Posted on

National Novel Writing Month

Last night, I won National Novel Writing Month.

That means that I passed 50,000 words before the end of the month. It’s not a race. Everybody who manages that is said to have “won.” Heather and Dad both seem to be in an excellent position to make it through, too.

I’m not cheering as much as I maybe could, because yesterday morning, knowing that I was approaching 50,000, I checked on my outline and what I had left to write, and it looks like the novel I’m working on is going to need right at 100,000 words. So, really, I’m only half done. The project guidelines don’t require you to finish the book, just to hit the requisite word count, but I really want to get this novel done this month.

So, yeah, now instead of coasting to the end of the month, I’m going to be trying to produce twice the daily word count that I have Heather and Dad working on (and that in itself is a grueling pace). It’ll be a lot of work, but the novel is turning out a lot better than I expected it to, so it will probably be worth it.

Anyway, yeah, I’m doing a double NaNoWriMo this year. Wish me luck.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Okay, I said I would make posts if anything big happened.

How is 25,000 words, for something big? Eh? Huh? Bwa-hah!

That’s right, I’ve got 25,000 words done on my National Novel Writing Month. The goal for that project is 50,000 words in one month. My goal for this particular novel is about 70,000 words. So I’m either 1/3 or 1/2 done with my month’s goal, and it’s only the 7th. No matter how you cut it, that’s awesome.

Gwyn and Dad and Heather are all doing it with me, and they’re doing an incredible job. I’m so impressed with everyone! We went to Little Rock last weekend to visit my parents, and Dad and I spent several hours every day writing together. He was having such a good time, and it was awesome to get to see his excitement. I’m enjoying playing the coaching role, too. Every other day I have a long talk with Heather or Dad, and I’m always putting together emails with general advice for everyone.

So, yeah, I’m having a good time.

On Friday, I’m having friends over for dinner and a movie, and Saturday, seems like Josh will be taking me to the OU game. That’s awesome. It’s making up to be an awesome November.

Hope everyone’s doing well. I’m off to write a couple more pages.

Posted on

My Little Girl (a poem)

Sometimes I dream of what you’ll be,
My little girl, my precious heart,
So many things for you to see
In this big life you’ve yet to start.

I think you’ll be adorable,
Your happy smile, your eyes so wide,
And anything is possible
For you, who fill my heart with pride.

I hope you’ll be a brilliant one
But there’s so much to understand.
Too soon you’ll crawl and walk and run.
Just know I’m there to hold your hand.

I pray that you’ll have common sense,
Be blessed with health and grow up strong.
Be full of quiet confidence
And joy that drives you all day long.

I know that you’ll be dear to me
No matter how your life may go.
My little girl, with heart so free,
I’ll help you live and love and grow.

Posted on

Journal Suspension

I know you’re all going to be heartbroken about this, but for the next month, I’m going to stop trying to post a daily record of events.

As my dad put it, I’m throwing a lot of irons into the fire, over the next five weeks, and the biggest one is enough to take up all my free time anyway. So posting here about days where I basically did nothing isn’t a high priority on my list of available activities.

I’ll still try to post if anything interesting happens, and I’ll probably end up writing a bunch about my projects as I work on them, but I’m going to drop the pretense of doing this as a diary.

That said…I had a really good weekend. We got to visit B– and E–‘s place again last Thursday, then Friday night we went to a party with the young married couples from church, and it wasn’t horrible. Saturday I helped K– clean out his garage, then watched AB while T– scrapped, and yesterday we spent most of the afternoon and evening with D– and K– and N–. It was a lot of fun.

Today, I’m skipping work because my cold has lingered, and though I’ll probably be in good working condition by early afternoon, T– was going to hire a babysitter for that time, so I’ll just stay home all day and get some stuff accomplished.

Have a good November.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Tuesday, October 23rd
Tuesday night was the next-to-last class in our wedding seminar. D– wasn’t available to babysit AB, so we had more work than usual as we got her ready to take with us, but we were still only a few minutes late to class (and not the last ones to arrive). Class went pretty well, and afterward we talked K– and N– into coming home with us to watch Heroes. That was fun. K– also checked on my progress on Portal, which I finished later that night. Very fun game.

Wednesday, October 24th
Last night, D– came over for dinner, and then K– and N– showed up to carpool with us over to B– and E–‘s. The guys went over there to hang out, and the girls went over there to see the baby. It worked out for everybody.

We had a pretty good time, talking and catching up (and me drinking all of B–‘s OJ and vodka), and it was nearly 9:00 by the time we got home. At that point, T– did some painting and I read up on CGI and Python web tools while we watched a couple old episodes of Jim. Then it was bed time.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Wednesday, October 17th
Last Wednesday I got sick.

Well, on my drive home from work, I got a call from K– asking if I could help him try something out on D–‘s 360 (which was temporarily sheltering at my house) when I got home. I did, and the long and the short of it is that he and I spent all evening playing Halo 3 over the network. That was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, the minute I walked in the door T– asked if she could just order pizza for dinner, and I met that suggestion with enthusiastic agreement, but as the night wore on she kept second-guessing herself and thinking something else might be tastier than pizza. I never disagreed, and in the end she so-kindly offered to go pick up some Braums for us both, and left me home with a sleeping AB, which also let me keep killing alien scum with K–.

She brought me a burger deal and a medium chocolate malt, and it was all (of course) delicious. She stole some of my fries, but by the time I was done I didn’t much mind because I could tell I’d had way too much malt, anyway. I felt over full, and kinda queasy, and that didn’t go away as T– and I watched Heroes (or something of the sort). I stretched out on the floor, and as soon as the show was over, I went to bed.

Thursday, October 18th
That’s weird, see, because it was relatively early and I didn’t have to be up on time Thursday, because I had a doctor’s appointment. Still, I felt sick, so I went to bed early assuming it would pass and I’d feel fine by the time I woke up. Somehow, though, I didn’t. I woke up feeling worse than I had the night before. I was queasy, and my stomach hurt.

I got dressed around 8:30, and headed up to my doctor’s office at 9:30. The appointment was just a follow-up to my annual exam that I got a month ago. He wanted to discuss my labs (fantastic), and see how the blood pressure medication was going (really good). It was definitely a positive review, but while I was there I mentioned the nausea and he noticed (and commented) that I was feverish, so he went ahead and prescribed a nausea medication for me, along with my BP refills.

The day just got worse from there. I spent the next eight hours in bed or in the bathroom. Around 6:30 I finally felt up to going out in the living room to lie on the couch for a couple hours, and I watched some of our Thursday night sitcoms with T–, then went back to bed by 9:30.

Friday, October 19th
Friday, I was back at work. I still felt a little off, but nothing like Thursday had been. I made it through the day at work, then went home to watch some TV with T–. I also did some of my homework for the week, and I worked on some music stuff on my computer while T– was pushing AB in the backyard. Just a general sort of busy afternoon/evening, while we waited for T–‘s parents to show up.

D– and K– and N– went out to Kang’s for sushi and karaoke for the night. They wanted me to come along. I kinda wish I could have, because I like spending time with all three of those people, but I don’t like doing either of those other two things, so it wasn’t too bad. We talked with T–‘s parents for a couple hours, then everyone went to bed.

Oh! I also got a new game running sometime in there, and started playing Portal. It’s awesome. I highly recommend it.

Saturday, October 20th
Saturday was supposed to be a Fall Festival at the park across the street from our house, and T– had big plans for it, but when we finally got everyone ready to go and drove over there, we saw the sign indicating that the Festival was, in fact, next weekend. No good. So we went garage saling instead. We ended up splitting up, and John and I went down to the south end of town to check out a hobby shop while T– and her mom went to the mall to buy some shoes.

Just as we got to the hobby shop, I got a call from Dad about his writing project. He’d hit his first big speedbump, and he was worrying about the implications of it. Luckily, the only reason he’s hitting it now (instead of this time next month) is because I’d predicted that sort of thing could happen, and I set him an assignment to help him track it down now. That worked out even better than I expected.

Anyway, we talked for over half an hour, about writing and the writing process and what to expect. I loved that. I’m really excited about next month, and all the opportunities it implies, for connecting with Dad and Heather, on things we haven’t really had in common in the past.

More than that, I’m excited about Dad and Heather and Gwyn all finally getting their novels finished. That is going to be awesome.

After the call, though, we headed back to the house to pick up D–, and took him with us over to K– and N–‘s to watch the OU game. It was a tense one, but we pulled it off. I don’t need that level of drama, though. Ugh.

After that, we came back home and had enchiladas for supper, and then watched Evan Almighty. Frankly, better than I thought it would be. I think I said the same thing about Bruce Almighty, now that I think about it. Same reaction, really.

Sunday, October 21st
On Sunday, after church we went to Texas Roadhouse, because T–‘s parents wanted to take me out for a birthday lunch. It was delicious, nevermind them making me get up on a saddle on a sawhorse so they could shout “Yeehaw” by way of “Happy Birthday.” Forget about that. It was nothing. The steak…the steak was amazing.

Then I went over to K– and N–‘s a little late in the afternoon (after seeing off T–‘s parents), to watch the Cowboys game. Not quite as bad as the OU game, but not a lot better, either. It was fun getting to see Adrian Peterson on the field, but when we got a real lead on the Vikings they had to pull him (for reasons made clear in an article I read last week), and then we just cleaned up. I’m not a fan of the trailing-for-the-whole-first-half strategy, even if we are usually pretty good about winning-out-in-the-fourth.

Anyway, we won, and T– came over and K– bought us some always-excellent barbecue from Steve’s Rib, and you just can’t beat an evening like that. T– and I went home and talked about doing our homework, and watched some TV instead.

Monday, October 22nd
Yesterday was back to work, and my big deal for the day was coming up with a plan to restart the Remnant project as a web game. B– made the mistake of asking me about that project, and I talked at him for like two hours. But, yeah, if you’re interested feel free to ask. For now, suffice it to say that you can expect me to spend a lot of time in the near future complaining about having too many projects to work on. The Shepherd and Oberon’s Dreams were already going to make that happen, but adding in a Sims version of an MMO that’s web-playable isn’t going to help the situation any.

I got home from work, checked the mail, sat down on the couch, and then B– called and asked if we could come over. T– was jumping up and down, she was so excited about the opportunity. So we went over to their place last night (they just got rid of the in-laws yesterday afternoon), and spent some time with the new parents giving our advice and (as aforementioned) regaling half of them on the nuances of a web interface for a highly-automated role-playing game.

We also had pizza, and ostensibly watched MNF, although we really only saw the kickoff. We had a great time, though. It was nice to get the invite, and great to see them.

Afterward, we came home and talked about doing our homework, but watched some TV instead.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Tuesday, October 16th
Yesterday was a good day.

November is rapidly approaching, and I’m coaching three or four folks in preparation for the terrifying marathon that is National Novel Writing Month. These are all people who have told me (often) that they want to write a book, but have never been able to get it done. National Novel Writing Month is a great project to get that done, but it’s also a really brutal way to write your first book. The sheer amount of writing per day is just…unbelievable. Unreasonable, certainly.

So, anyway, I’m taking people who think they want to write, and daring them to participate in an event that will scare them off it forever. To try to avoid that, I’ve set up this whole regimen of intensive pre-writing work that will help smooth the transition. I hope.

But, yeah, I’d meant all along to be doing my own assignments, to provide as samples for them to go off (Table of Contents, short synopsis, character descriptions, long synopsis, that sort of thing), but I never actually got around to sharing those with them. Yesterday, I decided enough was enough and sat down to type all that stuff up in one place, so that I could share it out. I’d done everything but the two synopses, and the long synopsis isn’t due until Friday of this week, so that wasn’t really that bad.

Anyway, I sat down with the intent of doing just the short synopsis on The Shepherd, my next Sleeping Kings novel, and it just, all on its own, turned into the long synopsis. And what I mean by “short” (according to the assignment) is “1-page” and what I mean by long (according to actual, living history) is “12-pages.” So, yeah, I wrote out the whole plot for The Shepherd yesterday, when I had no clue that I’d figured out that much of the story.

It’s good, too. That’s the part that really surprised me. I decided nearly a year ago what would happen in Sarah’s story, but I didn’t know exactly how, or in what order. When I sat down to jot down some ideas yesterday, everything just fell into place. That’s one of my favorite things about writing, when that happens. And then, when I was done, I read back through it and fell in love with the story. It’s got its weak spots, and I’m going to have to do a ton of research (after November, for the rewrite) for accuracy’s sake, but it’s a really good story.

And…that still really gets my blood pumping. I was really on a kind of high, all evening yesterday. As soon as I got home, I found T– in the back yard, and told her all about it. D– came over, and I told him about it. T– and I went to our marriage class last night, and I told K– and N– all about it. I’m sure everybody else is bored sick of it now, but I’m still in a good mood over it. I can’t wait to get started.

Oh! After class, K– and N– came over to our place, and we all watched The Transformers on D–‘s HD-DVD player. So awesome. That is just such a fun movie. It was a blast, and I think we were all satisfied with the decisions made, that kept us up a little too late on a week night. It was fun.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Ugh, I hate these long catch-up posts as much as you do, but part of my goal with the diary-style blog is to be able to look back a year in my life to see what was making daily news for me, and it helps with that for me to put in everything. I don’t remember much terribly exciting apart from football games, though, so maybe this will be a short one.

Wednesday, October 10th
Oh, see, look how wrong I was! Oh, wait, never mind. But, yeah, something extraordinarily exciting happened last Wednesday, but I’m not going to tell the internet about it. Sorry, internet.

We skipped church for it, though, and ended up at the hospital, and it was awesome, so you can probably draw inferences. Congrats, guys.

Thursday, October 11th
Thursday, I took off work early because I was just ready to be gone. I had Friday off as an RDO, so I decided to get my weekend started at 2:30 instead of 4:30. Definitely a good call. I spent some time playing with T– and the baby, then played on my computer some, and ended up making us some chili for supper. It was fantastic.

Then I suggested that we watch one of the Thursday night sit-coms, and save the rest for Friday (I had the whole day off, right?), but we ended up watching all three. It was a lot of fun, for a quiet evening.

Friday, October 12th
Friday really flew by. I slept late, I mowed, I went grocery shopping with T–, and…I dunno, one more thing useful. Oh! I helped her with a lot of preparation for her scrapping thing on Saturday. Apart from that, though, I spent most of the day playing Heroes. It was fun.

Saturday, October 13th
T– had a scrapping thing with Rebecca down in Norman from 9-3 on Saturday, and I’d agreed to watch AB so she could do that. As I always do when I’m watching the baby, I sent out a rather general request for help, and D– brought over his XBox and some breakfast at 9:30, and stayed around to help with the baby. While she was napping, we played Halo 3.

I’d invited K– and N–, too, but K– was stuck at work all weekend, out of town, and N– had no vehicle because they’d had to drop her car off at the shop for some maintenance. So, noon-ish, D– stayed with AB and I ran N– up to the shop to pick up her car, then she came over and hung out, too. D– got us all some lunch, and we watched the pilot of Chuck and a little bit of King Kong on his new HD-DVD player. King Kong was unimpressive, but the D was definitely H.

J– called a couple times inviting me to go to the OU game with him, but I just couldn’t figure out a way to make it work out timing-wise. T– had a good suggestion when I mentioned it to her, but by then it was probably too late. It’s a shame, though. The game was awesome.

Anyway, we went over to N–‘s place to watch the OU game, and it was kinda sad that K– couldn’t be there. Working weekends sucks. The game was awesome, though. Fun stuff. T– left partway through, to put AB in bed, and after the game D– asked if I could go to the blues bar downtown with him. We did that, and it was a pretty good time. I got in late, though.

Sunday, October 14th
Sunday…ugh. It was second Sunday, so we had a pot luck fellowship lunch at church. D– came with us, which was pretty cool, and I actually managed to find a full plate of good food that met my ridiculous demands, so that was a pleasant surprise. After lunch, N– went to a parade downtown and we were planning on going, too, but T– started feeling pretty bad (allergies), so we went home instead and she and AB took a nap.

D– and I watched some TV, and when T– woke up, we watched V for Vendetta on the HD-DVD player. Awesome, awesome. So awesome. I’d go so far as to call it boss.

All of this was while waiting to watch the Cowboys game. Ugh. It started at 3:15, but around 2:00 we started hearing rumors that K– might be back in town 5-ish, so we all decided to wait to watch the game with him. Ugh. That game….

Anyway, so, we watched the movie and just sort of burned the afternoon, then met D–‘s mom for dinner at Abuelo’s (so good), and then D– and I went over to K– and N–‘s place to watch the game.

Ugh. Y’know, it’s not like college where, when OU lost a few weeks ago, it seemed like that had put them out for the season. An undefeated season in the NFL has only happened once, and I wasn’t particularly expecting us to get one, but it was fun having that streak while we did. It’s just…argh, I hate the Patriots so damn much. Why’d we have to lose to them (and let them keep their streak going)? Bah. Ugh. I went home with a bad mood.

Monday, October 15th
Yesterday…I dunno, I had a good day. Work went well, in some indefinable way. Afteward, T– and I worked on our homework for our marriage seminar, and that was pretty unpleasant, but I think it was ultimately very productive. After that, we watched Heroes, and that was my night.

Posted on

Journal Entry

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.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Wednesday, October 3rd
Wednesday night, after supper, T– took AB to church. I went to Best Buy with D–, because…well, I left that bit out of Saturday’s story, but when he went to research his options on TVs, he picked the model and size he liked best, and then learned the Best Buy was offering it at a competitive price, and that they had a promotional package which included an XBox 360 for $100 off.

So he got that, but they were out of 360s on Saturday. Wednesday, the new shipment came in, so I ran up to Best Buy with D– and waited around while they made the necessary arrangements, then he picked up the console and Halo 3.

We took those to his apartment and got them hooked up. It was the first time I’d seen the TV set up in his place, and it’s a really nice one. We played some Halo 3, and it was quite awesome. I’m liking his current setup.

Anyway, that took until about 9:00. Then I went home and watched some TV with T–. That’s all for Wednesday.

Thursday, October 4th
T– spent some of the afternoon yesterday at my little sister’s place, making some cards. She was still there when I got home, so I went back to the office and played some Heroes. Around 6:00 she got home, and a few minutes later D– showed up with some buffalo wings for dinner. Awesome.

We spent most of the evening watching TV. We watched the last two episodes of Psych, which we’d missed, and 30 Rock, which was really good. Probably something else, too, but that’s all that comes to mind.

Then I stayed up late playing Heroes. It’s one of those turn-based games, where you’re constantly working on a long-term strategies (usually 3 or 4 different strategies at once, many of them that will take more than an hour to complete, game-time), end each turn only accomplished a small part of what you’re trying to do, and even if you do get to a milestone in one of your strategies, it’s probably when you’re about two turns away from another milestone in one of the others, so it’s hard to stop right then, and a 4-minute turn turns into a 4-hour session.

Just like Civ, for those who are thinking that. I think what I really enjoy about Heroes is that it’s not so much a Strategy game or Role-playing game, but a Logistics game. You don’t see a lot of those.

Anyway, yeah, I was up until midnight, but it was fun.