when I was done I felt better than I had in days. Then I spent several hours folded into the couch, working on my laptop while we watched Monday night television, so I did another ten minutes before I went to bed. Today I woke up feeling a lot better. So that's promising.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Afterward we celebrated Mother's Day with the whole clan by throwing a cookout at her parents' place. The men provided and prepared the food. For me, that consisted of buying a couple bags of chips and some soda. To legitimize the process a bit, I let AB choose the chips.
Anyway, the party lasted a couple hours and then people started slipping away. Around 3:00, when the house was finally empty, we put AB down for a nap and then left her in her grandparents' care while T-- and I headed up to the mall.
I'd bought her some clothes for Mother's Day and, of course, got the wrong size. Further, the place I got them from (Motherhood Maternity or something along those lines) has a demonically brutal return policy, so instead of a present I basically got her an errand. We turned it into a positive, though, by taking the afternoon for some shopping time together. We ended up a Town West mall which was a real blast from the past. (For me it was the first time since high school.)
Then we picked up a Papa Murphey's pizza on the way home, had that for dinner, and headed back to OKC around seven. That put us in a little after nine, and by the time we got AB in bed and all our stuff in from the car, we basically had time to watch an episode of Scrubs before going to bed. We ended up watching three.
Monday morning I woke up sore again, and when I got home from work I decided to try a different tack. I spent forty minutes on the elliptical machine -- no resistance, and at a relatively slow pace -- and when I was done I felt better than I had in days. Then I spent several hours folded into the couch, working on my laptop while we watched Monday night television, so I did another ten minutes before I went to bed. Today I woke up feeling a lot better. So that's promising.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Journal Entry: May 10, 2009
Friday
Last Friday (the first of the month), after work, T-- went out shopping for the evening with Diana, leaving me to watch AB. I ended up taking her to the mall for dinner in the Food Court. N-- met me there and helped me find a Mother's Day present for T--. In the process, I got to see what it's like to try to run errands with a child in tow. It wasn't actually as bad as I would have guessed.
I got home from that eight-ish, and D-- called to see if I was free to go out later. T-- showed up right after that called and confirmed that I was, so around 9:30 D-- swung by and picked me up. We checked on a couple coffee shops but they were closed, discussed a couple different bars, and ended up going to On the Border. We sat in the bar, finished a pitcher of sangria and two or three bowls of chips, and ended up taking home a bag full of leftovers somehow. Chips, salsa, queso, tortillas.... We think maybe the waitress had a crush on D--.
Saturday
Saturday morning T-- got up early and took AB out garage saling, so I took the time to get some work done. I mowed the lawn and put down some weed killer, got a couple old Wal-Mart bags out of a tree in the front yard, cleaned up the house some, and even did a little writing. Then I got cleaned up in time to meet T-- and AB at IHOP for lunch.
After lunch was my niece Lola's birthday party -- a tea party at my sister's house -- and I'd received conflicting reports concerning whether or not boys were supposed to be there, so I picked the most self-serving option and skipped it. D-- and I went to see Wolverine instead, which turned out to be a chick flick, somehow. So there really were no winners.
My grandma and my aunt Darla's family came up from Dallas for the party, so after the movie we all went out to dinner at Ole. It was excellent fun. Sometime in the afternoon T-- had mentioned that we really needed to watch Quantum of Solace (she and I hadn't seen it yet), and then when we mentioned that at dinner my brother-in-law said he hadn't seen it, either. Or 300. Or Transformers. We were aghast, so I told my sister her husband was going to spend the evening at my place.
We watched the Bond flick, and then T-- went to bed. Then we put in Transformers and I was yawning before the end of that one so I ended up going to bed, but D-- and Jeff stayed up to watch 300. Good for them.
Sunday
Sunday morning we had church, and then headed up to Jason's Deli to meet N-- and K-- for lunch. After that I took the girls home, then headed back to Edmond to play some Demigod with K--. Two hours disappeared like that, and then I headed back home in time to have dinner with T--. We had a pretty quiet evening, playing Hi-Ho Cherry-oh with AB and then watching TV after she went to bed.
Monday
N-- went back to work on Monday, and T-- got to watch Jason for the afternoon. She also made up a delicious pot roast and tempted N-- and K-- to come over for dinner. After they left we moved to the living room to watch our Monday night shows (only comedies left now, and it looks like tomorrow might be the finales of those). I brought my laptop out of the office to work while we watched, and finally got started recovering my documents folders.
Before the robbery I'd had all my active writing projects divided unevenly across two working directories -- one on my computer at work (which I'd brought with me from Lowrance, where I did a lot of creative writing at the office), and the other on my computer at home. There was a lot of overlap between the two folders, but they were nowhere close to synced. On top of that, I've been doing more and more work on Google Docs lately, which is not reflected in either folder (but, also, was not lost in the robbery).
Anyway, my backups consisted of a three-month-old backup of my folder at work, and some CDs that contained 3-, 5-, and 6-year-old backups of my home folders. Again, there was some overlap but it wasn't identical.
So I started the process of reducing this massive piles of documents down to only the most recent version of each document. I went through my novels first, gathering them into project folders by series and novel, but I haven't even begun the process of comparing individual files there. Then I went through my academic papers (only about 30-40 of those), and got those cleaned up.
Then I started working on my poetry, and ended up spending all of last week on that project. I had 160-something poems, but they were scattered (and frequently duplicated) across nearly 200 files, many of which were collections of several poems at once. To clarify the collection at the expense of a little extra effort, I decided to break them all out into individual files, again saving only the best version of each. That meant a lot of comparing documents. I also decided to make the styles consistent across all the documents and label each one according to the oldest date I knew it had existed (which mostly meant going off the Last Modified date on the big collection files, so it looks like I wrote several dozen poems on 13 January 1998 and a couple dozen more on 1 August 2002, but whatever).
Anyway, I started that process Monday night.
Tuesday
Tuesday T-- got to babysit baby Jason again, and I got to go to work again. Yay! But while I was at work I got an email from Dr. Agan, one of my professors at OC, saying that she had sent off my recommendation letter to OU and, oh, by the way, would I be willing to teach Technical Writing at OC in the fall.
That's a big deal. T-- was incredibly excited for me, as were most of the people I told about it. D-- said it sounded like too big of a time commitment, especially with me going to school in the fall (and he's not wrong), and B-- said it sounded like a miserable experience for someone with social anxiety (and he's not wrong), but I think in the end I'm going to do it. We need the money, it'll look great on a resume, and I'll have a lot of support from my old Tech Writing professor, who goes to church with us. She also mentioned that I can make it a half-classroom half-online course, so that cuts the time investment considerably. I'll have a lot of work to do at home, but I can handle that. It was the extra hours out of my evenings I was really worried about.
Wednesday
Wednesday night we tried to go to KFC to get Oprah's free chicken (or something), but everyone in the world did the same thing so we ended up going across the street and getting Popeye's you-have-to-pay-for-it-but-at-least-you'll-get-it-in-the-next-two-hours chicken. We met D-- and N-- and K-- there, then I went to church (for a change) so I could meet with Gail Nash (my old Tech Writing prof) and learn what I told you in the last paragraph.
After that K-- and N-- came over to watch Lost which, for various reasons, took us almost three hours to accomplish. It was a good one, though.
Thursday
Thursday night, I think we watched some TV and I worked on my poetry. I don't remember anything exciting.
Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I'd promised T-- I would watch AB in the afternoon so T-- could get a haircut. Once again she woke up early and took AB out garage saling so once again I got up and mowed the lawn. I also cleaned out the closet in my office because we're going to be switching the office and baby's room soon, and I did some work in the garage, too.
Then T-- called to say she'd lost track of time and wouldn't be home before her haircut. She was in Edmond so she dropped AB at my sister's place, and I got an afternoon off. I spent it working on my poetry (and finished up that project), and doing a little writing.
Then T-- got home and put AB down for a nap, and a few minutes later K-- showed (that'd be around 3:00), to take me to the theater.
We had plans to go see Star Trek for K--'s birthday, and it being opening day decided we needed to be there early. K-- and I went to save spots in line (T-- and N-- and B-- showed up in time for the movie), and we ended up getting there way too early. We'd brought our laptops with us, though, and we set up an ad-hoc network and spent the time playing Demigod. It was fun. There was a little initial concern about how much we'd look like dorks, but come on, we were waiting in line for the Star Trek movie. That ship had already sailed.
The movie was fantastic. Of Star Trek, I've only ever seen Generations and First Contact. Maybe (maybe) two or three episodes total of any of the series, ever. So, yeah, I came to it new. The movie was good enough that I'm thinking of finally watching some of the shows. We'll see.
After the movie everybody headed home (it was already after nine, after all), but I stuck to my recent pattern of doing way too much on weekends and went over to B--'s place. I caught up with B-- and E--, telling them all about my teaching opportunity, and then we watched Comedy Central's roast of William Shatner. That was some funny stuff.
Saturday
Saturday morning I had to wake up early so we could pack the car and head to Wichita. We're there, now, to celebrate Mother's Day. I spent most of Saturday laid-up with back pain, but John and I took AB out to dinner at Chili's in the evening, then after we came back John ran out to rent one of the old Star Trek movies on essentially the same principle that led us to having Jeff over last weekend. Unfortunately they didn't have Kahn or the one with the whales, so he grabbed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Ummm....
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Last Friday (the first of the month), after work, T-- went out shopping for the evening with Diana, leaving me to watch AB. I ended up taking her to the mall for dinner in the Food Court. N-- met me there and helped me find a Mother's Day present for T--. In the process, I got to see what it's like to try to run errands with a child in tow. It wasn't actually as bad as I would have guessed.
I got home from that eight-ish, and D-- called to see if I was free to go out later. T-- showed up right after that called and confirmed that I was, so around 9:30 D-- swung by and picked me up. We checked on a couple coffee shops but they were closed, discussed a couple different bars, and ended up going to On the Border. We sat in the bar, finished a pitcher of sangria and two or three bowls of chips, and ended up taking home a bag full of leftovers somehow. Chips, salsa, queso, tortillas.... We think maybe the waitress had a crush on D--.
Saturday
Saturday morning T-- got up early and took AB out garage saling, so I took the time to get some work done. I mowed the lawn and put down some weed killer, got a couple old Wal-Mart bags out of a tree in the front yard, cleaned up the house some, and even did a little writing. Then I got cleaned up in time to meet T-- and AB at IHOP for lunch.
After lunch was my niece Lola's birthday party -- a tea party at my sister's house -- and I'd received conflicting reports concerning whether or not boys were supposed to be there, so I picked the most self-serving option and skipped it. D-- and I went to see Wolverine instead, which turned out to be a chick flick, somehow. So there really were no winners.
My grandma and my aunt Darla's family came up from Dallas for the party, so after the movie we all went out to dinner at Ole. It was excellent fun. Sometime in the afternoon T-- had mentioned that we really needed to watch Quantum of Solace (she and I hadn't seen it yet), and then when we mentioned that at dinner my brother-in-law said he hadn't seen it, either. Or 300. Or Transformers. We were aghast, so I told my sister her husband was going to spend the evening at my place.
We watched the Bond flick, and then T-- went to bed. Then we put in Transformers and I was yawning before the end of that one so I ended up going to bed, but D-- and Jeff stayed up to watch 300. Good for them.
Sunday
Sunday morning we had church, and then headed up to Jason's Deli to meet N-- and K-- for lunch. After that I took the girls home, then headed back to Edmond to play some Demigod with K--. Two hours disappeared like that, and then I headed back home in time to have dinner with T--. We had a pretty quiet evening, playing Hi-Ho Cherry-oh with AB and then watching TV after she went to bed.
Monday
N-- went back to work on Monday, and T-- got to watch Jason for the afternoon. She also made up a delicious pot roast and tempted N-- and K-- to come over for dinner. After they left we moved to the living room to watch our Monday night shows (only comedies left now, and it looks like tomorrow might be the finales of those). I brought my laptop out of the office to work while we watched, and finally got started recovering my documents folders.
Before the robbery I'd had all my active writing projects divided unevenly across two working directories -- one on my computer at work (which I'd brought with me from Lowrance, where I did a lot of creative writing at the office), and the other on my computer at home. There was a lot of overlap between the two folders, but they were nowhere close to synced. On top of that, I've been doing more and more work on Google Docs lately, which is not reflected in either folder (but, also, was not lost in the robbery).
Anyway, my backups consisted of a three-month-old backup of my folder at work, and some CDs that contained 3-, 5-, and 6-year-old backups of my home folders. Again, there was some overlap but it wasn't identical.
So I started the process of reducing this massive piles of documents down to only the most recent version of each document. I went through my novels first, gathering them into project folders by series and novel, but I haven't even begun the process of comparing individual files there. Then I went through my academic papers (only about 30-40 of those), and got those cleaned up.
Then I started working on my poetry, and ended up spending all of last week on that project. I had 160-something poems, but they were scattered (and frequently duplicated) across nearly 200 files, many of which were collections of several poems at once. To clarify the collection at the expense of a little extra effort, I decided to break them all out into individual files, again saving only the best version of each. That meant a lot of comparing documents. I also decided to make the styles consistent across all the documents and label each one according to the oldest date I knew it had existed (which mostly meant going off the Last Modified date on the big collection files, so it looks like I wrote several dozen poems on 13 January 1998 and a couple dozen more on 1 August 2002, but whatever).
Anyway, I started that process Monday night.
Tuesday
Tuesday T-- got to babysit baby Jason again, and I got to go to work again. Yay! But while I was at work I got an email from Dr. Agan, one of my professors at OC, saying that she had sent off my recommendation letter to OU and, oh, by the way, would I be willing to teach Technical Writing at OC in the fall.
That's a big deal. T-- was incredibly excited for me, as were most of the people I told about it. D-- said it sounded like too big of a time commitment, especially with me going to school in the fall (and he's not wrong), and B-- said it sounded like a miserable experience for someone with social anxiety (and he's not wrong), but I think in the end I'm going to do it. We need the money, it'll look great on a resume, and I'll have a lot of support from my old Tech Writing professor, who goes to church with us. She also mentioned that I can make it a half-classroom half-online course, so that cuts the time investment considerably. I'll have a lot of work to do at home, but I can handle that. It was the extra hours out of my evenings I was really worried about.
Wednesday
Wednesday night we tried to go to KFC to get Oprah's free chicken (or something), but everyone in the world did the same thing so we ended up going across the street and getting Popeye's you-have-to-pay-for-it-but-at-least-you'll-get-it-in-the-next-two-hours chicken. We met D-- and N-- and K-- there, then I went to church (for a change) so I could meet with Gail Nash (my old Tech Writing prof) and learn what I told you in the last paragraph.
After that K-- and N-- came over to watch Lost which, for various reasons, took us almost three hours to accomplish. It was a good one, though.
Thursday
Thursday night, I think we watched some TV and I worked on my poetry. I don't remember anything exciting.
Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I'd promised T-- I would watch AB in the afternoon so T-- could get a haircut. Once again she woke up early and took AB out garage saling so once again I got up and mowed the lawn. I also cleaned out the closet in my office because we're going to be switching the office and baby's room soon, and I did some work in the garage, too.
Then T-- called to say she'd lost track of time and wouldn't be home before her haircut. She was in Edmond so she dropped AB at my sister's place, and I got an afternoon off. I spent it working on my poetry (and finished up that project), and doing a little writing.
Then T-- got home and put AB down for a nap, and a few minutes later K-- showed (that'd be around 3:00), to take me to the theater.
We had plans to go see Star Trek for K--'s birthday, and it being opening day decided we needed to be there early. K-- and I went to save spots in line (T-- and N-- and B-- showed up in time for the movie), and we ended up getting there way too early. We'd brought our laptops with us, though, and we set up an ad-hoc network and spent the time playing Demigod. It was fun. There was a little initial concern about how much we'd look like dorks, but come on, we were waiting in line for the Star Trek movie. That ship had already sailed.
The movie was fantastic. Of Star Trek, I've only ever seen Generations and First Contact. Maybe (maybe) two or three episodes total of any of the series, ever. So, yeah, I came to it new. The movie was good enough that I'm thinking of finally watching some of the shows. We'll see.
After the movie everybody headed home (it was already after nine, after all), but I stuck to my recent pattern of doing way too much on weekends and went over to B--'s place. I caught up with B-- and E--, telling them all about my teaching opportunity, and then we watched Comedy Central's roast of William Shatner. That was some funny stuff.
Saturday
Saturday morning I had to wake up early so we could pack the car and head to Wichita. We're there, now, to celebrate Mother's Day. I spent most of Saturday laid-up with back pain, but John and I took AB out to dinner at Chili's in the evening, then after we came back John ran out to rent one of the old Star Trek movies on essentially the same principle that led us to having Jeff over last weekend. Unfortunately they didn't have Kahn or the one with the whales, so he grabbed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Ummm....
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Journal Entry: May 1, 2009
Tuesday T-- made enchiladas, D-- came over for dinner, and we watched TV while I played Demigod. The end.
Wednesday, D-- came over right after work to babysit AB for the evening so T-- and I could go out on a date. We've started something of a ritual of going out to dinner whenever I finish a novel (and she finishes reading it), so she can give me her full feedback and I can ask any pressing questions I have (such as, for instance, "Is it any good?"). That's always a lot of fun, and this week's was no exception. We went to Texas Roadhouse and talked about GT: Expectation.
Then after that we went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art to check out the openings of a couple exhibits. One featured Oklahoma modernist architecture, and the other was a collection of original prints (woodcuts, lithographs, that style of thing) from nineteenth-century France. That was pretty cool.
We also wandered upstairs after checking out the exhibits to stroll through the permanent collection again, and ended up spending some time on a couple medieval maps from France and the Netherlands. Cool stuff.
We got home in time to watch Lost with D--. It was awesome. And then it was bedtime.
Yesterday T-- had to go work in Tulsa and I had to stay late at work, so we had a competition to see who could get home latest. I won. Or lost. Whatever. We had leftovers for dinner, watched some Thursday-night TV, and then I headed to the office to spend my writing time working on a programming project. It was fun.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
Wednesday, D-- came over right after work to babysit AB for the evening so T-- and I could go out on a date. We've started something of a ritual of going out to dinner whenever I finish a novel (and she finishes reading it), so she can give me her full feedback and I can ask any pressing questions I have (such as, for instance, "Is it any good?"). That's always a lot of fun, and this week's was no exception. We went to Texas Roadhouse and talked about GT: Expectation.
Then after that we went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art to check out the openings of a couple exhibits. One featured Oklahoma modernist architecture, and the other was a collection of original prints (woodcuts, lithographs, that style of thing) from nineteenth-century France. That was pretty cool.
We also wandered upstairs after checking out the exhibits to stroll through the permanent collection again, and ended up spending some time on a couple medieval maps from France and the Netherlands. Cool stuff.
We got home in time to watch Lost with D--. It was awesome. And then it was bedtime.
Yesterday T-- had to go work in Tulsa and I had to stay late at work, so we had a competition to see who could get home latest. I won. Or lost. Whatever. We had leftovers for dinner, watched some Thursday-night TV, and then I headed to the office to spend my writing time working on a programming project. It was fun.
Other than that, it's just things and stuff.
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