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Journal Entry

I got six pages written at church. That finishes B19 (the “B” stands for “backstory” and refers to one of 30 6-page segments that take place in the narrative past — there are also 30 1-page vignettes that take place in the narrative present, and I have all but 6 of those done).

So I guess that’s 72 pages that I still need to write.

After church, we were walking out into the parking lot with K– and N– and the smell of Johnny’s Charcoal Grill was so overwhelmingly tantalizing that we couldn’t resist. So I had a delicious theta cheeseburger for lunch, and we shared a meal with good friends.

Then we came home and T– took a nap while I played some WoW. D– came over around 3:00, after he finished up at the gym, and then we three went to see Harry Potter while K– and N– oh-so-generously watched AB for us. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for that.

So, within the same weekend, we got to see the movie. Not as good as Transformers, but that would really be something of a stretch. Easily the best of the Harry Potter movies so far, though. My favorite book is the third, but this movie blows the third movie right away.

After the movie we had a slice of pizza at a New York-style pizzeria right across from the theater (at D–‘s insistence), and that was quite awesome. I pointed out that it would be an awesome place to go while drunk (there’s a handful of really cool bars in the neighborhood), and we noted that the restaurant is open until midnight, so that’s on the “someday” slate.

Then we picked up AB, and ended up back at home around 10:00. D– agreed to go for a walk with me, and we spent most of it discussing the writing project. I’m more and more impressed at the depth and detail the world is taking on. I can’t wait to get some of the real meat of it on paper. But, then, I’m also really enjoying the little glimpses the short stories give. I’ve gotten such positive feedback so far, and that just makes it so much easier to keep writing (even if negative feedback is more useful for the material itself).

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Journal Entry

I went to bed fairly late last night (just check the timestamp on my blog post), and woke up at 8:30 this morning to mow the lawn. I should’ve waited two hours. For one, I was still exhausted. For another, the grass was still wet. It was awful, but I got the job done. My lawn is really starting to look pretty nice, which is surprising considering the (small) amount of work and money I’ve put into it. I’m going to chalk it up to Social Constructionism (about all I did to make it look better was decide to start making it look better), and get on with my life.

I don’t write well at home. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about that before or not, but I really can’t do much writing at my home computer. I’m great at scribbling down pages during a boring business meeting, or during an hour at work, waiting for an engineer to get back to me with markup. And my very most productive time is during a 20-minute sermon at church on Sunday morning. I’ve written more chapters during those little bits of time than everywhere else combined.

When I was in high school, I wrote at home. I was good at it. One night, after watching Empire Records for the first time, I sat up all night finishing a novel I was working on (I mentioned that last night in less than glowing terms). I’m not saying now that it went well, but I put out a hundred pages sitting in the basement typing on my dad’s crappy little PC.

I can’t do that anymore. There’s too many distractions at home. I’m not blaming T– for it, I just can’t lose myself in another world when I’m at home. My world at home is too pressing.

I like to think that if writing were my only job, things would be different. But, then, the idea of renting a cheap office space to go work on my novel for five hours a day isn’t altogether unpleasant. It could have a certain charm.

Anyway, I tried to write today. After I mowed and got cleaned up, I sat down at my computer and slid up to the keyboard with the full intention of slapping down two chapters of King Jason’s War. But it didn’t happen. I didn’t write a word. I ended up playing WoW to help my dad level one of his redundant paladins instead. It was frustrating.

T– had a crop from 1-6, and I’d already made arrangements to spend that time over at K–‘s place (N– went to the crop, too, so I knew he’d be free). We had a lot of Tatoo and Redbull, and played several cheesy little games on his new XBox. Time passed way too quickly. One of the games we were playing, I recommended to him because I’d read somewhere that everytime the reviewer loaded it up, he lost track of time while playing it. I considered that high praise. Also, at this point, having lost track of about six hours at it already, I can definitely confirm his analysis.

So that was fun, but over way too soon. I came home and played some more of my dad’s character on WoW, and T– made us a couple turkey sandwiches, and we watched The Dead Zone. That was our whole evening. At nine she said she was going to go to bed, and I said I was going to go for a walk, and we watched two more episodes before we got around to following through on that. But she did hers, and I did mine, and now the house is all dark and quiet, and I’m quite exhausted.

It was a good day, though. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finish six pages of King Jason’s War while McElroy talks about one of King David’s. It could happen.

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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.

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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 8, 2007

Saturday, July 7th
Today was a long day.

First, in spite of my insistence that I should go to bed instead of writing last night, I did stay up late. I didn’t write, though. I was up until nearly 3:00 finishing this week’s Civ game. It was a monumental victory, but probably not worth the late hour.

I’m not sure exactly when I got up this morning. It was between eight and nine. I spent a couple hours working on our finances, plotting out a general budget through December, and then I watched AB for a couple hours while T– went to try to find someone interested in a free kitten. She found no one.

When she got back, we discussed what we should do about the kittens, and I ended up finally checking out Craigslist. I’d heard and read a lot about it, but I hadn’t actually visited before. We placed an add for the kittens on there for free (the cheapest ad in the Daily Oklahoman is $60). We’re going to see what kind of results we get before spending money on it.

Speaking of which…is anyone interested in a free kitten? They’re adorable and friendly, and litter box trained. What more could you want? Eh?

Around noon K– showed up to help me with a couple projects I’d been waiting on for a while. We were going to put a faceplate in the wall for my rear speakers (they’re already wired through the attic, but the wires were just hanging out of a hole in the wall), and then T– also wanted me to hang an outdoor swing for AB. The best tree for that required a much taller ladder than I have, thus the need for K–‘s help.

Also, he’s got this wood saw he’s been bragging about for three weeks, so I asked me to bring that along to clear some of the deadwood out of our big tree out back while he was up on the ladder.

Everything but the swing ended up being a lot more work than it sounded like it should have been, based on the descriptions I just gave.

We had some…difficulties installing the faceplate for the speakers. For a while, I thought I was going to have to call an electrician, or possibly spend a whole Saturday working up in the attic to fix the problem. In the end (for very odd reasons), it ended up being a lot less painful than that, but what should have been a 10-minute job ended up taking over an hour as we tracked down and resolved that extra problem.

Then we went out back. I have tons of overgrowth among the various trees and bushes in the backyard. While K– started climbing his way-too-tall ladder like a little monkey (meaning “without fear”), I stayed on the ground and worked on the yard. He started on the deadwood, to get that cleared out before we hung the swing. While he was sawing away, I got out the power hedge trimmers and set to work on the mess along out back fence.

Then he took a break, and I took up the saw to cut some trunks too thick for the hedge trimmers. I fell in love.

Okay, that’s a little over dramatic, but it was an amazing wood saw. It cut through live wood like nothing. We piled up all the limbs and trees (I cut down whole trees along the back of our house, to keep their roots from damaging the foundation) in a big bunch on a muddy, grassless area in my back yard, to wait for Big Trash Day (now a month away). That pile came out about five feet tall, twelve feed wide, and six feet deep. That should give you an idea how much work we did.

The difference was amazing. It opened up the yard a lot, and it’s going to make ongoing maintenance a lot easier. It also gave us a clean, clear place to hang the swing, which K– did really quickly and easily. AB’s already taken a ride in it, and she seemed to have a pretty good time. There’ll probably be pictures on T–‘s blog any day now.

After that, our friend Julie and her man came over for the evening. We had chicken soft tacos and played Wii. They’d never played before, so we got to show off all the Wii Sports games, and then Carlos asked me to show him Zelda. Between us (after a couple hours of trying) we figured out how to catch a fish, and progressed through the puzzles pretty quickly from there. It was so funny seeing how much fun he had using the remote like a sword to control the character’s sword fighting. That really was pretty cool.

And that stretched on, even after T– went to bed, we were still playing Zelda. Fun stuff. Around 11:30 they decided to call it a night, and I reluctantly convinced myself to go for a walk (even after all that work this afternoon!). I’m home now, and my water’s gone, and I’ve got church in the morning. No Civ 4 this time, really. No writing, either. I’m off to bed.

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Journal Entry: July 6, 2007

Just back from my walk. It was invigorating.

Today was slow, and mostly uneventful. We had a meeting at work, and I’m relinquishing some of the authority I’d been given last fall (with no pay to supplement it), so that I can resume control of the IETM project that had been canceled in the spring.

Things are in flux, it is safe to say.

When I got home from work, I spent some time playing with AB. T– made some delicious spaghetti for dinner, then I played some Civ (I’m close to a win, on the game I started Tuesday) while she started watching The Dead Zone. I’ve got the first four episodes, and over the course of the night she’s watched three of them.

At nine she reminded me to go for a walk. I spent the whole time working on a short story for my project with D–. I’m having some trouble with it (as I knew I would), but at the very least I have a pair of scenes that I think are pretty involving. I’m just not convinced that, between them, they make up a whole story. I certainly have a beginning and middle, but I’m not sure about an end.

We’ll see what happens when I get into it. I’m tempted to start on it now, but I’d be up for hours. I’ve had enough late nights this week. Besides, sitting on a story for a little while is always more likely to help it than hurt. I think I’ll head to bed.

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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 2, 2007

Biggest news of the day: I finished Josh’s story. I won’t post the last three pages until tomorrow morning, because that’s what my schedule says to do, but it’s done.

The book isn’t quite finished there. I’ve got an epilogue — a single scene that ties up the book, and reframes the whole story you just finished reading (if it works, anyway). I plan to post that on July 4th. So, the real end is very much in sight. Josh’s tied up the way I wanted it to, too, but I’m not sure if it reads the way I want it to. I’ll require extensive reader feedback to figure that out.

When I got home from work today, I learned AB still isn’t gaining weight as fast as the doctors want her to. That’s pretty frustrating, mainly because the solutions involve making T–‘s life a lot less convenient. And there’s already a person in this family filling that role. There’s no room for AB to help out with that!

I also discovered that my computer was off (we had a power flicker during the day), and when I tried to reboot it, it did something really wonky. I got that fixed, though, by swapping the jumpers on the hard drive and DVD drive. They’d been giving the BIOS problems anyway, and K– suggested making that switch a month ago. It solved the problem.

Then I did some more yard work, because we’re hoping to have people over for a cookout on the 4th. The bugs have been terrible, so I did another (different) treatment, to hopefully get that under control before Wednesday.

After that, the evening was already well on its way to 7:00. We watched a little TV, had some pizza, and I played Civ. Then I went for a walk, and thought through the dialogue for the closing scene of Sleeping Kings (and a little of the rewrite of the intro). That went pretty well. I’m looking forward to writing it.

For now, though, I’ve got to get to bed.

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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: Thursday, June 28th

Heh, this is getting very confusing. Every day this week, I’ve written a post on alexpoet about yesterday, and a post for SleepingKings that’ll go up tomorrow. It’s wiggin’ me out.

I guess that can end early next week, though. Teehee.

All I’ve got left is the action sequence, and the epilogue (also known as the “denouement,” which is French for when we finish off the bad guys). There was a lot of setup that had to go in before I could get to the action sequence, and I was pretty concerned about getting through that, but as of today (tomorrow, in terms of public viewing) it’s done. And, actually, the scene I wrote today was another of those few scenes I’ve had in my mind since day one. In my opinion, anyway, it went as well as I could have hoped. Feel free to judge it harshly, though, and say so in the comments, when you read it tomorrow.

Yesterday was another muggy day. Seventeenth day in a row that it’s rained (and today makes the eighteenth). That has been wild. I found out yesterday I’m on the list to get green-badged (which is our way of saying “moved from contractor to Federal employee”), which has several long-term benefits for me. So that’s pretty cool. Otherwise, the changes at my work are still in flux.

T– went to Tulsa for work yesterday, and left AB (I’m just gonna call her “AB” — it’s an unGoogleable nickname, so I’ll use it without the dashes) with E–. After work, I picked her up and chatted with B– and E– for a while (catching them up on my work situation), and then headed over to K– and N–‘s place to drop off a printout of the most recent SleepingKings posts, for them to read on their trip this weekend. While I was there, I learned (erroneously, it turned out) that I didn’t have any bottles for AB, so I had to rush home to feed her when she got fussy. Not before I made a delicious mini-pizza, though. Hooray for leftovers.

So, by that point it’s already 7:15. The only milk we had was frozen, so I went ahead and gave AB her cereal while the milk was thawing (we usually do those two in the opposite order), which is a horrific mess. Possibly the most unpleasant thing I do with my baby (she hasn’t started making the really awful diapers yet).

Usually, T– does the feeding (and the diapers, for that matter), but she didn’t even get out of Tulsa until 7:00, and the baby was hungry. So I fed her cereal, and then changed an explosively dirty diaper, and then gave her a bottle, and then changed another explosively dirty diaper. It was a wild night. Then I put her in her bed, went out to the garage to feed the kittens and change the litter box, and by the time I came back into the house, AB was sound asleep.

Ten minutes later (which is to say, 8:45), T– got home. We talked a little bit about her day, and then I went out for my walk.

Remember what I said about it raining? I was out for about fifteen minutes before it started to sprinkle. It got progressively stronger, and by half an hour it was really seriously raining. I decided to keep at it, though. Every single block on my route has a turn that will basically lead me straight back home, in a shortcut. The night before last, though, I only half did my walk, because D– was with me, and he was wearing flip-flops. So I decided, rain or no, to do it right.

By the time I got home, an hour after I left, I was drenched. Sodden. Quite inundated. Still, there was a little bit of satisfaction knowing I stuck it out. So there’s that. I’m at five days in a row, now. It’d be easy to skip tonight, because I’m hanging out with B–, but I’ll bet I can talk him into going with me. We’re planning on getting drunk, anyway, so he should be quite suggestible.

Have a good weekend. Enjoy tomorrow’s Sleeping Kings. It’s a good one.