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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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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.

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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.

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Feels like old times….

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

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

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

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

Okay, I’m heading to bed. Later.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Journal Entry: Thursday, July 12th

Wow. It’s been a long day, and I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.

We were supposed to have a big goodbye lunch for our departing Branch Manager today, at Steak and Ale. I can’t really justify a steak lunch these days, financially, but I was looking forward to giving in to social pressure. Unfortunately, the guest of honor got stuck in an airport last night, so the lunch was postponed until some other convenient time. So I had mediocre Arby’s and wished it was a sirloin.

That was really the day’s only disappointment, though. I did have an abominably boring meeting this morning concerning the contract transition, but I’d brought a pad and pen with me, so I spent the whole two hours working on a short story. Then I spent lunch working on it, too. Then, at the end of the day, I came home and worked on it while T– made dinner.

Then I went to Transformers with D– and K–. We invited B–, but he couldn’t come. Work demands, or something lame like that. When the movie ended, I turned to the other two and said, “I think that was the best movie I’ve ever seen.”

So there you have my review. I don’t need to go into a lot of details. They talked me down from that analysis, but at the very least I’ll finally be forced to divide “best movie ever” into categories by genre, now, and this one definitely wins “action/adventure.” It does what an adventure movie is supposed to do. Fun. Awesome.

I’d heard that it was not a disappointment, from the type of people who expected to be really disappointed by it. So I went in without that expectation. I went in expecting it to be good. I did not expect it to be flippin’ fantastic! But it was. Good movie. Go see it. I’ll be glad to come along.

Anyway, that was from 8:00 to 10:45, and then as D– was dropping me off at the house, he asked if I was planning to go for a walk. In all honesty, I wasn’t, but I had the right shoes on so I said yes. He and I went the full route, and I spent most of the time thinking about the short story I’d started in today’s meeting.

And then I got home from the walk, and finished it. It was a terrible idea. I should have gone to bed. I really should not be up this late. But it was so strong on my mind, there’s no way I could have fallen to sleep. And now it’s done, and I’ve got my favorite story so far. It does so many things, for the larger story, and yet I think it’s also compelling on its own. Maybe not in its current form — it’s just the rough draft — but I think it has the potential to be awesome.

That’s three stories in two days. That’s a pretty big deal. I’m excited. I’m also wondering if I’ll write another one before the weekend’s done. I would like to, but I’ve got kind of a lot of recreational activities planned. We’ll just have to see what happens.

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Journal Entry: July 11, 2007

Today was a strangely productive day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Journal Entry: July 10, 2007

I left one thing out of Saturday’s account: by the time I was done working in the yard Saturday, I had over 70 fresh mosquito bites. I counted them as I treated them. It was bad.

Sunday, July 8th
On Sunday, I had a headache. The crippling sort, that rather stops you doing anything else. The sort that interrupts your thinking. As a result, T– and I didn’t do much on Sunday. We went to church, and stayed for the fellowship with K– and N– and N–‘s mom (who went home on Sunday). After that, we stopped by B– and E–‘s to get some speaker wire so I could finish up the work K– and I had done on Saturday. We also hit Blockbuster while we were out and picked up three movies: Breach, which was surprisingly good, but pretty slow, as well as Happily N’Ever After from the makers of Shrek, and Gray Matters which has Heather Graham in it. So far, we’ve only watched Breach.

Anyway, we got home and T– ran some errands while I watched AB. Then her friend Rebecca came over to crop. While they did that, I finished fixing the TV, and then vegged on the couch all afternoon. I played some Civ, but not much. Mostly I sat still with my eyes closed, because of the headache.

Then that evening was when we watched Breach. It ended at 9:45. I usually go for a walk at 9:00 so I can be in bed by 10:00, since I have to wake up at 6:00 on weekdays. It was late enough, and I felt awful enough, that I decided to skip my walk Sunday night. I didn’t post on my blog here, either, so that’s two resolutions broken Sunday.

Monday, July 9th
And both again on Monday. Really, my headache persisted through the day Monday. T– got a lot done during the day, while I was at work. I, on the other hand, accomplished almost nothing at work, and then almost nothing when I got home. I’m pretty sure I have nothing to report for yesterday, except that I didn’t walk, and I didn’t do a blog post.

Tuesday, July 10th
This morning, I finally felt better. I had to wake up early, too, to finish an urgent project for work that I should have completed yesterday, except for the headache. That was also part of my excuse for not walking last night — the importance of my being on time to work today. Anyway, I showed up early and worked hard, and finished a special project well before lunch. It ended up…creeping, so that the same project ended up taking my whole day, but I’d finished the part I was assigned by early in the morning.

I went to lunch with D– and got to check out his new iPhone, which is really pretty cool. Then back to work and I spent the rest of the afternoon working on this project (which has nothing to do with my long-term responsibilities). It’s the sort of project that has lots of little gaps throughout the day as I hand it off to other people to collaborate, so during those breaks I worked on Josh’s story.

First I wrote up the Post Mortem discussion I’d been toying with since last week. Then I pulled out my Word document of the novel and cleaned up all the section breaks between blog posts, to make it look like an actual novel in structure. I thought that would be a week-long process, but I was able to finish it all this afternoon, which means my brief rewrite in the month of July is a lot more likely to actually make deadline.

Then I came home in time to watch T– give away one of our kittens. That’s a big deal. We’ve been advertising them for a while now without any takers. Now we just have two more to get rid of (and one to keep). We owe this one to Craigslist. Glad we thought to post there.

I also made chili for dinner, and helped T– out by doing the day’s dishes and taking out the trash. After that, I went for a walk with D– (so, yes, I’m back on track), and then came home to write a blog post (so there’s that, too). Overall, it was a really good day.

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