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Journal Entry: July 24, 2009

Oh man, I have got to be just about the perfect husband.*

As you already know, I got T– a brand new* car for her birthday,* but for practical reasons we had to pick it up two weeks early. So, y’know, I wanted her to have something to open on her actual birthday, so my special lady got to wake up this morning to find a package of peanut M&Ms on her nightstand.

Happy birthday, baby! Only the best for you.

Yesterday I spent all day feeling tired — by which I mean shaky, weak, and semi-transparent. I had hoped I was just hungry and lunch would solve the problem, but it didn’t (and I had a pretty hearty lunch). So I came home from work and took a nap. An hour and a half later, I felt a little better.

T– made me a very special dinner, by request, and then we tried to watch a Better Off Ted and play with AB at the same time. It was fun.

After AB went to bed, T– and I retired to our room for some reading. She’s on Pride and Prejudice and I’m on Triad, as I mentioned yesterday. We spent almost two hours on that, and then went to sleep.

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

* not really

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Journal Entry: July 23, 2009

I’ve been reading Courtney’s fantasy novel, which is one of the better fantasy novels I’ve ever read. I spent much of my lunch break for each of the last two days working on that, and I find myself really regretting it when I’ve got to put it aside and go back to work.

Work this week has been a lot of wrestling with FrameMaker, which is an authoring tool for structured documentation (as opposed to a WYSIWYG editor like Word). I had some training on it way back when, but there’s just so much that it does so differently from what I’m used to, that I find myself floundering again and again. It’s frustrating, and could have been avoided altogether if certain higher ups had done their job when negotiating with Raytheon, but that didn’t happen and here we are.

I’m not bitter, I’m just unproductive.

Anyway, after work yesterday I wanted to take a nap, but we do our Wednesday night meals pretty early to get them done before church, so I spent half an hour playing with AB instead, and then we drove up to Arby’s to meet my sister’s family and N–. Then all of them went to church, and I went home to hang out with D– who, it turned out, was unavailable.

So instead I worked out, figuring it was too close to bedtime for a nap at that point. I also cleared out the village of Minefield and made a tidy profit in the process. Which is good, because I’d been running out of ammo.

T– brought home the missing second half of Courtney’s book, but I got distracted working on internet things (specifically my Google Docs account) and didn’t get around to reading any of it before bedtime.

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

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Wrath of God

As you already know if you’ve read through my many posts on religion, I don’t really believe in a punitive Hell. If you think that frees me from fear of God, though, you’d better think again. No, I live in constant, trembling horror of the threat in the Parable of the Talents. I wonder if I’m alone in this.

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Journal Entry: July 22, 2009

Yesterday was the twenty-first, so I fasted. We actually had dinner plans at 6:30 that I knew about, so to facilitate that I started early on Monday afternoon. It made for a long day yesterday (as it always does), but I got a lot done (as I always do).

I got home from work at five, looking forward to dinner at 6:30, and decided to work out to keep myself from snacking. I spent forty minutes on the elliptical, and accidentally killed some townsfolk in Fallout 3. The rest of the town was pretty forgiving, though, and I got a new shotgun out of it. So win/win.

Then we went up to Ole for dinner with the McElroys. We’d had them over for dinner back in…I don’t know, March maybe, when Rob read Gods Tomorrow, so that we could discuss it. When I finished Expectation I gave him a copy and he devoured it, but then they left for a three week vacation, so we’ve only just gotten around to having dinner.

Anyway, I spent most of dinner wrestling with AB (who just wanted to have fun), and consuming my meal with a vigor and dedication that is rarely part of my countenance. Afterward, though, they came over to our house for brownies and I got to talk more.

They’re good people, and it was a fun night’s conversation. It was after 9:30 when they headed home and AB was still awake, so once we got her calmed down and in bed, it was past our bedtime, too. So there’s my whole night.

Oh! And then this morning I had a dream that I think is worth sharing. I found myself sitting at a picnic table in the ruins of an elementary school playground in the midst of a post-apocalyptic hellscape. I had a…well, I guess I’d call it a dual-monitor laptop. It was a contraption that folded open along the middle like a book to create a base platform, and then from there two laptops rose up side-by-side. It was a very cool device, and I got the impression it was one of the last computers in the world. Alas, it was a Mac.

I’m pretty sure, all alone in the midst of waste and destruction, I was checking my email.

Then while I was sitting there at the picnic table a gang came sneaking up behind me. The gang consisted of a sixteen-year-old prostitute (their leader), and then four or five of the gayest contestants from recent seasons of American Idol (which have featured a fair number of gay contestants).

The girl wanted to know more about my MacBook. The guys were all scared every time something exploded in the distance, but I could comfort them by singing a line of some show tune, and they’d all launch into it with (again) vigor and determination. The dream ended on “Blue Shadows on the Trail” from The Three Amigos.

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

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Writer’s Group

Writers are supposed to group. This is a thing. Just trust me.

J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were in a writer’s group called The Inklings. Look it up. I’m not lying.

I started something like a Pogue Family Writer’s Group back in ’07, when I sent an email to my dad and older sister telling them, “Next month you’re going to write a novel.” That was our first NaNoWriMo, and we spent all of October and November in fierce email exchange exhorting one another toward the goal. Since then, it’s been nothing so formal, but in ’08 my younger sister joined us all in writing, and then we ended up having a family writer’s conference at a cabin in Branson, where we spent a weekend critiquing each other’s work, teaching lessons and participating in exercises. We’ve all benefited from that.

A while back I accidentally spent a Small Groups session discussing my book, and then when I wrote Gods Tomorrow I shared it with our preacher (who is also the host of our Small Group), so inevitably word got around at church that I was a writer, and the preacher’s son realized we had a number of writers among us, so he suggested a writer’s group. Word of this suggestion reached me via T–, and my immediate response was, “Nope! Not gonna do that.”

On Saturday, we had our first meeting.

The members of our group were Shawn McElroy (the aforementioned preacher’s son), Courtney Cantrell (the recently much-mentioned, here on this blog), and J. T. Hackett (a poet and storyteller from the youth group). We got together at Courtney’s place at two.

(As an aside, Shawn and I showed up first, and I had the unnerving experience of encountering IRL things with which I’d become familiar IBlogger. Specifically, Courtney opened the door to greet us and had to stop Pippin rushing out the door, and I thought, “I know that cat!”)

Anyway, we began our discussion with the weirdness of dreams, and the usefulness of journals, and proceeded to a discourse on sleep schedules. One phrase often uttered among us variously (at least at first) was, “I know I’m going to sound like a freak, but….” The answer quickly became, “I don’t think you need to say that, here.”

That’s the point of the writer’s group. Writers spend a lot of their time thinking about things sane people shouldn’t be thinking about — and often in ways sane people cannot think about things. We dedicate huge amounts of our time to learning to do just that. If you’re reading this blog you know me, and you know I’m a little off, and yet those first few sentences are clearly exaggeration. They’re not, though. Writers just know how to hide it, when they have to. The things I’ve discussed with you only barely scratch the surface.

Part of the joy of a writer’s group is getting to let that guard down — to just relax and say what you’ve really been thinking. When I said, “That’s what I’d been looking for for years! A mechanism to bring about the end of the United States!” It got a laugh, sure, but they knew exactly what I meant.

More than just indulging in our special weirdness, though, the writer’s group gives an opportunity to vent about the special frustrations of writing. The actual process of writing is such an isolated experience that it’s easy to feel alone in your struggles. I’ve found — first with teaching my family, and then again in our conversation Saturday — just how valuable it is to hear someone else say, “Oh yeah! Me too.”

As I understand it, we’ve got two veterans and two novices in our group. I don’t know exactly how long Shawn’s been writing, but he presented himself as new to it. Courtney and I have both been scribbling since high school, and we’ve both gone through the same Writing program at OC. It’s nice to be able to bring that experience to the table. It was nice when Shawn said, “These are the things I’m struggling with,” to understand them and be able to give real, solid advice. At the same time, I was able to take a lot of energy from Shawn’s enthusiasm, and some of the stuff he said gave me a new perspective on material I’ve been staring at for years.

We went around the circle and discussed our major projects — with much interruption, of course — and by the time we were finished with that we were all anxious to read each other’s stuff. We talked about our literary influences and made a round of book recommendations, and we all agreed we’d like to do it again. Regularly.

Thanks to Courtney for hosting, and to Shawn for suggesting it in the first place, and to T– for gently prodding me toward participating at all. I can’t wait for the next one.

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Journal Entry: July 21, 2009

Yesterday I spent all day in a meeting at work, which was brutal.

After work, I did forty minutes on the elliptical machine while getting killed by fire ants on the XBox. It was…fun? Anyway, I did my workout, so that’s good. Then I helped T– hang some stuff in AB’s room — a mirror and shelf over the changing table, and some pegs for coats and backpacks near the door.

After that AB grabbed T–‘s laptop and showed me her new favorite games on the Sesame Street website. Her favorite is an Elmo game that lets her push keys on the keyboard, and Elmo names an item beginning with the letter she pushed. Up until now it had just been typing letters in a Word document, but she’d always end up getting distracted with the auto-repeat functionality and stop searching for new letters. So I think this is an improvement.

Then she went to bed, and T– and I watched Leverage while I typed up some pages I’d written during the day. That put me over 10,000 words (close to 11,000), and halfway through with chapter 4. I feel like the story is finally starting to flow, but it could easily prove me wrong in the next week or so.

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

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Journal Entry: July 20, 2009

Friday
As I mentioned on Friday, my parents came in Thursday night for a brief visit — primarily to celebrate T–‘s birthday, since they couldn’t make it here next weekend. I had to work Friday, but they drove down my way to meet me for lunch at On the Border. Then shortly after I got home we headed up to Carino’s for T–‘s birthday dinner.

My little sister’s family came to that, too, which made for quite a crowd. It was hectic, and afterward we went back to our house for ice cream cake and Madagascar. My parents had never seen it, and of course the little girls appreciated it.

They didn’t make it all the way through the movie, but even so it was well after nine before my sister packed up her kids and took them home. Mom and Dad watched the rest of it, with many a hearty chuckle, and then they slipped away, too. T– went to bed and I spend a while considering all the things I could get accomplished with a few hours of peace and quiet, but the pillow called to me. I was asleep by 10:30.

Saturday
Saturday morning T– and Mom headed up to Edmond to meet my sister and N– for pedicures, so Dad came over to watch AB with me. He played with her in the back yard while I took care of some stuff around the house, and then she came in to play with puzzles while Dad and I talked writing.

Of course, she wanted some attention, so she brought the puzzle over and sat down right between us while we talked, but that gave me an opportunity to show off how well she knows her letters (she only really gets confused between M and W, and Y and V), and even her right and left. Dad was suitably impressed.

We spent most of our time this weekend talking about his book. He’s been about to finish it for the last three months or so. I read it right up to chapter sixteen, when everyone in town has hardened their hearts against our fair hero, and then he left me hanging. So I’ve been more a demanding fan than a mentoring coach ever since, trying to bully him into getting it done. It worked. While AB and I were doing puzzles, Dad pulled out his laptop and started writing.

T– and Mom got home around 11:45, and I had to run out immediately because I had a haircut scheduled for noon. Under normal circumstances I’d have rescheduled, with my parents in town, but I had plans later in the afternoon for a writer’s group — which I found intimidating for reasons my regular reader will instantly understand — and I always feel a little more confident right after a haircut. I mentioned that to Dad (who’s quite familiar with my social anxiety), and he encouraged me to keep the appointment.

It wasn’t that bad a plan anyway, because the rest of them were just going to spend that hour eating lunch, and under the circumstances there was no way I could have eaten. So I ran up to Memorial and Penn, got a chop, and then headed back home.

That left me most of an hour to chat with Mom while Dad busily hacked away at his keyboard. Then as two rolled closer, Mom started telling him to wrap it up and he lamented that he was so close to the end, but yeah, they had to get on the road. So he packed up his laptop, we all said goodbye, and then I headed out to writer’s group at the same time they headed back to Little Rock.

I’ll give a full accounting of writer’s group in its own blog post. For now, suffice to say that even with the social anxiety going full strong, it was awesome. A great experience, and I’m looking forward to more.

At three T– had her monthly crop up at the church, and N– attended that, so while I was in writer’s group I got a text message from K– asking if he could bring Jason and hang out at my place. D– was there watching AB, and at the time it seemed like we were about to break up, so I replied and said, “Sure,” without any sort of explanation.

As it turned out, we were not about to break up. So K– hung out at the house with D– for a while, put Jason down for a nap in our room, then Jason woke up and K– took him back up to the church, and all told it was 6:30 before I left Courtney’s place. As I was walking out the door D– messaged me to say AB was getting hungry, so I called K– to convince him to come back to the house again, and then stopped and picked up food for all of us at McDonalds.

AB had missed most of her nap, but she was still a pretty good girl all evening. K– and I tried to put some new remote control software on my HTPC while she watched Dora, but it was to no avail. I could fix the situation with an upgrade to Vista and a new $30 remote, but there’s not a lot we can do with pure software solutions. We finally gave up on that when K– had to leave to pick up N–.

Shortly after that AB went to bed, and D– headed home, and I had the whole quiet house to myself. Once again I pondered all the useful things I could accomplish, and of them all I chose a stupid little computer game and spent the rest of the night doing that.

Oh! There was one interruption to it. Dad called me to let me know he’d finished his book on the drive home. Go Dad! I have it waiting in my email even now. I should have a strong review for him by the end of the day.

I ended up going to bed around eleven. T– headed to a late Harry Potter after her long night at the crop, so I have no idea when she got home. She was still awake before me on Sunday morning, though.

Sunday
Sunday morning we all got up in time to make it to Bible class, but we didn’t make it to Bible class. That just sort of happened. We ended up getting to the church halfway through, so we dropped AB in her class (two-year-olds don’t judge), and then T– and I slipped into the church library to pick a couple new books for AB and wait for classes to break. While we were there I told her all about our writer’s group.

Then the bells rang and we headed to the auditorium. Courtney came over to say hi, and then I spent the service getting started on chapter four of Restraint. I like where it’s going. I fear (like too much of this book so far) the chapter is going to be about half as long as it’s supposed to be, but maybe this one will surprise me.

After that we had lunch at Jason’s Deli with D– and K– and N–, then we all went our separate ways. AB took a nap, T– and I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and then T– woke AB up to take her to small groups in Guthrie. I decided to skip that to spend some time with D–.

After four weeks of him suggesting we go see Transformers II and me saying I didn’t want to, I suggested we go see Transformers II. It was not good. I don’t regret seeing it, but it was not good. There was so much third grade humor in there that did nothing to improve the movie. You know me. I am not easily offended. But every bit of comedy in there felt childish, forced, and overdone — and there was lots of it. The only line I laughed out loud at was, “We’ve got Jordanians!” which — I assure you — was not meant to be funny at all. That was actually supposed to be high drama.

Anyway, after that we grabbed dinner at Moe’s, and then came back to the house to watch an episode of Dexter. That show is creepy. I cannot recommend it, but I’m having a hard time not watching the next episode. Creepy.

T– got home with AB well after nine, we put her in bed, and D– headed home. T– and I watched a random episode of Newsradio, and then we went to bed.

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

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Memesmerizing


Y’know, for such an asynchronous communication medium, the Internet spawns a surprising number of call-and-response memes, from the O RLY? bird to “I’m not your buddy, guy,” to “Madness? This is Sparta!”

I realize comedy has always had a place for the setup you can get with a good straight man, but it’s still fascinating how much social comedy comes from synchronizing a series of responses in an environment where both call and response are inherently separated by an indeterminate lag.

I suppose a Communications grad student could probably make a really boring paper out of this.

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Journal Entry: July 17, 2009

I spent all of yesterday in a really good mood. I’m not sure exactly why, but it persisted. Yay for that!

We’d been expecting some rain all week, but I think we were all caught unprepared by the ferocity of the swift-passing tempest we got yesterday. I had the pleasure of leaving work in time to drive from blue skies into the heart of the storm, and it was beautiful. Unfortunately the other drivers experiencing the majesty of the weather phenomenon did so poorly, erratically, and with frequent mashing of pedals. Still, I made it home safe.

Then I watched AB for a bit while T– ran out to grab some groceries before Mom and Dad got in. When they arrived, AB had to show them her new room (they haven’t been here since the office/nursery swap) and her new bed (which is still only a few weeks old), and explain to them with patient thoroughness that the crib isn’t her bed anymore it’s Alexander’s.

While they were getting the guided tour, T– started making dinner. D– joined us, to my parents’ delight, and T– made some amazing chicken and steaks even with the grill temporarily unavailable for typhoonish reasons.

We talked a lot, and then after we put AB to bed we spent some time checking out movie trailers on the HTPC — a feature which my mom wished she could have at home — and they told us about plans to remodel their house — which sound very cool — and then around ten they left to find a hotel someplace. T– and I finished the last episode (of season two, anyway) of Flight of the Conchords, and then went to bed.

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

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Journal Entry: July 16, 2009

Yesterday I finished my software course. It’s a pretty cool program. I threw together a MaskedFox icon in it, and then drew an Eye of Horus that was pretty acceptable. That was killing time. For the actual training I built a workflow process flow chart, an organization chart with decorative groupings for the various departments, a cubicle map that imported database info, and a Word document with an embedded calendar object.

Boring stuff.

I know how to use the program now, which is what my work was paying for. I don’t know how to design (or really read) an EE schematic, though, so I don’t know how practically useful it will be. If an engineer who spends all day every day working in CAD software needs to tell me every little line I need to change, wouldn’t it be faster for him to just make the change and hand it off to me? I mean, I could understand if the goal were to have him say, “Reroute this circuit from J4 to $A1X33+ and put in a resistor.” That would save him a lot of time. But they’re going to have to send me to a lot more classes before that happens.

Okay, it just occurred to me that apart from the handful of work associates I left behind in Tulsa, I don’t know a single other technical writer in the world. So this post has been a real waste of time so far….

Yesterday after work I grabbed a way-too-short nap while AB climbed all over me. I finally got tired of that and agreed to take her to McDonalds so she could climb on the play equipment instead. D– and my sister’s family were already there when we got there, and K– and N– joined us a little later.

Oh! Okay, I went to check out Redbox for new movies last Monday when they sent me a coupon for a free rental, and there was nothing worth getting. Just before I walked away, though, I noticed one of the many “Coming Soon” covers and when I looked closer I saw that it was The Color of Magic. That’s a Terry Pratchett novel — the first one in the Rincewind series (I think). So, of course, I had to get it. Hogfather, you’ll recall, was extraordinarily long and most people found it tiresome, but I loved it. I’m certain this one will be the same, but with the added features of Tim Curry and Rudy from the movie Rudy. But no Susan, which is a real shame….

Anyway, I went back Tuesday (the aforementioned “Coming Soon”), and they didn’t have it. I figured it was a pretty low-demand item, so it probably wasn’t too heavily stocked. Still, there’s another Redbox about a quarter mile from the one I’d checked, so I hopped down the road to try that one, but no luck. There’s another one on my way home from work, at the McDonalds right by our house, so I checked that one, too, but still nothing. I decided to add it to my Netflix queu, and promptly forgot.

So then last night when T– told me to take AB to the playground while she got in line to buy our food, I spotted the Redbox and took AB over there instead. And there was the movie! Haha, in your face! I say that because now you’re going to have to sit through an extraordinarily long and timesome movie, but I’ll love it.

Ahem.

After dinner, T– took AB to church, and I went back to the house with D–. We started watching Dexter, about which I’d heard some really rave reviews, but it’s just oppressively dark. It’s hilarious, when it’s not soul-crushingly bitter. We watched most of two episodes before AB showed up and made us change the TV to WordWorld.

Then we put her to bed, D– headed home, and T– and I watched the penultimate episode of Flight of the Conchords. And then, both of us still exhausted from our Harry Potter adventure, we went to bed before ten. That’s our glamorous lifestyle.

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