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Friday, October 5th
Friday night, I’d agreed to watch AB so that T– could go do some scrapbooking with her friend. Said friend ended up changing plans a little, but T– still went out to see a movie, and I had the baby for a few hours.

D– came over to help out, and brought his new XBox. B– and E– came by, and mostly they watched me set up the XBox, because I didn’t have the necessary cables in place and my TV is a monster. So, I’m sure that was a lot of fun for them. It was fun having them around, too.

We tried to convince K– to come join us, but N–‘s family was in town, and he chose to be a good husband. Good for him! The bastard….

Anyway, D– and I played for several hours, which was a lot of fun, then he left to go visit his grandma in…I dunno, starts with “Chick,” but I’m not sure how it’s spelled after that. Some place boring, anyway.

Saturday, October 6th
Saturday, of course, was the OU/Texas game. N–‘s visiting family happened to be from Texas, and big Texas fans, so that added some drama to the day. We went over there to watch the game, and they made a big party of it. K– cooked up some awesome hamburgers and hotdogs. T– provided some bacon-wrapped cheese-stuffed jalapenos that, by all accounts, were delicious. Everyone brought something, and everybody had a good time.

Of course, the Sooners trounced. Fun times.

Then we all split up for the evening, and I was doing some work in my office when I got a call from D– saying that USC had lost its game, and LSU was looking questionable. That was almost as exciting as the OU game, because it put them back into contention for the national title. Whoop! OU is now ranked four spots above USC, if I remember correctly.

Seriously. I hate those guys!

Sunday, October 7th
Sunday afternoon, we met with my high school friends Joe and Liz. I got back in touch with Joe through MySpace, and then learned that Liz was living down here in OKC. Anyway, Joe was down for a birthday party this weekend, so we got together. AB’s schedule kept it from being overly long, but it was still nice to get together and get caught up some.

Some of you think I’m lying right now, because I’m not the social guy. Oh, and we met at the park near our house, so that just seals it, because I’m really not the outdoors guy. But it was good. Definitely good.

Anyway, after that we watched the first couple episodes of Chuck (fantastic show, by the way — you must watch it), and then went over to K– and N–‘s for leftover burgers and hotdogs, and to watch Stargate Atlantis. That was fun. We got home late-ish, and T– and the baby went to bed. I stayed up late playing Heroes, because Monday was a federal holiday.

Monday, October 8th
Of course, I’d agreed to spend Monday watching AB so T– could go to Tulsa for work, so I ended up severely regretting that decision.

On the whole, AB was good, but do you remember what I was saying last Friday about turn-based games? Watching a baby is exactly like that. There so many things you have to get done, and their schedule is so rigidly defined, that you’re just constantly completing some strategy and making arrangements to complete another one, and before you know it, nine hours have disappeared.

That was basically my day. I did finish a ton of homework for our class, mostly while the baby was crawling around the kitchen floor, and watched Knocked Up, which is an awesome movie. Just incredibly raunchy, but awesome. It’s like Keeping the Faith for the married people.

Oh, I also did four loads of laundry.

Then T– got home around 6:00 and brought a pizza with her, and I spent an hour catching her up on everything AB had done during the day before heading over to K– and N–‘s to watch the Cowboys game. At the last minute, B– called to invite me to watch it with them, and I so wish I could have, but I felt like I’d already made a commitment.

And, of course, knowing what I know now (sorry, B–), there’s no way in hell I would’ve done that. The game was not at all what we expected, going into it. If you care at all, you’ve probably already heard, and I’m not going to go into the details here, but it was the most exciting last two minutes I’ve ever seen in a football game.

B–‘s DVR stopped recording with 6 minutes left in the game. Poor guy. I can’t even imagine the rage.

Anyway, yeah, awesome game. Unbelievable, and a really good time in spite of all our mistakes. It was fun. I got home around midnight, and crashed.

Tuesday, October 9th
Last night, then, was considerably quieter. After a long day of work, T– made me a quick sandwich before we headed off to our marriage seminar. Class went pretty well, we had excellent snacks (peanut-butter-infused fudge brownies and home-made vanilla ice cream), and then K– and N– came over to watch Heroes with us.

At the house, D–‘s mom and grandma were there, visiting. And they were at our house, as you probably know, because D– was watching the baby. They told us what a doll she’d been and we all visited for a while, then they headed out and we watched that Heroes episode.

That’s enough to catch us up to today. Sounds like we’ll probably be paying a visit to B– and E– tonight, assuming we’re invited, but other than that I don’t see it being a very dramatic evening. We’ll probably watch the third episode of Chuck. I might mow. We’ll just have to see where the evening takes us.

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Journal Entry

Meanwhile, our heroes….

Ugh. I thought I was two or three days late on posting. Maybe four. But no. It’s worse than that.

I have a sore ankle tonight. That’s why I’m not walking right now. Not sure how it happened, but I noticed it walking out to my car after work today.

Work? Work has been awful this week. I’m in all-day meetings all week. Monday I had free (no meetings, that is — I still had to work a nine-hour day), and Friday I have free free. It’s my RDO. It comes on the Friday before a Monday holiday, too, so I’m looking at a four-day weekend (Kris’s dinnertime request notwithstanding).

Anyway. Last weekend was a lot of fun. I’m trying to remember back that far. I don’t really know what happened last week. I finished reading Calvin and Hobbes, I know that for a fact. And then…I dunno, I had pretty short evenings. I don’t remember if I was feeling tired, or if I was busy. Oh! I did play some WoW with Mom and Dad. Most of Tuesday night and most of Thursday, too.

Then Friday night I’d set aside to go help B– drown his sorrows in some of his expensive whiskey, but he ended up taking a nap or something, so I watched some TV with T– and then went over to D–‘s to check out some cool new video game he’d gotten.

Then Saturday I helped T– with some chores in the morning, then went over to K– and N–‘s for the afternoon while T– took AB to one of her Saturday crops. I introduced K– to my favorite new game, Overlord, and watched him play for five hours or so. It’s that sort of a game. It’s fun and funny. Apparently at some point it gets challenging, but I’m not really there yet. It’s quite unique, though, and I enjoy that.

Then at 6:00 we headed to B– and E–‘s for their long-awaited housewarming party! It was worth the wait, too. I may have mentioned before, but they have done a TON of work on their house since they got it. N– mentioned that she was jealous of it. I can’t blame her. They’ve made a really cool home.

E– decided to pick up some meat for the guys to grill (we made it a team effort, too, all four of us out on the patio giving B– instructions). So we had hamburgers and hotdogs and chicken and all manner of grilled vegetables. There were also two cheesecakes courtesy N–, and chardonnay champagne to boot. We all had a really good time, got thoroughly smashed, and discussed very private matters in a public sort of way, into the wee hours of the morning.

Sunday, somehow, I made it to church. Got three pages of “Royal Holiday” written during the sermon, then picked up D– for some lunch at Schlotzky’s. He’d left his car at B–‘s place (N– drove us all home), so he needed a ride to pick it up. We took him to lunch, then came back to the house to pack up a few baby things that we’re loaning to B– and E–, and then we went over there (and, yeah, woke B– up for our short visit). I introduced HIM to Overlord, too, and dropped off the stuff, and we chatted for a bit before he chased us out of his house so he could get back to sleep.

That evening, we met K– and N– for dinner at Casablanca American Grill, a new-ish restaurant here in town, and had some delicious dinner. I’d been meaning to take T– on a date, and she picked the place. I had my filet mignon for the year, and it was well worth it. Yumm.

Afterward, we went to their place to watch some Psych, and then finally got home 9-ish. I don’t remember if I walked or not. For most of the last week, I didn’t.

Monday, I spent most of the day honing my programming skills. Specifically, I wrote a script to cheat at a really cheesy, free, multiplayer web-based flash game that I’d encountered while at work on the previous Friday. Over the weekend, K– and I were discussing that “we” had figured out how to control HTML objects from within a Python script, and I was forced to point out that it was all him.

So I took some of his sample code on Monday, read through it and modified it until I understood what was going on, and used this cheesy little online game as a project to learn through. It’s been a blazing success, too. I’m tearing up. I’m more excited about the skills I picked up, though. Web-manipulation through Python is terribly useful. If you can’t immediately guess why, you’ll probably just have to trust me on that.

Monday night, T– didn’t feel like cooking and I didn’t feel like eating leftovers. I suggested P. F. Chang’s. She went out and picked up a cheap but amazingly good pizza from Mazzio’s for dinner. It was good. Sometime later, D– and I went for a walk together.

Tuesday, yesterday, was my first all-day meeting. It was just awful. Basically, it has nothing to do with me, so I have to just sit in the meeting all day, nine hours straight (with a thirty-minute lunch break in the middle), and listen to engineers argue about things that aren’t going to change. About a year from now I’ll be responsible for maintaining the documentation that will be generated after this meeting is over, but I can tell you for a fact that almost nothing discussed in these meetings will have any impact on the product I receive. Ugh.

So, yeah, I didn’t enjoy yesterday at work, or today, and I won’t enjoy tomorrow. But I get Friday off. So that’s good.

Yesterday I came home in a bad mood, and T– asked me why, and I told her all about my meeting and then I felt a little better. Then I played with AB for a while, and she giggled for me (finally), and then I felt a little better. Then D– came over and we finally had a leftovers night, finishing off some of the food in our fridge (which was way better than “leftovers night” makes it sound). D– had hurt his knee somehow, so he skipped out on our walk, so I went to the office to pay our bills and play Overlord instead of going by myself.

Then today, well, same as yesterday at work, but about halfway through the day I decided what I wanted to do for dinner. We often get together with K– and N– (and usually D–, too) for Wednesday night dinners, because K– and N– go to the church right next to our house, so it’s convenient. But, we have to find somewhere pretty quick and pretty close, because the earliest they can get over to this part of town is 5:45, and church is at 7:00. We’ve generally gone somewhere Mexican.

But, as I may have said more than once, I’ve been craving Changs for a week, so when I got out of meetings at 4:40 today I called everyone involved (including B– and E–, but B–‘s in Dallas for some reason, so couldn’t make it), and told them instead of going to some Mexican place, they should head to my house. Then I went and picked up a bunch of Changs and brought it back to the house for everybody. The timing was almost perfect, and the food was SO good. Then I prevailed upon all to hang out at my place and watch a movie (Blades of Glory), which turned out to be hugely fun. We laughed and had a good time.

So…yeah, today has been a really good day. Really, all week I’ve managed to have good enough evenings to make up for just awful days. Tomorrow’s looking encouraging, too, because there’s a Cowboys/Vikings preseason game, and then no work to follow. If I can just make it through the day, I’ll be in really good shape.

Anyway, sorry for the long silence. I hope everyone’s doing well. I’m off to kill a few unicorns, and then I’m heading to bed.

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Journal Entry

I don’t know why I have so much trouble updating over the weekend. Maybe it feels like work, and I’m just convinced I shouldn’t have to work on weekends (in spite of much evidence to the contrary). Anyway, here’s the weekend’s posts.

Friday, August 17th
Friday was my RDO. I planned to take full advantage of that (read: sleeping in), but somehow didn’t. I stayed up late Thursday night (probably playing Civ, but I don’t remember for sure), then woke up around 9:00 on Friday morning. So, yeah, technically I slept in (I normally wake up at 6:00 for work), but when I think “sleep in,” I’m thinking noon. It’s not a non-specific designation, as far as I’m concerned. It means “not waking up in the ante meridian,” plain and simple.

Anyway, yeah, woke up at nine, and I was kinda thinking that if I helped T– out with some housework on Friday, good karma would kick in and I wouldn’t have to do any chores for the rest of the weekend. So I vacuumed the whole house before T– got home from walking AB, and then I took out all the trash (including the diaper pail, so that actually counts). After that, I did nothing useful for the rest of the day, so karma didn’t really take me all that seriously.

I’m really not sure what I did with my afternoon. I read some and did some stuff on the computer, and played with the baby and talked with T–, and the day just sort of melted away. It was a pleasant one, though. T– made some really good sandwiches for lunch, and we already had plans in the works for pizza for dinner. She’d been seeing tantalizing ads on TV all week, so how could we resist?

So, when evening finally rolled around, we ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut and tried to watch a movie. The guy at Blockbuster really recommended I Think I Love My Wife as a hilarious comedy, but ten minutes in we decided to turn it off. It wasn’t funny. Have you ever seen Bye Bye Love, with Paul Reiser? Yeah.

So we turned that off, and started Wild Hogs, and then heard back from B– and E– who we’d invited over (and who sounded like they were having a real hell of a day), and it turned out they could come over after all (yay!), and seconds after that phone call the XBox glitched (that’s our story), and instead of resuming the movie where we were, we waited for B– and E– to get there and we started it over.

D– saw it a long time before we did, and said it was mostly hilarious to middle-aged people. While we were watching it, about a third of the way in, B– said, “So, this is basically City Slickers, no?” Basically, yes. It was good though. Easy fun. Easy laughs. We had a good time, and then we talked for a long time before they headed home. It was a fun night. I love it when those two can come over.

After that…well, I went to my office to play Civ, and T– went to bed.

Saturday, August 18th
AB turned six months old. We didn’t have a party or anything, but the fact got mentioned more than once this weekend, so I’ll throw it in. A short paragraph doesn’t really cost me anything.

Saturday morning I woke up je ne said quand, and pretty much immediately headed outside to mow. At that point, it was eight days since I’d mowed last, and such dry days that I was thinking I could probably skip it, but I had the whole day free so I might as well get it done. Ten minutes in, I felt a couple sprinkles and thought maybe I should quit. It didn’t rain, though. It was brutally muggy, but it didn’t rain. Not while I was mowing.

A little later, I got cleaned up and then when I came into the living room (10-ish), T– suggested that we invite K– and N– over for lunch. That sounded fun, and we ended up eating with them around noon and socializing until two-ish, then they went home to take care of some stuff before coming back a little before five. I probably spent the whole afternoon on the computer, though I may have read some.

At some point in there it started raining, full-on storming, and I discovered it was a really good thing I’d mowed. I hear we got four inches of rain in just a few hours. No big deal, at least at the time, but it kept raining all evening and became a major storm sometime in the night.

The thing at five was one T– has been planning for a little over a week. She invited all her girl friends to go out for the evening. I think only three were able to make it. N– was one of them, and she dropped K– off at my place to watch the second Cowboys preseason game while they were at the movie (they went to dinner, then shopped at the mall some, then went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix again). We had AB.

K– brought some steaks with him, and the makings for Tattoo and Redbulls, so we had the stuffs for a party. We also had two hours until the game began, so I suggested watching the Chris Rock movie again in the hopes that it would turn out to be funny. It didn’t. Bye Bye Love, seriously. It was brutal. It had a happy ending, eventually, but it was never anywhere close to a comedy.

Also, my nerves were worn a bit by AB, who skipped her 6:30 nap entirely, opting to spend that hour crying instead of sleeping, no matter what I did to calm her. She finally went down around 8:30, and that gave us a little under two hours to watch the game without her screaming.

Anyway, it was a good game (Cowboys are looking really good for this season — I’m optimistic), and K– and I had some time to talk, which was pretty cool. We also had an awful lot of salsa which went uneaten, because nobody came by with chips. But, then, that just means it’s still available, and the invitation is an open one. I’m just saying, is all.

But, yeah, we played the last quarter at double-speed on the TiVo while the girls told us about their evening, and then K– and N– went home and, if I remember correctly, I went to my office to play Civ, and T– went to bed.

Sunday, August 19th
I woke up this morning at 6:40 and 7:15 and 8:00 and 9:30, and since church is at 10:30 I finally got up around 9:45. We had some wild storms last night. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I remember lying in bed with the sheets up over my head, listening to the howling wind and just waiting for it to break out the windows. It never did, though, and by dawn the rain was mostly gone.

When we marched out to the car to head to church, I was just putting AB in her carseat in the back when T– looked over the top of the Honda to our stupid old Saturn and said, “Oh, shoot!” The windows were cracked, to relieve a bit of the brutal heat we’d had for the least three weeks or so, and when we looked inside the car it had several inches of standing water in the floorboards. Yuck.

There was nothing for it at the time, though. We went to church, and K– and N– didn’t make it (N– had a headache), so we just went home for lunch which left us with a weirdly-early afternoon. We almost always go to lunch with them on Sundays, so we ate some chicken and veggies that T– cooked up, and found ourselves home and fed more than an hour earlier than usual. It threw us both off our games.

I decided to spend the hour fixing a drip in our guest bathtub, and spent an hour and a half trying to get the cold water knob removed. I never managed it, either. I know how to remove a cold water knob from a bathtub faucet, this one just didn’t work right. I researched it on the internet. I called my parents. I banged on it with a hammer and pried at it with a crowbar. It just wouldn’t come off. So I gave up, put everything back together as it had been, turned the water back on (slow drip and all), and put all my stuff away, and chalked the whole thing up as two hours wasted.

Sometime in there, T– took our shopvac out and completely cleaned out the water in the Saturn, and even vacuumed the Honda just for cleanliness. Jeez. It looks really nice now, though.

Around 6:00 we went over to K– and N–‘s for pizza and Psych, which was a ton of fun. While I was there, I missed a call from D– on his way home from Wichita, so after we got home (and T– and I each had a bowl of ice cream and we watched another episode of Psych together), I got back in touch with D– and we went for a walk.

I keep trying to think of a non-gay way to say, “we went to D–‘s apartment and had a bottle of wine and talked.” Turns out, there’s not one. But we did that (and nothing else), and it was a lot of fun. Then I came home, drank a cold glass of water, and wrote an ass-long blog post. And now, exhausted, I’m going to bed.

Watch Stranger than Fiction, if you haven’t. Read The Three Musketeers and all of Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber if you haven’t. You’ll be glad you did. I’m going to bed.

(237.0)

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Journal Entry

Woke up late this morning, and the whole day went that way. I’ve felt like I was running behind ever since I got up.

I spent most of the day at work wrestling with silly little thing. N– got us some tickets to an OU game through her work, so that should be fun. Then I met T– for lunch at Rib Crib.

When I got home, I played with AB for a while, which was a lot of fun. I also flipped through one of my old scribblebooks, and picked out a dozen old pencil drawings I did that I’d like to preserve. I’m going to try to figure out how to work our scanner, then see how much time I want to waste in Photoshop trying to make them look right. Given my proficiency with the graphic arts, that’ll probably end up being a lot of time, and they still won’t look right. Alas.

My favorite of all my drawings is, “My First Mob Hit.” If I can just get a good scan of that one, I’ll be satisfied. I have a couple others that some friends have complimented, but that’s the only one that holds dear meaning, close to my heart. Well…that, and the one with the coring knife chopping off some dude’s thumb….

Oh, and the Heroes of Might and Magic-style beholder preaching at Levy Church of Christ. That one makes me giggle.

Anyway, had some dinner, ran to Blockbuster (Wild Hogs and Chris Rock’s I Think I Love My Wife, which I’ve heard is really good), and then spent some time watching According to Jim. I’m probably going to go read, now, and skip my walk. So what! I can skip my walk if I want to. Okay, fine, I’ll walk! ‘Night.

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Hmmm. I had a media-heavy weekend…..

Saturday, August 11th
As mentioned, I was up late Friday night reading Harry Potter. I woke up around 11:00 Saturday morning, only to be told we had to be at T–‘s brother’s place for lunch at noon. So I got cleaned up, and read another chapter of the book.

We went over to Matt’s place, and had brats and hotdogs. The kitten we gave them a couple months ago was running around, and he’s become a pretty fun little animal. The kids are all doing good, got to see Matt and Chris, had a good lunch and spent a lot of time talking. Then we checked out the old Jeep Matt is rebuilding, which is a pretty cool project. After that, John and I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum.

I wasn’t really excited about that movie when I heard it was coming out (mostly because Supremacy was something of a snoozer), but for the last week or so I’ve been hearing a lot of people say how excited they were to see it, and getting really good reviews from people who had, so when John asked if I was interested, I said sure.

After leaving Matt’s, we had a little time before the movie so we stopped by a model car shop (John collects some of them), and while I followed him around the shop I saw an old Camaro, and for the first time in my life I got it. I was all, “Oh, Camaros used to be cool.” I’d never seen one before that that came close.

Anyway, the movie was awesome. Fantastic action flick. I recommend it highly, for anyone and everyone. Make sure to watch The Bourne Identity first. Supremacy is optional. If you’ve seen the first movie, you can pretty much assume everything that happens in the second movie, and save yourself two hours.

After the movie, we went back home and John made steaks. He just got his first gas grill (to my knowledge) when they bought the new house, and this is the second time he’s made us steaks on it. He keeps asking for my advice, but he already does a better job getting everything to the desired done-ness than I’ve ever managed, so good for him. The steaks, by the way, were excellent.

Then we went downstairs to watch some TV, and I was making an effort to be friendly and social, but the book was just lying right there. In easy reach. Looking at me.

So, y’know, during a commercial break or whatever I picked it up, and just sort of started flipping through the pages, and next thing you know, it’s one in the morning and I’m turning the last page.

So, basically, that’s my Saturday.

Sunday, August 12th
Sunday morning we had plans to go to Westlink for church — that’s the one in west Wichita where T– and I met (and D– and I for that matter, and Julie, Julie, and…well, half of the people reading this blog). It’s where I attended for the six years I lived in Kansas.

Anyway, of all my old friends, only Vicki nee Linnell still goes there. Everybody’s parents still go there, but that’s not quite the same thing. It was weird, though. T–‘s parents came with us, and we got stopped just inside the door by a greeter who recognized the Charbs even though they hadn’t been there for over a decade (T– and I have been back to visit more often than that). But, while we were caught in the entry, classes apparently let out, and it seemed like 3 out of 4 of the people walking past recognized one or all of us and came over to say hi. It was an outpouring of welcome and hospitality. It made my skin crawl.

But, yeah, everyone was really friendly and so excited to see all of us. We showed off the baby some, had an interesting service, and then Vicki and her husband Dan came to lunch with us at Chilis. After that, we went back to the house and pretty much started packing right away, because I had plans with D– in OKC Sunday evening. (Evening, I said, not afternoon — okay?)

The drive went pretty well. I came up with a story idea Suday morning and spent a couple hours developing it, then discussed it with T– on the drive home. That’s always a good time for talking, y’know? Anyway, I’m hoping to develop the idea into a short story within the next month, and that short story can serve as sufficient summary of the basic idea to hold it for me until I get time to develop it into a novel. Should be fun.

We got home around 5:30, unpacked the car, watched some Jim and had sandwiches, and then at 7:00 I headed to the mall to meet D– and K– and N–. I tried to invite B– and E–, but phones failed us and by the time I got through, I didn’t have sufficient time left to do all the necessary wheedling and convincing. Also, it wouldn’t’ve done any good. Poor B– is getting hammered with work stuff. That’s got to stop!

Anyway. Anyway. Back to the point. We went to see Stardust, which was awesome. It’s like Big Fish, if Big Fish were a happy movie. I loved it. Highly rewatchable. Very good story. I had a great time.

Then D– and I went for a walk around the neighborhood, and I ran my new story idea by him, and we ended up going to his apartment to try out a new bottle of chianti, and finish the conversation. I ended up getting home a little after eleven, and I was too tired to make my blog post. Sorry about that.

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Journal Entry: Thursday, July 12th

Wow. It’s been a long day, and I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.

We were supposed to have a big goodbye lunch for our departing Branch Manager today, at Steak and Ale. I can’t really justify a steak lunch these days, financially, but I was looking forward to giving in to social pressure. Unfortunately, the guest of honor got stuck in an airport last night, so the lunch was postponed until some other convenient time. So I had mediocre Arby’s and wished it was a sirloin.

That was really the day’s only disappointment, though. I did have an abominably boring meeting this morning concerning the contract transition, but I’d brought a pad and pen with me, so I spent the whole two hours working on a short story. Then I spent lunch working on it, too. Then, at the end of the day, I came home and worked on it while T– made dinner.

Then I went to Transformers with D– and K–. We invited B–, but he couldn’t come. Work demands, or something lame like that. When the movie ended, I turned to the other two and said, “I think that was the best movie I’ve ever seen.”

So there you have my review. I don’t need to go into a lot of details. They talked me down from that analysis, but at the very least I’ll finally be forced to divide “best movie ever” into categories by genre, now, and this one definitely wins “action/adventure.” It does what an adventure movie is supposed to do. Fun. Awesome.

I’d heard that it was not a disappointment, from the type of people who expected to be really disappointed by it. So I went in without that expectation. I went in expecting it to be good. I did not expect it to be flippin’ fantastic! But it was. Good movie. Go see it. I’ll be glad to come along.

Anyway, that was from 8:00 to 10:45, and then as D– was dropping me off at the house, he asked if I was planning to go for a walk. In all honesty, I wasn’t, but I had the right shoes on so I said yes. He and I went the full route, and I spent most of the time thinking about the short story I’d started in today’s meeting.

And then I got home from the walk, and finished it. It was a terrible idea. I should have gone to bed. I really should not be up this late. But it was so strong on my mind, there’s no way I could have fallen to sleep. And now it’s done, and I’ve got my favorite story so far. It does so many things, for the larger story, and yet I think it’s also compelling on its own. Maybe not in its current form — it’s just the rough draft — but I think it has the potential to be awesome.

That’s three stories in two days. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m excited. I’m also wondering if I’ll write another one before the weekend’s done. I would like to, but I’ve got kind of a lot of recreational activities planned. We’ll just have to see what happens.

(237.6)

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Journal Entry: July 10, 2007

I left one thing out of Saturday’s account: by the time I was done working in the yard Saturday, I had over 70 fresh mosquito bites. I counted them as I treated them. It was bad.

Sunday, July 8th
On Sunday, I had a headache. The crippling sort, that rather stops you doing anything else. The sort that interrupts your thinking. As a result, T– and I didn’t do much on Sunday. We went to church, and stayed for the fellowship with K– and N– and N–‘s mom (who went home on Sunday). After that, we stopped by B– and E–‘s to get some speaker wire so I could finish up the work K– and I had done on Saturday. We also hit Blockbuster while we were out and picked up three movies: Breach, which was surprisingly good, but pretty slow, as well as Happily N’Ever After from the makers of Shrek, and Gray Matters which has Heather Graham in it. So far, we’ve only watched Breach.

Anyway, we got home and T– ran some errands while I watched AB. Then her friend Rebecca came over to crop. While they did that, I finished fixing the TV, and then vegged on the couch all afternoon. I played some Civ, but not much. Mostly I sat still with my eyes closed, because of the headache.

Then that evening was when we watched Breach. It ended at 9:45. I usually go for a walk at 9:00 so I can be in bed by 10:00, since I have to wake up at 6:00 on weekdays. It was late enough, and I felt awful enough, that I decided to skip my walk Sunday night. I didn’t post on my blog here, either, so that’s two resolutions broken Sunday.

Monday, July 9th
And both again on Monday. Really, my headache persisted through the day Monday. T– got a lot done during the day, while I was at work. I, on the other hand, accomplished almost nothing at work, and then almost nothing when I got home. I’m pretty sure I have nothing to report for yesterday, except that I didn’t walk, and I didn’t do a blog post.

Tuesday, July 10th
This morning, I finally felt better. I had to wake up early, too, to finish an urgent project for work that I should have completed yesterday, except for the headache. That was also part of my excuse for not walking last night — the importance of my being on time to work today. Anyway, I showed up early and worked hard, and finished a special project well before lunch. It ended up…creeping, so that the same project ended up taking my whole day, but I’d finished the part I was assigned by early in the morning.

I went to lunch with D– and got to check out his new iPhone, which is really pretty cool. Then back to work and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on this project (which has nothing to do with my long-term responsibilities). It’s the sort of project that has lots of little gaps throughout the day as I hand it off to other people to collaborate, so during those breaks I worked on Josh’s story.

First I wrote up the Post Mortem discussion I’d been toying with since last week. Then I pulled out my Word document of the novel and cleaned up all the section breaks between blog posts, to make it look like an actual novel in structure. I thought that would be a week-long process, but I was able to finish it all this afternoon, which means my brief rewrite in the month of July is a lot more likely to actually make deadline.

Then I came home in time to watch T– give away one of our kittens. That’s a big deal. We’ve been advertising them for a while now without any takers. Now we just have two more to get rid of (and one to keep). We owe this one to Craigslist. Glad we thought to post there.

I also made chili for dinner, and helped T– out by doing the day’s dishes and taking out the trash. After that, I went for a walk with D– (so, yes, I’m back on track), and then came home to write a blog post (so there’s that, too). Overall, it was a really good day.

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Journal Entry: July 5, 2007

Tuesday, July 3
On Tuesday, I finished my second novel. I wrote the epilogue to Josh’s story, the first volume in the Sleeping Kings trilogy. Nobody needed that amount of detail (if you’re reading this blog, that event was nothing like a surprise), but it’s a dramatic enough thing for me that I wanted to spell it out.

Really, the rest of the day is just a blur. On Tuesday, I finished my second novel!

Work sucked. It was a bad day. Shouldn’t have been — a lot of people were gone because of the holiday (turning a day off into a five day weekend, through clever use of leave), and I usually really enjoy days like that (I never have enough leave saved up). There was just a lot of unpleasant work to do on Tuesday, though, and I wanted to be elsewhere.

I did get off work an hour early, and then for the evening K– and N– came over, and N–‘s mom, who is in town visiting, and we watched the Season Finale of Stargate Atlantis and the Series Finale of Stargate SG-1. That was kind of a big deal, too. We’ve all been watching SG-1 for years now, and it’s easily the best long-running sci-fi TV show I’ve ever seen. Watching it with K– and N– was a lot of fun.

Oh, and I had three 7-and-7s, because they were there.

They stayed kind of late, but since I didn’t have to work the next morning, I didn’t really have any excuse to skip my evening walk, so around 9:45 I headed out. When I got home, I found T– chatting with D– (he’d tried to reach me on my cell phone, but I hadn’t taken it with me). I checked in to see why he was trying to reach me, and he wanted to go see Live Free or Die Hard. There was an 11:20 showing.

I knew better than to take him up on that offer. But I did anyway. I called K– and B– both (it was nearly 11:00 at that point) to see if either of them wanted to join us, but they were wiser men than I. D– picked me up, and we went to the mall.

I guess because it was the night before the holiday, they were closing showings (probably based on the sales during the day). So when we got to the ticket booth there were no showings of Die Hard, but there was an 11:20 of Transformers. I pointed out that I would get in a lot of trouble for going to see Transformers first, without… well, really, anyone whose initials I use on this blog. So we agreed not to tell anybody, and asked for two tickets.

And, would you believe it, they were sold out. So we decided to go to Hudsons for a few drinks. But when we got there, it turned out it was karaoke night. Loud karaoke night. Bad karaoke night. And the place was packed. We finally found a couple seats, waited ten minutes without hearing from the waitress, and then left without placing an order.

From there, we went to Fox and Hound Pub, and it was a much more pleasant environment. I had nachos and a Jack and Coke and Long Island Iced Tea (and around the first sip of the Tea, I was thinking, “Man, I shouldn’t feel this tipsy…” and then I remembered the tree 7-and-7s from earlier and said, “Ohhhh…”). We talked for a couple hours. Good times. I finally got to bed around 2:30.

Wednesday, July 4
At 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 in the morning, AB woke up (and made sure we knew about it). T–, generous, loving wife that she is, handled it. Still, it was not a lot of sleep even for me. I ended up getting up for real around 7:00, because she needed me to take care of some stuff around the house before our guests came over. Meanwhile, she went to a parade up in Edmond with N– et al.

Wednesday was N–‘s birthday, and it being the 4th, that always means some pretty dedicated celebration. This year was no exception. I spent a significant portion of the morning at Wal-Mart, buying needed goods, and then came home just as D– showed up with the meat for a cookout. I started the chicken marinading, made up two batches of salsa (Mild, which I was told by experts was still too spicy, and Extra Super Hot, which K– said was, “actually hot this time,” meaning it was probably pretty close to Extra Super Hot).

On a whim, I mowed the back yard real fast, realizing we’d be cooking out on the back porch, and possibly playing K–‘s yard game (backyard bolo, or golf horseshoes, or whatever you want to call it), so short grass would help. It’s not a terribly big back yard, but it had gotten hot, so I was already at a simmer by the time guests started arriving. I took a Benadryl, too, because of the mowing.

Guests started showing up around 1:00. K– and N– with her mom, my little sister with her whole family, B– and E–, D– was there…all told, we had 13 people in our house, not counting the zygotes. Considering that, the whole afternoon went amazingly well.

We grilled burgers and chicken and brats, and a selection of vegetables N– had brought, and everyone said it was all delicious. We had two extravagant desserts, by way of birthday cake, and some delicious ice cream by way of Blue Bell. We invested a significant portion of the afternoon in eating, and of course there was chitchat throughout that, and as people started falling asleep standing up, we realized it was about time to split up. My sister’s family left to get the kids some rest, and B– and E– left to get themselves some rest, and those of us who stayed mostly crashed out on couches. We turned on the Wii and showed N–‘s mom how to bowl, and wasted a couple hours that way.

Then, around evening-time, we headed out to Bethany for a big Independence Day carnival they were throwing, with the expectation (of course) of fireworks at the end of the evening. This year, for reasons having to do with the penultimate scenes in Sleeping Kings, I was looking forward to the fireworks more than at any point in the last two decades. We picked a good show, too, and I was not disappointed.

Before that, though, we had to find parking. They’d set aside a big field for parking, but when we got there we learned it had been closed off because of all the recent rains (and the risk of getting stuck in the mud as a result). So, instead of a parking spot within sight of the Live Music stand, we had to find a place somewhere in town. And everywhere within a couple miles was off-limits, as clearly indicated by the “Road Closed” and “Towaway Zone” signs posted everywhere.

It turns out, though, that by simply ignoring those signs and slipping down a street we weren’t legally allowed to be on at all, it became quite simple to find a really fantastic parking spot. So that solved that problem.

Then there were the long hours waiting for the fireworks to begin. We walked around the carnival, but couldn’t convince ourselves to spend money on any of the mediocre attractions there. We did buy some of the mediocre fried foods, and delighted in it the way one does in such a scenario, but that quickly passed. Oh! I tried out a 1920’s door-to-door salesman voice that worked out pretty well, so that was something accomplished.

S–‘s family showed up about an hour after we got there (so 7:30-ish, but that’s just a guess) and B– and E– showed up shortly before the fireworks (so, two hours later). Figuring out landmarks to meet up with B– was an adventure in itself, but we managed to rendez-vous behind the port-a-potties, and all was well.

The fireworks show was spectacular.

We got home around 11:00. D– had stayed at our house all evening watching AB for us (he’s not a big fan of fireworks). I invited him to go for a walk with me, so we did the usual route and talked of life and things. It was fun. Afterward, he went home, and I got to bed around 12:30.

Thursday, July 5th
Today, significantly less happened. Oh! I mentioned earlier that I never have leave saved up to supplement a holiday, but I do get a regular day off every pay period. I was able to move mine for this week (that should have been Friday) back a day, so I could recover from the merriment of Wednesday.

To take full advantage of that (and much in need of it), I’d vowed to sleep until noon. Instead, I ended up getting up around 8:30 so I could watch AB while T– went to the chiropractor. I played Civ 4 all morning, and had a couple leftover burgers for lunch. At 1:00 we headed over to K– and N–‘s place, because N–‘s mom had invited T– to go see a movie with them (“them” being the girls — it wasn’t the sort of movie that guys go to). I took AB with me and hung out at K–‘s place for the afternoon.

We downloaded a game from XBox Live Arcade called “Band of Bugs.” I’d heard favorable discussion of it in a Penny Arcade newspost, so we decided to try it out. It’s a surprisingly fun game. It’s a combat strategy game, that simple to play but has a surprising level of complexity to it. Could be a lot of fun. We had just started trying the multiplayer out when the girls got back, and T– and I came home.

I spent most of the evening playing Civ. D– came over to pick up his iPhone, which he’d had delivered here, and he hung out all evening getting it set up. T– and I watched some TV, and had a frozen pizza, and…I dunno. She probably did a lot of work. I just played my game.

At 8:45, I did the dishes so T– wouldn’t have to (after yesterday’s party, some had piled up). Then, a little after 9:00, I decided to go ahead and go for a walk. I’m glad I did. At this point, I’ve only missed once. I want to see how long I can keep that up. I spent most of the walk working on an Afterword for Josh’s story, which I hope to get typed up and posted tomorrow, but will do sometime in the next week. Just to let people know where the story stands, really, and that it’ll be a while before I start posting Sarah’s story.

And then I came home, and typed up a ridiculously long blog post. That was my holiday weekend, in the middle of the week. Now I’ve got a Friday that’ll probably be pretty quiet, and then another weekend that I actually get to spend at home. I’m excited about that.

I’m going to bed. Later.

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Journal Entry: July 1, 2007

Seething with fury. I’d already typed up through Saturday night when my Firefox did something weird, and I lost it all. Grrrr!

Friday, June 29th
Our friend Julie is in town housesitting for some family for a couple weeks, so she stopped by Friday night after work to drop off some bead jewelry for T–, and visit with us some. Once she’d had her fill of AB, she went to hang out with T– who was at the church for a crop.

Around 7:30 B– and E– came over, and E– was so generous as to offer to watch AB while B– and I ran out for supplies. We hit Byron’s Liquor Warehouse where I got some Seagram’s 7, because B– had never had a 7 and 7. He’d also never had a Tattoo and Redbull, so I suggested we go by a grocery store and pick up some Coke and Redbull for that. It didn’t occur to me, somehow, that I also needed 7-Up. So B– had his first Tattoo and Redbull Friday night (and his second, and his third), and we both had our first Seagram’s 7 on the rocks. It was pretty good….

We also picked up some magnificent barbecue while we were out. When we got back, we ate, and drank, and talked. We also turned on an episode of Firefly, but twenty minutes in we paused it because AB was fussing, or something on that order, and never ended up unpausing it. We talked much of days gone by. It was really fun.

Around 11:30, they headed home. I kept telling myself as soon as T– got home, I’d go for my walk. She got home, and I didn’t. Six days in, and already I’ve failed my goal to walk daily. I stayed up until midnight, posted Saturday’s Sleeping Kings story (so it’d show up on the right date), and then went to bed.

Saturday, June 30th
Saturday, I didn’t write at all. Instead, I slept in, to a dramatic degree. I finally got up and around sometime around 11:00, and discovered that it hadn’t rained at all yet today. So I went out and mowed, as I’m sure 90% of the homeowners in town did that morning. I also sprayed the foundation of the house for bugs, and moved several piles of branches out to the curb for big trash day.

In the afternoon, T– and I ran up to Old Navy so I could finally get the new shorts I’ve been yacking about all week. I got a pair of jean shorts and a pair of workout shorts, both of which are extraordinarily comfortable. I’m very satisfied.

Then in the evening, Julie came by again. We visited some, and after she mentioned she was a huge fan of the Deschanel sisters (and explained who they were), we ended up watching Big Trouble, which she had never seen before. That’s always a fun one. Then we watched Happy Texas, which is on the same disc, and also she’d never seen before.

Shortly after that, she headed home. I stayed up to play some Civ, and then around 11:30 realized I hadn’t gone for a walk yet. T– argued that my yard work should count, but since I’d skipped the night before, I felt bad. So I went, full route, as fast as I could, and felt a lot better about myself. When I got home, I crashed.

Sunday, July 1st
And this morning, I felt awful. Between the work and the workout, I was sore all over by the time I woke up. Worth it, though. One week in, I weighed myself this morning and I’ve lost eight pounds in the first week. It tends to go like that, though. The first ten fall right off, and then nothing for a month. I’m not looking forward to that.

We went to church, and then came home and I wrote up today’s Sleeping Kings post. Only three more to the end of the story! I’m really excited about that. I guess I’ve said that every day this week, haven’t I? Forgive me. It’s a big deal for me.

This afternoon was a little bit lazy. We watched some Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which was a fantastic show, back when it was on. We also watched She’s the Man, a rough take-off of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the same vein as 10 Things I Hate about You. It’s not as good as that one, but not as bad as it could be. It burned a couple hours for us, is what I’m getting at.

Then I spread some weed-n-feed on my yard, and then D– went with us to Friday’s where we met K– and N– and N–‘s mom for dinner. It was a really fun evening. I don’t think I remember a time a group like that has been that talkative. For pretty much the whole time we were there we had at least two conversations going simultaneously.

And, of course, the food was delicious. T– and I split the Jack Daniels Tower (ribs, chicken, and shrimp), and I had a Redbull Berry Blast Slush to drink. It was interesting.

Came home, then D– and I went for a walk, and spent the hour talking. After that, he went home, and I came here, to type this up. And Firefox lost half of my submission and I had to retype it, and you can bet your ass I’m still grouchy about that. But now I’m going to feed the kittens, and then I’m going to bed.

Hope you had a good weekend. This next week should be interesting, given the mid-week holiday. I’ll keep you posted.

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Journal Entry: June 24, 2007

Friday, June 22nd
Friday night, we didn’t end up doing the Family Fun Night. It was rainy, and the event was an outdoor event. As far as I know they didn’t cancel it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be there.

Instead, we went over to K– and N–‘s for the evening. We made mini-pizzas (which were delicious), and played some Guitar Hero, and talked a lot. S– and J– were there with their two kids, so it was a pretty wild night. Fun, though. Although, as far as Guitar Hero goes, I got a lot worse.

We went home about 10:30.

Saturday, June 23rd
We woke up around 6:30 in order to be on the road an hour later. T– had two big events in Wichita yesterday: a baby shower at 11:00 and a wedding at 4:00. Also, we delivered one of our kittens to T–‘s brother’s family. The original plan was to drop it off on the way to her mom’s house (thus the early start time) but her dad and I ended up taking it over there while T– and her mom were at the shower.

I’d had some hopes of cranking out the last twenty or so pages of Sleeping Kings this weekend, since yesterday should’ve been a pretty empty day for me. I’m kinda popular with the Charboneau clan, though, so I didn’t have quite the amount of free time I thought I would. So, all told, I got about a page and a half written.

After the wedding last night, we came back to T–‘s parents’ place and watched Zoom: Academy for Super Heroes or something to that effect. It was pretty much awful. Not awful in the way a kid’s movie is awful, but awful in the way an awful movie is awful. Just plain awful. Don’t watch it.

Then last night I had nightmares, for the first time in forever. The horror-movie type nightmares, not the how-am-I-going-to-get-the-taxes-paid kind. It was wild.

Right now, I’m just waiting for it to be time to head to church. With luck, I’ll get another couple pages written while we’re there. Afterwards, John’s supposed to make us steaks. I don’t figure we’ll head home until late afternoon.