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Journal Entry: June 19, 2008

We didn’t really have a Wednesday night dinner last night — at least, not one of the social ones I’ve talked about before here.

Instead, we went to a fundraising dinner at church, intended to raise some money for the missionaries. K– and N– went, too, but we showed up fifteen minutes before they did, and sat with several women I don’t know at all (but, of course, who all know and love T– and AB), so it was mostly a matter of trying to avoid being talked to.

That was stressful enough for me, and T– attends a ladies-only class anyway, so after dinner I hitched a ride home with K– and left T– to attend classes and then meet me at home. I spent the hour or so playing AoC. When she got home, she mowed the lawn (so she wouldn’t have to do it in the heat of the day today), and I played some more. Then we watched some TV, and went to bed. Altogether, it was a pretty quiet night.

I did get a call from B–, which is always delightful. I need to spend more time with him. But, then, I think that every time I spend any time with him.

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

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Journal Entry: 80’s Movies Spectacular

Yesterday for lunch, as has become my ritual, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings for some cheap boneless wings and some AoC on the laptop. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the wireless network on. I’ll give them another week to see if they fix that nonsense, and then I just may cancel my ritual. Jerks.

I’d had the presence of mind to bring a book, though, so it wasn’t a bad lunch. And the chicken, of course, was delicious.

Then after work I took AB to the gym, and T– stayed home to get some work done (she’s been in a frenzy all week, getting ready for her parents to come visit). After strength training, I did the first day of week 5 in my running program, and it went really well. The second day is going to be tough, and the third is going to be a nightmare, but I’m anxious to see if I can manage it (this is the first week that the various days involve different requirements).

Anyway, after the gym, I got home to find K– and N– already there, and D– showed up shortly with a big batch of boneless wings from Buffalo Wild Wings. (Yes, I did know that we’d be having the same thing for dinner, and no, I didn’t mind at all.) I suggested that we watch the next movie in our 80’s marathon, and we settled on Flight of the Navigator, one of N–‘s picks.

Okay, here’s the thing with that. D– suggested over dinner a couple months ago that we should spend the summer watching our favorite movies from the 80’s.

The idea evolved gradually. We started out with a pretty simple rule: our “favorites” should be movies that we liked during the 80’s, not just movies made in the 80’s that we like now. The reason being, movies that we like now (with the availability of DVDs and whatnot), we watch pretty frequently. Not a season goes by that I don’t watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and usually some subset of this group of friends is forced to sit through it with me. Same goes for The Three Amigos and any of the Fletch movies.

So, 80’s movies that we liked back in the 80’s. When we started throwing out names, there were way too many, so we decided on 3 movies apiece. Some negotiations were made whenever more than one of us wanted to pick the same movie, so that those with longer lists wouldn’t have as much difficulty narrowing it down.

And then, as we got further into the selection process, it became more of an evangelistic endeavor. When K– said, “Well, there’s Tron,” and I said, “Never seen it,” and he said, “You’ve never seen it?!?!” like that, well, he had to pick Tron because, come on, everyone should see Tron.

So that pretty much became the next major rule: out of our lists of childhood favorites, we narrowed it down by polling everyone to find out how many people had never seen each film. We’re not required to pick the least viewed films, but we’re using that as one of our selection criteria.

Anyway, T– hasn’t settled definitely on her 3 yet, but she’s hoping her parents’ visit this weekend will help spark her memory. Once that’s done, we’re going to go through a voting process to determine the viewing order, but so far I’ve just been using the right of imminent domain (we’ve watched all the movies at my house) to pick the ones I thought we should see.

The list we have so far (not including T–‘s) goes, in no particular order:
The Abyss (N–‘s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Adventures in Babysitting (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
An American Tale (N–‘s pick. 1 person has never seen it)
Bladerunner (K–‘s pick. 3 people have never seen it)
Field of Dreams (N–‘s pick. 1 person has never seen it — me)
Flight of the Navigator (N–‘s pick. 2 people had never seen it)
Goonies (D–‘s pick. 2 people had never seen it)
Ladyhawke (My pick. 2 or 3 people have never seen it)
The Last Starfighter (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
The Lost Boys (D–‘s pick. 3 people have never seen it)
Real Genius (My pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Running Man (K–‘s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Tron (K–‘s pick. 2 people have never seen it)
Young Guns (D–‘s pick. 3 people have never seen it)

There’s an extra movie in there for me (Ladyhawke) and N– (An American Tale). We haven’t fully narrowed down our lists to three yet. I toyed with suggesting that we expand our selections to our favorite four movies, but then I looked at a calendar, and realized that would stretch our summer to the end of October.

We’re sort of watching a movie every Saturday night that we’re all in town (T– and I being the ones most often missing). I like Thursdays, too, but it can be tough to talk K– and N– into staying out too late on a school night. Luckily, 80’s movies tend to be in the 75-90 minute range, instead of the 2 hour plus stuff we’re making today.

Anyway, that’s our 80’s movie thing. Now you know what’s going on. We watched Flight of the Navigator last night, and it was pretty good. I can definitely see why kids would have loved it back then. I was pretty critical of it during the movie, but that was the Crown Royal talking.

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

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Journal Entry: June 10, 2008

Friday afternoon, I left work early and dropped by the mall to pick up some new t-shirts, then went to get a haircut (always a pleasant experience). When all that was done, I still got home around 4:00.

T– took AB to a church Ladies’ Night Out sort of a thing at the mall, after meeting N– for dinner. Meanwhile, D– and I went to Ole, and I enjoyed their free queso once again. I recommend the place highly, if only for their setup.

Afterward, D– and I grabbed snowcones, and then played AoC until T– got home. At that point he went home (tired of trying to play a high-end game on a laptop), and I moved out to the living room to watch some Lost with T–. While we were doing that, I played a high-end game on a laptop.

Saturday morning I’d offered to watch AB for T– while she went to a big sale with my little sister. It was easy enough, because she was kind enough to schedule her shopping to overlap AB’s nap. As a result, I got to spend most of the time she was gone playing games.

Of course, as soon as T– got home, that was over. She had a big playdate scheduled for the afternoon, with E– and the Nances and several of the young moms from church invited over for a “pool party.” It took place entirely in the back yard, so she and I spent the morning and afternoon getting it ready.

As part of that, we were moving a lot of the less-attractive elements from our back porch (things like the lawnmower) into the garage. We also still needed to get the quadrillion-pound air conditioner that we’d brought from Tulsa out of the van and stored somewhere semi-permanent, and the only reasonable place for it was occupied with a massive pile of junk that had accumulated over the course of our last five or six trips to work on the house in Tulsa.

So, in addition to helping T– with yard work, I ran up to Wal-Mart to buy some new storage shelving, then committed a big chunk of my Saturday to setting it up and coordinating a lot of the mess. By the time I finished, our cluttered garage was a lot more organized. D– came over to help me unload the air conditioner and we tucked it into the newly-emptied corner, and had room for everything else besides.

T– had asked me to make an appearance at the playdate, but it being all-girls, she didn’t require me to spend much time on it. Which is a good thing, because it was outdoors…and I’m not a fan. Toby came, too, bringing his family, so he and I spent the two hours in my office, working on a programming project. Primarily, he was trying to get my computer installed with all the software necessary to collaborate on a big project we’re starting. I’m looking forward to it.

After they left, I’d intended to spend much of the evening playing AoC, but I got a call from K– asking if we wanted to carry on our 80’s movies review, and that sounded just capital. K– and N– picked up some P F Chang’s for us, and D– came over, and we watched The Goonies, which neither of the girls had seen before. It was a fun evening.

Sunday after church, we five met up again for lunch at Friday’s, then split up again. I did some more house work, patching up the open ceiling of the creepy closet on the back of our house, and cleaning up all the loose insulation that had fallen down into it. Afterward, T– went shopping while I watched AB and played some more AoC. Later in the evening, we watched some more TV and retired early.

Last night was much the same. When I first got home from work, I spent half an hour playing with AB, practicing her dragon roar and quizzing her on face parts (she definitely knows where her hair and nose are, but she’s pretty hazy on ears and eyes). Then I think I played AoC while she took a nap.

This week is VBS at church, evenings, and for the first time they’re not offering adult classes, so after T– dropped AB off, she found herself with an hour of unexpected free time. We spent most of it in the Customer Service Desk waiting line at Wal-Mart, after watching a pretty funny half of an episode of King of the Hill. Then we went up to the church for the end of VBS, and watched N– and K– on-stage for the evening’s sketch, which involved the giving of the Ten Commandments.

Afterward we compared notes, and learned that we’d been present for all of N–‘s collegiate and post-collegiate stage performances. Apparently she did something in high school that — she being many thousands of miles away and, at the time, completely unknown to us — we didn’t bother to attend. That’s the only one we’ve missed. And she has that on video. Yay.

Anyway, we got home from church and it was already 9:15, so we watched an episode of Lost and bemoaned the fact that it was too late for another, and then went to bed.

There’s no gym in any of that, as you may have noticed. Last time I went was one week ago. I don’t really mind, but I may by the time I try to do my run. K– will be there to make me finish it, too. Ugh. Anyway, I’m doing that right after work tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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

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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 5, 2007

Tuesday, July 3
On Tuesday, I finished my second novel. I wrote the epilogue to Josh’s story, the first volume in the Sleeping Kings trilogy. Nobody needed that amount of detail (if you’re reading this blog, that event was nothing like a surprise), but it’s a dramatic enough thing for me that I wanted to spell it out.

Really, the rest of the day is just a blur. On Tuesday, I finished my second novel!

Work sucked. It was a bad day. Shouldn’t have been — a lot of people were gone because of the holiday (turning a day off into a five day weekend, through clever use of leave), and I usually really enjoy days like that (I never have enough leave saved up). There was just a lot of unpleasant work to do on Tuesday, though, and I wanted to be elsewhere.

I did get off work an hour early, and then for the evening K– and N– came over, and N–‘s mom, who is in town visiting, and we watched the Season Finale of Stargate Atlantis and the Series Finale of Stargate SG-1. That was kind of a big deal, too. We’ve all been watching SG-1 for years now, and it’s easily the best long-running sci-fi TV show I’ve ever seen. Watching it with K– and N– was a lot of fun.

Oh, and I had three 7-and-7s, because they were there.

They stayed kind of late, but since I didn’t have to work the next morning, I didn’t really have any excuse to skip my evening walk, so around 9:45 I headed out. When I got home, I found T– chatting with D– (he’d tried to reach me on my cell phone, but I hadn’t taken it with me). I checked in to see why he was trying to reach me, and he wanted to go see Live Free or Die Hard. There was an 11:20 showing.

I knew better than to take him up on that offer. But I did anyway. I called K– and B– both (it was nearly 11:00 at that point) to see if either of them wanted to join us, but they were wiser men than I. D– picked me up, and we went to the mall.

I guess because it was the night before the holiday, they were closing showings (probably based on the sales during the day). So when we got to the ticket booth there were no showings of Die Hard, but there was an 11:20 of Transformers. I pointed out that I would get in a lot of trouble for going to see Transformers first, without… well, really, anyone whose initials I use on this blog. So we agreed not to tell anybody, and asked for two tickets.

And, would you believe it, they were sold out. So we decided to go to Hudsons for a few drinks. But when we got there, it turned out it was karaoke night. Loud karaoke night. Bad karaoke night. And the place was packed. We finally found a couple seats, waited ten minutes without hearing from the waitress, and then left without placing an order.

From there, we went to Fox and Hound Pub, and it was a much more pleasant environment. I had nachos and a Jack and Coke and Long Island Iced Tea (and around the first sip of the Tea, I was thinking, “Man, I shouldn’t feel this tipsy…” and then I remembered the tree 7-and-7s from earlier and said, “Ohhhh…”). We talked for a couple hours. Good times. I finally got to bed around 2:30.

Wednesday, July 4
At 3:00, 4:00, and 5:00 in the morning, AB woke up (and made sure we knew about it). T–, generous, loving wife that she is, handled it. Still, it was not a lot of sleep even for me. I ended up getting up for real around 7:00, because she needed me to take care of some stuff around the house before our guests came over. Meanwhile, she went to a parade up in Edmond with N– et al.

Wednesday was N–‘s birthday, and it being the 4th, that always means some pretty dedicated celebration. This year was no exception. I spent a significant portion of the morning at Wal-Mart, buying needed goods, and then came home just as D– showed up with the meat for a cookout. I started the chicken marinading, made up two batches of salsa (Mild, which I was told by experts was still too spicy, and Extra Super Hot, which K– said was, “actually hot this time,” meaning it was probably pretty close to Extra Super Hot).

On a whim, I mowed the back yard real fast, realizing we’d be cooking out on the back porch, and possibly playing K–‘s yard game (backyard bolo, or golf horseshoes, or whatever you want to call it), so short grass would help. It’s not a terribly big back yard, but it had gotten hot, so I was already at a simmer by the time guests started arriving. I took a Benadryl, too, because of the mowing.

Guests started showing up around 1:00. K– and N– with her mom, my little sister with her whole family, B– and E–, D– was there…all told, we had 13 people in our house, not counting the zygotes. Considering that, the whole afternoon went amazingly well.

We grilled burgers and chicken and brats, and a selection of vegetables N– had brought, and everyone said it was all delicious. We had two extravagant desserts, by way of birthday cake, and some delicious ice cream by way of Blue Bell. We invested a significant portion of the afternoon in eating, and of course there was chitchat throughout that, and as people started falling asleep standing up, we realized it was about time to split up. My sister’s family left to get the kids some rest, and B– and E– left to get themselves some rest, and those of us who stayed mostly crashed out on couches. We turned on the Wii and showed N–‘s mom how to bowl, and wasted a couple hours that way.

Then, around evening-time, we headed out to Bethany for a big Independence Day carnival they were throwing, with the expectation (of course) of fireworks at the end of the evening. This year, for reasons having to do with the penultimate scenes in Sleeping Kings, I was looking forward to the fireworks more than at any point in the last two decades. We picked a good show, too, and I was not disappointed.

Before that, though, we had to find parking. They’d set aside a big field for parking, but when we got there we learned it had been closed off because of all the recent rains (and the risk of getting stuck in the mud as a result). So, instead of a parking spot within sight of the Live Music stand, we had to find a place somewhere in town. And everywhere within a couple miles was off-limits, as clearly indicated by the “Road Closed” and “Towaway Zone” signs posted everywhere.

It turns out, though, that by simply ignoring those signs and slipping down a street we weren’t legally allowed to be on at all, it became quite simple to find a really fantastic parking spot. So that solved that problem.

Then there were the long hours waiting for the fireworks to begin. We walked around the carnival, but couldn’t convince ourselves to spend money on any of the mediocre attractions there. We did buy some of the mediocre fried foods, and delighted in it the way one does in such a scenario, but that quickly passed. Oh! I tried out a 1920’s door-to-door salesman voice that worked out pretty well, so that was something accomplished.

S–‘s family showed up about an hour after we got there (so 7:30-ish, but that’s just a guess) and B– and E– showed up shortly before the fireworks (so, two hours later). Figuring out landmarks to meet up with B– was an adventure in itself, but we managed to rendez-vous behind the port-a-potties, and all was well.

The fireworks show was spectacular.

We got home around 11:00. D– had stayed at our house all evening watching AB for us (he’s not a big fan of fireworks). I invited him to go for a walk with me, so we did the usual route and talked of life and things. It was fun. Afterward, he went home, and I got to bed around 12:30.

Thursday, July 5th
Today, significantly less happened. Oh! I mentioned earlier that I never have leave saved up to supplement a holiday, but I do get a regular day off every pay period. I was able to move mine for this week (that should have been Friday) back a day, so I could recover from the merriment of Wednesday.

To take full advantage of that (and much in need of it), I’d vowed to sleep until noon. Instead, I ended up getting up around 8:30 so I could watch AB while T– went to the chiropractor. I played Civ 4 all morning, and had a couple leftover burgers for lunch. At 1:00 we headed over to K– and N–‘s place, because N–‘s mom had invited T– to go see a movie with them (“them” being the girls — it wasn’t the sort of movie that guys go to). I took AB with me and hung out at K–‘s place for the afternoon.

We downloaded a game from XBox Live Arcade called “Band of Bugs.” I’d heard favorable discussion of it in a Penny Arcade newspost, so we decided to try it out. It’s a surprisingly fun game. It’s a combat strategy game, that simple to play but has a surprising level of complexity to it. Could be a lot of fun. We had just started trying the multiplayer out when the girls got back, and T– and I came home.

I spent most of the evening playing Civ. D– came over to pick up his iPhone, which he’d had delivered here, and he hung out all evening getting it set up. T– and I watched some TV, and had a frozen pizza, and…I dunno. She probably did a lot of work. I just played my game.

At 8:45, I did the dishes so T– wouldn’t have to (after yesterday’s party, some had piled up). Then, a little after 9:00, I decided to go ahead and go for a walk. I’m glad I did. At this point, I’ve only missed once. I want to see how long I can keep that up. I spent most of the walk working on an Afterword for Josh’s story, which I hope to get typed up and posted tomorrow, but will do sometime in the next week. Just to let people know where the story stands, really, and that it’ll be a while before I start posting Sarah’s story.

And then I came home, and typed up a ridiculously long blog post. That was my holiday weekend, in the middle of the week. Now I’ve got a Friday that’ll probably be pretty quiet, and then another weekend that I actually get to spend at home. I’m excited about that.

I’m going to bed. Later.

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Journal Entry: July 1, 2007

Seething with fury. I’d already typed up through Saturday night when my Firefox did something weird, and I lost it all. Grrrr!

Friday, June 29th
Our friend Julie is in town housesitting for some family for a couple weeks, so she stopped by Friday night after work to drop off some bead jewelry for T–, and visit with us some. Once she’d had her fill of AB, she went to hang out with T– who was at the church for a crop.

Around 7:30 B– and E– came over, and E– was so generous as to offer to watch AB while B– and I ran out for supplies. We hit Byron’s Liquor Warehouse where I got some Seagram’s 7, because B– had never had a 7 and 7. He’d also never had a Tattoo and Redbull, so I suggested we go by a grocery store and pick up some Coke and Redbull for that. It didn’t occur to me, somehow, that I also needed 7-Up. So B– had his first Tattoo and Redbull Friday night (and his second, and his third), and we both had our first Seagram’s 7 on the rocks. It was pretty good….

We also picked up some magnificent barbecue while we were out. When we got back, we ate, and drank, and talked. We also turned on an episode of Firefly, but twenty minutes in we paused it because AB was fussing, or something on that order, and never ended up unpausing it. We talked much of days gone by. It was really fun.

Around 11:30, they headed home. I kept telling myself as soon as T– got home, I’d go for my walk. She got home, and I didn’t. Six days in, and already I’ve failed my goal to walk daily. I stayed up until midnight, posted Saturday’s Sleeping Kings story (so it’d show up on the right date), and then went to bed.

Saturday, June 30th
Saturday, I didn’t write at all. Instead, I slept in, to a dramatic degree. I finally got up and around sometime around 11:00, and discovered that it hadn’t rained at all yet today. So I went out and mowed, as I’m sure 90% of the homeowners in town did that morning. I also sprayed the foundation of the house for bugs, and moved several piles of branches out to the curb for big trash day.

In the afternoon, T– and I ran up to Old Navy so I could finally get the new shorts I’ve been yacking about all week. I got a pair of jean shorts and a pair of workout shorts, both of which are extraordinarily comfortable. I’m very satisfied.

Then in the evening, Julie came by again. We visited some, and after she mentioned she was a huge fan of the Deschanel sisters (and explained who they were), we ended up watching Big Trouble, which she had never seen before. That’s always a fun one. Then we watched Happy Texas, which is on the same disc, and also she’d never seen before.

Shortly after that, she headed home. I stayed up to play some Civ, and then around 11:30 realized I hadn’t gone for a walk yet. T– argued that my yard work should count, but since I’d skipped the night before, I felt bad. So I went, full route, as fast as I could, and felt a lot better about myself. When I got home, I crashed.

Sunday, July 1st
And this morning, I felt awful. Between the work and the workout, I was sore all over by the time I woke up. Worth it, though. One week in, I weighed myself this morning and I’ve lost eight pounds in the first week. It tends to go like that, though. The first ten fall right off, and then nothing for a month. I’m not looking forward to that.

We went to church, and then came home and I wrote up today’s Sleeping Kings post. Only three more to the end of the story! I’m really excited about that. I guess I’ve said that every day this week, haven’t I? Forgive me. It’s a big deal for me.

This afternoon was a little bit lazy. We watched some Andy Richter Controls the Universe, which was a fantastic show, back when it was on. We also watched She’s the Man, a rough take-off of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in the same vein as 10 Things I Hate about You. It’s not as good as that one, but not as bad as it could be. It burned a couple hours for us, is what I’m getting at.

Then I spread some weed-n-feed on my yard, and then D– went with us to Friday’s where we met K– and N– and N–‘s mom for dinner. It was a really fun evening. I don’t think I remember a time a group like that has been that talkative. For pretty much the whole time we were there we had at least two conversations going simultaneously.

And, of course, the food was delicious. T– and I split the Jack Daniels Tower (ribs, chicken, and shrimp), and I had a Redbull Berry Blast Slush to drink. It was interesting.

Came home, then D– and I went for a walk, and spent the hour talking. After that, he went home, and I came here, to type this up. And Firefox lost half of my submission and I had to retype it, and you can bet your ass I’m still grouchy about that. But now I’m going to feed the kittens, and then I’m going to bed.

Hope you had a good weekend. This next week should be interesting, given the mid-week holiday. I’ll keep you posted.

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Journal Entry: Wednesday, June 20th

Strangely busy night last night. I’d go so far as to say hectic.

Work was mostly uninteresting. I was late getting in, and then over lunch I wrote an SK post that introduced a scene I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. Then Xanga was down for the rest of the day, so I didn’t get it posted until this morning.

D–‘s mom stopped by shortly after I got home from work, on her way back to Wichita from someplace Texasy. That was not unexpected. We had an Ed’s Massive Burger, which was delicious, and then she hit the road to get home at a reasonable hour. I loaded up Civ 4, honestly thinking that would be the end of my day (with, y’know, pleasant coasting as I wasted the next three hours playing video games).

Oh, right. “D–‘s mom.” I’ve decided, as a very flimsy sort of privacy protection, to truncate everybody’s name. I almost did the same thing with Wichita, but it could eventually get a little silly. I realize I’m not just documenting my own life here, though, but those of everyone I interact with, to one degree or another, and a surprising number of those people have serious secrecy concerns. Here’s hoping not-spelling-out-their-names every time will sufficiently soothe their anxious little hearts.

Obviously, it’s a thin disguise, but it’ll thwart Google, at the very least.

Also, using the dashes….that’s a really old convention. Lots of novels used to use first-letter-dash-dash in place of a full name for pretty much any proper nouns, especially ones existing in the real world. It still kinda throws me off when I’m reading through a Dumas or Scott and hit a word like that, but I thought it’d be fun to throw it into my blog.

Anyhow, D–‘s mom left around 7:30, and just as I was settling down to play some Civ, T– got a call from N– (isn’t this going to be fun?) saying she and K– wanted to stop by on their way home from church and borrow a couple books. A few minutes after they showed up, we were all talking, playing social, and then I got a call from B– saying their water was off, and could I come help them turn it back on. I just happened to have the right tool for that, so I hung around until K– and N– left, and then headed over to B–‘s place, and fixed his water.

It’s nice to have the right tool for the job. Easiest plumbing project I’ve ever done. We got their water back on, and then I hung around to talk a little. Lots of new complications in the home-buying project. Ugh.

I got back home around 9:30, and found T–‘s friend R–‘s car in the driveway. Oh, and D– was still there building his new computer. Yeesh, busy night at the Pogue house.

And as I’m going to be gone all weekend, and my Friday night’s already accounted for (and I was wearing the right type of shoes for the job), I talked myself into going ahead and mowing the back yard, which badly needed it. I have this to say of mowing at night: there are a lot more bugs out, when it’s dark out. You don’t see many of them, but that’s as much a curse as it is a blessing. Yuck.

Anyway, I got done around 10:00, and but didn’t get to sleep until a couple hours later. So, short night, and it’s been a very long day today at work. Still, I did half the diner scene for SK over lunch, and I’m in a pretty good mood about that.

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Journal Entry: June 18, 2007

Hmm…okay, I’m only four days behind, so far. So today’s will be a long one.

Friday, June 15th
I took off work last Friday, because I get one day per pay period, and my regular day off (this coming Friday, the 22nd) I’m going to be busy with work, so I took it early.

Thursday night, I agreed to spend my Friday keeping an eye on K– (who’d just had surgery), but I got a call from N– early early Friday morning saying she could take care of it, so I could just stay in bed. Unfortunately, by the time I learned this, I was already out of bed. Alas.

T– and I went to Sears, and I finally got repair parts for my week-dead lawnmower (that died mid-mow, so my front yard had been weird looking). I also did go over to K–‘s for a few hours in the afternoon, and we beat Gears of War on his new XBox 360. Sweet.

‘Round about 4:00, “B and E” (as they like to be known) were closing on their house, so we threw a housewarming party for them. D– brought the wine, I ordered pizza, and toward the end of the evening K– and N– bought us all gellato. Oh, and we watched Ghost Rider and ridiculed it without mercy. Again, alas for what might have been.

Saturday, June 16th
Saturday was awful. B– kept insisting he would need no help moving their boxes to the new house (and I was getting the feeling he wouldn’t accept any, anyway), so after I repaired my lawnmower (I say “repaired” because it sounds a lot more impressive than “replaced the air filter and spark plug for the first time in five years”), I decided to go ahead and mow. And while I was at that, I pulled out the ol’ power hedge trimmers to clean up the overgrown clutter along our front fence, and to chop down the unpleasant shrubs growing along our front walk. Chainsaw work, but I did it with hedge trimmers. In the hot and humid. For a couple hours.

What I’m getting at, is I fully wore myself out working on the yard, then went inside and crashed on the couch, only to have D– call me lazy and instruct me to go help him start loading up B–‘s stuff. Which I did, because I don’t like being called lazy in spite of the fact that I’m amazingly lazy. Kinda like Back to the Future 2, when you think about it….

Anyway, D–‘s a vicious taskmaster anyway, so we sprinted through getting B–‘s stuff loaded, then sprinted through getting it unloaded so I could be back at the house in time for T– to leave for an evening of scrapbooking. I’d promised to watch A–b–. Daniel was kind enough to watch her for a couple hours while I went to dinner with T– and K– and N– mid-crop, and other than that she slept for most of the evening, so that was a relief. I played a pretty amazing game of Civ, and then went to bed when I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, around 2:30.

Sunday, June 17th
Okay, Saturday morning and midday I used myself up, and then spent the whole evening and night folded into an extremely soft couch, so my options for Sunday were extremely limited before it ever began. I woke with an extraordinarily sore back. In addition, all A–b–‘s good sleep Saturday evening meant that she wasn’t as tired as she should’ve been during the night, so she kept T– awake late and woke her up early. Between the two of us, we were a pretty sad sight for most of the day.

It was my first Father’s Day, though, and T– gave me an awesome book of pictures of A–b–. She made the book, and picked such cute pictures. I brought it to work this morning, and naturally it was a big hit.

We managed to make a trip to the grocery store, and T– made some delicious Amish Friendship Bread. I fiddled around with stuff on my computer (some WoW, some Civ, lots of just fiddling). T– watched half a dozen episodes of Numb3rs. We’d intended to go over to B– and E–‘s new place sometime in the afternoon, but they were overcome with the many demands of new homeownership, and so that was postponed. We ended up meeting K– and N– for dinner at Jersey Mike’s Subs, and then crashing for the evening.

All told, we accomplished very little. I finished Saturday’s Civ game with the option of winning in any of 4 different victory paths within the last 5 turns. That was pretty cool. We went to bed early and I slept the sleep of the dead.

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Journal Entry: January 17, 2007

Did I talk about Christmas? I really didn’t. I don’t really need to. Christmas this year was everything it’s supposed to be, and nothing it’s not. Which is, you must agree, pretty dang good.

New Year’s Eve was fun. We went to the Austins’, and watched old movies, and snacked and drank. And got a promise of a visit from the Gordons, which made everyone present smile and, to a real extent, cheer. Actually cheer. I will not speak of further developments on that topic.

Since then, we’ve had a snow day. Well, not quite. I mean, I didn’t get to miss any work for free, because the Friday was my Regular Day Off, and the Monday was a federal holiday. So, shucks. But we were trapped in the house for a four-day weekend, so that’s the sort of thing that leads to blog posts.

Well, yes, of course you’re wondering why it didn’t lead to a blog post during my prolonged confinement, but the answer to that is simple: I had an XBox available. Played a lot of WoW, and a lot of Madden ’07, and watched a lot of movies.

Let me review, in brief (and in chronological order, if I remember correctly):

Reality Bites is very good. I would have loved it ten years ago. Also: people smoked a lot ten years ago.
Down Periscope is very good. I can’t believe I’ve only watched it twice. Stupid, yes. Funny, yes.
The Longest Yard (2005) is pretty good. As Kris says, too serious a subject matter to make a comedy out of it. But they did their best.
Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys is okay. It’s not great. I like Dave Barry as a writer, but his deadpan works better on paper than film.
Domino is okay. It wasn’t awful to watch, but I’ll never watch it again.
Boondock Saints is fantastic. I recommend it to everyone who likes movies. Gory action flick. Awesome.
Idiocracy is not very good. It’s got it’s moments, but…meh. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Wedding Crashers is raunchy but hilarious. Take that analysis seriously. I enjoyed it for a second time.
Accepted is pretty good. It’s not as raunchy as I expected, and it’s actually a pretty good story. It’s an old plot (Revenge of the Nerds, Animal House, PCU and probably countless others), but they did a good job with it.

I know I watched at least one more (and possibly as many as four), but I can’t remember it at the moment. If I do, I’ll post a review.

That was the weekend. Then they made me go in to work on Tuesday, in spite of it being the release date for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade — the much anticipated WoW expansion. My darling wife went and waited in line at Best Buy for me, though, so I was able to install the game over lunch, and play it last night. Awesome. So awesome. The best thing about it, is that everyone is so excited about it. Everyone you encounter in-game, and everyone you know who plays it, is just running around like a kid in a candy store. That’s brings a lot of joy to the experience.

Also, and this deserves a whole post rather than being a passing comment at the end, but I submitted three novels to Tor last week. Tor is one of the leading publishers in the Fantasy industry, and I sent them Taming Fire, King Jason’s War, and Sleeping Kings (to their mainstream editor). Of course, I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything. It’ll be six to eight months. Meanwhile, keep that in your prayers, if you would. It’s…unbelievably important to me.

I hope everyone’s well. Find something to smile about. I’m heading home to play some WoW.

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Journal Entry: November 27, 2006

Thanksgiving come and gone.

It was a really good one. Honestly, Thanksgiving doesn’t really stand out to me as the sort of holiday I think about any time other than late November. Mostly just Thanksgiving week. It’s not high on my list of priorities, is what I’m getting at. I usually enjoy a pretty good meal, and do my best to watch a Cowboys game in spite of family, and then it’s over and done.

This year — and I don’t really know why — this year, Thanksgiving was awesome. Now, I said the same last Christmas (when it was my family’s turn for Christmas), and that was for a very particular reason. We had a LAN party Christmas. We all got together in Little Rock to quest in Azeroth. Wahoo! But, no, I’m not just repeating that.

We did play some WoW, which was fun. We spent Friday afternoon in Blackrock Depths, and it was Mom’s first successful trip there. We’d dragged her along several times when she was still too low level to be there, but now she was actually ready, and I think we all had a really good time with that.

But that was really only Friday afternoon. Dad and I played some Saturday night, but other than that, there wasn’t really any dedicated WoW time. We all ate a lot (a lot), and I watched even more football than usual. Oh, and all of my teams won. With one exception (founded solely on petty hatred), every football game I cared about at all this weekend went exactly as I would have wanted it to. Dallas tore up. OU managed to win (and we weren’t sure they would until the last second), and thanks to Texas’ loss, that means OU is going to the Big 12 Championship, which is quite awesome. And the Giants lost in an amazing sort of way, which puts Cowboys at the top of the NFC East.

Okay, I don’t know how much you care about football, but the point is that, in an amazing confluence of good luck, everyone I wanted to win, won. And everyone I wanted to lose, lost. Those commas probably shouldn’t be there, but just consider them rhetorical.

The big thing, though, that really kind of surprised me, was the extra family we had around. Heather and Graham were there, and reminded me how great it was to have them back from far Maine, so they can at least make holidays. But my Dad’s family was there, too — his brother Perry, sister-in-law Debby, and my cousins Sam and Katie. These are the ones who lived in Scotland and France, before moving back to Houston last summer. And here I was complaining about Maine.

Anyway, Perry and Debby and Sam and Katie, and I got to spend time with all of them and they are all four really cool people. That was fun. It’s always nice to learn you’re related to good people.

Also got calls from Bruce and Josh, both of which were exciting. And then found time Sunday night, after a long drive home, to have dinner with the Austins, and watch another of the Cowboys’ rivals lose a football game. It was a busy weekend, and my computer was broken, and that drive is just ridiculously long…but it was probably one of the best Thanksgivings I’ve ever had. Yay for that!

I hope yours was good, too.