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.

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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.

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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?

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Journal Entry

Saturday, July 21st
Yesterday was a slow and easy sort of day. I woke up around nine, and Mom made me some bacon to go with my breakfast croissant. Then Dad and I played some WoW for a couple hours (I spent most of it fixing Mom’s AddOns and getting them updated). I also got to chat with N– some over GMail. Around one, we met Mom and T– for lunch at Chili’s.

After that, I talked Dad into going to see Live Free or Die Hard, which K– and N– insisted was great. So, based on their suggestion, I had to convince Dad that it was great (he had strong doubts). Anyway, I’d spent most of Friday night and Saturday morning working on that, so by the time we finished lunch (and the girls took AB with them to do some shopping), he was about ready to risk it.

When we got to the theatre, though (and he explained to me why there was only one theatre in town worth going to), we learned that we had a little over a two hour wait until the next showing of the movie. Unexpected setback, but we were caught up in a conversation about writing anyway, so I gave him some general advice, and we talked through the plot of a novel he wants to work on, and that burned about an hour.

Then we got tired of standing, so we slipped into an empty theater to sit down, and half an hour later we got to watch the first ten minutes of Transformers (which was enough to convince Dad that he needed to see that movie, too) before we headed over to our actual theater to watch our actual movie.

It was phenomenal. Way too close to the plot of Josh’s story in Sleeping Kings, which is always infuriating, but it was such a good job of making another Die Hard that I find it hard to complain. Awesome, awesome flick.

It ended at 7:00, and we came home so Dad could grill up the steaks for a fancy multi-course French dinner that Mom had put together. We had salad and beets, then the steak, then a delicious cheese tray, and then coffee and dessert. It was awesome.

After dinner, around 9:00, my little sister called to say she was nearly halfway here, so Mom and I stayed up reading. She was working on the new Harry Potter book, and I picked up her copy of book one (T– is reading our copy of book seven, and I’ve only read through the series once, so I decided to reread while T– reads the new one). S– got in right around midnight, and I helped her bring in some bags before going to bed. After that, church came way too early this morning.

Journal Entry

Dateline Little Rock.

We got up way too early this morning, in order to be an hour late getting in to Little Rock. We were anticipating arriving between noon and 1:00, and somehow got in right at 2:00. We grabbed some breakfast on our way out of town (which was pretty much factored into the noon-1:00 schedule), and then stopped at Kinko’s to pick up a fax for T–. That didn’t take more than a couple minutes. We did have an extra stop or two on our drive, though, and with AB’s needs, that’s probably what took all the extra time.

Anyway, it’s a brutal drive at five hours, and adding another one doesn’t make it any better.

When we got in, Mom told us all about their France trip (they just got back from eighteen days in Europe), and then we picked up Dad from work and got some lunch (Arby’s), and then came back to the house where Mom pretty much immediately started making dinner.

She was excited about dinner, and for good reason. She made us up a fancy meal inspired by their time in Italy, including some amazing bruschetta (ask anyone, I usually hate it), calzones, and gelatto for dessert. And then some really weird Italian lemon thing for a digestif, but I liked it. At 40% alcohol and amazingly citric bitter, what’s not to like?

Then we tried to find a Harry Potter release party worth going to. We tried out a Books-a-Million (I dropped Mom and T– off, and went to a Kroger to buy diapers), and then tried out Barnes & Noble (I actually had to hang around for that one). It was a lot more fun than the first, but we still decided after about an hour of bustle and noise (with still another hour to go) that it wasn’t worth waiting around, when none of us were going to stay up to read the book tonight anyway. Mom’s got hers on reserve (and T–, too, though hers is reserved in OKC), so we came home a little after 11:00, and the girls will just go pick the book up tomorrow morning.

I’ve thought about going out walking. After a day in the car, I really ought to, but I’ve had a pounding headache all day, and it’s late, and I just want to go to bed. I did get another scene of KJW done on the drive, so that puts me up to B24, which I can probably find the time to write tomorrow. If I get one or two more done this weekend, then I could finish the book by writing one scene per day next week (which is a very attainable goal). So, yay.

Journal Entry

Today was a much slower day than I expected, and I turned it into a productive one. I was able to finish three sections of King Jason’s War (which leaves only eight more). That’s pretty exciting.

Then we got to have dinner with B– and E–, which is always fun. We ate and talked for a few hours, and I sent them home with copies of my short stories as homework. Hopefully they don’t mind.

Then I went for a walk with D– and we talked story stuff. Now I’m needing to restart my computer so T– can watch something on the XBox. Sorry for the hurried post, but I’m thinking it’s better than nothing.

Journal Entry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journal Entry

Feels like old times….

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

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

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

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

Okay, I’m heading to bed. Later.

Journal Entry

I got six pages written at church. That finishes B19 (the “B” stands for “backstory” and refers to one of 30 6-page segments that take place in the narrative past — there are also 30 1-page vignettes that take place in the narrative present, and I have all but 6 of those done).

So I guess that’s 72 pages that I still need to write.

After church, we were walking out into the parking lot with K– and N– and the smell of Johnny’s Charcoal Grill was so overwhelmingly tantalizing that we couldn’t resist. So I had a delicious theta cheeseburger for lunch, and we shared a meal with good friends.

Then we came home and T– took a nap while I played some WoW. D– came over around 3:00, after he finished up at the gym, and then we three went to see Harry Potter while K– and N– oh-so-generously watched AB for us. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am for that.

So, within the same weekend, we got to see the movie. Not as good as Transformers, but that would really be something of a stretch. Easily the best of the Harry Potter movies so far, though. My favorite book is the third, but this movie blows the third movie right away.

After the movie we had a slice of pizza at a New York-style pizzeria right across from the theater (at D–‘s insistence), and that was quite awesome. I pointed out that it would be an awesome place to go while drunk (there’s a handful of really cool bars in the neighborhood), and we noted that the restaurant is open until midnight, so that’s on the “someday” slate.

Then we picked up AB, and ended up back at home around 10:00. D– agreed to go for a walk with me, and we spent most of it discussing the writing project. I’m more and more impressed at the depth and detail the world is taking on. I can’t wait to get some of the real meat of it on paper. But, then, I’m also really enjoying the little glimpses the short stories give. I’ve gotten such positive feedback so far, and that just makes it so much easier to keep writing (even if negative feedback is more useful for the material itself).

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Journal Entry

I went to bed fairly late last night (just check the timestamp on my blog post), and woke up at 8:30 this morning to mow the lawn. I should’ve waited two hours. For one, I was still exhausted. For another, the grass was still wet. It was awful, but I got the job done. My lawn is really starting to look pretty nice, which is surprising considering the (small) amount of work and money I’ve put into it. I’m going to chalk it up to Social Constructionism (about all I did to make it look better was decide to start making it look better), and get on with my life.

I don’t write well at home. I can’t remember if I’ve talked about that before or not, but I really can’t do much writing at my home computer. I’m great at scribbling down pages during a boring business meeting, or during an hour at work, waiting for an engineer to get back to me with markup. And my very most productive time is during a 20-minute sermon at church on Sunday morning. I’ve written more chapters during those little bits of time than everywhere else combined.

When I was in high school, I wrote at home. I was good at it. One night, after watching Empire Records for the first time, I sat up all night finishing a novel I was working on (I mentioned that last night in less than glowing terms). I’m not saying now that it went well, but I put out a hundred pages sitting in the basement typing on my dad’s crappy little PC.

I can’t do that anymore. There’s too many distractions at home. I’m not blaming T– for it, I just can’t lose myself in another world when I’m at home. My world at home is too pressing.

I like to think that if writing were my only job, things would be different. But, then, the idea of renting a cheap office space to go work on my novel for five hours a day isn’t altogether unpleasant. It could have a certain charm.

Anyway, I tried to write today. After I mowed and got cleaned up, I sat down at my computer and slid up to the keyboard with the full intention of slapping down two chapters of King Jason’s War. But it didn’t happen. I didn’t write a word. I ended up playing WoW to help my dad level one of his redundant paladins instead. It was frustrating.

T– had a crop from 1-6, and I’d already made arrangements to spend that time over at K–‘s place (N– went to the crop, too, so I knew he’d be free). We had a lot of Tatoo and Redbull, and played several cheesy little games on his new XBox. Time passed way too quickly. One of the games we were playing, I recommended to him because I’d read somewhere that everytime the reviewer loaded it up, he lost track of time while playing it. I considered that high praise. Also, at this point, having lost track of about six hours at it already, I can definitely confirm his analysis.

So that was fun, but over way too soon. I came home and played some more of my dad’s character on WoW, and T– made us a couple turkey sandwiches, and we watched The Dead Zone. That was our whole evening. At nine she said she was going to go to bed, and I said I was going to go for a walk, and we watched two more episodes before we got around to following through on that. But she did hers, and I did mine, and now the house is all dark and quiet, and I’m quite exhausted.

It was a good day, though. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Maybe I’ll finish six pages of King Jason’s War while McElroy talks about one of King David’s. It could happen.

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