Posted on

Journal Entry

Amazingly enough, there has been more going on in my life than just the mess with the Tulsa house. I’m not sure how I keep up with it all, but I do.

I’m making slow but steady progress on Sleeping Kings: Golden Age. The characters are at 50 Penn Place now, which means I’m into the climax of the story. The whole second half of the book is handwritten so far — I haven’t started transcribing any of it — but I’m nearing completion of the draft and then I’ll start typing.

I quit playing WoW about a month and a half ago. My account officially ended on the first of April, but I was done playing at the beginning of March. I’m anxious for a new MMO for me to waste massive portions of my life on, but it’s just not here yet. WoW can’t hold my attention anymore, thuogh.

I started programming a game, and that’s been pretty fun. I also started reading again. In the last week I’ve finished Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, Everything Bad is Good for You by some neuroscientist dude, Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by the grammar lady, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, and the first three books of the Myth series by Robert Asprin.

I’ve done some work around the house, too. It’s frustrating to me going up to Tulsa over and over again and putting in all the effort for a house we don’t even live in. We can’t afford to redo a bathroom or put in new carpets, but I’ve been motivated to fix some little things that have been nagging. I worked on our garage door opener (loose wire), finally replaced the bulbs in our garage overhead light (fluorescent, and they’d been dead for over a year), started getting our lawn treated to kill off bugs and weeds, and swapped out our broken kitchen sink faucet for one that will actually work (and, as it happens, is really nice). I’m going to take a shot at fixing the bathtub faucet again, even though last time I tried was a miserable, devastating failure. Who knows? Maybe this time it’ll turn out better.

There’s not a lot to report on the baby front. She’s making more use of her words, but not really talking yet. She nods when she means yes, and if you hold up two objects (books, toys, pairs of pajamas, whatever) she can pick which one she wants. She got four molars at once (well, “is getting”), and that’s a little bit brutal on everyone living in the house, but once it’s done she can stop chewing all her food at the front of her mouth, and that should be better for everyone.

We refinanced our mortgage on the Oklahoma City house, and caught some good breaks on that. It’ll definitely help us out financially, especially with everything going on in Tulsa.

Oh. I’m still going to the gym regularly. I guess I wasn’t blogging in January when we started, but we joined a gym January 20th, and I’m going three days a week ever since. I’ve missed more than a handful, but I’m pretty well set in my routine. I’ve only lost 9 pounds at best, but I’m definitely seeing improvements in my endurance and strength training, so hopefully I’ll see more weight loss in the coming months.

I think that gets you all caught up. I haven’t blogged any since November, but not a lot has happened, either. So there you go.

Posted on

Journal Entry

It was a really busy week, last week. Some of the highlights have shown up already on T–‘s and N–‘s blogs, but I feel like I’ve got to fill out the form, anyway.

Tuesday, September 18th
Tuesday morning I had a doctor’s appointment. I’ve been getting high blood pressure readings for about a year now (ever since I learned about AB, really), and it got to the point where people were threatening me with sad faces if I didn’t go get checked out.

So I told my boss I needed the morning off, and that I’d maybe take the whole day. My appointment wasn’t until 9:00, though, so I was looking forward to sleeping in. At 6:30, T– came crashing through the bedroom door with a screaming AB and said, “Here, hold her for me while I get a rag.”

I sat up, grabbed the baby, and noticed all the blood pouring out of her mouth. She had fallen while playing in the living room, and somehow ripped that bit of skin connecting the upper lip to the gums, and it was bleeding like crazy. I got her to calm down while I was holding her, and then T– got her cleaned up, but she spent all day going through that cycle. She’d chew on a toy or suck on a pacifier and it would start bleeding again, and she’d start crying and make a huge mess, and then we’d calm her down and try to get the bleeding to stop.

Really, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it was a lot of work, for both of us. So, yeah, I ended up taking the whole day off. I did go in for my appointment, though, which happened to be during the worst time for T–. But, y’know, what can you do?

Doc said I looked good apart from the blood pressure, and gave me a month’s worth of samples for a BP medicine that he said (and N– confirmed) is a really good one. I’ll probably be on it for a couple years, if not for life, but it’s supposed to be really helpful.

And, while we’re dealing with AB troubles all day, we also know we’ve got the marriage class to go to that evening. Last week’s was a tough one, discussing all the things each of us do that hurt the other. Not fun to discuss, not even fun to think about. We both had a lot of trouble getting motivated to do the homework, and we’d kind of put it all off to do during the day Tuesday. Instead, we spent the day chasing the baby, so we were really unprepared for class.

Anyway, right around 5:00, K– and N– called and offered to bring over dinner. That was fun, and brightened up my afternoon considerably. We had fajitas from Taco Cabana, and chilled for a few, then headed up to the church when D– showed up to watch the baby.

I had an uncomfortable experience in class that night, over some confusion as to how “voluntary” the sharing portion of the class was. Turns out, it’s not voluntary, but by the time I learned that, I was in a pretty embarrassing situation, with a big ol’ spotlight on me. That sucked. Anyway, at least now I know for future classes.

I’m glad we went to that class, though. Out of all of them, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the most valuable one we do, because it was good to hear everybody talking about the difficulty they had with the homework, and discussing such things. That was definitely worth being there for.

Wednesday, September 19th
Wednesday night, K– and D– and I went to the movies. We’d talked about going to see Dragon Wars and/or Shoot ’em Up. Then we learned that Dragon Wars was a Korean-made, low-budget cheese fest, and decided to save our eight bucks (which probably is code for “go see it when D–‘s not around to make fun of us”). So, Shoot ’em Up it was.

B– and E– should get it and watch it on DVD, when it comes out (unless they have a strong desire to see it apart from my recommendation). As for everyone else…I can’t think of another human being I could recommend that movie to. K– and D– both enjoyed it, but….yeah. It’s ludicrous. It’s absurd, and probably the most violent movie I’ve ever seen. Crass, out the ass. But it was fun.

After the movie, around 9:30, we came out of the mall to find K–‘s driver-side window smashed out. Someone was probably trying to go for the GPS unit mounted on his windshield, and spooked when his car alarm went off, because there was nothing missing from the car. But, yeah, whoever did it won’t be caught, so K– is stuck with a $150 glass bill. The security guard who filled out the paperwork on it said he’d had a lot of windows broken out, in his time, and recommended a particular repair crew. K– got them out to his place Thursday night, and got that taken care of. Ugh.

Thursday, September 20th
Thursday night we had the church picnic. They claim to do one every month in the summer, but I don’t think it actually happens that often. Anyway, T– heard about this one and I didn’t have any good excuses to get out of it, so we went out to a private park across town around 6:30, and had some pot luck. T– was kind enough to make me a sandwich beforehand, so I wasn’t entirely at the mercy of the old church ladies’ cooking.

In addition to pot luck, the theme for the dinner was “Pie Contest!” (The exclamation mark is part of the title, not my own.) T– baked two apple crumble pies for the event (blogged on her MySpace), and they were amazingly delicious. I’m not a constant fan of fruit pies of any sort, but this one was awesome. It could be the massive quantity of brown sugar melted over the top that won me over. I’m no food critic, but that strikes me as a winning combination.

Anyway, I tried about seven pies. Everybody voted, and they said we’d learn the results on Sunday. So, for narrative reasons, I’ll save that information until I write about Sunday. HaHA! Building a little suspense in the ol’ blog, I am. A writer practices good writing techniques, always. That’s the rule. But, yeah, anyone who’s read T–‘s MySpace already knows the answer. And pretty much anyone who knows her.

Friday, September 21st
For reasons inexplicable, Friday night was the OU game. I know, I know, they’re a college team, but yeah…they played on Friday night. Against Tulsa, who was supposed to have a pretty good passing offense. Nobody was worried, but we’d heard things, y’know?

We had dinner with K– and N– at Freddy’s (always a good time), and then I went over to their place to watch the game. Tulsa scored first, and in the first six minutes game-time, Tulsa put up 14 points. That was a little alarming. Of course, they also used up all of their timeouts for the half, to do that. K– pointed out that they probably had to do that to get their offense some rest, which was a point well made. It was clear they were pulling out all the stops to make a statement early, but once the timeouts were gone, our guys just rolled over them. OU’s final score was in the sixties. Fun.

Afterward, I hung around and watched a couple episodes of Dr Who with K–, who’s trying to get into the series. It’s a good show. I’m looking forward to seeing more.

Saturday, September 22nd
Saturday I’d offered to spend at home, with T–. We’d had a wildly busy week, and we were planning to watch two games on Sunday, so it seemed wise to just set aside some home time. I mowed in the morning, and then we went grocery shopping together. We spent most of the afternoon working on homework for our marriage seminar, and I’m glad we did. We covered a lot of material, and even though this was pretty sensitive stuff, it was nothing compared with the week before, so we were able to talk pretty freely. That was a good experience.

In the evening, most of our work done, we watched a little TV, and then I decided to run up to Lowe’s and grab some storage stuff to help organize the garage, and my office closet. I’ve mentioned a lot of work on the garage recently, and there was really one last major change I wanted to make, rearranging some stuff to make more room for car doors to open. To do that, we needed a new place for T– to keep her catalogs and other work stuff, and she’d been wanting a closing cabinet for that for a while. I’ve also been wanting a set of stacking drawers to organize the cables and connectors and computer parts crammed in my office closet, pretty much since we moved into the house.

So, I ran out and bought all that stuff. If you haven’t shopped for storage solutions, you’d probably be surprised how much they cost. I managed to find what I wanted, though, and brought it home to put together. After that…well, I get a little manic when I’m working on a project, wanting to get it done, so I got the cabinet built, and then I took it out to the garage (and it’s probably 9:00 at that point), and then I spent some time rearranging things out there, and I finally made myself stop working on that to come inside and watch some TV with T–.

Then I ended up, a couple hours later, setting up the drawers in my office closet and working on that until one in the morning. It’s just who I am. Don’t judge me.

Anyway, Saturday was a lot of work, but I’m impressed how much I got accomplished. The improvements in the garage and the closet were awesome, and like I said, I’m really glad we got the homework done.

Sunday, September 23rd
Sunday morning, after church, we went to K– and N–‘s to watch the Vikings/Chiefs game with a bunch of friends. B– is a long-time Vikings fan, and as I mentioned back in preseason, our old hero Adrian Peterson is now starting running back for the Vikings, so we were all interested in watching it. They also invited my sister’s family over, because J– is a big Chiefs fan (and, y’know, just for the opportunity to hang out).

Early in the game, the Vikings were rocking on the Chiefs. Enough so that B– started cheering for the Chiefs because he felt sorry for J–. Unfortunately, about twenty minutes after J– left (S– had a photoshoot to get to, and needed J– to watch the kids), the Chiefs turned it around and tore up. It was an exciting game. Adrian Peterson was amazing (the commentators kept saying he was carrying the rest of the team).

K– grilled hotdogs for lunch, and they were awesome. T– brought some leftover apple pie, and it was just a big ol’ party. Everyone had a good time.

After that, I borrowed K–‘s distribution spreader and took a bag of grass seed he’d picked up for me, and headed home. In church Sunday morning, they’d said that the pie contest winner would be announced Sunday night. So, T– really wanted to go to that, but I had so much stuff I still needed to get done before the weekend ended (and that necessarily meant “before the Cowboys game started”). So I dropped her off at church, then went home to seed my yard.

The new spreader worked way better than the old drop spreader I’d used, and I was able to seed the whole back yard in about ten minutes. I then broke out some insect control stuff that’s also supposed to be spread like that (which I never used, because the old spreader took so long), and put that out, front and back. D– came over early in that process, asking me if I wanted to hit Best Buy, but I told him I was busy. So he pulled out his laptop and read some webcomics on my couch while I did yard work.

Anyway, got all the poison down and set up a sprinkler, and then grabbed a quick shower, and was able to pick up T– just a few minutes after church ended. That was a lot accomplished in one hour.

And when I showed up to pick her up, she was proudly brandishing her silver spatula! She got second prize in the contest, which was much deserved. If you haven’t already, send her a congratulations for that.

We dropped her off at the house, then D– and I ran up to the barbecue place next to Blockbuster and grabbed a small family deal to go. Chopped brisket and hot links, which was enough for all of us to have heaping plates, and still enough for my lunch on Monday. Awesome stuff.

Then K– called to say he couldn’t make it over, so D– and I watched the game together. It was an incredible game. Both teams were playing really well (Dallas vs. Chicago). In the second half, though, Romo just laid it down. I think we won 34-10. Woot woot.

Monday, September 24th
So, anyway, Monday after I got home from work, I went to Best Buy with D–. He’d finished Bioshock and the anime series he was watching, and needed something new for entertainment. We looked through all the games, but the only one that really tempted was Madden ’08 for the Wii. Then we went and looked at high-end TVs instead. That was a lot of fun. He’s still needing to make the upgrade to HD, and his small apartment (and bachelor lifestyle) makes a big ol’ wall-mount LCD the perfect choice.

Anyway, we were there for a while, then came home and T– made us some chicken crescent squares that are just awesome. It’s a recipe she started on just after we got married, and I always love it. Yumm. After dinner, it was already 8:00-ish. We watched the season premier of How I Met Your Mother, and an episode of Rules of Engagement which is another show in the same vein, but it’s got David Spade. Then we watched the season premier of Heroes, which didn’t really disappoint.

Then D– went home, and I did the last little bit of homework I had to fill out, and then it was bedtime.

Tuesday, September 25th
Yesterday, I found a chunk of free time in the afternoon, and spent a lot of it typing up the many pages of Royal Holiday that I had handwritten (and I’m starting to think it’s going to have to switch back to “Royal Holiday,” which is a shame, because I was looking forward to trying to push the short-format novel). I’m nearly caught up on the typing part, and the longhand part is nearly done, so that’s the sort of news that appeals to my manic drive to complete a project. Wahaa!

Around 4:00, I got a call from T– saying she’d just heard from the people leading our marriage seminar with a reminder that we were supposed to provide the snacks this week. Ack! I suggested chips and salsa, because I knew we had the stuff handy, and it feeds a crowd. She ran up to the store and got some extra chips, and the stuff to make guacamole. It was a real rush to get everything done before the class started at 6:30, but she managed. And she made some delicious grilled cheese sandwiches for D– and me. She’s the whole package.

So, we left AB with D–, and went to class for two hours. Our snacks were a huge hit. I think everyone there complimented either the salsa or the guacamole, if not both. So, y’know, good for us. Woohoo.

I got home, and I was feeling too socialized, so I retreated to my office for some video games. I played Heroes for a couple hours, and made it to bed around 10:30.

And, amazingly enough, I’m finally finished with that update.

Posted on

Journal Entry

Today was a good day.

You already saw my pictures, probably. I’m glad I finally got that done. I’ve found a few more, mostly older pictures (closer to high school age), so people checking out my Facebook profile can remember who I was. I’ll get those up in a couple days.

But, yeah, work went well. I was busy every minute of the day, today, but about 4 minutes before I was scheduled to go home, I finished up my major project. I sent off the email and turned it over to the engineer. He’ll have to review it, and my editor will have to review it (did I explain this already?). Anyway, it won’t be done by the end of the day tomorrow, but I think the people interested will be pretty impressed with what we managed to do nonetheless.

But, yeah, I got a ton accomplished at work, and I know for a fact that it’s quality work. That’s a good feeling. Especially knowing I managed that even under a major rush. So, woohoo for me.

Then I got home and played with my baby some, talked with T– some, and then I suggested a new recipe for a leftovers dinner — meatball grilled cheese — and it turned out so good. And after that, I beat Overlord. And after that, even though it was already time for bed, I somehow convinced myself to go for a walk anyway. D– came over to walk with me, and I just got in. I’ve been pressing it a little harder lately, so my legs are a little sore, but it’s the good kind.

That’s all for today. Hope you’re well. Keep in touch.

Posted on

Journal Entry

I don’t know why I have so much trouble updating over the weekend. Maybe it feels like work, and I’m just convinced I shouldn’t have to work on weekends (in spite of much evidence to the contrary). Anyway, here’s the weekend’s posts.

Friday, August 17th
Friday was my RDO. I planned to take full advantage of that (read: sleeping in), but somehow didn’t. I stayed up late Thursday night (probably playing Civ, but I don’t remember for sure), then woke up around 9:00 on Friday morning. So, yeah, technically I slept in (I normally wake up at 6:00 for work), but when I think “sleep in,” I’m thinking noon. It’s not a non-specific designation, as far as I’m concerned. It means “not waking up in the ante meridian,” plain and simple.

Anyway, yeah, woke up at nine, and I was kinda thinking that if I helped T– out with some housework on Friday, good karma would kick in and I wouldn’t have to do any chores for the rest of the weekend. So I vacuumed the whole house before T– got home from walking AB, and then I took out all the trash (including the diaper pail, so that actually counts). After that, I did nothing useful for the rest of the day, so karma didn’t really take me all that seriously.

I’m really not sure what I did with my afternoon. I read some and did some stuff on the computer, and played with the baby and talked with T–, and the day just sort of melted away. It was a pleasant one, though. T– made some really good sandwiches for lunch, and we already had plans in the works for pizza for dinner. She’d been seeing tantalizing ads on TV all week, so how could we resist?

So, when evening finally rolled around, we ordered some pizza from Pizza Hut and tried to watch a movie. The guy at Blockbuster really recommended I Think I Love My Wife as a hilarious comedy, but ten minutes in we decided to turn it off. It wasn’t funny. Have you ever seen Bye Bye Love, with Paul Reiser? Yeah.

So we turned that off, and started Wild Hogs, and then heard back from B– and E– who we’d invited over (and who sounded like they were having a real hell of a day), and it turned out they could come over after all (yay!), and seconds after that phone call the XBox glitched (that’s our story), and instead of resuming the movie where we were, we waited for B– and E– to get there and we started it over.

D– saw it a long time before we did, and said it was mostly hilarious to middle-aged people. While we were watching it, about a third of the way in, B– said, “So, this is basically City Slickers, no?” Basically, yes. It was good though. Easy fun. Easy laughs. We had a good time, and then we talked for a long time before they headed home. It was a fun night. I love it when those two can come over.

After that…well, I went to my office to play Civ, and T– went to bed.

Saturday, August 18th
AB turned six months old. We didn’t have a party or anything, but the fact got mentioned more than once this weekend, so I’ll throw it in. A short paragraph doesn’t really cost me anything.

Saturday morning I woke up je ne said quand, and pretty much immediately headed outside to mow. At that point, it was eight days since I’d mowed last, and such dry days that I was thinking I could probably skip it, but I had the whole day free so I might as well get it done. Ten minutes in, I felt a couple sprinkles and thought maybe I should quit. It didn’t rain, though. It was brutally muggy, but it didn’t rain. Not while I was mowing.

A little later, I got cleaned up and then when I came into the living room (10-ish), T– suggested that we invite K– and N– over for lunch. That sounded fun, and we ended up eating with them around noon and socializing until two-ish, then they went home to take care of some stuff before coming back a little before five. I probably spent the whole afternoon on the computer, though I may have read some.

At some point in there it started raining, full-on storming, and I discovered it was a really good thing I’d mowed. I hear we got four inches of rain in just a few hours. No big deal, at least at the time, but it kept raining all evening and became a major storm sometime in the night.

The thing at five was one T– has been planning for a little over a week. She invited all her girl friends to go out for the evening. I think only three were able to make it. N– was one of them, and she dropped K– off at my place to watch the second Cowboys preseason game while they were at the movie (they went to dinner, then shopped at the mall some, then went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix again). We had AB.

K– brought some steaks with him, and the makings for Tattoo and Redbulls, so we had the stuffs for a party. We also had two hours until the game began, so I suggested watching the Chris Rock movie again in the hopes that it would turn out to be funny. It didn’t. Bye Bye Love, seriously. It was brutal. It had a happy ending, eventually, but it was never anywhere close to a comedy.

Also, my nerves were worn a bit by AB, who skipped her 6:30 nap entirely, opting to spend that hour crying instead of sleeping, no matter what I did to calm her. She finally went down around 8:30, and that gave us a little under two hours to watch the game without her screaming.

Anyway, it was a good game (Cowboys are looking really good for this season — I’m optimistic), and K– and I had some time to talk, which was pretty cool. We also had an awful lot of salsa which went uneaten, because nobody came by with chips. But, then, that just means it’s still available, and the invitation is an open one. I’m just saying, is all.

But, yeah, we played the last quarter at double-speed on the TiVo while the girls told us about their evening, and then K– and N– went home and, if I remember correctly, I went to my office to play Civ, and T– went to bed.

Sunday, August 19th
I woke up this morning at 6:40 and 7:15 and 8:00 and 9:30, and since church is at 10:30 I finally got up around 9:45. We had some wild storms last night. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I remember lying in bed with the sheets up over my head, listening to the howling wind and just waiting for it to break out the windows. It never did, though, and by dawn the rain was mostly gone.

When we marched out to the car to head to church, I was just putting AB in her carseat in the back when T– looked over the top of the Honda to our stupid old Saturn and said, “Oh, shoot!” The windows were cracked, to relieve a bit of the brutal heat we’d had for the least three weeks or so, and when we looked inside the car it had several inches of standing water in the floorboards. Yuck.

There was nothing for it at the time, though. We went to church, and K– and N– didn’t make it (N– had a headache), so we just went home for lunch which left us with a weirdly-early afternoon. We almost always go to lunch with them on Sundays, so we ate some chicken and veggies that T– cooked up, and found ourselves home and fed more than an hour earlier than usual. It threw us both off our games.

I decided to spend the hour fixing a drip in our guest bathtub, and spent an hour and a half trying to get the cold water knob removed. I never managed it, either. I know how to remove a cold water knob from a bathtub faucet, this one just didn’t work right. I researched it on the internet. I called my parents. I banged on it with a hammer and pried at it with a crowbar. It just wouldn’t come off. So I gave up, put everything back together as it had been, turned the water back on (slow drip and all), and put all my stuff away, and chalked the whole thing up as two hours wasted.

Sometime in there, T– took our shopvac out and completely cleaned out the water in the Saturn, and even vacuumed the Honda just for cleanliness. Jeez. It looks really nice now, though.

Around 6:00 we went over to K– and N–‘s for pizza and Psych, which was a ton of fun. While I was there, I missed a call from D– on his way home from Wichita, so after we got home (and T– and I each had a bowl of ice cream and we watched another episode of Psych together), I got back in touch with D– and we went for a walk.

I keep trying to think of a non-gay way to say, “we went to D–‘s apartment and had a bottle of wine and talked.” Turns out, there’s not one. But we did that (and nothing else), and it was a lot of fun. Then I came home, drank a cold glass of water, and wrote an ass-long blog post. And now, exhausted, I’m going to bed.

Watch Stranger than Fiction, if you haven’t. Read The Three Musketeers and all of Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber if you haven’t. You’ll be glad you did. I’m going to bed.

(237.0)

Posted on

Journal Entry

Nothing terribly exciting to report for the day. I considered some fun ideas for the story I mentioned last night, but I didn’t do any writing on it.

Actually, I’ve remarked before on a recent difficulty motivating myself to write, and that persists. I’ve been able to commit a handful more pages of the Auric-meets-Queen-Sera story to paper in my scribblebook, but I can’t even make the time to type that up. That’s more than a little frustrating.

Anyway, I spent most of today at work working on work, but I did leave to have lunch with D–, which ended up not really happening because he got caught in some errands (not that I begrudge him that). But I ended up eating a burger at Coits, and then after I was done he showed up and we talked for a few before I had to head back to work.

I spent most of the afternoon fighting nodding off at my desk. I don’t know why, but I just felt extraordinarily lethargic there. I was falling asleep at the wheel on my drive home, and then had a pounding headache by the time I got into the house. Then AB was fussing and T– needed help making dinner, and I didn’t really get to take a nap until around 7:00, and I wasted that one by taking it on the couch. I never get good rest on the couch.

So, a frustrating evening, really, and I’m sure T– could have used more help than I gave her, so probably frustrating all around. D– came by around 8:30, and we went for our walk a little early. We spent the whole time talking shop (writing stuff, I mean), and then I just got home. Going to get another DVD burning, and then I’m off to sleep.

(237.4)

Posted on

Journal Entry

Still a little drunk, even after two hours and a three-mile walk.

I had a pretty good day. Work was a little rough this morning. I did not sleep any better, and I was late getting in again, and then I had an angry email from an engineer to whom two hundred pages worth of technical manual was owed. That is, I owed him a completed section on Controls and Indicators, and I didn’t have it finished. He’s also in Wisconsin until the eighth of August, so I didn’t think he really needed it that soon, but I guess he’s got good internet access and a lot of free time. So there ya go.

So I banged that out and emailed it to him, and that made for a stressful morning, considering I had that same fatigue thing going on. Then in the afternoon I finished up a bunch of little things I’d been putting off (after the morning’s wake-up call on things put off). Among them (and the only one not work related), I did finish those last two pages. Actually, I also did some heavy duty rearranging of the pages that went after those two, and that was something I knew had to be done, so there was a little more work left than I’d been implying. But, yeah, I finished that, so that’s two novels written in July ’07. Not too shabby.

I was late leaving work because of that, but traffic wasn’t too bad. D– had offered to buy us a pizza for dinner, so I was pretty excited about that. When I got home from work, I made a quick run to Blockbuster to drop off some movies — which reminds me, I meant to make a note to myself to spend my next three free rentals on Freedom Writers (y’know what, shut up!), The Number 23, and Perfume: The Story of a Murder. 23 was all rented out, and I’d picked up the other two but I found something better while I was there. I’d still like to get all those, though.

Also, 300 is out on Tuesday. I’m just saying, is all.

Anyway, I got back from Blockbuster and D– was there with the pizza. We also had a box of wine that he bought us ages ago for the Gordons’ housewarming party. By way of greeting card, he’d scribbled “Congrats Bitches!” on the box, right above the spigot (or “bunghole,” if you want to use the proper term). Well, T–‘s parents are coming in this weekend for her birthday and, while we don’t hide our alcohol consumption from our parents, she wasn’t too happy about the horrific profanity greeting them whenever they opened the fridge. So she asked us to get rid of it.

Umm….it has to be three or four weeks old by now. It was still nearly as good as the day we opened it, though. I’ve got to admit — boxed wine has its advantages. So I had three big glasses, T– had one, and D– had two or three. I was definitely buzzing while we watched a couple episodes of Dead Zone.

Then D– and I went for a walk, and spent the whole time talking about our writing project. We’ve got some really amazing material to work with. I’m more and more impressed every time we discuss it.

But, yeah, we went for our walk, then he went home, and I’m going to go to bed. ‘Night.

(241.6)

Posted on

Journal Entry

Is it only Wednesday? Ugh. I feel like it’s been weeks since last Sunday.

I haven’t been sleeping well, all week, and I’ve been feeling absent and spacey during the day. I blamed it on Benadryl on Monday, but it’s more than that. I’m just…ugh.

Anyway, Wednesday’s done. I woke up late this morning and barely made it into work at all. I’ve committed my regular day off already (a week from Friday), because I’m supposed to go down to Dallas to help K– help his mom move. I dunno, it’s a weird situation. Anyway, that’s not available, and I have nearly two days of leave available, but when we make the contract transition next week it gets cashed out, and I need the cash to pay for T–‘s birthday present, so that’s not an option.

So I went to work. It was pretty awful. I was, as I described earlier, entirely useless all day. I was there, though, and that’s what counts. Actually, I did get the last of my paperwork turned in for the contract transition and I got my new badge (the old one expires next week), so that’s all business taken care of.

I didn’t finish KJW. As I described in yesterday’s post, I basically had four pages that I had to write today, to finish the novel. I only wrote two, and inexplicably (or, well, explicably, but it’s a really long and boring explication) those last two pages are going to be a real bugger to write. I should get it done this week, but for having only 600 words missing, it’s just unreasonably tough.

Anyway, got home from work and I was way too tired to vacuum the floors as a favor to T–, so I played with the baby instead. Halfway through that process, we got a call from N– inviting us to dinner at a Mexican place next to church. We used to eat there every week on Wednesday, until it went under new management and the new people stopped selling the dish that every damn one of us would order. So we went once under the new management, didn’t like what we got, and stopped going there. That was over a year ago.

Anyway, T– was supposed to make biscuits and gravy for dinner, but we felt adventurous so we took D– with us (he’d come over for some free biscuits and gravy) and met K– and N– for supper. Afterword, T– went to church with the other two, and I was taking D– back to the house when he suggested we get a drink somewhere. There’s a bar within walking distance (or, as I like to put it, “stumbling distance”) of my house, but I’d never been there. It’s a sports bar called “The Dugout,” and since I despise baseball, I always assumed I’d hate the bar. We stopped in, though, because I didn’t feel like driving three miles to Henry Hudsons.

We sat down at the first booth we saw, and then realized there was a framed, autographed Roy Williams jersey hanging above our booth. Not bad at all. Also, they had a whole ad full of Red Bull drink specials. It was a really cool place, and we’re definitely going to have to try out the Sunday night specials with K– some time.

So, yeah, we burned an hour that way, and I was kinda flying by the time T– got home from church. We watched an episode of Dead Zone and then it was time for my walk. She was kind enough to offer me the use of her iPod, and I took her up on it. I’ve got to say, it made a huge difference. I can’t believe how fast that walk seemed to go. It actually was faster, too, because I was listening to fast-paced music and walking in time with it. So, very cool.

Anyway, I’m going to go to bed now, and with any luck I’ll fall asleep right away. I certainly need it.

(239.1)

Posted on

Journal Entry

Tuesday, July 24th
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I had an ounce of self control, I’d be the perfect man.

Ugh. So, no, I didn’t walk last night and I didn’t post to Xanga, either. I did have a really fun evening, though.

Yesterday, as the blog post shows, I finished up the backstory for King Jason’s War (B28 and B29, the latter of which is the love story post). That still left eleven one-page vignettes to write, but I was able to get half of those done, too. So, in spite of a pretty unpleasant set of work projects (a couple of which were new, so I’ll be complaining about them for a while yet), I had a pretty good day at work.

I also went and picked up T–‘s birthday present while I was out — an iPod. She’s been wanting an mp3 player for ages now, and by all accounts the iPod is the best one out there, so there ya go. Only the best for my baby. Also (and this did not escape my notice), if she ends up getting bored with it any time soon, there is a commutative property that works out to “only the best for me,” and I’ve got no complaints about that.

Anyway, I’d convinced D– to watch AB for us so I could take T– out to a birthday dinner. Her parents are coming in this weekend to take us out somewhere nice to eat, so I recommended we pick somewhere nice to drink, while it was just the two of us, and get us some delicious margarita. We settled on Poblanos, which actually served both purposes. Delicious dinner, and a fantastic frozen margarita. Yumm.

Then afterward we went by Hobby Lobby to look at picture frames and check out the sales on scrapbooking stuff (hey, it was her birthday!), and then we called K– and N– to see if we could come over and watch Psych, in spite of the late hour. And then we called D– to see if it was okay for us to stay out a while longer. Oops. Anyway, AB had been good for him up until that point, so he said sure. Sucker!

Psych was a good one, and it was fun seeing K– and N– again. After that, we went back home to figure out iTunes and try out the new iPod. And, of course, that led to searching for some new music because the gigs and gigs of it we already have isn’t sufficient, and I got caught up in that and forgot to go for a walk or read any Harry Potter.

So, eleven o’clock rolled around and I finished listening to “Okie from Muskogee” or some nonsense, and then I just headed to bed and crashed. Tonight…tonight, maybe I’ll go for a walk. Maybe.

(238.8)

Posted on

Journal Entry

I feel like I’ve spent the whole day mowing, from sunup to sundown. In truth, it’s been a little less than that.

Back to work this morning, and really not as bad as I expected. I had clean, easy work to do today. I had a meeting last week with the engineer, in which we went over a two hundred page document page by page, and marked down every change that needed to be made. That was brutal, but once it was done, the actual change process is fairly simple. I spent the day today working on that.

I also had some time over lunch, and some free time in the afternoon that I spent working on KJW. I typed up B23 and B24 and B25, which I had written over the weekend, and I had to write a thousand words to finish up B25, which is about half. I got most of that done in the morning. Then over lunch I wrote out B26 and B27, and then as I was bragging to T– and K– about that at the end of the day (over GMail chat), I got so caught up in it that, instead of going home from work, I wrote B30 (which is the final section of the book).

Now, some of you are math whizzes out there (I’m looking at you, Toby), and you’ll have figured out that I skipped B28 and B29 in that paragraph. That’s okay. It amounts to twelve pages between them, and I already know what happens (the Council offers their allegiance to Jason if he’ll support the war, and then Myriam asks Jason to marry her — it’s complicated). Twelve pages, and I could probably do that in a day, if it’s a slow one. If not, it’s a small matter to finish it over two, and that still leaves me two more to type up the handful of vignette pages that I need to finish the story out (a smattering between N16 and N29 — N30 got cut).

So there you go. Most of my day centered around King Jason. That, and an air conditioner modification to our long range radars in high ambient and high corrosion environments. Not around a lawn mower at all.

But I got home from work, intending to do the laundry as a favor to T–, and found she’d already done it. So instead, I spent an hour playing with my computer as a favor to T–, and then headed to Edmond to mow my sister’s yard as a favor to my brother-in-law.

Now, let me take a moment to expound on mowing my sister’s yard. First, I hate mowing. I really, really hate mowing. Nobody enjoys it, but I hate it, to a very unreasonable degree.

But my little sister lives in Edmond which, for the most part, is filled with nazis. K– and N– insist this isn’t true, but they do such a good job taking care of their responsibilities without anyone asking, that they’d never have a chance to notice nazis anyway.

Should I capitalize that? Nah, I’m not going to bother. I’m generalizing far beyond the context of the proper noun anyway.

Okay, so, S– lives across the street from a particularly awful lawn nazi. Really, a complete asshole. I try to avoid language like that on my blog, just because I want my mom and dad to start reading it, but in this case it clearly applies. Also, there’s going to be a lot of it in this post.

So, I’ve already established a little bit about my likes and dislikes. Specifically, I hate mowing, but I hate nazis more. And S–‘s asshole neighbor is a nazi. They’re both true things about her, I don’t know which one causes which, but they’re definitely mutually reinforcing.

Anyway, so I get–

Oh! (Yes, I just interrupted myself. Deal with it.) I also really hate talking to people I don’t know. It makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable. Even people I know sometimes make me nervous (brothers-in-law for instance, even the ones I like…which, so far, is all of them, amazingly enough… huh, I just realized that).

Buh! Benadryl is making me dopey. Anyway, so I get to S–‘s house, and have to do this whole complicated rite to get the necessary doors unlocked and the dogs locked away in their run in the back yard. It’s like a puzzle game. I’m Link, out there opening the garage side door so that I can unhook the lock on the back yard gate, but I have to open the dog run gate before the side gate or else the dogs will escape, and then I’ll have to chase them down and once I’m carrying a dog under both arms I cannot work the latch on the back yard gate so I have to go through the house or garage, but that requires that I already opened one or both of those doors and left it open….

Seriously, Legend of Zelda stuff here.

Anyway, so I beat the first two levels of that, and then there I am with the lawn mower out on the driveway out front, and who’s standing out in their driveway across the street except that very asshole neighbor, chatting away with a bunch of friends. Now, as I understand it, she’s supposed to be the sort of nazi who leaves notes, not the sort who talks to you, but since I already think she’s an asshole, and I hate having to talk to strangers, I just assume she’s going to want to talk to me, so I get this big knot of hate going in my gut.

I force that from my mind, and yank the cord on the lawn mower. It goes guh-guh-guh, real loud, but doesn’t start. All six of the people on the neighbor’s driveway look at me, and I probably blushed (yeah, I’m that bad). It’s really no big deal, though, because you often have to prime a lawnmower, so I gave it another yank, and guh-guh-guh, but it doesn’t start. So I look all over for some sort of primer (that’s what mine has, a little vaccuum button sort of thing), but there’s none. I try again, three or four times, and every time I pull the cord all these strangers look at me and I’m all, “Gah!” in my head but (of course) say nothing out loud, and I’m just praying the stupid thing will start.

I go through that whole process two or three times, and each time I prod or poke some other bit sticking out of the side of the mower engine, until finally one lever ends up working. So the lawnmower pops to life, roaring real loud, and my adoring audience all look over again and I’m half expecting them to burst into applause, but they’re not actually as interested in me as I thought they were. Right after that, though, they all split up, leaving only the neighbor’s stupid-looking family standing out on the driveway.

So I start mowing…walk walk walk. Right, this is the part I hate under perfectly normal circumstances. And this time the neighbor is watching me, and I’m thinking to myself, “I’m pretty sure that one’s the asshole nazi one,” and she just watches me cutting back and forth, and it’s really getting to me.

Then, as I’m making a turn, she walks across the street, and smiles at me, and says, “It looks nice, huh?”

And I said, “What?” I had to yell over the motor (I think that last little bit I poked was the throttle, and I probably turned it all the way up, and I didn’t turn it back down — so it was loud). She said basically the same thing, and I shrugged and walked on around (which is my way of not talking to people), and when I got back she nodded, still smiling, and said the same thing.

So (see, I’m not good at being openly rude to people who don’t get it on the first try), I let the lawnmower die, and I sighed, and I said, “Huh?”

And she said, “It makes a big difference, huh?”

Now I was cutting the grass a lot shorter than it had grown, because J– keeps his mower set low, so there was a dramatic difference, but it really didn’t look that bad to start with. Anyway, I hated this lady before she said the first word, so I wasn’t about to agree with her. I shrugged. “It’s not that bad.” And she looked like she was going to argue, and I spent all day writing about people who talked over someone who looked like they were about to argue, and I guess that got to me because I said, “Y’know, I don’t live here. This is my sister’s house. I’m just mowing the lawn as a favor because she’s got this asshole neighbor who’s always bitching about her lawn.”

And she just stood there, her mouth open. I don’t really talk like that to strangers. (I sometimes use much dirtier words, but only for laugh factor, and only around friends.) And I could tell this lady was highly offended by what I was saying, and I was pretty sure no one had ever chastised her for all the hell she’d given my little sister, so I shook my head and said, “I can’t imagine living next to someone like that. I’d go insane. It must be real hell, huh?” Y’know, pretending I didn’t think she was the asshole neighbor (and kinda covering my ass in case I had the wrong chick). Then I jerked the cord, because I was ready to be openly rude again, and finished mowing the front yard.

So…apart from finishing two novels in one month, that’s about the coolest thing I’ve done this year.

*Contented sigh*

Now! Back to my list of things I hate! So, we start with mowing, and then move up to nazis, and talking to strangers is somewhere in there too (it’s no longer relevant to the story, so I’m not going to labor over its ranking). There’s a few other items in the list. Dogs, but that’s sort of a low-grade hate, so it goes near the bottom. Now, chasing around the yard after dogs I hate, that’s higher up, but still probably not as high as mowing. Stepping in dog poo, though, that’s right up there. Probably equal to nazi.

So, dogs, chasing dogs, mowing, nazis, and stepping in dog poo.

You know what’s worse than stepping in dog poo? Mowing dog poo. Wait, just in case that image isn’t completely clear in your head, I should expound upon it. Not just mowing over dog poo but, because you’ve got no choice but to follow the mower where it goes, stepping in the greasy puddle left behind.

So, anyway, that for about forty-five minutes, and then I came home and mowed my own yard (which, you’ll recall, is something that I hate) just for a not-awful medium in which to get some of the mess cleaned off my shoes.

Hmm…y’know, reading back over it, this blog post really needs some disclaimers at the top of it….

Anyway, mowing my yard took another forty-five, and it bled the last of the sunlight from the sky, and the last of my energy from me, so there’s no way I’m going for a walk tonight. I did technically finish earlier than usual, though, so I had time to do an extra long blog post. And I wasted it writing this filth. Can you believe it?

Okay, I’m going to go read Harry Potter now. I’m up to chapter eight. In book one! Can you believe it?

I’m starting to sound like the guy at the end of Hudson Hawk. I’ll go before I start tossing out worse expletives than I’ve used so far.

(240.4)

Posted on

Journal Entry

Just got home, at ten to eleven. Home safe, though, and it was a fun weekend in Little Rock. The older I get, the more I appreciate my relationship with my parents.

As I said earlier, morning came way too early today. We got to church on time, though, and I got a section of KJW done during the sermon. Then we had Friday’s for lunch, and got home just in time for AB to take a nap. We decided to let her sleep her fill, then feed her, and then get on the road. That should’ve put us out of town by 3:30, but she overslept and T– didn’t feel like waking her.

It was a funny scene in the Pogue house this afternoon, with S– and T– and Mom all three reading Harry Potter (and at pretty close to the same rate). Dad spent some time downstairs on the computer, playing WoW and such. I got started on another section of KJW (and got it finished on the drive home, when we stopped for dinner) so that leaves me just five left to write.

Between packing things up and long goodbyes, we finally got on the road at 4:15. I drove, T– read Harry Potter. We stopped at a Hardee’s for dinner, and spent some time there (as I said, I had time to write). Between that and the extra stops for the baby, it was a six and a half hour trip. That is stretching the limits of reason.

Still, as I said, we made it in safe, and the weekend was worth the cost of travel. I hope everyone else had a good one. I am not looking forward to work tomorrow. Then again, when am I ever?

(241.8)