Category: writing

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.

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.

Last Friday I got home almost an hour late from work, and that threw off our whole evening. We ended up having cheese dip for dinner after eight, and watched a little bit of TV before Mom and Dad got in, about half past ten..

We chatted for about an hour, but nobody was interested in staying up to watch Iron Man, so we all went to bed around eleven.

Saturday morning T– and Mom went to meet my little sister at some salon, leaving Dad and me to watch AB for a couple hours. While they were out, T– finally got in touch with the McDonalds where we were having AB’s birthday party, and learned that someone else already had it reserved. So three hours before the party was supposed to start, with guests coming in from multiple states, T– frantically put together a birthday party at a Chick Fil-A across town, and we got managed to get everyone there.

“Everyone” is too long a list to spell out in detail, but in addition to B– and E– we had four of Mom’s family from Dallas (three adults and a child), and my little sister’s family. Everybody came back to the house afterward for cake and presents, and then all the family stuck around through the afternoon. It was six before the Dallas group headed home, and our house finally got a little quieter. I think AB had a great time, though.

After that, we were too exhausted to do anything but order pizza and watch TV. It was a fun evening nonetheless.

Sunday morning we went to church with Mom and Dad, and my little sister brought her family to join us. After that we all went to lunch at McDonald’s, because Dad had been promising his granddaughters for the last two trips to take them, and he insisted on keeping his word.

Mom and Dad left after lunch. D– got back in from Tulsa (where he’d been all weekend), but he didn’t end up coming by. It was another quiet night.

Monday, during the day, D– contacted me and offered to bring us some dinner. We settled on a Big Ed’s burger, which T– has been trying to get for nearly two months now without success. Monday night it worked out, D– showing up with it around six in the evening. After dinner we watched the new shows (Chuck and Heroes), and then I got D– almost caught up on Flight of the Conchords.

Tuesday I started some terrible, awful, miserable training at work, and I’ll be doing that until sometime tomorrow. Ugh.

It was bad enough that I got home from work last night, again around sixish, and crashed on the couch. I expect I’ll do the same again tonight. We had quesadillas for dinner and watched Biggest Loser until Obama started talking. Then T– went to bed to read, and I balanced our checkbook.

Also, through all of that, I was working on my rewrite of Gods Tomorrow. I mentioned it in my last journal entry (and still haven’t done the project report on it), but I have had a major rewrite of my NaNoWriMo novel pending ever since I finished it last November. I was rather dreading it, because it involved making some pretty huge changes to the narrative flow, but I think it worked out well. T– is going to reread it for me soon, and I look forward to her feedback because she’s had such glowing praise for the book up to now. If I broke, she’ll definitely let me know.

Anyway, that’s done. I’m hoping to make some progress on the sequels this weekend, but I don’t have anything specific in mind.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

I haven’t posted since before Christmas, and that’s down to laziness and forgetfulness more than anything else.

Christmas, we spent in Wichita with T–‘s family. I took along a laptop, and whatever time I didn’t spend on other events, I spent either sleeping or playing WoW. You can take that for granted, and I won’t bother to spell it out.

We got in Wednesday, Christmas Eve, and spent a couple hours discussing Gods Tomorrow. T–‘s parents had been reading it aloud together, and they’d made a point to finish it before we got there to visit. So I brought our stuff in and Karla made us up some sandwiches for lunch and then we sat around the table and talked about my book. And really for the rest of the afternoon, during pretty much any lull in the conversation, I’d pull out some other question about their opinion on this or that, and they were always happy to answer. I got some fantastic feedback from them, as well as a markup. I told them I’d decided to make Gods Tomorrow my NaNoWriMo project for the indefinite future, so I would work on one every year. As we were leaving Sunday, Karla said, “Do we really have to wait until November to read the next one?” That warmed my heart.

But back to Christmas Eve. Wednesday night, T–‘s family (40-something guests, if I remember right) all gathered at her mom’s house, and we had a big fancy dinner, then we went downstairs and gathered around the tree for a gift exchange. Before too late, everyone headed home so the kids could get in bed before Santa came.

Then Christmas was a pretty quiet day, with just the five of us for the most part. Her brother Matt brought his family and her sister Nicki brought her family for dinner (so only about 12 of us Thursday night), and then we watched The Dark Knight late into the night.

Friday I was left home alone for most of the morning, while T– and her parents took AB out shopping the after-Christmas sales. They came back after lunch, then went out again while AB took a nap. When they got back, we all went over to D–‘s mom’s house for a big dinner.

She invited both of the Vickis (our friends from high school), with their husbands, and Kali (another friend from high school), so we had 12 at dinner again that night. It was some fantastic beef brisket, and I had to fight AB for whatever was on my plate. She finally went to her mom when T– got ice cream for dessert, so I took the opportunity to grab a third helping of brisket for me, and I delighted in it.

Afterward, D– and I went to see The Spirit at a late showing, and I heartilly recommend it. It’s weird. Absolutely weird. As weird a movie as you’ve ever seen, in parts. It has a feel very similar to Sin City, but it’s adventuresome and playful where Sin City is dark and brutal. Or, to put it another way, The Spirit is to Sin City as Iron Man is to The Dark Knight. So there you go.

Saturday I don’t much remember. Just lots and lots of WoW, I guess. I know T– and her parents went to a museum downtown while I watched AB, but that’s all I really remember. Then Sunday morning we headed home when her parents headed to church.

That put me home in time to watch the Cowboys’ devastating loss to the Eagles. Damn.

After that we had dinner with the Austins, who hadn’t seen the game yet, and I didn’t have the compassion to warn them to skip it. Instead, I just fought to hide the disappointment from them. That was made easier by the fact that, after watching the whole fourth quarter, I was completely dead inside.

The week after Christmas was a weird one at work. I worked three days, and it was pretty quiet around the office. I discovered a questing guide for the new zones in WoW, by one of my favorite guide writers, and I decided to start entering that into my TourGuide Addon format, which is something of a huge project (I’m guessing forty to fifty hours, total, give or take ten). It’s work I can do in small chunks, though, and pretty rewarding.

In addition to that, I’m also still working on my financial software, and K– got me working on our media library software again, too — a project I haven’t touched in a year and a half. I’m crazy busy.

So then Wednesday night rolls around, and my little sister had invited us all to her place for New Years Eve. Mom and Dad came in for that, too, and we all got together over there. We had some delicious snacks and drinks, and rocked out on Jeff’s new XBox. D– and I left around 9:30 to bring AB home, with Dad and T– caught up in a 7-song set. For our part, we greeted the new year in Northrend.

Thursday I was off work, of course, and Mom and Dad spent it with us. We had lunch with D– and K– and N– at P. F. Chang’s, then Dad and I spent the afternoon on our laptops while Mom and T– went out shopping. They brought back fixins for chili, and we took a big pot of it over to my little sister’s place for dinner. K– and N– came for that, too, and then afterward we played Partini, a new party game T– had picked up. It was her misfortune that Jeff’s family is about as enthusiastic about party games as I am. So it wasn’t much of a success, but I’m sure when she finds some fun people to play it with, it will excell.

We got home late-ish, and Friday I had to work. I tarried long enough at the house for my parents to wake up so I could say bye to them, then went in to the office. I expected to be the only one there, but over the course of the morning about half of my team showed up. Still, nobody got too much accomplished.

Saturday, T–‘s friend Rebecca took her out for a morning at the spa, as a Christmas present, and T– took Rebecca out to an afternoon at a crop as her Christmas present, so between the two T– was gone from 9:30 in the morning until 6:00 at night. I watched AB for the day, I guess as my Christmas present to both of them. Or, more accurately, as my one day of being a dad. Whatever.

I took AB to the gym in the morning. A couple times over the past week or so, I’d been to the gym with K–. Saturday was the third. Strength training, I’m basically at the same place now as I was when I quit going last June. That’s both astonishing and encouraging. In terms of aerobic endurance, I’m much worse off. And, of course, weight-wise.

Anyway, I’ve been back three times now, and the story is that I’m a regular again. We’ll see.

After that, K– came over and we had leftover chili for lunch, then I put AB down for a nap and we spent the afternoon working on our media library software. Specifically, we spent it researching new GUI builders, because the one we’d used a year and a half ago, that was obsolete then, is no longer available at all. So before we can make any changes, we have to completely rebuild the GUI. Yuck.

T– came home from the crop about 6:00, and K– went home to meet N–, who was just getting off work. We talked about getting together for dinner, but it was really too much effort all around. Instead I ran up to Schlotzky’s and picked up some sandwiches for T– and me. We ate, she printed out some more pictures to scrapbook, and then she ran back to the crop to get the most out of the all-day pass she’d bought.

By then AB was ready for bed, though. I put her down, then played some WoW and watched the pilot of Leverage, which my dad had recommended. It tries to make a TV show with the same feel as Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve watched the first two episodes so far, and I plan to watch the rest. It’s not as good as the movie, obviously, but it’s certainly not bad. I like it much better than Fringe, and I sat through six episodes of Fringe.

Sunday morning I slept through church, then went to lunch at On the Border with T– and K–. After that, I pretty much played WoW for the rest of the day. We watched Mamma Mia (which I’d picked up for T– on Friday), then K– and N– brought pizza over for dinner, then T– and I watched the pilot of Leverage and the second episode. Then it was bedtime.

Today…. I know I don’t usually do today, but this seems worth mentioning. Today I started on the sequel to Gods Tomorrow. I intend for it to be a long-running series, murder mysteries set in the world established by Gods Tomorrow. I’m toying with the idea of doing NaNoWriMos every odd-numbered month this year. If I go with that, then I’m starting January four days late, and that’s going to put the crunch on.

If I go with that…I’ll have a pretty damn hectic year. And I’ll probably write my first truly terrible novel since The Poet Alexander. On the other hand, if only couple of the six books I’d write turn out to be any good, that still puts me on par with my best year to date. And if four or five of them turn out quality, then I’m looking at doubling my portfolio in one year. That’s nothing to sneeze at.

So we’ll see. In all likelihood, I’ll scrap the project a couple weeks in. Then again, last year at this time I was saying that about my gym membership, and that one lasted six months before I took a crippling injury. So maybe I’ll get accomplish something after all.

For now I have 656 words and a basic premise. I’ll keep you posted as it develops.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.