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.
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