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Wednesday, July 18th
I spent nearly the entire day at work yesterday filling out paperwork for the contract transition. It was wild. I had set aside yesterday to get that done, but really figured it would take maybe an hour. It took six. And that made for a very long day.

Got home, and our friend Vicki was in town for work and she’d stopped by to hang out with T–. That was pretty cool. It’s always fun to see Vicki again. We chatted for a while, then got a call from K– and decided to go hang out with K– and N– for a couple hours. Vicki wanted to spend some more time with AB, so she offered to watch her for us. It was very kind of her.

We picked up some Subway on the way over, and had dinner with K– and N–, and then watched the first episode of the new season of Psych. That was fun.

Then I dropped T– back at home, and remembered that K– needed me to help him pick up his car (and I’d forgotten to do that while we were there), so I went back to his place, and dropped him off at his car. We got to talk some, which was nice. Then I got home and found Vicki still there, which was a pleasant surprise (I’d kinda figured she would leave right when I dropped off T–). So I got to talk with her some more, and to say goodbye before she left.

That ended up being around 10:30, and I had to work this morning, so I skipped my walk last night. I also haven’t gotten any writing done for the last couple days. I’m hoping to jump back into it, maybe over the weekend, but we’ll be in Little Rock so I’m not sure how successful it’ll be.

Tuesday, July 17th
Tuesday really wasn’t interesting. Same as Monday, but on Tuesday. I played WoW, and went for a walk.

Oh! T– experimented with making chicken fried rice using Rice-a-Roni instead of rice, and I think we were both really surprised just how well it turned out. Awesome stuff.

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Feels like old times….

Today, I came home from work, sat down at the computer and logged into WoW, and that was my whole evening. For more than a year, I did that pretty much every weekday. Then I hadn’t really played WoW at all for more than three months.

I’m not relapsing. I’m just working a special project, and that ends tomorrow night. Tomorrow night will probably be a lot like tonight was, though. I made some excellent progress tonight.

Then, yes, I did go for my walk. A little early, even, because I need to get to bed early tonight. I’ve been missing out on sleep lately, and I’m tired of waking up tired. Hopefully this will help.

I did get another six pages of KJW done over lunch. I’ve only got one segment left before I’m in the final portion of the book (it’s divided into three big chunks), and I’ve already got that last segment laid out, so I should be able to get it done tomorrow during lunch. That would be pretty exciting.

Okay, I’m heading to bed. Later.

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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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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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Friday, July 13th
Fridays are always slow days at work. Half the office is out on Regular Day Off on any given Friday, and those who aren’t are often on leave. Or comp time, from travel. For whatever reason, there’s rarely more than a handful of people in the office, and those who are there don’t usually expect too get much work done.

Today was no exception. I still have a long-running project to work on, and I made some real progress on my section today, but the hours seemed to drag by. I had a couple hours comp time of my own, so I spent one of them to leave early, when I just couldn’t take it anymore.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Over my lunch break I worked on King Jason’s War, for the first time in over a year, and I got a significant portion written. I had trouble, though. Every time I went to reference the main character by name, I typed “Josh” out of habit. And when I went back to correct it, “Ja” became “James” before I could finally get around to “Jason.” I probably spent as much time hitting backspace as I did actually typing.

It felt good to make progress, though. I have a very rigorous outline for that novel (it was an experiment), and it’s easy to finish a piece and see just how much progress I’ve made toward the end. I’ve got a dozen pieces left to do, and the book will be done. That’s probably two weeks’ worth of work, if I worked hard at it, but I’m making no promises.

I did spend my whole walk thinking about that story, though. I worked mostly on the ending (since the beginning and middle are written). There’s a devastating development in the last third of the book, and in the story I wrote today I set the stage for that. While I was walking tonight, I figured out how to develop it, how to make that scene build from here to the end of the book, and it ought to be heartbreaking. I’ve never tried to write heartbreaking, so I don’t know if I can do it, but it’s in the outline. We’ll have to see what happens.

We had big plans for tonight. After work we were supposed to go downtown for dinner at Abuelo’s, and then to the biggest movie screen in the state (Cine Capre at the Harkins in Bricktown) to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Dinner was delicious (it always is there), and K– and N– joined us for it. Then we went to wait in line for the movie (for over an hour) and B– and E– showed up in time to chat with us a little before the movie started, but after that AB had other plans for us.

Really, the movie was just way too loud for her. T– had thought she would sleep through it, late as the movie was, but we had no such luck. T– couldn’t focus on the movie, and she was fighting AB the whole time, so we ended up walking out an hour in and heading home. It was frustrating, but no big deal in the long run. We got refunds for our tickets (the lady at the counter was very nice about it), and we’ll just have to see the movie another time. I hated leaving our friends there, though.

It was 11:30 when we got home, and I’ve already told you about my walk. I’m going to finish my water now, and then it’s off to bed. I have this feeling, this energy like I could finish King Jason’s War before dawn, but I’ve done that once before, on a different novel, and it turned out awful. I’m going to get some sleep, and pace myself.

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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 11, 2007

Today was a strangely productive day.

I’ve talked several times about my various writing projects. I don’t know if I did so publicly, but I mostly decided to go ahead with the idea of writing several short stories to get into the swing of the collaborative novel I’m going to be working on. To that end, I spent most of the last week working on ideas and even text for a short story about one of “my” characters.

Today, over lunch, I typed up what I had written and then just kept typing, filling in the rest. By the end of lunch, I had a 6,000-word short story written. That’s pretty exciting.

Then I had a quiet rest of the afternoon at work. I left early, to pick up AB from E–‘s place, because E– had to go see the doctor (she was at E–‘s because T– spent the day in Tulsa for work). After I picked up AB, I went home and put her in her bed, and then sat down at the computer.

I didn’t really feel like playing Civ or WoW. Finally, I decided to take a stab at some of the ideas D– and I had discussed on our walk last night, for another short story. Apart from that walk, I hadn’t put any thought into the story.

Around five, I got invited over to K– and N–‘s for some dinner and some XBox 360. Of course I went, leaving my story with about a page written. When AB got really fussy around 7:00, I brought her home for a nap, and spent the rest of the evening working on that same story. Before I left for my walk, it was done.

So, yeah, I wrote two short stories today. That’s kind of a big deal, I think. D– read them both, too, and he really liked them. So I consider that a major victory.

I did go for a walk, and then came home to find D– waiting on GMail chat. We discussed the stories, and I made a few quick changes that I’d thought of during my walk. Now I’m going to go to bed, but I’m heading that way in really good spirits. I’ll have to discuss it with D–, but I may be able to share those stories with you soon. If you have my email address and you’d like a copy, I can certainly provide it that way (or hard copy, if you ask nicely). Just let me know.

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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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