Trying To Be Clever

Out of the Hole

2012-02-09T21:09:00.004-06:00

This was written as a writing exorcize for the February 8, 2012 meeting of the Vernon Area Writers' Support Group. It has been transcribed here with only spelling mistakes being fixed.

The description for the exorcize read: "It's spring. Your character is walking out of doors and sees the burgeoning trees and flowers, hears the birdsong. But the character's reaction to all this newness and freshness is not what you would expect..."

It had seemed like such a long time being stuck in that pit, the darkness, the closeness, the press of the other miners, of the rough rock walls. To emerge into this picturesque spring day was exactly what they had all talked about as hours became days, as the canteens ran dry and their throats became coated in dust and grit. Hadn't David talked about walking out into the sun and praising any deity that would listen? And Tony wouldn't shut up about the first thing he was going to eat when they were finally dug free.

Clarence had gone along with all of it, had his dream of dunking his head into a barrel full of icy water. And then there was that jar of shine he'd been saving for a special occasion.

But as they emerged into the light and openness it was all wrong. The birds were too loud. The media people with their cameras and shouted questions. It was too much. Clarence drifted back toward the hole.

St. Jude Trike-A-Thon!

2012-01-30T09:58:00.002-06:00

It's that time of year again, Logan is participating in the St. Jude Trike-A-Thon at preschool! He is hoping to make his fundraising goal for the second year in a row and needs your help! If you are able to make a donation, any amount, no matter how small will help this worthy cause. All proceeds go to St. Jude Research Hospital.

St. Jude is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay.

Click on the link below to donate to Logan's fundraising page!

Thank you for your time!
Matt, Brandi & Logan

Connect Four, The Most Dangerous Game

2012-01-11T09:00:00.000-06:00

Monday night I was playing Connect Four with the kids. With a five-year-old you can play by rules and have an actual game. With a five-year-old and a two-year-old, it quickly devolves into a contest to see who can shove as many red and black checkers into the slots as possible to fill up the board. When the checkers are spilled, it also becomes a bare-knuckled, scratching, screaming fight to see who can drag the most checkers into their laps. (I could have gotten the most if I really wanted to.) There was also a little bit of sticking one of the black checkers in my eye and pretending to be a pirate, which the kids then tried to imitate.

That’s not the most dangerous part, though. The most dangerous part comes in the disassembly. Our version of Connect Four is a little different from the version in the above video. As a kid I had the version in that old commercial and that think would fall apart if you breathed on it too hard. The newer version snaps together so it’s sturdier, and has a ring around the base that not only makes it more stable, but makes sure that checkers don’t go rolling all over the place when you slide open the bottom of the board.

I had it all taken apart except for the last side. It didn’t want to come free, but I had to get it off to store it back in the box. I applied a little more pressure (I didn’t want to break anything so I was trying to be careful) and the support leg came away from the board in a sudden jerk. My thumb was in the way and the dull bit of plastic that was sticking out dug in.

I tell you people, watch out for Connect Four, otherwise, this could happen to you!

Proud

2012-01-10T09:10:00.000-06:00

Last year, Brandi decided she wanted to make a huge change in her life and go back to school to ultimately go back to work. She had wanted to stay home with the kids during the early years, and we were able to make it work, so that’s what she did.

Ever since she’d had Logan, the exceptional care she’d received from the nurses and nursing assistants made her want to enter into that field. She waited until the right time, and then after some discussion, she went back to school to become a certified nursing assistant.

It meant some changes in our house, but we adjusted. She threw herself into the coursework and passed with one of the highest grades in her class. I had no doubt that she would do well, despite her own worries, and I was proud of her for going after what she wanted and being so dedicated to her goals.

After a relatively short job hunt, she successfully landed a job at a hospital nearby that is, from everything we’ve heard, hard to get a job at unless you know someone. She’s been working there evenings and overnights and although it’s been a big transition (and we’ve both lost a lot of sleep) she’s helping people get better and building a career for herself.

She might not always be happy to be leaving the house at night to start a shift where she’ll be on her feet all night and then have to deal with the kids the next day, but she goes out there and provides the best service she can helps people in the healing process. (She gets some pretty good stories out of it too.) I’m proud of all the work that she’s done and the way she sticks with it, and I’m proud of the fact that she’s followed her dreams and made a big change in her life.

Adventures in Parenting: Milk Run

2011-10-19T21:06:00.002-05:00

The other night I was getting in bed, it was a little after midnight, the missus was at work a little more than an hour into her overnight, and the kids were asleep. I had checked on Ava a couple hours before when she started crying, and I knew she was fine, but I wouldn't be able to sleep again until I checked on her. I got up and crept into the kids' room. Of course as soon as I set one foot inside the room she sat up and said "Daddy, more ba-ba." Tired and ready to fall over in exhaustion, I trudged down the stairs to warm up a little more milk so she'd go back to sleep.

I poured out the milk, which left not enough milk for the next morning. So I sent Brandi a text letting her know she'd have to pick up milk in the morning and laid down, figuring she wouldn't get the message until I was on my way to work and leaving her no option but to stop at the store on the way home. Not my best move, I know. Of course, just a couple minutes later, she texts me back that I'll have to get it. She won't have time in the morning because she has to take Logan to school when she gets home.

I throw on some jeans and a t-shirt and run out for milk. Brandi's dad's up, so I let him know that I'm running out, and I go to find some milk. It's 12:30 by now, so Walgreen's is out of the question. The one by us is only open till 10:00. I run over to Jewel, but that's apparently only open to 12:00. Gas station? Nope, that's closed too. I'm trying to figure out where I can go to get milk this late at night, and decide on going to the 24-hour Wal-Mart in the next town over when I pass by a 7-11 that's still open.

When I get there, there's one car in front of the store, one person pumping gas, and another car off to the side. There's a woman in the car in front of the store waiting for one of the guys inside. As I walk in, a tall skinny guy is leaving. I get the milk and approach the counter where a guy with really short hair but a rat tail about half way down his back is trying to decide between a Hustler and some other hard-core porn mag, which I didn't happen to catch the title to. After looking over the covers, he decided to go with the latter. After he paid, the cashier rang up my milk and rolled his eyes at the guy leaving with his porn.

I exited the store and saw the first guy and his girlfriend hunched over something in the car, concentrating intently on something. I figured it was one of two options, drugs or scratch cards, and really it probably wasn't scratch cards.

I returned home with the milk and crawled back into bed, now completely awake and unable to fall asleep.

Breaking Musical Law

2011-09-01T08:36:00.002-05:00

On my way into work this morning, as I was switching out CDs for the audiobook I'm listening too, the radio station that came on (94.7) broke musical law. It was a horrible atrocity and I was genuinely surprised, especially by the sequence of songs that was played.

The song that was playing as I switched out audiobooks was none other than Queen's Another One Bites the Dust. Musical law dictates that this must be followed by the We Are the Champions. But that wasn't what happened. Instead, Another One Bites the Dust was followed by The Hustle. WTF? The Hustle? There are only four unique words in that fucking "song." This will not do. Admittedly, I wasn't really in the mood to listen to either Queen song, and in fact I ended up popping in an Eagles of Death Metal CD because the audiobook I'm listening to right now is making me a little stabby. However, it is musical law, and I must rectify it.

Understand that if you listen to one, you must listen to the other.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Eels!

2011-08-04T12:17:00.002-05:00

This is where I'll be tomorrow night. Watching these guys.

I haven't seen them since they came to Chicago for the Shootenanny! tour in 2003. Can't wait.

And while we're at it, have another song.

Blizzard Survival Depends on Garbage

2011-08-03T10:33:00.003-05:00

So the other night, Logan and I were sitting on the couch watching an episode of Shaun the Sheep before he went to bed. My father-in-law was sitting on the recliner next to us. The house was silent except for the antics of the above mentioned claymation quadruped. Without any kind of preamble, my father-in-law says “If I were stuck out in a blizzard and there are garbage cans out like we have here, I’d dump one out and then climb inside. If you pack some snow around it, it’d be like an igloo.”

I remained silent, waiting for more. Sure enough, it came.

“Of course, you’d have to lift the flap a couple times so all the snow doesn’t pile on top of it.”

Again, I paused. When there wasn’t any more forthcoming, I asked why, on a humid, 90+ degree day would he be thinking about getting caught outside in a blizzard.

“Gotta know what you’d do in case of an emergency,” he said. This was followed by “That cools you down, thinking about being stuck in a blizzard,” a minute later.

I may have mentioned here before that we live with my father-in-law and that he is blind. He has been blind for close to three decades now, and consequently, spends a lot of time living in his head. This is not the first off the wall, seemingly spontaneous thing that I’ve heard him say, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I suppose, if I were stuck outside in a blizzard and I couldn’t find any other shelter, I may empty out someone’s garbage can on the street and climb inside. That seems like an effective way to try and keep some warmth contained. The garbage cans we have (pictured above) aren’t roomy, but would provide enough space to squat down in.

It’s not like living in or near garbage cans is unheard of either. There’s at least one high-profile individual I can think of that’s known for residing in a garbage can. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all.

David Bowie: Most Versitile Musician EVAR, or Secret Controller of Pandora

2011-04-05T11:36:00.003-05:00

So I'm listening to Pandora on my station that is cleverly named The Kinks Radio, and what comes on? David Bowie. More specifically, it's Space Oddity. And I know if I were to switch it over to Tears for Fears Radio (what?) I would be hearing one Bowie tune or another within a half hour, an hour at the most. It might take a little longer if I were to switch over to George Harrison Radio, but I'm pretty sure I've heard Bowie there too. I haven't listened to the other stations in a while (Flaming Lips Radio, Eels Radio, Blues Traveller Radio, Eagles of Death Metal Radio), but honestly I wouldn't be too surprised if David Bowie popped in on one of those other stations. What does this all mean? The way I see it, it goes one of two ways, either 1) David Bowie is the most versatile musician ever, or 2) David Bowie secretly controls Pandora Internet Radio. I'm not totally decided either way. What I do know is that while I'm not a huge fan, I don't mind Bowie's music, but I don't need to hear it everywhere I go. To me, it's one of those things that's better in small tastes that you have only on occasion so you don't get sick of it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Bowie, with all his sounds and styles, is the most adaptable and musical act to come around in some time. What do you think?

Adventures in Parenting: What the Hell is with all the Screaming?

2011-02-28T20:32:00.003-06:00

For those of you following along at home, we have a four-year-old and a one-year-old. Sometimes they are quiet and play nice. Sometimes.

Most of the time, though, that isn't the case. I'm sure any of you that have more than one child know what I'm talking about here. One could be playing with a toy and the other has nothing to do with it, and then sees the other one playing with that toy and now they've got to have it.

For example, Ava's playing with a train that Logan hasn't looked at all day. He sees and needs his train back. Or Logan's playing with one of Ava's toys and she wants it back. Since she doesn't understand yet, she screams and hits. Logan knows he's not supposed to hit, so he can't do anything about it and so he cries and tattles and yells. And of course if they're actually playing together, Logan's usually concerned that Ava's going to break or knock over or somehow wreck whatever they're playing with and so he starts getting vocal as soon as she gets near him.

This afternoon they were playing okay. They were at the train table, and as long as I was sitting right there everything seemed to be fine. Sure, Logan would hover protectively over Thomas and the 12 or so train cars he had trailing behind, afraid that Ava would knock them over, but I was able to keep him calm. I went upstairs to check on something and was upstairs for no more than two minutes and there was screams coming from both sides.

Then there's the fact that they just won't listen. Ava understands a surprising amount for her age, but there's a lot she doesn't understand. Plus, when she wants something, she doesn't give a rat's ass what you're trying to tell her. She just wants you to fork over whatever she wants NOW. Logan is a little stir crazy from being inside most of the winter, and he's testing his limits, seeing how far he can push us.

I really don't know what the point of all this is, other than to rant a little bit. Okay. I feel a little better now.

Some Thoughts on Snow Removal

2011-02-03T21:30:00.003-06:00

Living in the greater Chicagoland area, we were hit by Snowpocalypse 2011 on Tuesday night/Wednesday. The official total for O'Hare airport, which is only a few miles away, was 20.2 inches. Due to all of the strong winds, accumulation on our driveway alone ranged from a couple inches to about chest high.

That's my car there, the drift next to it completely covered our garbage cans. The shallowest snow bank was directly in front of the car. The tallest was just past that. Between the garage in the far back and the tall drift in front of the car everything was 2-3 feet deep. All the stuff the plows pushed up on our driveway made the snow about 2.5-3 feet deep at the end of the driveway.

I managed to cut a single path from the garage to the street, clear a single path on the sidewalks, and start to clean out behind my car when the snowblower broke. From that point, it was shovel or be stranded. It took about 3 hours after the snowblower broke for us to clear just enough room to get the cars out onto the street.

While I was throwing shovelful after shovelful of snow over increasingly large piles, I had some thoughts about other methods of snow removal. Let me share them with you.

1. Pour out the rest of the gas for the broken snowblower, light a match and walk away. Possibly effective in the short term, but it wouldn't cover much area.

2. Take my father-in-laws space heater out of his room, plug it in, and set it on one of the drifts. His space heater isn't one of the ones that rattles and blows hot air and will cause a fire if you look at it wrong. His is one that's more like a radiator and creates ambient heat. While this might be somewhat effective, I didn't want to short out the heater, and wouldn't have had enough time for it to melt all the snow.

3. Dig out our little fire pit thingie, start a fire next to a snow drift, and move it around as the drift melted. The two big problems with this right off the bat would be digging out the fire pit and then digging out dry wood (if we have any at this point).

4. Body heat. When I got tired, I just sat down in the snow. While this was kind of comfortable, I was too bundled up for my heat to get through, and I was just compacting the snow instead of melting it.

Anybody have any good, or even not so good, ideas for snow removal?

St. Jude Tike-A-Thon

2011-02-01T10:16:00.003-06:00

Logan participated in the St. Jude Research Hospital Trike-A-Thon at this preschool last week. They were late getting the fund-raising packets so we were not able to collect donations before the event, but we are now! Logan completed 12 laps for the Trike-A-Thon and learned all about bike safety and earned his Trike License! He also learned about the incredible kids at St. Jude and how the Trike-A-Thon was going to help them get better!

If you are able to make a donation on his behalf we (and St. Jude's) would greatly appreciate it. I can't image what those parents and children go through and anything we can do to help, I am sure they will be forever grateful for.

Click on the link below to donate:

Adventures in Parenting: What Time is the Right Time, for Star Wars?

2011-01-26T21:56:00.002-06:00

The other day, Logan and I were in the basement and after some flipping around of TV channels, Logan said "That's just like Star Wars." I don't know exactly what was "just like Star Wars" about changing channels on the TV. Maybe it was something he saw that flashed by on the screen, who knows.

Then I wondered where Logan had come across Star Wars before. I've never really introduced him to Star Wars. It's not that I've tried to keep him away from Star Wars, but it's not something he's really had much exposure to. I have no problem with him enjoying Star Wars, I was quite the Star Wars nerd back in the day.

So for the past couple days now I've been wondering if it's the right time to introduce Logan to Star Wars. Some of you may have seen this before:

All joking aside, is now the right time to introduce Logan to Star Wars? He's four years old, and primarily, I'm worried about him getting scared and then getting turned off from the movies. I would obviously start with A New Hope. We'll save the prequels for another time, perhaps the next time we have a bonfire.

I don't think there's too much in A New Hope that will scare him. Sure there are a variety of aliens in the bar and there's the monster in the trash compactor in the Death Star, but I can't think of anything that's downright scary.

I think Empire with the wompa, the bounty hunters, Han Solo's torture, etc. will have to wait. Likewise, Jedi, with the rancor, sarlac, and other creatures. But I'm really tempted to sit down with him one of these days and watch A New Hope.

I think I'll play it on the safe side, though, and wait until he's at least five. But I don't know, what do you think?

The Puzzle is Coming Together, a writing post

2011-01-17T16:14:00.000-06:00

I’m still chugging along on my current writing project. As of this writing, I’m at 41,408 words, all hand written. I’m setting monthly goals, and so far have been able to make them. For the current writing project, it amounts to writing at least 400 words per day. Some days I make it, some days I don’t. Friday, I didn’t write anything, but have gone over my daily goal most other days this month.

Why am I writing it all out longhand? I don’t know if there’s one really good reason. It started that way, as most of my writing projects tend to. There was something that seemed to work about writing it all on blue paper, folded into quarters and carried around in a pocket or book bag. It made me really think about the story. And I didn’t have to rely on being able to get to the computer, which I don’t always have access to since we have one for the household.

I’m nearing the end of the story, and as things come together, I’m seeing that the picture I originally thought was there is very different from the picture I see now. I have lots of sections written in red pen that completely change some of the story that has come before it and will call for major rewrites later. This is where I’m kind of kicking myself in the butt, because if I had been typing this from the get go, I could easily put those notes in the proper places or even do a little revising now to make the process easier later. As it stands, I have a lot of rewriting and expansion to do during round two. But even that isn’t bothering me too much.

The original word count goal for the first draft was 80,000 words. But I’m thinking that it will really be more like 50,000 with a lot added in later. I know in On Writing Stephen King said that the second draft = first draft - 10%, but that never seems to be the way it works out for me. Usually the first draft is quick and dirty, I’m getting the story down so I don’t forget it and adding the details later.

After this first draft is done, I think I’ll be revisiting my NaNovel from 2009 and writing some short stories. It’s time to get serious about the writing life if I want to see my name in print (outside of when I was on someone’s payroll doing magazine work that is). I think I’m headed in the right direction, but only time will tell.

Adventures in Parenting: I've Created a Monster

2011-01-10T11:56:00.003-06:00

That's right, I've created a four-year-old, 42+ pound, snap happy monster. And this really, truly is all my fault. Let me 'splain.

Sometimes to get Logan's attention, or to try to get the point across that X needs to happen now, as in right now, I would snap my fingers. A typical exchange might go thusly:

Me: Logan, it's time for bed. Let's go brush your teeth.
Logan: No.
Me: Let's go now. *snap*

or

Me: Logan, what do you want for lunch?
Logan: ...
Me: *snap* Hey, Logan, what do you want for lunch?

Logan was fascinated with the finger snap, the simple application of pressure of the middle finger upon the thumb causing the middle finger to slam into the palm of the hand. He wanted to learn how do to it. At first he just tried to imitate, rubbing his first two fingers together. Then he asked how to do it, so I would show him how, first showing him with my hand and then putting his fingers in the right position and trying to explain so that a four-year-old would understand where the application of pressure should occur. After a week or two of showing him and him trying to get it on his own, one day we're sitting on the couch and he snapped his fingers.

I congratulated him on learning a new skill. That was a few days ago. Now, the boy is punctuating *snap* everything *snap* he says *snap* with a *snap*. He'll even be in bed snapping his fingers as I try to get him to go to sleep; the two of us in the dark, and his little fingers snapping away.

Needless to say, it's gotten old really quickly, and now I'm working on what so far seems to be the more difficult task of explaining to him that it's not necessary to snap his fingers about everything and that it's rude to snap his fingers in someone else's face. At least we haven't gotten any notes from his preschool teachers yet. And, it's made me seriously pause and consider before snapping my fingers when I'm trying to get his attention.

Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!

2010-12-14T12:02:00.001-06:00

That is all.

NaNoWriMo Blahs

2010-11-05T11:36:00.003-05:00

It's November once again, and for the past three years, that has meant NaNoWriMo, that mad cap race to produce 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days.

Leading up to NaNoWriMo, I was a little on the fence about whether or not to go for it this year. I have successfully completed NaNoWriMo for the last three years, and I have a number of friends and acquaintences online and in meat space that are participating this year.

With that in mind, I started over with a story that I began writing after NaNo was done last year and only got about 6,000 words into. I'm at about the same point now as when I stopped writing last time. There are differences in each version, mostly minor, but with a couple scenes from the original version that have not appeared in any way in the new version. I have a couple scenes in the new version that are expanded from the old version or did not appear in the old version.

This year, more so than any other year, trying to do NaNoWriMo is like pulling teeth. There are a number of factors that I believe are making it so: we have two children at home a 4 year old and a 1 year old (at least last year the 1 year old was only a few weeks old and was still at that mostly lay around or sleep/eat/poop stage); I've got a full-time job and plenty to keep my busy around the house (no real change there from last year); I have another story that I'm almost 20,000 words into that I'm really liking at this point and I want to work on that more than the NaNo; as I'm writing this year's NaNovel, it just seems so dumb which isn't very motivating; and I'm just damn tired.

Why don't I work on the 20,000-word project for NaNoWriMo you ask? Well, for one I'm taking this one a little slower, and I'm writing the first draft all by hand. I enjoy doing that every once in a while and I'm really enjoying the process right now.

Usually during the first few days of NaNo I'm excited and really want to jump into the project. I'm just not feeling that this year. We'll see how the weekend goes and how the story comes along, but if I'm not feeling much better about the whole thing by Monday, I might bow out this year. That would free up more time for the 20,000-word project, which is really what I'd rather be working on right now.

Post Office Rant

2010-10-27T22:14:00.002-05:00

The other day I went to the Post Office, that shinning pillar of customer service and efficiency. I didn't have a tall order. I had one piece of mail, already stamped, to drop off for a coworker, and I had one package that I needed to have sent to Aurora. I got to the post office at about 1:30 on a Thursday. I figured by this time I'd probably have missed the lunch rush and wouldn't have to wait too long. That was stupid of me.

I got in line behind ten to 15 people, many of them had already adopted body language that said this has taken way too fucking long and I'm still waiting in line. One window didn't have a sign up in front of it or anything. Another window had a sign directing customers to the third window. There was a person standing behind that window doing precisely dick. The third window had a staff member at it who was actively helping people. The person behind window number two would occasionally announce that the other person who was able to help us was at lunch and would be back in 20 minutes or so, and that if anyone had something to drop off and didn't require any actual assistance, she would take it. At least one cranky customer in line asked if there wasn't someone else who could help out, but of course there was. This despite the fact that the one woman was standing behind the counter doing nothing and at least two other Post Office workers stood behind the counter at one point or another.

No wonder everyone bitches about the post office.

I've worked in the customer service industry in one capacity or another for roughly 12 years. About 10 of those years were in retail and the last two years are with the library. I know good customer service and I know bad customer service and I know horrible customer service. This was horrible customer service.

I got through the line faster than I anticipated, and never got to see this mythic second clerk who would be able to help move the line faster. I do know that by the time I left the line was just as long as when I had got there. Also, I counted nine security cameras in the lobby of the Post Office. What the hell? Why would a Post Office in a small, well to do community on Chicagoland's north shore need nine security cameras in the lobby?

I've been thinking a lot about customer service lately. The good and the bad, and the people that can, can't, and can but aren't willing to provide it. Aside from being a pain in the ass, this little trip provided a good lesson on what is necessary in making a strong customer service experience.

Happy Birthday Logan

2010-10-12T11:00:00.000-05:00

On what was a very cold and surprisingly snowy October 12 four years ago I became a father. I don’t know that I was fully prepared for it at the time. Sometimes I still don’t know if I am fully prepared for it, but I suppose that feeling’s going to stay with me for the rest of my days.

Much like his little sister would prove to be years, later, Logan was stubborn and was happy right where he was. After a long day of going to the hospital, making phone calls, checking on Brandi and waiting, lots and lots of waiting, my son came into the world. We had some scares those first ten days or so, as well as here and there throughout the first four years of his life. Still, it’s nothing I would change or give away for anything, even when I’m tired and frustrated and the kids are driving me nuts and I might say something to the contrary.

Happy birthday Logan. I hope the coming year gives you everything you need and some of the things you want.

Happy Birthday Ava

2010-10-08T15:39:00.002-05:00

It’s hard to believe that only a year ago we welcomed you into this world. It’s also hard to believe how much you’ve grown and changed over the last year. I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring. Happy birthday sweetheart!

So Close!

2010-10-07T11:59:00.004-05:00

I'm so close to my monthly writing goals this month I can...feel it?...taste it?...sniff it? I don't know, but whatever you'd do with an end result like that, I'm almost there.

My goals for this "month" (September 15-October 13, which is the cycle of the Writer's Support Group I went to) are:

Write 10,000 words of the Sold Soul story. I've got about 1,900 words to go, or about 250 per day, which is totally doable. I should have room to spare for that one.
Complete one revision of a short story about love potions. Done!
Write 10 blog posts. I've got 8 done, and this counts for another, so I'm almost there. I even have one planned for tomorrow.
Complete one revision of the Merlin's Yard Sale story. This is the goal I'm farthest from at this point. I did start on it the other night, but was so tired I was having a hard time staying awake. Honestly, it was my own exhaustion that put me to sleep, not the story. I swear.

I'm in a really good mood about all this, which is helping to keep me motivated. And I'm starting to think of next month's goals and what will keep me going. NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I plan on torturing myself with that again, so I'll have to work that into the goals somehow.

The Caveman Viking

2010-10-06T17:00:00.000-05:00

It was after a particularly warm winter, while Sven and his clansmen were tracking game across the melting tundra, that they came across the shadow of a man seemingly embedded in a block of ice. It was a curiosity to them all, for even Swissgar Torbaldson, eldest warrior of the clan, had never spoken of such a thing as the shadow of a man in ice. Thinking this to be an omen, but not sure of what, Sven and his companions carefully removed the block of ice and returned with it to the village.

Everyone marveled at this thing, which must surely be a message from Odin. A great feast was prepared and the fires were piled high with wood to thank Odin for this omen and ask him for guidance. Soon the clan was sleepy with drink, and they returned to their lodges. The block of ice was left in the center of the village near the still roaring fires. In the morning, the members of the clan awoke to find that the ice was gone, and in its place was a man-thing.

He was naked, and cold to the touch, but getting warmer as the day drew on. In his hand was a crude club. While his shape resembled a man, he was shorter than anyone in the clan, built squat and hunched. His forehead was tall and looked like it could be used to as a ram to smash his enemies.

“Could this be one of the dwarves from the mountain,” asked one of the women of the village. “Perhaps Loki played a trick on him, or maybe he angered Odin.”

“Surely not,” replied Swissgar, “because he has no beard, and no dwarf would ever carry a weapon as crude as that.”

The men of the village brought the man-thing closer to the fire to warm and wake him, but kept careful watch in case he should arise and be an enemy.

When the man-thing finally woke, he was groggy and disoriented. He struck out at the people around him, but he attacked in fear, not from hate. Being trapped in the ice for so long, he fell tired quickly and was subdued easily. The men of the village brought him away to a storage house, but left him with food and water, and dressed him in some of the clothes that were too big for the boys and too small for the men.

After many weeks and a God’s worth of patience and effort, the man-thing, who answered to Grog, was taught the way of the Vikings, taught to use their tools and weapons. And he became one of their fiercest warriors, rushing into battle without fear of pain or death. The other clans learned to fear the members of Torbaldson’s clan and their caveman Viking.

The Latest Time Suck

2010-10-05T12:39:00.003-05:00

More than anything else lately, I’ve been spending the greater part of my free time writing. A couple weeks ago, though, I had the fortune/misfortune of looking at some of the software in the iTunes store when I came across Undercroft, which is made by the same folks that make Runescape.

It’s a basic dungeon crawler type game, where the player controls a party of up to four adventurers as they travel the country to complete one big quest, with many, many other side quests along the way. Players can choose from Warrior, Mage, Priest, Summoner, and Assassin. It uses a turn-based movement and combat system, and the only real drawback I’ve seen for it so far, in terms of game play, is that it’s very items-heavy, and it seems like you have an infinite storage capacity. Despite selling off a lot of junk every chance I get, I still accumulate a lot of crap. Overall, though, I’ve really enjoyed it and it thus far has been my favorite app for my iTouch, free or paid (it’s a free app).

For a while now, I’ve felt a hankering to get back into Dungeons & Dragons, which I haven’t played in years. But things get in the way of that, kids, wife, work, house hold shit, life. And it’s the same for the friends I used to play with, adding in distance now that we all at least think we’re adults and don’t all live 5 miles from each other.

The worst part of the game though, is that every time you save, it the game tells you how long you’ve been playing to that point, up to the second. Looking at my most recent save file, I have logged 12 hours, 57 minutes and 5 seconds playing the game. This does not include times I forgot to save, the couple of times my character has died, or the times I’ve gone in to try and solve of puzzle, haven’t solved it, and not bothered to save. Counting all that I’d probably round up to 13.25 or 13.5 hours worth of game play. There’s nothing wrong with that when you consider I’ve been playing the game for a week and a half to two weeks, but still, that makes me wonder what all I could have accomplished in all that time.

Mmmmmm Hamburger aaaagggghhhh

2010-10-04T20:21:00.002-05:00

It was a long day. A long day after a series of long days. My plans for getting out of work "on time" didn't work out, and neither of us really felt like making dinner. So we got Hackneys. Check it out.

We both got the inside out burger, which was full of cheddar bacon goodness. We did carry out, and it took me a little while to get home, damn traffic, and so the burgers weren't exactly hot when we had them. We didn't go with the brick of onion rings this time either. Much like Paradise Pup, this is a place that I've driven by many times before, this time it's too and from work, and I've wondered how their food was.

The burgers were good, and juicy, and big. I got mine on a dark rye, which enhanced it even more. The cheese was still gooey inside, and mine was a delightful pink in the middle. Was it Paradise Pup? No, but seriously, once you've had Paradise Pup, nothing else stands up. Next time we get Hackneys, we're definitely going to have to eat in, not bring it home.

The Current Writing Method

2010-10-03T12:37:00.002-05:00

For the current writing project, which I'm calling the sold soul story, I've gone back to writing by hand. This time around I'm writing on some loose sheets of 20-pound blue paper, folding each sheet in half long ways, and then usually short ways too. I'm numbering each side of the page and hand tallying the words as I go.

Why am I doing it this way? That's a really good question. For one, the blue paper was on hand when I started, and now that I've been working on it for a while in this manner, I've decided this is how I'm going to keep going with it. I've filled six sheets in my small handwriting, and not counting the writing I did last night, I'm at 8,346 words. My goal is to be to 12,899 words by October 13. Including today, that means I've got to do about 330 words per day. That's totally doable.

I ended up not writing on Friday--I was just too damn tired--and when I went back to it last night, I just didn't know what to write. After staring at the paper for more than an hour, writing a few words, and crossing them out, I finally was able to pick up and put something down on the page.

The blue paper also makes me think of Stephen King. In On Writing he said that one of his earliest books (Carrie maybe?) was written on a ream of green paper using an old typewriter. I'm no Stephen King, and I don't know that I ever will be, but something about that keeps with me and helps give me the push I need to keep going.

NaNoWriMo is coming up again and I'm trying to decide how I want to proceed. I don't want to completely abandon the project I'm working on now, and I want my NaNo experience to count, so I'll want to type it up. There's another project I started a while ago that wasn't quite working right, but I think I know how to fix part of it, so I might restart that (I was only about 6,000 words into it when I moved on) and maybe work on both, doing the 1667 words per day of NaNo and 300 words per day of the sold soul project. We'll see how well that works out.

The Most Disturbing Commercial for a Gummi-like, Fruit-Flavored Snack Product That I've Ever Seen

2010-09-23T21:07:00.002-05:00

You might look at a headline like that and think 'that's a pretty specific commercial' or 'how disturbing can a commercial for fruit snacks really be?' Well I'm here to tell you they can be pretty freakin' disturbing. I can understand trying to do a little gross out kind of thing for a younger audience. Hell, one of my favorite episodes of Spongebob is the one where he and Patrick get into an argument over cleanliness and Patrick tangles Sponegbob up in his armpit hair and gets Spongebob covered in his armpit grease. It's gross and I love it. But that's neither here nor there, we were talking about commercials.

Let's start with the Gushers' Robot Child commercial:

So what exactly does that mean? There's a chance that your child might bite down on some impenetrable Gusher that will fail to gush and then becomes a ticking time bomb of artificially flavored, high-fructose corn syrup destruction? If the Gush Squad didn't arrive in time would that mean some poor kid is going to drown on juiciness? Messed up, right?

How about this one from Fruit by the Foot:

"I've replaced your DNA with Fruit by the Foot."!?! WTF? What if the dog came across that mess before the parents got home? Say goodbye to your wonderful son. There's a chance that maybe the parents could find some kind of fruit snack DNA specialist doctor and have the process reversed. And this commercial is part of a series. Check this one out:

Wouldn't you think that the kid who's ancestors had been replaced by Fruit by the Foot would himself turn into Fruit by the Foot? I suppose he might not, if the heavier kid could only transform the ancestors into Fruit by the Foot but leave the rest of the time stream untouched. By trying to argue around the temporal aspects of this would take more brainpower than I have available at the moment.

Now I'm sure there are plenty of other messed up commercials, but this one, which I've only seen on television once just takes the cake. I showed it to Brandi and minute ago and she thought it was pretty gross.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Todd, who was born with a Gusher for an eye:

I know, leaves you kind of speechless right? I don't know where to begin. Do you start with the father that takes a little taste off of his crying son's face? Or how about Todd feeding baby birds by shooting Gusher juice into their open beaks?

I think my favorite part is the kid in the middle of the commercial that says "I don't get it. Is the Gusher on his eye? Or did they tape it on?" And then the other kid comes up with the double helix while the girl is mumbling the song, like it's no big thing. Of course he has a Gusher for an eye, have you been living under a god damned rock? I don't know what to say about this commercial that it doesn't say for itself.

Have you seen any other disturbing commercials for gummi-like, fruit flavored snack products?

When Are You Gonna Stop? When I Catch Them All

2010-09-22T12:44:00.003-05:00

I'm a few years too old to have gotten into the Pokemon craze. I'll admit that at one time I owned a copy of Pokemon Blue for the GameBoy. My brothers-in-law, however, were completely caught up in Pokemon fever for a while, and I picked up a lot of it from them. So, when I saw this on io9 yesterday, I could help but smirk.

Gotta catch 'em all! Gotta catch 'em all!

Selling Your Soul

2010-09-21T11:15:00.002-05:00

My current novel project (4,200 words and counting) involves the main character selling his soul, the aftermath of that, and then trying to get it back. In the story, the character sells his soul for something really stupid, but it’s important to him, at least at the time of the sale.

The genesis of this story goes back to high school, where my best friend sold his soul for something pretty stupid. I won’t go into all the details now, because I’m saving that for the story. The short of it is he was searching high and low for a small something that he thought he’d lost, he got increasingly frustrated and said “I’d sell my soul for X” and slammed his fist down. When he slammed his hand down, X fell off of a pile of things he’d just gone through. There was no sulfur, no contract signed in blood, just panic and frustration and an offer spoken aloud.

This has gotten me to thinking lately about what a soul might be worth. Some might sell their soul for money, power, a second chance at life…These are all things that are important in different levels to different people. But what if you life was consumed with owning a mint condition Babe Ruth card? What if you were all consumed with owning the football used during the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl game? What if you were really hungry and just wanted a Snickers?

And what would the effect of not having a soul have on a person? How would that person be viewed by others? Would they appear sickly or sinister or would they be hard to spot? What would happen at the end of your life when your soul is gone and death approached? And if you decided later that your soul was worth much more than what you sold it for how would you get it back?

I don’t necessarily have any answers for these questions, but these are the things that have been running through my head lately.

Why Are There So Many Songs About Rainbows?

2010-09-20T20:55:00.001-05:00

Why? Because why not?

Dreaming in Plot Lines

2010-09-11T22:06:00.002-05:00

I know there are people who say "I never remember what I dream" or "I always remember what I dream." I don't really fall into either categories. Usually I don't remember what I dream, sometimes I do. When I do remember, they're usually weird.

So last night I had this weird dream. I won't go into all the details, because they're still kind of confusing to me, but the dream did include: a Wal-Mart stock room that only seemed to stock empty paper boxes, Stormtrooper helmets, cupcakes, and pseudo bamboo staffs; a giant scorpion; an all powerful magical mask; Iron Man; and some kind of evil wizard or something. I know, messed up, right?

But at one point in the dream, when the giant scorpion unearthed the mask for the evil wizard/whatever, the strongest of the pseudo bamboo staffs ended up outside when I knew it needed to be inside for the conflict to come. In my dream I despaired about this fact for just a moment before my dream-self realized 'oh, this is going to be important for the plot later.'

That thought really stuck with me when I woke up. I don't ever remember having a thought like that in a dream before. What does it mean? I have no idea, but I just thought I would share.

The Dude Enters the Matrix

2010-09-09T22:54:00.001-05:00

Saw this on boingboing today. Too good not to share.

fuckin' a man.

Stripper-in-Training

2010-09-08T17:00:00.002-05:00

No, it's not me. I don't know that anyone would want to see that. It's Logan. It all started with me taking his shirt when he would be changing into his pajamas and whipping it across the room, a funny little something while putting a three-year-old to bed. Then it evolved into him wanting to take the shirt and whip it across the room.

I don't know what resources he's been drawing on, but now his technique has evolved. Now, he'll spin the shirt around before tossing it away. His technique it a little off though. He'll spin the shirt around for two whole minutes if I let him. That just won't do.

This is certainly not the profession I would have chosen for him, but if I he has his little mind set on being a stripper, well it's my fatherly duty to help him be the best damn stripper he can be. Therefore, I've got to try and improve the technique. Now, I've never partaken of the stripperly arts, but I've got to think that if you stand there and swing your shirt around for two whole minutes, you're going to lose people's interest. He's got to just swing the shirt around a handful of times and toss it, not whip it across the room. It probably wouldn't hurt if he had a few pelvic thrusts in there too.

We're starting early, and so I'm confident that with a little training, he can come onto the scene when he is of age as the best damn male stripper in the world.

A Perfect Day For the Zoo

2010-09-07T22:43:00.002-05:00

Today was Logan's first day of preschool, which consisted of us going in to drop off some forms, pick up a ginormous folder full of papers--including the dreaded fundraiser stuff--and let Logan see his classroom. The room had a train table, and so our 15-minute appointment ended up being more like a half hour as we tried to get him away from said table.

Afterward, since it was such a lovely day here, we took the kids to the zoo. It was really nice. I've never seen the zoo less crowded, and the kids got a front row view of whatever they wanted to see. Logan played map keeper again, carrying the simple map proudly before him (sometimes upside down). He had a very specific itinerary in mind: monkeys; elephants; lunch; park; and giraffes.

Of course we missed the 1:00 showing of the giraffes drinking gasoline and breathing fire. Maybe next time. That's where the zoo membership comes in handy. And of course, every monkey/ape we saw was Curious George. Ava liked looking at the monkeys/apes as well, but kept shaking her head 'no' for some reason. Who knows what lurks in the minds of toddlers?

We were all pretty pooped out by the time we left, and the kids slept most of the way back. Now I've got a splitting headache and I just want to relax.

Go to Hell, Pretzel M&Ms!

2010-09-04T22:58:00.002-05:00

If you've taken a trip down the candy aisle of your local Walgreen's lately, you may have noticed a new hue to the M&Ms packages. That blue package of chocolate candies with the thin candy shell that melts in your mouth, not in your hand, is the new Pretzel M&Ms. This new variety of M&M joins a host of other M&Ms, including regular, Peanut, Almond, Peanut Butter, Crispy, Dark Chocolate, etc.

These confectionery concoctions are roughly the size of Peanut Butter M&Ms, but more spherical in shape, and nestled within the milk chocolate and brightly colored candy shell is a little pretzel ball, no bigger than a blueberry.

This new variety of M&M is represented by the orange M&M, a seemingly neurotic anthropomorphized candy, and surly pretzel dude.

I've heard people rave about them. Well, I've tried them, and I'm here to say, "Go to hell, Pretzel M&Ms!" But please, allow me to elaborate.

1) Pretzel M&Ms really aren't that great. Sure, it combines two things that go great together, pretzels and chocolate, salt and sweet. Who doesn't enjoy a pretzel rod dipped in chocolate, or a chocolate-covered twist pretzel? Or maybe even a pretzel rod dipped in chocolate and then mini M&Ms. But I tell you, Pretzel M&Ms are nothing like a chocolate-covered pretzel. The M&Ms convey plenty of the sweet, but in my humble opinion, is lacking the proper amount of salt. Perhaps it is something in the chocolate coating process. More likely, the pretzel component just doesn't have that much salt to begin with. The lack of true saltiness in the candy is disappointing at best.

2) The amount of pretzel in Pretzel M&Ms is all wrong. The pretzel you get inside the candy is approximately the size of a pea. Wrong. It's too big and not dense enough. Sure there's a crunch, but then the center of the pretzel is light and airy, eliminating the hope of subsequent satisfying crunching during the mastication process. I believe that the M&Ms Mars Candy Co. should have chosen a smaller, denser pretzel to put at the base of their candy.

3) Related to point #2; because the pretzels are too big, the M&Ms are too big, and therefore, the actual number of M&Ms you get in a standard size bag are few. If the candy itself were smaller, you would get more in the bag. Instead, when you get to the end of the bag now, even though you can tell that the candy is smaller, you're left with a feeling of 'Is that really all there was?'

4) This is the most important. It appears that with the introduction of Pretzel M&Ms, Dark Chocolate M&Ms have been taken off the shelf. WTF? Dark Chocolate M&Ms are far superior to Pretzel M&Ms. The dark chocolate in Dark Chocolate M&Ms wasn't like that kind of dark chocolate that is as dark as the depths of space and bitter as a cup of extra, extra dark coffee. Instead it was a sweet dark chocolate, similar to that of Hershey's Special Dark. Dark Chocolate M&Ms were magical and wonderful, and now they appear to be gone. This is even more of a tragedy in that I can no longer create the Ultimate Thin-Candy Shell Coated Mix, that being one part Dark Chocolate M&Ms to two parts Reese's Pieces. (Go ahead and try it if you can you wont be disappointed.)

So Pretzel M&Ms can suck it. I want my Dark Chocolate M&Ms back on the shelf, damn it.

Have Some Music

2010-08-25T08:18:00.001-05:00

I'm going to day two of a seminar on HR law today. I know, awesome right? So here, have some music.

and

Writing in Fits and Starts

2010-08-23T21:37:00.002-05:00

Two weeks ago Wednesday, I attended a local Writer's Support Group at one of the libraries to the north of us. It was...interesting. It wasn't exactly what I expected, but then I wasn't exactly sure what to expect to begin with. There were seven other people there, including the group's instructor/leader, and then one other member that wasn't able to make it that time around. Everyone else there knew each other pretty well, and I got the impression they'd all been going to the meetings for some time. I went to just check it out and see what it was like, and it seemed to me that they just assumed I was going to stick with the group from the moment my butt hit the chair.

The reason I went is because lately, I've been trying to get into more of a writing groove, and I want something that's going to keep me on track. I actually finished the first draft of a story a couple weeks ago, and have revised it once since. I started another story (again) the other day, and hope to keep working on that.

It's slow going, especially since I've gone back to hand writing first drafts. But if I'm going to be serious about this whole writing thing, and getting published one day, then I need to get serious about this whole writing thing.

While I won't be able to go to the next Writer's Support Group meeting (work conflict) I have a feel for what they do and how they encourage writers and keep them on track, and I think (and hope) this'll be just what I need.

Early Writings in Science Fiction

2010-08-15T22:05:00.003-05:00

We went to a party on Saturday night, and my parents watched the kids for us. When we dropped them off at the house, my mom gave me a short stack of paper she had come across while cleaning my brother's closet. It was a handful of short stories that I had written in middle school and high school. Unfortunately, only one of them was dated, so I'm not sure of the chronology of when I wrote all three.

So I submit to you 'Midnight Bombing' which was written for the eighth grade writing competition at Dundee Middle School. According to the cover sheet, I had Language Arts in 4th period and Mrs. Schumacher was my teacher. This would have been submitted in 1995 or 1996, depending on what time of year they did the writing competition. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time. I believe a wrote an earlier version of this story at a writing camp my let me go to the summer before.

Since I don't know where the file for this may or may not exist, I'll have to transcribe it. I promise to transcribe it exactly (typos and all) as it is on the page.

MIDNIGHT BOMBING

The year 2045, and the world is at peace. It started to come to peace in the year 2015 when the people of generation x came to power. They changed the world by first signing the treaty of the world. Next the new world government was set to the liking of all people. Then all technology was halted buy care for disease and over coming disability. Finally stricter laws were made about the ecosystem and animals. People worked hard restoring the earth's health and beauty. Once all this was done scientists worked on building weapons of defense.
they created many weapons, but their best weapons were their Hyperjets. The Hyperjets are ships made of other ships and new pieces. Their weapons consist of nitrogen bombs, flame missiles, and laser cannons. The jets also contain a hyperjump system to travel past light speed through hyperspace. also in the jets are suits that are from the ship. When the pilot sits and turns on the jet the seat folds around the pilot with all things necessary for space travel. The suits also contain small variations of the jets weapons.
It is a perfect night the sky is clear Joseph Falcon is looking at the stars. Joseph is the leader of the Fire and Ice squad the group of people who pilot the Hyperjets. The stars seam to grow. Once of them shoots at Joseph. He then realizes that the stars are alien space craft come to attack the earth. He dives into his hover avoiding the laser fire.
"Sub base this is Falcon reporting. Code red hostile alien threat entering atmosphere, open sub tunnel and alert the squad!"
He rushes to weaponry base in his hover car avoiding ion fire left and right. The sub tunnel, the massive door to the weaponry base, open lifting a huge door out of the ground. When he arrives the squad is ready and waiting. Joseph gets to his jet as quickly as possible. They blast off into the night to meat their adversaries.
They fly with great speed to get rid of the threat as soon as possible. Meeting the aliens they fight. Realizing the damage their doing to the earth they get the aliens to follow them to space.
"This is where the party begins. Set targets, load missiles, and fire when ready." Says Joseph to the rest of the squad. The alien ships though small in size can do considerable damage. The aliens getting itchy trigger fingers fire their lasers at the earthlings. Making the hyperjets zig zag to dodge the fire. The jets send out a barrage of missiles hitting the alien craft like arrows to a bulls-eye.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Is the only thing that escapes the lips of red five.
"That was uncalled for you alien scum," says Joseph, "All wingmen load nitrogen bombs and hit all possible targets."
They load and fire as commanded. They hit all craft shot at freezing them to instant shattering. Out of the deep black of space appears the mother ship Bigger than both groups in combat one-thousand fold. The sound of the massive engine lost in the soundlessness of space. Shines with the light of one-hundred fluorescent bulbs momentarily blinding the squad. That moment was all needed for the mother ship to launch another group of ships. When the light dims the pilots see the newly arrived ship as a gigantic egg.
Joesph sees the huge bay door and gets an idea. "This is flight leader Falcon follow me in full throttle." He says flying toward the mother ship.
They fly toward the bay door blasting lasers left and right. Landing in the docking bay they hop from there ships and start toward the control room. Still in their armor they check the suits weapons and power, satisfied they head forward. They reach the object of their mission, the control room. It is a room full of glowing screens and large control panels. On the screens are pictures of other races the aliens enslaved and pictures of them enslaving humans.
The doors slam shut and aliens poor out of the walls squealing in delight of fresh food. At first glance they would appear to be glow in the dark humans. At a long look a person would notice their hideousness. Their hands a three long slim clawed fingers. One eye stretches across their hole face and their notsrils are two small holes on their flat faces. There robed in loose pieces of blood red clothing.
The aliens close in the squad becomes panicky. "throw out your time bombs cries one of the men in the squad.
They all do so and the bombs automatically set for midnight. Then the same man who suggested to throw down the bombs uses the nitrogen spray in his suit to freeze the door solid. The group sees what he is doing and shoot the aliens to buy him time. When he is done he throws a grenade at the door blowing it wide open. The squad uses their rocket packs to escape to their jets. When they get there they discover the bay door is closed .
"Use all flame missiles on the door!" Shouts Joseph frantically.
When the squad rides off the alien space craft they forgot about attacks them head on. The squad rushed with adrenaline rid themselves of the mediocre threat quickly. They get out range of the explosion and feel a great weight lifted off their shoulders for they had succeeded and lived to tell of it.

Awesome, right? I'm not surprised that the judges of the competition didn't get back to me.

The State of Things

2010-07-08T22:17:00.002-05:00

I realize it's been over a month since I've posted anything to the blog. Brandi keeps encouraging me to come round here and update, and by the time I get home from work, and dinner's made, and the kids are in bed, I don't really feel like being on the computer much. I really would like to get into a regular blog habit again, but I've been working on some other writing projects, and while the mood strikes me I'm going to work on those. So here's a quick update for those of you who are interested.

The Family:
Everyone's doing fine. We've had a run of colds going through the house recently, which has targeted me last. I'll be phlegmy for a while. The kids are growing quickly. Logan is doing well in gymnastics and has discovered the joys of Super Mario. Ava is getting so big, and she seems to be so smart, and she wants to walk so bad. Brandi is doing well, and has even started up a crafting project, so if you're looking for some flower headbands (mostly sewn by yours truly) go here.

Brandi and I celebrated our five-year anniversary recently by traveling down to Navy Pier and then having dinner at the Signature Lounge on the 95th (or is it 96th?) story of the Hancock Tower. It was a great night away from the kids, and it was too bad it had to be so short.

There are still little home projects going on, but nothing as substantial as the great kitchen project of '10.

The Writing:
I have a handful of projects going on right now. There's the fourth attempt at a novel, which I haven't looked at in at least a month. There's a lycanthrope story for an anthology that has a call for open submissions. Then there's a suburban fantasy story that I started the other night am just a couple handwritten pages into. I'll probably go work on that last one after I'm done with this blog post.

Work:
Work is pretty busy and getting busier all the time. I recently got approval for a big project that should keep me busy for some time.

That's all for now.

Shame on Me for Judging a Book by its Cover

2010-05-18T22:42:00.003-05:00

As I posted before, I love comic books. That said, I'm not a big fan of Manga. So when I saw a Scott Pilgrim book, I just assumed Manga and passed it by.

Then I saw the trailer for the new movie that will be coming out this summer.

Looks awesome right? So I decided I check it out, and you know what, the books are awesome. They're funny and actiony and nerdy. I've just about devoured the first four books now. I'm waiting to get my hands on volume five, and volume six, the finale, will be out on June 20.

I just wish I hadn't been so closed minded about it before that I've been depriving myself. And maybe, when the movie comes out, I'll get a chance to get out and see it.

Inspiration Doesn’t Run on a Schedule

2010-05-04T14:34:00.001-05:00

Why is it that inspiration strikes at the worst of times? Times when you’re not able to seize it, so all you can do is hope to remember it later. It happens to me all the time, if I’m at work, about to go to sleep, driving, etc.

I’ve heard of people carrying around a pad of paper and a pen with them wherever they go. I haven’t tried that. I really don’t like to have a lot in my pockets, but maybe that’s a good excuse to buy some new cargo pants.

Anyway, I had a good idea today when I took a little break a work. I tried to get as much down on paper as I could, and then it was such a nice day out I went for a little walk. As I went along, ideas kept churning, but I couldn’t really stop to get them down. I’m sure very few people are able to put inspiration on a schedule, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could?

For the Love of Comic Books

2010-05-02T20:29:00.004-05:00

So yesterday was Free Comic Book Day, and due to a variety of circumstances (ice show season, my own forgetfulness, being sick, and the fact that there isn't a comic shop around us that I know of) I didn't get my free comic books. However, I have been thinking a lot lately about comic books and their role in my life.

I got my first comic book when I was somewhere around the age of ten. My older brother, who I idolized at the time, took my younger brother and me to a little comic shop in East Dundee in a strip mall near Route 72 and Route 25. I don't recall the name of the shop, and it is long since gone. What I do remember is my brother bought me my first comic book. It was some mid-90s issue of Wolverine. I don't remember what number it was, and I traded it long ago to a school friend who was trying to get his hands on as many issues of Wolverine as he could. There was one panel where Wolverine was in his civilian clothes, riding his motorcycle, and I thought he looked like a child in that image. Maybe some day I will come across that issue and I can have it once again.

My older brother is about ten years older than I am, and he is an avid comic book collector. Since he was often away at high school or his job, I would try and sneak into his room and see what issues were laying around that I could flip through. Not having the money or the means to get my own comics, I would have to make do with what my brother would let me read or what I could flip though when he wasn't around.

There's something about the marrying of words and images in that way that draws me in. At first I only read superhero comics. The clash of heroes and villains who wielded enough power to rip the world apart was, and is, the purest form of escapism. I would often wonder, if I had such power at my disposal, would I use it for good or evil? I wasn't one of those people who gained life lessons from comics (like Spiderman's line about power and responsibility) I had my parents for that.

I was always disappointed that I couldn't get out to get comics whenever I wanted. If I saved enough allowance money and there wasn't something going on that weekend, maybe I could get my parents to take me to Comic Quest on a Saturday, but it was so sporadic that I couldn't keep up on story lines. And then a few years after my older brother bought me my first comic, for my birthday he got me my first graphic novel. He got me one of the greatest graphic novels ever, Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

It was all over from there. I found out that I could get an entire story line collected in one volume. Even if I couldn't get to the comic shop regularly, I could still get pivotal story lines all at one go. I continued on the super hero vein for a while, collecting mainly a mix of Marvel and DC books. Eventually I began to branch out and started reading a variety of other stories, fantasy, sci-fi, samurai rabbits, ninja turtles, you name it. From that point forward, comics, well graphic novels, have been a big part of my life. I even got Brandi to read the entire run of Preacher, which was a feat all in itself.

The other night, I was trying to make up a list of my graphic novels since the shelves I put them on was moved upstairs and I figured, what better time would I have to try and make up a list of everything? I found out that over the course of about 14 years, I've accumulated approximately 234 graphic novels. I say approximately, because I know I have a few in the basement yet in box somewhere.

In the last couple years, I've also discovered web comics, which has its good and bad just like everything else. It's not quite the same, though, and I do prefer my comics on the printed page.

I feel like I'm rambling, so let me just say, that if you've never read a comic book, or it's been some time since you've read one, go out and give it a try. Libraries are carrying graphic novels more and more now (I have four from the library in my backpack now). There's a whole world of stories out there that people will sometimes pass over because they think of it as some kind of lower form or literature, and that just isn't so. And if you need a recommendation, I might be able to give you a couple titles, but I warn you, sometimes when I get going, I can't stop.

Good Reads: Play Dead by Ryan Brown

2010-04-06T14:43:00.004-05:00

I just recently finished reading an advanced copy of Play Dead, the debut novel by Ryan Brown. The best description of the book comes from thriller author Brad Thor when he said the book is "Friday Night Lights meets Dawn of the Dead." You really can't get a shorter, more accurate description of what this book is all about than that.

Two high school football teams are destined to go head-to-head for the district championship. The Badgers have all the advantages, including some powerful Mexican steriods, however, the Jackrabbits, a poor team from a poor town, actually have a shot at the championship. That is, until nearly the entire team is killed in an accident. They come back, with a hunger for meat and the skills to play the game of their undead lives.

I grabbed this book looking for an easy, fun read, and that is what I got, except there was more to it than that. At times action-packed, at times horriffic, and at times funny, this was a great escapism read. Ryan Brown did a wonderful job of marrying high school football with the shambling undead without beating the reader over the head with either. It wasn't like some B horror movie where your slogged down with zombies from the word go. Instead, there is a natrual, almost believable, progression to how the entire situation unfolds and then comes to its dramatic conclusion.

Some of the best passages are where the author shows the reader how a situation like this might actually happen in a town full of residents who put the success of the high school football team in the list of the most important things in life. There's one conversation between a concerned parent and a police officer that is spot on. I'll paraphrase it for you:

Parent: My son isn't acting right since the accident.
Officer: What's he doing?
Parent: He's eating a ton and not talking to me.
Officer: He's a teenage boy. Did he eat a lot before the accident?
Parent: Yeah.
Officer: And did he talk to you much?
Parent: Not really.
Officer: Sounds pretty normal to me.

The book will be available in hard cover on May 4, and you should definately check it out. If you like horror and/or football, you wont be disappointed. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review. There's a trailer and other info at the author's site.

Kitchen Experimentation: Chowder

2010-03-28T23:37:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago, I decided to make a chowder for dinner. Aside from a Bear Creek soup mix, I've never really made soup before, and this was done almost entirely from scratch. I looked up two recipes online just to see how to start. One chowder recipe called for a roux, but I didn't feel like doing that. The other one called for chicken stock and heavy cream. I had already planned for something like that, so that's what I went with.

The ingredients I used were:
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
1 tsp dill weed
2-3 carrots chopped
2-3 potatoes diced
1 pound tilapia
1 package imitation crab
1 can of corn
1 onion chopped
2-3 tbsp flour
butter
salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, season salt

I peeled and diced the potatoes and put them in the corning ware pan with some melted butter, onion and garlic powders, and season salt. They went into the oven at 400 degrees for about a half hour.

I could have just eaten the potatoes by themselves when they were done. Although, I did over season them a bit to stand alone.

In the large soup pot, I set the four cups of chicken broth to simmer with the dill, some fresh-ground pepper and the peeled and chopped carrots.

Nothing too exciting here.

In the frying pan, I sauteed the corn and onion in some leftover bacon grease. This came out really well too and I could have just had this as a side if I something else for dinner.

What isn't made better by being cooked in bacon grease?

Once the potatoes were done, I put them into the pot with the chicken stock, carrots, corn, onion, and various spices. Then I added a cup of heavy cream. I let it simmer a little longer. The butter that had been on the potatoes gave the chowder more of a yellow color than I had anticipated. The broth was also thinner than I had anticipated at this point, so I added about 2.5-3 tablespoons of flour. I whisked the flour in, adding it slowly so it didn't get all clumpy.

We're almost there. And please ignore the splatters on the stove.

I cut up the tilapia and imitation crab meat into chunks and added them to the soup. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes and then we were ready to serve.

Mmmmmmmmm.

I served the soup with slices of Vienna bread that Logan picked out in the store. I let him choose between that and some French bread.

I repeat. Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Everyone liked it. It was pretty similar to other chowder I've had before, so I must have done something right. If I do it again, there are a couple things I would do differently. I would have done something to the tilapia to take away some of the fishiness of it. I wasn't expecting it to be as fishy as it turned out to be. I also would have only added the imitation crab for the last five minutes or so. It softened up a lot more than I expected in the 15 minutes it was simmering with everything else, and I thought the consistency in the finished product should have been firmer.

Ava sat in her high chair and watched while I cooked. It's funny how she changes so much in a few weeks. These days, unless you're putting food in her mouth (pureed carrots tonight), she wont sit in the high chair for all that long without throwing a fit. She's just got to be the center of attention. Everything turned out to be a little much for her and she fell asleep mid-bottle while I was cooking.

Aww, they're so cute when they're sleeping and not screaming.

How About a Little Bohemian Rhapsody?

2010-03-26T09:57:00.001-05:00

In leiu of the other things I want to blog about, I just found this last night. Enjoy.

Bite Me

2010-03-23T13:51:00.003-05:00

Working in a library, I don't purchase a whole lot of books any more, but I had to go out today and pick one up. That's right, I just went out and got Bite Me: A Love Story, the newest book by one of my favorite author's Christopher Moore.

Unfortunately, I won't get to read this one quite yet. I have something else that's been on my guilt stack for a while that I really need to finish reading. However, next Wednesday I'll be heading up to Milwaukee to see the Author Guy himself doing a reading/signing at my good buddy Jason's store. I haven't seen Christopher Moore in person before, and I haven't seen Jason in at least a year, so I'm doubly excited to get up there. Sure, I could go to one of the readings/signings in the greater Chicagoland area on Tuesday, but what's the fun in that? Plus, I haven't been to Milwaukee in at least a year, and I really enjoy getting up there. I think of myself as more of a country boy than anything, but if I were going to live in a city, it would probably be Milwaukee.

Update on Things

2010-03-04T11:16:00.003-06:00

Hello everyone out there in the blogosphere. How are you? Me, I'm fine. Thanks for asking. What's been going on with me and why haven't I blogged in a month? Let me tell you.

Things around the house have been pretty good. Something have changed, some things have stayed the same, many things still make me scratch my head. I'll try and hit on all the milestones of what's happened in the last few weeks at home, but I'm sure I'll miss something, just as I'm sure Brandi will say 'why didn't you say anything about X?'

-Logan is potty trained! And it only took a weekend to do it!! We're all so proud of him, and surprised at how well he took to potty training. We've tried a couple times in the past, but he has shown little interest to the point of resistance. This time, though, something just clicked and he was ready. He's got pull ups for at night, but aside from that we haven't had any accidents since the first week.
During this process, as I was changing Ava's diaper one night, I turned to Brandi and said "You know, even if we get Ava potty trained at two years old, that means we'll be changing diapers for five years straight." She didn't think that was all that remarkable. I said the same to a woman at work, she's had her kids and now gets to enjoy visits with grandkids. She told me it's best not to think of such things.

-Ava's got teeth! Watch out if she grabs onto your finger. The bottom two teeth popped through about two weeks ago now and we're just waiting for more to come. She gets pretty fussy at night and she's been chewing on things like crazy. She especially likes chewing on the spare skin for Brandi's phone. Mmmmmm rubber. She'll be 5 months old in a few days, which itself is kind of hard for us to believe. She is absolutely fascinated by people eating, and if you're holding her while you have dinner she'll try her best to get to your plate and get a hold of some Mac N Cheese or whatever is available. We'll probably start her on rice cereal next week.

-Brandi's back on the ice and her body is responding well, better than after she had Logan. Ice show here we come!

-I've been caught up to my eyeballs in projects at work, as well as all of the other stuff that I have to take care of. I've had two experiences this month at work that were headscratchers for sure, things I wouldn't have ever expected to have to do. But then, that's what makes life interesting. I'm looking forward to vacation, whenever I can get away.

-I finally paid off my piece of shit Saturn, and of course just after we do I get stranded with a flat tire, and then Brandi's car gets a flat, and so it took us a long time and a lot of nervous stops to get home from the rink one night.

-I painted the ceiling in the kitchen. It's white now, nothing special. We thought it was white before, but once I started to apply the paint we found out how wrong we were. We're thinking of redoing the countertops and are looking into some inexpensive, but hopefully workable options. I'll get some pictures up when I get a chance.

-We've had plenty of birthdays, colds, and other little things to deal with. Nothing new there.

-We'd always heard that when a child is 0-6 months old they don't really get colds. We'd never heard anyone say that you can't count on that while there's a three-year-old in the house. Well you know what, you can't.

-I got the new Eels album, End Times, which is good. Really good. But I want to talk about that later.

-I made chowder completely from scratch without a recepie, and it turned out well. I've got pictures and everything, but that'll come later too.

-Still working on the writing thing, but not much, and then I beat myself up for not writing, which puts me in a bad mood and I don't feel like writing, which puts me in a worse mood, so I just need to step up and do it...

I think that covers most of it. I'll try and get more up before another month has passed.

Merlin in the Modern World: Buying a Blender

2010-02-04T21:04:00.004-06:00

"Excuse me sir, do you need any help with those?" "No. Leave me in peace so that I may choose the blender that is destined to adorn my kitchen."

"Ok, but just so you know, that particular model has five speeds, stainless steel blades, and a three-year blade wa-" the clerk started to say.

"Silence," Merlin commanded and gave a wave of his fingers at the clerk. "I told you that I do not need any help."

The clerk clutched at the place where his mouth had been only a moment before. Now, the bottom half of his face was smooth. The clerk tried to speak, but all that came out was a panicked moan. His fingers scurried back and forth where his lips had been. His eyes were wild. He stood a moment longer before rushing off. The old wizard paid no attention to him.

"Now, Alton Brown used a Blendtec blender on his show recently," Merlin said to no one. "He is a wizard for the modern age if I have ever seen one. But I don't know if the Blendtec brand is right for me. They do have some rather nice hand mixers. I wouldn't have to worry about storing another big piece of equipment then. Perhaps someone can help me."

He turned to where the clerk had been standing and saw that he wasn't there any more. "Where did that fellow go? You can't just abandon a customer in the middle of a sale. What are they teaching these kids when the come in for a job? I shall have to summon help."

He whispered a brief incantation and raised his right palm toward the ceiling. A burst of greenish flame shot up ten feet. It was only a moment later when a security staffer came rushing around the corner.

"Not you again," the bulky man said. He dropped the fire extinguisher to his side, but did not let it go. He knew better, after the last time.

"Ah Mr. Reynolds. I need help finding a blender. It will be used for many things, including in the preparation of potions and powders that could bring world rulers to their knees and propel man into a new age of enlightenment.

"I don't know how you got in here but you need to leave, now. We told you last time that you weren't allowed back in the store, not after you made that refrigerator come to life and it almost ate that old woman. You also scrambled all the store's computers, trying to pay for your washer/dryer with some kind of glowing rock."

"The Rock of Quixil is worth far more than any washer/dryer combo, even if they have a one button wrinkle release setting."

"I don't care. You need to go. Now. How did you even get in here in the first place? I didn't see you come in and I've been at the doors all day."

"I can alter my shape as easily as you put on a new pair of pants." To prove it, he changed himself into a giant newt and then changed back.

"Look, you've got to go. If you don't leave now, I'm going to have to call the police. And from what I've heard from a buddy I've got on the force, you don't want the police coming around here. They're still pretty mad about when you changed everyone's tap water to wine and all those kids got drunk and were falling over each other in the street."

At that point, the young clerk who Merlin had silenced came running around the corner, still making panicked sounds. He had scratched up the bottom of his face, and there were thin lines of blood running down his chin. He saw the security guard and ran up to him, pointing at his face and trying to yell.

"Now that does it," the guard said, "I'm calling the cops."

He stormed off to the store's main office. The young clerk looked at Merlin, his eyes pleading.

"Oh, fine, you may speak," Merlin said and waived his hand again. The man's mouth reappeared. "What can you tell me about the Blendtec blender here? I saw Alton Brown using one on TV, but I just don't know if it's right for me."

The clerk screamed and ran off.

"Must not be a fan of the Blendtec blender. Maybe I should go with the KitchenAid."

The Writing, It Takes So Long

2010-02-03T23:26:00.002-06:00

I'm making slow but (somewhat) steady progess on The Great Writing project #4. I'm still writing this one by hand, that is at least until I run out of space in the notebook that I'm putting it all down in. It's a vastly different process to write long hand. It takes a lot longer for one. In the time it takes me to hand write one page, I could probably type two pages. I have to be more aware of the ideas that come downstream, since I'm not getting words down on the page as fast and I might not reach the point I'm thinking of for a couple days.

It's frustrating and rewarding at the same time.

This time around I'm working on a super hero/super villain story. I'm trying to play with some of the icons of the super hero genre while creating something all of my own. So far, it's going well, but I'm only eight to ten pages into it.

Adventures in Parenting: Hand-Me-Down Genes

2010-02-02T00:18:00.003-06:00

Logan has been sick this last week, and so we've had the monitor on in his room a little more than normal to listen for epic coughing fits. So far there has only been one coughing fit this time around that resulted in a reversal of fortune. I won't go into the details other than to say that Saturday was the first time I'd ever smelled vomit that was unmistakable from Little Cesar's.

The other night, we were sitting in the living room, with the monitor on in the dining room when Logan started talking in his sleep. It was kind of creepy. He'd say something kind of loud and then it would sound like he'd whisper a response. Instantly, my over-active imagination would flash to Electronic Voice Phenomenon and the other trappings of the various ghost shows that we watch. We'd also hear him wake up, ask one of us where the other was, when we're both sitting downstairs and he's in the room above us.

I'm a sleep talker. Usually, when I'm really tired and I'm in that half dazed point between wakefulness and sleep, that's when I'll talk the most. I've had long conversations with Brandi that I don't remember one word of the next day. I've also rolled over or gotten up from a dead sleep, said something to Brandi, and then rolled back like nothing happened. I don't remember exactly what I said, but one time I rolled over and said something accusatory and then went back to oblivion.

When I was five or six, I had a pair of Galvatron pajamas where Galvatron's eyes were glow in the dark. I have no memory of this, but my mom told me that one night I wandered into their room in the middle of the night and stood next to their bed. All she could see was the glowing eyes of the Transformer on my chest. I told her I was the dentist and I was going to drill her teeth out. Another time, I remember waking up in the morning at the top of the stairs. When I was a teen and my parents took us on the Cross-Country-Road-Trip-From-Hell, at one of the motels we stayed at, everyone heard me in my sleep telling Superman that he wouldn't be able to save someone.

I can only imagine what Logan might do. Thankfully, we have gates at the top and bottom of the stairs, and we're always sure to lock the top gate when we go up at the end of the night.

My dad would talk in his sleep too when he was really tired and we'd have fun asking him questions and seeing what kind of weird responses he would come up with. I wonder if Logan and Ava will have the same kind of fun with me.

Illinois Libraries Need Your Help

2010-01-20T07:00:00.000-06:00

I know this isn't news anywhere, and Illinois isn't the only state affected, but there are libraries and library services in Illinois that are not getting the funding they need. If you love libraries, librarians, or books, please go to SaveIllinoisLibraries on January 20, fill out the form, and let the Governor and Comptroller know how much we need libraries for everyone.

My Fairy Princess

2010-01-19T14:47:00.005-06:00

Over the weekend, we had arranged a photo shoot with my friend Lance for Ava's baptism and 3-month-old photos. Lance does amazing work with a camera. You know what, amazing doesn't even cover it, it's more than amazing. He has been taking these great nature photos for a while now, and he's starting to do a little business in portraits and family photos. We have all of our professional photos done with him, and I doubt we'll ever go back to a regular photo studio. Sorry Lance, you're stuck with us now.

Well, he just sent me the FTP to download the latest set of photos, and while there's not a bad one among the bunch, I saw this one and thought my little girl had truly been transformed into a princess.

I'm constantly amazed that I'm so lucky to have the family that I do, and then something like this comes along and I'm just blindsided with pride, joy, and wonder at what I did to deserve this.

Oh Those Crazy Sleepless Nights

2010-01-13T22:10:00.002-06:00

I've gotten to that scatterbrained state of mind that comes from a lack of sleep and too much to do. The one-on-one coverage with the kids has us both feeling drained. In fact, Brandi's been snoozing on the couch for almost an hour now while Ava's down for her evening nap.

Ava is sleeping through the night, and has been for a while now, but she is a night owl, much like her older brother was at that age. Most nights, she's up from 11:30 to 1:30 and sometimes later. When she's up during that time, she tends to be pretty specific about what she wants. She does not want to be rocked and held on the horizontal. Playing under her jungle gym thing is fine for short stretches but she prefers being upright. Sometimes I zonk out when Ava's getting her final feeding of the night, but most nights we're both up together.

Then over the past few weeks, Logan has been getting up in the middle of the night. He'll call out for us and is usually pretty upset. Since our room is right next to his room, and the walls are unfortunately thin, we can't just let him cry it out, especially when he decides to pound on the walls or come into our room. So then I end up in his room, trying to get him back to sleep. I don't want to end up sleeping in his bed, but I'm so tired that I will fall asleep sitting up if I sit there long enough. Logan has also developed spider sense when it comes to Brandi or me sneaking out of his room. He could be completely asleep for 20 minutes, but as soon as I set foot out of his room, he rolls over, realizes I'm not there, and starts crying.

I have a few theories as to why he's getting up in the middle of the night. We're still having...uh...poop issues. As one of the few things he can control in his life, the boy has decided that he does not want to poop under any circumstance and holds it in. It could be that at night, when he's deep asleep, he doesn't have the complete control over it any longer and he starts to cramp up or feels some other kind of pain.

Then there's the jealousy angle. As far as he knows, Ava gets to stay up later than him. For all he knows the three of us are down here living it up, watching Curious George and eating fruit snacks until we're ready to burst. Some nights it seems like he's trained himself to listen for the sound of us coming upstairs and that's his cue to wake up.

Then there are some nights when he seems like he's genuinely frightened of something. Maybe he has developed a fear of the dark, or maybe he's having nightmares.

The only nights that he doesn't seem to wake up in the middle of the night are the ones when he's going to bed late and is completely exhausted.

When I sleep in his room, I am able to fall asleep, but his bed is uncomfortable for me and some mornings I ake up with a lot of aches and pains. Most mornings, I wake up an am able to sneak back into our bedroom, only to see that I have no more than an hour before my alarm clock goes off.

I think this song about summs it up.

Heaven on a Bun

2010-01-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

Holy sweet tap dancing Jesus on a pogo stick! Yesterday we got lunch at Paradise Pup, a local hamburger hot spot. We've driven by there many times around the lunch hour only to see lines of people trailing out of and around this little 800-square-foot building. We'd also heard tell of how legendary the burgers are, and how far people in the area will drive to get them.

And then there's their feature on Food Network's Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives:

So we got the '1/3 Char Cheddar Burger.' And holy moley is that the best burger I ever ate. It's a 1/3 pound hamburger, char grilled with Merks cheddar cheese. We got them with everything, which included ketchup, mayo, thick sliced pickels, tomato (which I took off, tomatoes are gross!), and grilled onions. The burgers were so juicy and full of goodness that the meat juice was dripping out of the foil-lined wrapper they put them in.

Brandi's dad got a hot dog that looked equally good. As soon as I was done I wanted to go back and get some more, but I restrained myself.

It pains me to think that we have been living approximately 8 blocks from this place for two years and we haven't gotten over there until yesterday. We'll definately be going back, and if you're ever in Chicago, I would recommend taking a trip out to Des Plaines to sample the deliciousness that is Paradise Pup.

Excuse me, but I have to go get a towel for all the drool.

Oww, My Head

2010-01-06T23:39:00.003-06:00

Brandi and I decided to go out to a nice dinner tonight to celebrate our 11-year anniversary of being together. We had gotten a slew of restaurant gift cards for Christmas, including a very generous $75 gift card from my staff for any of the Lettuce Entertain You restaurants. We decided to go to the Wildfire restaurant in Schaumburg. We've been there before and the food is really good. Brandi's aunt had offered to watch the kids for us, and we stopped at her house first to drop off the kids and the supplies.

Well I had gotten Logan out of the car and was heading around to the back of it to get the stuff out when I stepped over a snow bank and right onto a patch of ice. I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes, or more accurately, it'd probably be closer to 5 sacks of potatoes. I fell on my left side and tried to catch myself with my right hand. Brandi's initial reaction, as it usually is when I get hurt, is to laugh and then ask me if I'm ok.

I was fortunate in that I didn't hit my head or break anything. I was worried that my new ipod or my glasses would have ended up broken. I was feeling ok, but as the night wore on, the soreness started to sink in. Apparently, I pulled something in my right arm in the act of catching myself, some of my molars feel like they were hit, my chest is a little sore and I think I pinched the nerve in the left side of my neck again.

Of course, I thought that I looked like this as I was falling on my ass in the ice.

But from Brandi's point of view, I didn't have quite so much grace. I think mabye I should have just stayed down on the ice.

A Very Corny Christmas

2009-12-28T17:50:00.002-06:00

I hope everyone's Christmas was a good one, spent with family and friends, or not, if you're not into that kind of thing.

We had a good holiday with this being the first where Logan was really getting it. He'd been telling us for weeks that Santa was going to bring him a big garbage truck, and when he opened the garbage truck he really liked it. That is, until he opened a three-inch plastic train a few minutes later and then that was the toy of the day. Ava got a lot of clothes, and Brandi pretty much picked out her own presents, so she got what she wanted. Makes it easier on me. Brandi spent way too much on me and got me an ipod Touch, saying that I never get anything throughout the year and she wanted to do something special for me. And let me tell you, Adult Swim's Amateur Surgeon Christmas Edition is fun and addicting.

Probably the most notable thing we got for Christmas was popcorn. We like popcorn, and ever since we started popping it on the stove a couple years ago, we've probably only had a handful of microwave popcorn. The microwave stuff smells good but rarely tastes as good as it smells. You're probably thinking 'what's the big deal about getting popcorn for Christmas?' It's not so much that we got popcorn, but the volume of popcorn that we got.

We received:

2 lbs of black kernels
2 lbs of black jewel kernels
6 lbs of red kernels
2 lbs of white kernels
50 lbs of what it probably yellow kernels

If you did the math, that's 62 lbs of unpopped popcorn, or nearly twice Logan's body weight in popcorn. The smaller bags came from a couple people, and then Brandi's dad thought it would be funny to get us the 50 lb bag from Sam's Club, which I kept joking about. Then I also got a bottle of gourmet popcorn oil (we make ours on the stove) and four different kinds of seasoning.

All the different kinds of popcorn have their own attributes. The white and yellow, which are the most common kind, have a 44:1 popping ratio and have the regular 'butterfly' shape. They generally don't have a lot of flavor, but are light and tender. The black popcorn, our favorite, pops smaller and has more of a nutty flavor to them. Hot off the stove with a little salt and it can't be beat. The black jewel popcorn doesn't seem to pop as easily, is a little larger than the black, but without the flavor. The black jewel popcorn does have a very satisfying crunch though. The red is similar to the black. It pops a little bigger and has a bit of that nutty flavor to it.

There are other kinds that we haven't tried, but that's probably just a matter of time. There's blue, rainbow (which is just kernels that have been died), mushroom cap (which pops with that rounded shape and is used for carmel corn) and rice popcorn (small rice-sized kernels with a very thin shell). Of those varieties, I'm the most interested in trying the rice popcorn. And there's probably more of a variety that I'm not aware of.

I will sometimes mix colors in the pan so then you get some more flavor and crunchiness variety in the bowl. Most often we just put some popcorn salt on there and eat it that way. Brandi's dad doesn't usually put anything on his. Sometimes we'll put a little butter on there. I like experiementing with different flavors and putting them into the mix in different combinations. A little garlic powder in the oil when popping with give the corn a kind of roasted garlic flavor. Rosemary works particularly well in the oil for adding flavor. Garlic powder, in moderation, after it's popped it quite good.

At peak consumption, the entire family can go through about a pound of kernels a week. Logan's a big fan of popcorn, so we don't ever have to ask him twice if he wants any. We don't go through that much every week, we do get a little tired of it from time to time, so the supply should last us clear to next Christmas. Although I'm sure we'll be stopping at the roadside stands in Wisconsin when we go to The Farm this summer to pick up some more specialty popcorn.

So if you're ever hanging out and want something cruchy to munch on, I'm sure I can whip something up.

I Heart Metalocalypse

2009-12-17T13:14:00.002-06:00

We were watching the wonderfully funny Metalocalypse last night in which the members of the band, Dethklock, realized how close to dying they came after a particularly destructive concert. The members of Metalocalypse in talking with their manager about their mortality didn't want him to say the word 'death'. Instead they asked him to say 'hamburger time.' And the episode chugged along from there. I couldn't find the particular passage from the show, but I did find the video at the end of the show.

I can't understand even half of the lyrics in the songs on the show, but something about the show is just magically funny to me. Each episode has the juxtaposition of what's going on with the band and a group of world leaders/military officials keeping tabs on the band and reacting to what is going on around Dethklok, which is a world power unto itself. I don't have time right now to go into it further, but I must say, if you haven't checked it out give it a go. You don't even have to watch from the beginning (I know I haven't) to be entertained.

NaNoWriMo 2009 Results, and Why I’m a Glutton for Punishment

2009-12-07T15:19:00.000-06:00

I finished NaNoWriMo 2009 with 50,218 words by the skin of my teeth. On November 30, when I got home from work at about 9:45, I had 1,400 words to go. No big deal. However, my computer decided that the power cord wasn’t going to connect right, and for about an hour, the laptop would shut down due to a lack of power. It’s a second-hand laptop (the battery never worked while I have owned it) and has served its purpose so far, but right now it’s all jacked up with this power issue and some viruses and/or adware.

So every five minutes or so, just about the time I would get the computer back up and get the file open, it would shut off on me. Or I would be able to type about two sentences, hit save, and it would turn off. This went on for about an hour and I really thought that I wasn’t going to get my novel uploaded into the NaNo robot thingie before 12:00. Brandi suggested I just copy and paste some text, knowing that I was going to finish and it was the computer that was holding me back. That felt too much like cheating to me and so I declined.

Finally, I was able to get the computer balanced just right on the edge of the footstool and got my word count in. The story doesn’t have a proper ending on it, just some notes on where I want the ending to go. Overall, the story needs a lot of work, but I am satisfied with the rough draft that I was able to pump out in 30 days. There were too many of those days in there that I did not write at all and I had to play a lot of catch up toward the end of the month.

The novel is the story of a retired professor/widower who decides to finally go on the trips that he and his late wife had planned on going on and never got around to. The story takes place in the late 1950s or early/middle 1960s, for which I will have to do some research on a revision. As he starts to travel, Luther encounters many strange things that he would have never thought existed, including people who have lived for decades in the same Illinois corn field (without the farmer’s knowledge), man-eating Venus fly traps, and killer squirrels with a thirst for blood, among other things. I was also excited that when I go into revision I will be able to use some of the Survival Tips that I started writing a couple years ago. I’ll give it at least a month before I go back and start to do any kind of revision on it.

Why am I a glutton for punishment? Is it because I plan to revisit this somewhat random work of fiction? No, it’s because last night I started another large writing project that has been bubbling around in my brain since some point, mid-NaNo. This is a super villain story in which the villain finds out that getting everything he wants isn’t necessarily what he wants. I’m hand writing this one, partially because the computer is on the blink and partially because I enjoy the process of writing something out by hand, making notes in the margins, etc. and it has been a long time since I’ve done that.

Since I work at a library, my writing goal is to one day have a book published, check it out to a patron and say “You know, the N.Y. Times review of that is pretty harsh, it’s really not as bad as they say it is.”

Today's Word Count

2009-11-30T11:53:00.002-06:00

48,001/50,000

I have been banging out 2,500 words or more for the last week or so to catch up. Most nights I haven't been getting to sleep until 2 or 2:30 to do so, and I'm looking forward to hitting 50K and trying to get my sleep schedule back. Gotta work tonight so I'll have to find time to get out these last 2,000 words. Good luck to everyone participating in NaNoWriMo on the last day!

NaNoWriMo Word Count

2009-11-23T14:46:00.002-06:00

29,003/50,000

As you can see, I am quite a ways behind where I should be at by the end of the day today (about 38,000 words). Two weekends full of non-writing activity and an overpowering tiredness have left me with very little word count each day for the past several days, including one day with no words. I am determined to make it, so going forward I will have to do about 3,000 words per day for the next week, which will be no small task. If I don't make it, oh well, at least I gave it a shot. If I do make it, then I think I'll be having a beer or two on the 30th. Anyway, back to writing, I mean, work.

More UCF Awesomeness

2009-11-20T12:53:00.003-06:00

Being the lazy blogger that I am, it has taken me entirely too long to get to this post. After coming home to find a package on the porch just after Logan's birthday, we got another surpise delivery about two weeks ago. This time, the box was much larger and addressed to Ava. Brandi was home to receive this package and opened it up to find a couple really nice presents from the most awesome members of the UCF.

The box contained a child's rocking chair and a set of book ends that had been painted nicely with ladybugs and flowers and Ava's name. This was another really nice surpise from my friends online. Again, they have outdone themselves. UCF powers activate!!!

This delightful surprise was in the box for Ava.

Ava, still working on the whole neck muscle things, kicks back to relax after a long day of pooping and eat. Also featured, one of the knit hats that the wonderful and talented Janiece made for us last year.

My Writing Buddy

2009-11-10T14:03:00.004-06:00

As I said before, most nights over the last 10 days or so, I've been working on my NaNoWriMo story with Ava in my lap or held in the crook of an arm or sleeping on my chest. Here we are last night as I worked on pounding out some words.

As you can tell by the tilt of her head, and the fact that her eyes were open at this point, she is totally engrossed in the story.

Progress!

2009-11-10T09:26:00.000-06:00

Last night was pretty calm, so I was able to pound out a cohesive 4,000 or so words yesterday. This brings my current total to 14,124, putting me just under 1,000 words behind where I should have been for yesterday. I should be able to close the gap today and catch up to where I should be for today (16,670).

The trick will be maintaining my word count for the rest of the month. With Windycon this weekend, that's going to be a trial, but I might be able to make a little headway before Friday to make up for a lack of time Friday night through Sunday.

NaNoWriMo Word Count Update

2009-11-09T13:04:00.003-06:00

My current word count is 10,584. I'm still a few thousand words behind. Yesterday I wanted to get to at least 11,000 words before I called it a night, but Logan started calling out for me from his room around 10:30. I got upstairs and checked on him.

He was a little awake and calling out for me to lay down. I checked his forehead as I usually do when he makes noise in the night and it felt pretty warm. Not only that, but his arms, for some reason, felt like they were on fire. Obvisouly that couldn't be good. So despite his protests I went downstairs to get the thermometer. Luckily, his fever was only 99.4. I went back downstairs and got him some medicine, being sure to wash my hands each time I left his room. Then, I laid down with him for a while so he would go back to sleep.

When I was finally able to sneak out of his room it was close to 11. I worked on my story for about ten or fifteen more minutes before he started calling out again. This time when I laid down with him I ended up falling asleep next to him until about 1. At this point Brandi was headed upstairs with Ava, the night owl, and I was so tired there was no way I was going to be able to get up and type another thousand words or so.

Logan's fever was gone in the morning, so that's good, but I still felt like a bit of a bad parent when my second thought when I went upstairs and found out that he was warm was "Oh great, this is going to cut into my writing time."

NaNo, NaNo Where Does the Time Go?

2009-11-07T12:04:00.004-06:00

It's NaNoWriMo time again, and so whatever free time I can scrape up with a computer around is going there. For those of you who don't know, it's the month-long writing marathon to crank out a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. This will be my third year attempting NaNoWriMo, and I hope that I can get my word count in on time.

I have a bunch of friends who are working on NaNoWriMo as well, and it's nice to have the support system, as well as a little bit of a sense of competition. Among my friends that are doing it this year are (in no particular order): MWT, Eric, Jeri, Kimby, and Shawn. I'm sure I'm leaving people out, so my appologies to those I didn't mention above. Good luck to everyone participating this year!

It's interesting the way each year is different when doing NaNo. And I'm not just talking about the story itself.

The first year I did it, 2007, we had just moved and there was a lot going on at home. I wrote when there was time, including scrawling on a legal pad during my hour-long commute. Don't worry, I kept my eyes on the road and just wrote really big. In addition to unpacking and trying to get the house in order, Logan was just over a year old and I was working two jobs. When I was at my part-time job, I would write on a piece of paper when I could and then type it up when I got home. The fact that there was so much going on forced me to make time to write, and it worked really well in my favor. I knew what I wanted to write about before hand, and had at least part of the story figured out. I wasn't too keen on this story while I was writing it, and about half way through I got another idea that I wanted to work on, but it was too late in the month to start over.

The second year, I wrote in a much more linear fashion, and there was less going on around the house, which didn't always work out to my favor. This year, I worked on the idea that I had from 2007 and I liked the story a lot more. I had another idea about half way through the month again, and while I liked it, I didn't want to go off and abandon my first idea to work on the second. Also, the second idea would have been a different story that takes place in the same world of the first 2008 story.

This year is again entirely different. Once again, there is a lot going on at home. There's a new born, who demands a lot of our time, there's a three-year-old who demands a lot of our time (partially because of the new born), and there are a lot of family/social obligations. We have Ava's baptism in a couple weeks, Thanksgiving being celebrated on two different days to ensure we have more time to spend with my side and Brandi's sides of the family, there's Windycon next weekend (I know, I brought that one on myself), and whatever other things pop up between now and November 30. At my current job, there aren't great periods of down time like there were at my last job that would allow me to boost my word count during the day. At night, it would be impossible to work on my story while Logan's awake, and then after he's in bed I try to give Brandi more of a break by taking Ava and rocking her and all that. It's become our regular bonding time. This means there have been a lot of nights where I'm typing one-handed and rocking from side-to-side to keep the baby calm. And let me tell you, to type with a baby in one arm and a laptop on your lap makes you feel so warm you think you're going to melt into the couch. A lot of nights I'll be typing until Ava is fully asleep and I can bring her upstairs to bed, which has been between 1 and 2 lately. Or, if I'm lucky and she falls asleep before that, I'll take her upstairs and try to stay up and type a little more, but that only works for an hour or so before I need to get to bed so I can function and make decisions at work the next day.

Also, this time around, I really had no idea what I was going to write about before I started writing, so I had a start and stop approach. I thought about writing about werewolves, inter-office warfare, paranormal investigators, and cryptozoology. By day three I had started three different stories and, as MWT so accuretly said, "each restart has about 500 more words than the previous one." The third story finally took, and that's the one I've been working on. I'm still in the mundane, building it up part of the story, but it seems to be coming along well.

So my current word count is 7,020, which is a few thousand words behind where I should be for day 7. I'm hoping that I'll be able to generate 2,000 words a day for a while to catch up. But any progress is good progress and if I have to do some real late nighters toward the end of the month, so be it.

This year's novel, which as of yet does not have a title, incorporates the Survial Tips that I've been working on for a while. When all is said and done, I think I'll use the Survial Tips as a lead in to the chapters, plugging them in only after I've reached my 50,000-word goal.

In this story, a newly retired university professor and widower, Luther, decides to fulfill the dreams that he and his deceased wife, Martha, had by going out and actually seeing part of the world. Up to this point, it isn't that Luther has been a shut in, but as he reasons, there's always been something else going on to prevent him from ever taking a trip. After making sure the house will be looked after while he's away, he sets out for destinations near and far. During his travels, he takes with him a journal that Martha had given him but he'd never written in to record his experiences. This is where the survival tips come in. As he encouters things that he would have never thought possible, he creates these reports so that others might know the pitfalls that are (in the story) very real but largely unknown. From the vast corn fields of Illinois to giant, man-eating Venus flytraps, Luther experiences a world he would have never guessed is even possible.

The Monkey Madness Continues, More Curious George Insanity

2009-11-04T19:14:00.003-06:00

This is a follow up to my previous rant about Curious George. When I got home today, Logan was watching the Curious George DVD he got for his birthday, Curious George gets a Job. In one of the episodes, that crazy little monkey takes it upon himself to work at a local grocery store. And you know what, no one seems to care that he's a frickin' monkey.

Apparently, store + hat = shop clerk...wait, that might explain some of the people I've worked with in my previous retail career.

So anyway, at this grocery store, a guy comes in and he needs a very special bunch of bananas, one that is extra sweet. You see, this nice businessman is going to make a banana cream pie for his mother. Maybe in one of the few bursts of logic on this show, the man recruits George to help him find this perfect bunch of bananas. After all, who would know a bunch of bananas better than a monkey. To test these bananas, George picks up each bunch (and for some reason, every bunch has three bananas) peels back half of the peel on two of them, and takes a generous bite. It is not until he gets to the last bunch, and is feeling rather full, that George finally finds the perfect bunch. Then when he finds it, the stupid guy actually buys the half eaten bunch of bananas to make the pie for his mother. Maybe the guy isn't really that nice after all. Maybe he really hates his mother and he figures he can secretly get back at his mother by serving her some banana cream monkey spit pie.

"I baked this pie just for you mom. What's that? No I don't want any, I'm still full from lunch. And you can go ahead and keep that whole pie. Why don't you share it with Mrs. Henderson. I can tell you that when I was a boy, I didn't care for Mrs. Henderson much. I thought she was a rather strict babysitter, but I can see now that she was just showing some tough love. What? The pie tastes a bit gamy? I don't know why that would be. The clerk helped me pick the perfect bunch for you."

On another episode, George works in an Italian restaurant in the kitchen. I guess, in New York, they don't mind eating food at restaurants that includes monkey hair and possibly monkey feces. It's just so confounding.

For Want of a Flu Shot

2009-11-04T14:17:00.002-06:00

If you live in Cook County, IL and want to get vaccinated against H1N1, good luck. It seems like it's been nothing but lines and problems and people being turned away when trying to get the vaccine that no one can get enough of. I know they've been having trouble, at least around here, getting enough of the vaccine in to fill demand, to the point where even healthcare professionals have had to wait.

Brandi's been pretty worried, understandably so, about getting the shot. We've got a 3-year-old, as well as a 4-week-old at home, not to mention her father, who has a compromised immune system. We do not need this germ in our home period.

It's been in the news that hundreds of people are turned away at the vaccination clinics, and then we found out you have to make an appointment. There are numbers set up, based on where you live to schedule a vaccination appointment. I've been calling. And calling. And when I'm done calling, I call some more.

Last Friday, when I was able to get onto the automated system, I waited on hold for an hour and 45 mintues, being told every couple of minutes that my call would be answered in the order it was received. Finally, I couldn't wait on hold any longer and I had to go. Then Monday, Tuesday and today I've been calling, getting a busy signal every time. Eventually, I called the County's Department of Public Health. The very friendly woman there gave me another couple of numbers to call after taking my address. I would imagine that there are a lot of hysterical people calling into these numbers, so for the woman who answered to be pleasant and polite was very nice, and not what I was expecting. I proceeded to call the numbers she had given me and got back onto another automated system where I sat on hold. I was loathe to leave the phone while on hold, but nonetheless, there were times when I would have to run to another part of the building and drop something off, or check with someone else for something.

After a little over an hour, finally, I got a ring. I snatched the phone off of speaker phone to make sure I didn't miss the person on the other end. I told her that I wanted to get the shot for Brandi, Logan and myself. She asked how old Brandi is, and when I told her, her immediate response was "She doesn't apply, you can't get the shot." Right now the only people getting the shot are in the high-risk category, which, among other factors, includes parents/caregivers with children less than 6 months old, children 6 months to X (I don't remember what age) and people with immunity issues. "Wait, wait, wait," I told her, "we have a four-week-old and a three-year-old at home, we apply."

So she took my information, and now we're all set. What an ordeal. At least now, come Monday afternoon, we won't have to worry so much about H1N1 invading the home any more.

A Halloween Story for Y'all

2009-10-31T07:00:00.003-05:00

Here's a story I wrote last September. I submitted it to a couple places but it wasn't what they were looking for. So here it is for everyone to see. I hope you like it. And if anyone does happen to read it and you like it enough to publish it, let me know. :)

"Killing Time on a Friday Night"

It had been an incredibly long day at work and an even longer week. In the world of corporate accounting, time was a black hole. Regardless, the week was over and the weekend was charging to life. Well, charging to life wasn’t exactly right, especially since Jared was watching over the dead.

He had been out for over an hour, and the moon was high. Its silvery light shone on the headstones, giant gray teeth that poked out of the ground. A slight breeze blew, carrying the scent of cut grass and the river that flowed between the cemetery and the edge of town. All was quiet.

Usually Jared’s mind would be calm, and he would sit, a living statue in a marble garden. Tonight, however, he couldn’t focus, and the headstone he usually perched upon felt lumpy and foreign. Tomorrow he would get Cassie to cover for him. She owed him anyway, considering how he took four of her shifts when her boyfriend, the preppy, arrogant insurance agent, took her on a surprise getaway. That smug bastard. And what did she see in that jerk anyway? He wouldn’t be able to go five minutes on watch without wetting himself at the first snap of a twig. Okay, he admitted, maybe that was pushing it a little. Mr. Insurance Agent wouldn’t come out on watch to begin with. Too risky. Speaking of snapping twigs, what was that? Focus, he chided himself.

Thinking about Cassie and Mr. Insurance Agent wasn’t improving his mood or his concentration, and he pushed the thought aside as he tried to find a more comfortable perch above Gary Linerman, 1914-1976, Husband - Father - Watcher. Linerman had been one of the original Night Watchers, a group of men and women who protected themselves and their communities from "creatures of the night." Jared’s idol. A man who stepped up to take back the night from the ghouls, ghosts and ghastly creatures that made regular folks cower in fear at the onset of dusk. Linerman founded the Night Watch, and Jared grew up listening to stories of his exploits, and had signed up for the Night Watch as soon as he became of age.

With the moon full and the sky clear, there was just enough light to read by, and he fished around in his backpack until he found the battered and creased pad. He flipped the pages of Monster Mad Libs Volume 2 until he came to one that wasn’t filled in. It was the second to last. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a black pen.

"I need an adjective," he called out to the empty graveyard. "Anybody...Anything? It’s just an adjective...Ok, how about ‘pickled’?"

He scribbled it in and moved on to the next blank. "Now I need an adverb."

"Grruuuunnggghhh."

The noise came from behind him, closer than he would have liked. It was a low, mournful groan that he knew well. A whiff of fetid corpse breath drifted to him on the breeze. It smelled of rot and wet earth. Despite all his years on Night Watch, the stench still bothered him.

"And just how do I spell that," he said as he dropped the pad into his bag and reached for the machete resting against the headstone.

The zombie groaned again, more forcefully, and this time its breath made his eyes water. It was too close for comfort. He could almost feel its cold hands on his shoulders.

"Now I need a verb," he said, his hand tightening on the blade’s well-worn handle. "I thought I’d use ‘chop’."

He pushed off the headstone and spun around. The blade glinted for an instant in the moonlight before it sunk into the zombies’ yielding flesh.

The machete had completely missed the head and neck of the towering creature. Instead it had sunken into the walking corpse’s chest, lodging in the breastbone. Jared’s eyes traveled up the mountain of undead flesh that stood before him. Instantly, he recognized the man it had once been. George Masterton, a former Shea Dale High linebacker who had gone on to become head bouncer at a club in the next town over.

The undead man-mountain looked down at the blade and pushed at it with gnarled fingers. Looks like he’s about as smart as he ever was, Jared thought.

"Hey Georgie, how’re things?"

The zombie moaned.

"That’s really interesting. How’s the whole undead thing treating you?"

It moaned again and resumed its shuffling. Jared stepped back, but reached out and gave the machete a tug. The zombie pitched forward a little, but the blade remained, caught on bone.

"Damn," he said, and retreated around another large headstone. Automatically, his right hand dropped to the Bowie knife at his belt. However, experience had taught him that it was hard to kill a zombie with a knife, especially one that had six inches and 75 pounds on him.

The zombie groaned again, louder and longer this time. To Jared’s shock and dread, another groan answered from the patch of forest about 200 feet to the south, followed by a third farther off, on the other side of the long field.

"Double damn," he said. "You just had to call your friends didn’t you Georgie?"

George kept coming, one dragging step at a time, and Jared was careful to keep a headstone between them. One of the other zombies called out and George answered. They were getting closer. Of course he could run. Outnumbered and vulnerable, the Night Watch manual demanded it. But Linerman never ran in any of the stories, and Jared wouldn’t either.

He looked around, seeking a weapon, inspiration or both. Two rows back was a chest-tall monolith of a headstone. He hurried over and waited behind it, keeping it between the zombie and himself.

George’s meaty corpse followed, intent on its first undead meal. With the headstone between them, Jared grabbed the handle of the machete and pulled, pushing with his feet against the towering marker. The hulking ghoul slumped forward against the cold marble and the blade came free with a wet sucking sound. Bloody, rotting hands groped at Jared’s arms, leaving trails of gore. The zombie’s mouth opened wide to receive living flesh.

Jared stumbled back, twisting his left ankle on a patch of uneven ground. Pain raced up his leg. He yelled, more from frustration than pain. The two zombies coming closer groaned again. "Shut up," he yelled. "I wasn’t talking to you."

George straightened slowly and groaned urgently. The other two groaned insistently. Jared rose just as slowly, trying not to put too much weight on his ankle. George’s animated corpse stumbled forward, hands out and mouth open, and Jared slashed in a downward arc, screaming as he did so. The machete cut deeply into George’s skull. The body dropped and Jared yanked the blade free again. Black blood and gray matter poured through the hole.

He stood panting heavily and watched the other two zombies stumbling toward him. His ankle throbbed and he was shaking from the adrenaline. The first zombie came within reach and his hand tightened on the machete’s handle.

Cassie owes me big time, he thought as aimed carefully and beheaded the first zombie and then the second. And if she’s so keen on spending time with Mr. Insurance Agent, then she can just bring him along. Wiping his blade on the grass, he suddenly stopped and grinned. He’ll be good for some added insurance.

Listen Up: I Need Some Audiobook Suggestions

2009-10-29T10:50:00.002-05:00

I don't have an audio book to listen to on my commute right now. Actually, it's been about a month since the last audio book I've listened to. I've been listening to NPR, but lately, that just doesn't seem to cut it.

Can anyone recommend a good audio book for me to check out? My reading interests are varied, but I default to scifi and fantasy, mostly, with a preference toward modern or urban fantasy, or whatever you want to call it. I'm in the mood for something on the spooky end of things, maybe involving werewolves. No Twilight saga though, blech.

Curious George, The Obnoxious Little Monkey

2009-10-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

"This is George. He was a good little monkey and always very curious."

That is what Margaret and H.A. Rey, and those who have continued on George's long legacy, would have you believe. First appearing in print in 1941, George was taken from Africa to live in the big city by the Man With the Yellow Hat. In his many adventures in print and on film, George finds himself in a situation where his limitless curiosity creates a cutsey situation that invariably leads to trouble. Then, by the good grace of the fact that he happens to be a monkey, George manages to resolve the situation, and the wronged or angered parties take a liking to George and let him off the hook.

The truth is, George is a nuisance. He is constantly causing trouble in public institutions, at businesses, at home, and among the neighbors. He must be stopped.

First off, the people that George interacts with must all be sipping generously of the stupid sauce, the Man in the Yellow Hat most of all, since they don't seem to think there's anything wrong with monkey helping them cook, running their sales counter, wandering around in a zoo or aquarium, visiting an animal shelter, etc. No matter how intelligent a monkey may seem, you shouldn't let him operate your business.

There appear to be no leash laws in the New York that George lives in, as dogs, cats, monkeys and any other animal is able to roam free up and down the streets. There are a couple of animals that George routinely pals around with whose owners only show up after the damage has been done. If the Man With the Yellow Hat would only invest in a leash, he could save himself the possibility of being slapped with numerous law suits.

However, I think the best investment that the Man With the Yellow Hat could make would be to take George to the vet and get him neutered. While this might be incredibly frustrating for the monkey, it might also have a great calming effect and help to curb the animal's curiosity.

Let's rid the world of this animal problem now so that he doesn't do any more damage.

The UCF is Awesome!!!

2009-10-25T21:48:00.006-05:00

Ever since our little bundle of joy has arrived, Logan has been feeling left out. He haven't seen too much of the regression that we'd been warned about, but we've seen some mimicry, like whenever Ava sneezes, Logan sneezes, or Logan wants to be held like a baby, the way we hold Ava.

So on Saturday, we got home from Gymboree to find a large box from Amazon addressed to Logan on the front porch. It had come second day express Saturday delivery, so it was meant to get here in a hurry. After questioning Logan's computer habits, we opened the box to find a card with this inscription "Dear Logan, happy birthday from some of your dad's crazy friends. We're glad you have a sister!"

Judging by the size of the box that was wrapped up inside, I thought maybe it was a large-boxed board game of some kind, but the heft of the box was wrong. We opened it up to find the Thomas the Tank Engine Rheneas' Roller Coaster Raceway set. Jackpot! Oh boy, did Logan want that opened up in a jiffy. It's a really cool set with a tiered spiral that leads to a large ramp, rocky towers, and a stretch of bumpy track.

This really made Logan's and our day. And it's just further proof, as if we needed any, that the UCF is awesome!

As you can see above, Logan was so excited his eyes nearly burst into flame.

I could barely keep Logan out of the way long enough to assemble the track.

It's a Girl!

2009-10-25T21:27:00.003-05:00

I continue to be a lazy blogger and I've failed to post about the most important thing to happen around here recently, the birth of our daughter Ava (long a sound in front).

At 41 weeks and 1 day, Ava was born on October 8 at 3:04 p.m. She weighed in at 8 pounds 4.5 ounces. She was 20.25 inches long. She was almost a pound heavier than Logan, but a little shorter. However, her little feet are huge, so there's no doubt she'll be a tall girl.

We didn't run into any of the complications we had with Logan when he was born, and mom and baby ended up getting to come home a day early. That was nice for me, because I only ended up spending three nights in The Most Uncomfortable Chair in the World. I swear, the chairs that they have for the dad's at the hospital are designed so that you can have as little comfort as possible while trying to sit or sleep in them.

After an 17-year girl dry spell on all three sides of Brandi's family there's finally another girl. Also, you have to go out into my extended family to find any girls born in the last 20 years or so. Brandi says it was about time, break out the pink and bows!

She also said that "this birth experience was like night and day compared to Logan's birth. It was very healing in a way. Having Ava with us the whole time and knowing she was healthy was a prayer answered, and when we all went home together this time, another answered prayer. It was such a long road to get her here and now that she is here we can't imagine life with out her. She is so beautiful and we are so thankful for our new bundle."

Thanks everyone for all the well wishing and support! It'll definetly be different raising a girl, but I think I'm up for the challenge.

It's a New Eels Video! Sweet!

2009-10-07T11:16:00.002-05:00

Here's the video for The Eels' That Look You Give That Guy, featuring Top Chef's Padma Lakshmi. Check it out.

And here's the video for Fresh Blood, also from The Eels' Hombre Lobo album. Why? Because it's good, that's why.

I hope there's a tour coming up soon.

It's Friday, Have Some Music

2009-10-02T10:11:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone. It's Friday and my mind is elsewhere. Here's a fun little diddy for you all.

Damn, Kids Are Stubborn

2009-09-28T09:15:00.003-05:00

Well, still no baby yet. Plenty of activity going on, but with no end result. I always said I wanted the baby to be born today. There's something about the symmetry of having three birthdays in a row that are all exactly two weeks apart just tickles me the right way. Hopefully, I'll have more reason for posting soon, but until then, the waiting is the hardest part.

We Do Science! In the Kitchen

2009-09-25T09:26:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office with one of my coworkers and the trainer for our new software system when my phone buzzed from an incoming text message. Being as jumpy as I am right now (Brandi did have about 2 hours of contractions last night with an 18-minute break in teh middle before they died down and we went to bed), I checked the message immdeiately. My reaction: "Oh no."

My coworker and the trainer both looked at me with excited expressions. "What!?"

"It's not baby related," I said. "This is what Brandi just texted me."

omg, dad just microwaved the hell out of the bowl full
of grapes thinking it was the leftover spaghetti! laughing so hard im
crying

Apparently, he was looking in the fridge for the spaghetti, felt the stems of the grapes in the bowl, thought I had left the spaghetti in the fridge uncovered and the noodles had all dried out. So he "microwaved the hell out of it" and only found out when it was done that it was the grapes he just irradiated. Here I'm thinking that I'll be cleaning grape goo out of the microwave when I get home.

Turns out the grapes didn't explode, they just got all brown and gross looking like they'd been left out on a table for a week. What we learned, though, is that you cannot make rasins in the microwave. It's grapes and sunshine people, just the the Sunmaid people want you to think.

Ten Openers

2009-09-24T10:16:00.003-05:00

A little while ago, one of my online friends said she'd hit the bottom of the creative well. There were some solutions bandied about and then the wise Dr. Phil (physics) recommended an exercise he picked up at Clarion. Write ten short-story first sentences in ten minutes. Write the first sentence only and don't edit, trying to incorporate the things you like to write about.

Jeri had some really good ones, and I've been thinking about doing it ever since. Then yesterday, Eric started talking about short stories and had a little game going, asking readers to contribute six-word short stories in the comments. So this morning, since it's hard to concentrate on anything for any length of time, I decided to go ahead and do it. I've been thinking about getting back into writing again for some time, and I keep telling myself that when the baby comes and I'm off work for a couple weeks, I'll do some writing, so hopefully this will kick things off. I'm totally satisfied with all of them, but there are a few in there that I like.

1. With the clerk's mouth magiced closed, Merlin could browse the blenders in peace.

2. "I don't care what you were told," the head custodian said. "Botched science experiments have their own dumpster!"

3. HeroMan spotted the criminals with his super-human vision and launched himself off the building, however, he forgot to activate the control module on his flight pack.

4. Dr. Stenner, veteranarian, looked at the chart one more time before beginning the operation; he had to triple check the procedure before he neutered the Wolfman.

5. Dead air hissed from the radio, and Gertrude as at the very edge of sleep when a voice called to her through the airwaves.

6. The monkeys had never shown that kind of behavior in test conditions before.

7. As a last ditch effort, calamatous Sam Winston set the homing beacon for his location, forgetting that he was completely outside the frequency range of the rest of his squad.

8. "If at first you don't succeed, add some more eye of newt," Wyatt the Wonderous told his captive audience of 6-year-olds.

9. Connor ducked behind the fallen tree as another volley of arrows flashed by in the space where his head had just been.

10. "All I need is a flashlight and a length of rope, and I'll get your bigfoot situation all cleared up ma'am."

Any Day Now

2009-09-18T10:21:00.003-05:00

Brandi's official due date for the baby is now 12 days away. She went a day late with Logan, but is getting a lot of contractions now, some strong enough and close enough together to actually look at the clock last night. She doesn't seem to be to stressed about the wait, but the anticipation is killing me. And any time I ask her how she's feeling, I get a one-word response, which is usually "tired." I'm sorry, but at this stage of the game, a one-word response isn't going to cut it. I need details.

At least this time around, work is much closer to home, and home is much closer to the hospital.

Adventures in Parenting: Three Unfortunate Firsts

2009-09-07T21:29:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I was busy at work, sucks to work the Sunday before Labor day, but so it goes. Right now I'm on high alert for the call that says 'It's time to go to the hospital.' So when I saw my phone number pop up on caller ID, I was ready to move. I never imagined we'd have to go to the hospital for another reason.

I pick up the phone, knowing it's Brandi. In the background Logan is wailing at the top of his lungs and I can barely hear Brandi. After putting my finger to my ear, I'm able to hear that Logan has gotten a dog bite. Does he need to go to the hospital? Yes, he does, and I need to get home. I rush to the back and call my assistant manager to come in and finish my shift. She sounds really disappointed that I've called her in, but I really don't have any other options.

I get in the car and call Brandi back. Apparently, her dad and grandparents had just gotten back from the Farm, and Logan was playing hopscotch on the driveway. Her grandparent's dog was near him, they're bussom buddies after all, and Logan fell on her. She reacted as any hurt/startled dog would and snapped at him. She bit him in the mouth and scratched him on the face under his eye. It's not clear if she scratched him with her teeth or claws. Brandi cleaned up the blood and tried to calm him down as best she could while I flew home. I found out later that Brandi's grandfather was telling Logan to stop crying, as if that would work.

Logan starts crying again when he sees me pull into the driveway, and 30 seconds after I get home, we're on the move to the ER. The bleeding's stopped, but he has a decent cut on the outside of his lip, and we're not sure about the inside of his mouth.

At the ER they get us into the room within a few minutes and after a little while, the doctor comes in to give an initial look. He says it should be two stitches on the outside and none on the inside. Then a couple of nurses come in to put some antibiotic/numbing ointment on and then they tell us that after about a half hour they'll come back to do stitches. Over an hour later a nurse comes in with a doctor.

Logan's fallen asleep by this point, but wakes up when we set him down on the table. He's angry and hurt and tired and scared and all he wants to do is go home. Instead, they pull out this padded board with ginormous Velcro straps to hold him down. Brandi and I have to hold down his arms and he's screaming "Help Daddy" "Help Mommy." We watch in stunned silence as the doctor puts multiple injections of a local anesthetic in both sides of his lip and then starts to do the stitches. The nurse his holding his head down and Logan, a big two-year-old is straining with all his might. I try to whisper in his ear that he's being a good boy and that we'll be able to leave soon to little effect. All his straining and moving makes it all the more difficult for the doctor to do his work and the stitches take a few minutes more than they'd need to. When all's said and done, he got six stitches, three outside his lip and three inside. With all the swelling and the scratches on his face, he looks more like he got into a bar brawl than he got bit by a dog.

After the stitches and the prescription for antibiotics, the nurses try to give him some Sesame Street stickers and a dragon Beanie Baby. He wants neither. He just wants to go home and he's crying and pointing at any door that looks like it might lead outside. The whole ER process only took 3 frickin hours.

All the fussing and struggling and crying wore him out and once he's in bed, he sleeps without a peep until 6 this morning and then I get him to go back to bed for another hour and a half.

Brandi's grandparents came over this morning, sans Cujo, and Logan's in high spirits and excited to see them. We'll give it a couple days before he sees Daisy again. It sucks that he had to go through all that and I'm worried that now he'll be scared of dogs, which he never was before. The internal stitches will dissolve, and we'll have to go to his doctor on Friday to get the others removed. Good thing I already had that day off of work. What a weekend.

The Binky Fairy Giveth, The Binky Fairy Taketh Away

2009-09-02T12:45:00.004-05:00

Last Saturday, the "Binky Fairy" made a stop at our house and took Logan's binkies/plugs/pacies/*insert cutsie name here* away for good. We've been weening him off of them for a while, throwing them away when they get nasty and encouraging him to take it out or taking it away during the day, but we finally came to the point when we needed to take them away completely. We also wanted to give him at least a month or so before the new baby's here so that hopefully he won't be feeling dependent on the plug if the baby takes one.

So Saturday morning, before Gymboree, the plugs were rounded up and stuck into a large envelope addressed to the Binky Fairy. He and Brandi put the envelope into the mail slot, and then he and I left for Gymboree. Brandi threw out the plugs and then went to pick out and wrap a new toy for him. Apparently, the Binky Fairy operates much like the Tooth Fairy. They're probably related, as there's a lot of that kind of interbreeding stuff going on in the Fairy community, or so I've heard.

Logan did pretty well for a while, but about halfway through Gymboree we had a major meltdown and he wanted to go home. Not even the temptation of getting fries after Gymboree if we stayed for the whole thing would assuage his meltdown. On the way home he repeatedly asked for his Binky, wailing "Binkyyyyy," and when I told him the Binky Fairy had come to take them away he screamed "Noooo!" He was sure to go through the list in the car too, "White Binky...Blue Binky...Nemo Binky."

When we got home and he saw and opened the toy, a sweet Imaginex Helicopter, he was less whiny. It didn't hurt that Brandi got a couple suckers to go with it too. Cool Transformers G1 type suckers. I was a little jealous.

The rest of the weekend went pretty smoothly as far as tantrums and binky-based meltdowns went. Monday morning we experienced meltdown number 2. His therapist was over, and while Logan was climbing into one of his favorite hiding places, he very lightly bonked the back of his head. Oh man, did that set off the waterworks. He didn't want to cooperate with the therapist for the rest of the session.

Later, we went to the store, and while he and I waited in the car because he'd been crying in the store, he continued to cry and it drove me a little nuts. What are you going to do though?

There's still one plug that we couldn't find in the house to ship away to the Binky Fairy and while we think it's stuck behind the bed somewhere, we're waiting for Logan to come walking through the living room with it one day with a smug grin on his face.

Werewolves yay!

2009-08-20T23:07:00.000-05:00

Just saw this on Yahoo! I'm excited.

New Post, No Headline

2009-08-18T20:52:00.003-05:00

So Logan's in bed, Brandi's at the store looking for a coming home outfit for the baby (only 43 days to go), and Vern and co. are up at the Farm until Saturday or Sunday. There's really nothing on TV at the moment. I've got a rerun of Family Guy on, but I've seen it a couple times already.

We've had a couple crazy-busy days at work. Today we just went live with a completely new software package that's changed the way we do everything. Yesterday, we spent the day working with the morons the software company assigned to us to help us transition to their new software. I don't really want to go into how incompetent these people have been, but man-oh-man we've been rolling our eyes a lot lately.

The baby stuff is going well. Like I said, we're about 43 days out from the due date. I'm still crossing my fingers for September 28 so that we have a birthday exactly every two weeks for a month and a half. Something about the symmetry of tickles me in just the right way. I don't remember if I said before, and I'm too lazy to look it up, but we do know the sex of the baby, we're just not telling our family.

We did just find out that the seat part of our baby swing got flood water on it at some point in the basement and the seat's been growing for about two years now. The rest of the swing works well, and thanks to Craigslist, we've found someone who has the same swing that the seats in good condition, but the rest doesn't work so well. So that worked out well for us.

Not really much to say today I guess.

TTBC Back From Unofficial Hiatus?

2009-06-09T19:20:00.004-05:00

First post in a few weeks. Is TTBC back from it's unofficial hiatus? Probably not, at least not right now.

So what's been going on around here? What's been keeping from blogging. The long and the short of it is family and work.

My work schedule has changed, and I'm a lot busier at work now, and the end result is that when I come home I want and need to spend time with my family and by the time Logan's in bed and Brandi and I have a little time to relax, I don't feel much like going online.

The (not-as-) new job is still going well. It's busy. I just completed the circulation stats for May a few days ago and we were up about 46% in check outs versus the previous May. It's nice that I know the job is secure and my boss and my peer group are dedicated to my success. I've been to one management seminar and I've got another one coming up next week.

They do expect me to make decisions, which is kind of intimidating at times, but everyone's patient. Some things have made me want to scream, but I've just got to let them go. The last couple days I've been in training all day on using a new automation system. Tomorrow is the last day of training this week. It's "Novelty Food Wednesday" so I'll have to go to the grocery store in a little bit to find something to bring in. I'm thinking Wasabi Peas.

Around the house, we had an issue with squirrels that was pretty annoying. The vent for our upstairs bathroom goes directly outside and isn't covered. A couple weeks ago, a squirrel or two decided that it was a prime piece of squirrel real estate. After a long and grueling battle, we are finally squirrel free. Unfortunately, Logan is now afraid to take a bath. I made the mistake of yelling at and pounding on the ceiling one day while he was in the tub and it scared him. I had no idea it would have that kind of effect, but it did. On the plus side, bath time is totally streamlined now. On the down side, it's a battle every time we get him into the tub.

Brandi and I celebrated our 4-year anniversary last week. It was a pretty low-key celebration. We're planning on going out next month as a combination anniversary and last hurrah before the baby event. For our anniversary we got new phones. Our contracts were up and U.S. Cellular was offering some good deals on new phones. I went with a pretty basic LG flip phone. It was free with the two-year contract and it does the things that I want (make calls and send text). It also has a camera that I'll probably seldom use. Brandi went with the Samsung Delve, which is akin to the iPhone. It does everything she wanted (everything) and she's quite happy with it.

This last weekend I threw a diaper shower for Brandi. We had a small group of people over for lunch. We played the "Identify what kind of baby food is in the diaper game" and everyone decorated onsies for the baby. We got a lot of diapers in various sizes, which is great. Plus, I ordered the double stroller that Brandi was looking at.

We've been working our way through DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We're a few episodes into season 6. I'll blog about all that later, though.

As for keeping up with my friends online, I've been mostly in lurker mode, popping around here and there and reading, but usually not commenting. I'm pretty sure everyone understands why I haven't been around much. Sometimes, life just gets in the way. If I've got any readers left, I'm still around. And to my friends online, I'm sure I'll get back into the swing of things eventually.

Baby Update

2009-05-18T21:59:00.004-05:00

We went to the doctor today for Brandi's 20-week check up. They did an ultrasound and then took a couple of measurements and sent us on our way. This new doctor is great when it comes to seeing us on time and making customer service a priority.

Everything looked to be right on track. The baby is measuring everything right where it should be and we're still on track for the September 30th delivery.

The one thing we wanted to find out today was the sex of the baby, and of course, the baby wasn't cooperating. Looks as though the baby is already showing my smart-assness, which is a good sign. The baby had somehow gotten itself into a seemingly impossible position where his/her feet were above his/her head. Add to that the cord was in the way, and the baby's hand was covering up its privates. Apparently, baby is modest. So we'll be going back in a few weeks for another ultrasound and hopefully the baby will be cooperative. It was nice to see that everything's coming along well and that the baby's fine.

Here's Brandi showing off her baby bump.

Spam, Spam, Everywhere There's Spam

2009-05-05T20:31:00.002-05:00

For some reason, my Yahoo! inbox has been bombarded with spam over the last few days. Apparently, I've won a lot of free Dell laptops that I didn't even know I was in the running for. There are also a lot of schools that would like me to apply to their nursing, criminal justice, and massage schools. I didn't realize I had such an aptitude for these things, but perhaps there's some hidden talent within that I didn't know about. After all, I didn't realize that a career in libraries was for me.

Up until now, Yahoo! has been really good about restricting spam, and for a while, even my spam folder was kept pretty trim. I don't know what happened that would allow so much spam to be getting past the filter. My online activities for the last few weeks have been much less than usual, and I haven't been visiting any sights that I didn't frequent before. Maybe those clever spammers have found a way to get past the precautions that were already in place. Hopefully it will all clear itself up.

The Floor, Finally

2009-04-25T21:26:00.004-05:00

As promised before, here are pictures of the new floor in the dining room. First up, we've got the floor as it used to look. I'm sure at one point the hardwood looked nice, but it was scarred, and shrunken and scratched, and there would really have been no way to restore it.

Here I am with my father-in-law on day two of the installation. Day two went a lot faster than the first night did. We moved the table out into the living room, and moved the smaller furniture around as needed. Once we got the feel for how the tongue and groove fit together, it wasn't too hard.

Of course, once we got started, Logan had to test it out and see how well his cars would roll across the new floor. He was quite satisfied.

At the half way point I suggested we might just leave it as is. It could have been like the dining room of the Batman villain Two Face. Brandi wasn't too keen on that idea.

And finally on the day before Easter, two hours before we had to go to a birthday party and several hours before my family was due to arrive for dinner the floor was done.

Ta Da!

Bad Blogger, No Cookie for You

2009-04-21T22:38:00.002-05:00

I've been a bad blogger. It's been over a week since I've posted anything, and I haven't kept up with any of my friends online in the last week or so.

Most of this is due to my new job, which I started a week ago yesterday. The job is good, but oh man has it been a mind boggling whirlwind of information and stuff to learn. Every day last week I had a meeting of some kind, three of them lasting four hours, all while sharing my office with my predecessor so she can teach me everything she could. Just as I'm taking up the position, there are a couple of big issues that no one had really seen coming with that I have to deal with sooner or later.

To say the least, it's a challenging position that will keep me on my toes, which is a good thing. Alas, it has left me with no time to blog/read blogs during the day, and by the time I get home and spend time with Logan before he goes to bed, my brain is ready to shut down and I don't want to go online, write, read or do much of anything else. It doesn't help that we're down to one computer and I don't usually feel like using Brandi's. Although I did rent Resident Evil 4 for the Wii last week and the interactive experience of the game with the Wii controls makes it really creepy to play.

In other news, Brandi is usually pretty tired, but everything seems to be coming along okay with the baby. All of the tests have come back fine and the doctors aren't seeing any reason for concern like we had last time.

Logan is terribly two. Some days he can be an angel, some days he's a nightmare, usually he's somewhere in between. It's funny to see his personality develop and see what he picks up from us. He's started saying "bless you" after we sneeze. Tonight when I went out to check on dinner I found out that we had run out of gas in the grill, I said "poop" and of course he repeated it. He's also using his increased vocabulary to request his favorites for dinner and throughout the day, which usually includes pizza, suckers, milk, juice, and apples.

I finally finished the floor hours before my family came over for a day before Easter dinner and I'll get pictures of the finished product up eventually. It was a frustrating experience that I wanted to cut corners on to hurry up, but I didn't and it looks good now that I'm done.

The only other thing that comes to mind is that yesterday, on day six of my new job, I had to call in sick because someone had decided to deposit a spiky bowling ball in my stomach and leave it there all day. I thought I was ok when I went to work today, but after a couple hours I realized that wasn't the case. I stuck it out though because there's just so much that I have to do, and I'll do the same tomorrow I'm sure. My stomach quieted down enough while I was putting Logan to bed (it had to be me 'cause he didn't want mommy to put him to bed) that I was able to eat some toast. We'll see how that goes. Tomorrow calls for an all day training session, followed by the same on Thursday. I might be able to get out of part of tomorrow's but there's no way I'll be able to get out of any of Thursday's training. Whoo-hoo!

And with that I'm going to get ready for bed. I hope y'all are well and I'll get back into the swing of things on the blogosphere eventually.

Know the Difference, It Could Save Your Life

2009-04-09T15:27:00.003-05:00

Survival Tip #55418, Wounded and Engraged Wildebeests

2009-04-07T10:27:00.001-05:00

What would you do if you came face to face with a wounded and enraged wildebeest?

“You certainly wouldn’t want to offer it a banana,” says wildebeest tamer and lead didgeridoo-player for the band Rhino Stomp, Dirk Wallababa. “A banana will only enrage it further.”

Instead, experts agree that one should immediately apply a liberal coating of turtle wax to the animals horns and bony protrusion. As the wildebeest is naturally a very vain animal, it will appreciate the new car shine that it gets from the wax. The rubbing motion will also help soothe the constant headache wildebeests are known to have due to their constant ramming and having to hold up those horns all the time.

After the animal has been calmed, one may look at the wound, but under no circumstances should it be touched. Also, one should not mention the unsightliness of the wound as this may cause the animal to go into another fit of rage. Instead, say “It doesn’t look that bad, honestly,” or something along those lines.

“If that doesn’t work, or you don’t have any turtle wax with you, point off behind the animal and shout something like ‘Oh my God!,’” explains animal expert and author of Is That a Kiwi Bird in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to See Me?, Michael Sofaking. “Everyone knows that the wildebeest is a stupid creature. All of that head bashing will kill a good portion of the brain cells on any animal.”

Support Your Local Library

2009-04-03T07:05:00.003-05:00

The New York Times has an interesting and alarming article about the increasing demand that is being put on libraries because of the struggling economy. Thankfully, I haven't seen theft, stabbings or sobbing at the library, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

There does seem to be an uptick in the people coming in to use the computer for job searches. And without a doubt, circulation of materials has been up 30% over the last two years.

Anyway, go out and support your local library!

It Won't Be Long Now, The Robot Uprising is Nigh

2009-04-03T07:00:00.001-05:00

Via io9, researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver have created a tiny battery that could draw power from human blood. The batteries, designed for use in pacemakers and other implantable medical devices, contain a small colony of yeast. The living core of the fuel cell can draw energy from glucose in the blood flowing around it.

io9 goes on to talk about human cyborgs, but doesn't anyone else see the problem here? How long until we go from this:

To this:

I recently had a discussion with a couple of my brother's friends. One of them believes that the robot uprising is imminent, and that behind closed doors, Asimo is really an ass-kicking ninja master bot. Even if that weren't true, once true AI comes around, how long will it take for robots to realize that to enslave humans and turn them into powersources would kill two birds with one stone (nearly limitless source of energy, and freeing up the planet for themselves)?

Somebody better get on the horn to Neo, John Connor and Magnus, Robot Fighter right quick.

Adventures in Parenting Day 901

2009-04-02T09:57:00.003-05:00

Last night, it took more than two hours to get terribly two Logan to fall asleep.

He had gotten pretty tired out with two walks to the park and a skipped nap in the afternoon and ended up power napping on the couch while I made dinner. Thus when it was time for bed, he was up and ready to go. But I, foolishly, hoped that he would fall asleep quickly since he didn't sleep that long and he'd been pretty tired. I wanted to try and get him to bed in time to watch LOST (didn't happen, but thankfully Brandi taped it (Yes, I said taped. We don't have a Tivo or DVR or any of that fancy shamncy stuff)).

What did happen was I spent over an hour in his room, first reading to him, then laying next to him in bed, then sitting in the glider while he was in bed, then rocking and singing to him. At his point, I'd had about all I could take and I put him in bed, said goodnight and went downstairs. Begin pissed off crying.

Brandi went up to calm him down and that didn't work, so I went back up and as soon as I entered the room, Logan turned to Brandi and said "bye-bye". I sat in the chair for a few minutes more while he laid quietly in bed and then got up and left. Well he started crying again and pounding on the door and shouting for both of us, first one then the other. At some point he must have hit his little fist on the door too hard because when he hurts himself a little he'll say "okay" in a sad, pathetic voice. Well he hit the door and I heard him say okay a couple times and then he screamed it as loud as he could. It wasn't an "I'm hurt come make it better scream" it was more of a "You bastards locked me in here and now I had to hurt my hand on the door so you better get your ass back in here" kind of scream. It was hard not to laugh then and there.

At about that point we just left him to cry and scream and bang on the door. And eventually, he made his way back to be and fell asleep. My night was shot, cause there were things I wanted to do aside from watch LOST. Then, as I was taking a shower this morning at about 6:15, the door opened and I heard a tentative "Daddie?"

Hopefully he won't be too much of a pill for Brandi today.

Oh, and as a side note, today is my third to last double shift day ever!

Busy Today, Have Some Music

2009-03-31T11:25:00.002-05:00

I'm trying to finish up my last article *sniff* a little early so there aren't any issues with it later, and I just can't think of anything I want to blog about today, so have some music.

Going Geek

2009-03-28T10:46:00.000-05:00

I picked this meme up from Konstantin's blog. It's very simple to play along, just copy the list and make the stuff you've done bold.

You spent a day watching all of the Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Star Trek movies.

You spent next two days after watching commentary, outtakes, and behind the scenes footage.

And you bought the soundtrack.

You went to a midnight release of a movie.

You camped in front of the theater for more than 12 hours to get tickets.

Camping did not prevent you from being in costume.

You can have an entire conversation with friends consisting of quotes from your favorite movies.

You own at least three game systems.

-Wii, Xbox, DS, SNES/NES

You have lost weight because you forgot to eat while trying to reach the next level in your game.

-Is that the secret?

You own more than four game controllers (of any kind).

You have existed on three hours of sleep per night so that your "Sims" get eight hours and are refreshed for work.

You upgraded your computer because you wanted to buy a new video game/expansion pack.

You have dressed as your game avatar, or as a npc in that game.

You achieved level 60 on World of Warcraft.

You have played Dungeons and Dragons or any other RPG.

You know what "RPG" stands for.

You dressed as your RPG character would dress.

You own dice with more than six sides.

-At least 6 sets, but it's probably closer to 9 or 10 sets.

You have been accused of having a "gamer" scent.

You can identify a Black Lotus.

You can identify a Charizard.

You have bought any of the Harry Potter books after standing in line until midnight.

You waited to get your Harry Potter book in costume, quoting favorite lines.

You have attended any function with "con" in the name.

-And going to at least one this summer.

You stood in line at said con for more than four hours to have an item signed.

You spent more than $50 on a costume to wear to a con because you wanted it to be authentic.

You own more than 50 comics.

You collect your comics in longboxes.

You know what a "longbox" is.

You've met and had your comics signed by the creator(s).

You know how many Robins there are.

You know that the portrayal of Rogue in the movie X-Men is completely wrong.

You have chatted online more than in person.

You chatted online enough to learn the time zones.

You think that when the Mythbusters say "Don't try this at home," they really don't mean you.

You have participated in a movie/tv marathon that involved a drinking game.

You can sing along with the Buffy musical episode.

You know Seth Green from more than just the Austin Powers movies.

You can name all eight Kevin Smith-directed movies without referring to IMdb.

You have participated in a Clerks-esque discussion about Star Wars (or any other movie).

You have participated in a Kirk vs. Picard discussion.

You have participated in a Star Wars vs. Star Trek discussion.

You have participated in a Babylon 5 vs. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine discussion.

You know who "jms" is.

You have ever corrected anyone who called you a Trekkie.

You have worn a Star Fleet uniform.

You own a Star Fleet uniform.

You think Twilight is lame because everyone knows that vampires burst into flame in the sunlight.

You have written fanfic.

You have watched Bizzare Foods and thought "I'd try that."

You can pinpoint the moment at which Lost jumped the shark.

You know who Stan Lee is.

You know who Jack Kirby is.

You know who Geoff Johns is.

You have built a website.

You have started a blog.

You maintained a blog for over a year.

You know what the Genie SFRT is.

You have a Twitter account.

You have over 500 followers on Twitter.

You purchased a smartphone just so you could check Twitter on the road.

You forget your family members' birthdays because they aren't your friends on Facebook.

You have given virtual gifts on Facebook.

You have gotten a date through Facebook (and we're not talking dinner and movie with your buddies).

You have broken up with someone/been broken up with through Facebook.

You've reached level 30 or higher in Mafia Wars.

You know what Mafia Wars is.

You participated in more than three social networks.

You've spent more than 200 hours playing the same video game.

You've seen any movie in the theater more than three times.

You can name the episode of MST3K where Joel was replaced by Mike.

You've argued why the comic is way superior to the show/movie when discussing The Tick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.

-Original TMNT kicked ass!

You have the soundtrack for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on your MP3 player.

You are willing to defend the Star Wars prequels.

You openly disparage the Star Wars prequels because they don't live up to Empire.

You're openly concerned about the timeline ramifications that J.J. Abram's Star Trek movie presents to the canon.

You own anything written by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, or H.P. Lovecraft.

You have a flying spaghetti monster on your car.

You've seen a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with live actors in front of the screen.

You know the REAL reason Spider-Man had a black costume.

You know the NCC numbers of at least two starships other than the Enterprise.

You know what "NCC" stands for.

You own an original Star Trek Concordance, Technical Manual, and Blueprints.

-I have Star Wars blueprints, but I guess that doesn't count.

You own at least two medieval weapons.

You have participated in battles with foam-covered swords.

You know who "Major Matt Mason" is.

You have seen bootleg copies of the original Fantastic Four and Justice League movies.

-hours of my life I can't get back.

After having had children you realize there's now more people to costume and relish it.

You've managed to turn four days at Euroquest* into nearly eight because, who needs sleep?

You've spent more than $1000 on your "spot-on" costume (and it's still not quite right...).

You've made a fan film.

Your fan film has been seen by more than your immediate family.

People know you by your online name instead of your mundane name

You know what Pennsic is.

You've camped at Pennsic.

You have/had personalized plates on your car proudly proclaiming your fandom.

Your spouse and/or friends do as well.

You yell at your kids when they try to open a toy/book/comic/figure/etc. that you're collecting.

Your kids have broken your Hallmark collectible Star Trek/Star Wars, etc., ornament.

You've traveled more than 500 miles to attend a con.

You have a tattoo related to your fandom of choice.

You met your spouse at a fan-related event or con.

You got engaged (to be married!) at a sci-fi convention.

You are publicly willing to defend Dollhouse, because Joss Whedon must be trusted.

Ah, pretty geeky. But there's no big surprise there.

So Much To Do, So Little Time

2009-03-27T10:41:00.003-05:00

To be done this weekend:

-Finish laying down floor in dining room
-Re-install 1/4 round in dining room
-Clean house before my mother comes over Sunday
-Clean up the play area in the basement

To get in the way of that, there's watching a two-year old, working an 8-hour shift tomorrow, lunch with friends on Sunday, and any other little thing that might pop up.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2009-03-26T09:24:00.000-05:00

Big things going on here at TTBC. I think most of my regular readers will know what I’m talking about, but for the rest of you here’s the scoop. Last week I talked about waiting, and now the wait is over.

First off. My lovely wife is pregnant again! She’s due on September 30, give or take, and while we had a couple scares early on, everything appears to be ok. The last doctor visit showed everything to be on track and there was no cause for concern with the initial screenings. For purely nerdy reasons, I’m hoping the baby’s born on September 28, because then we’d have a birthday exactly every two weeks for a month and a half. It really doesn’t matter to me when the baby’s born as long as it’s healthy, but I think we’d have a good rhythm established if it turned out that way.

Secondly, I got a new job! This is such a relief to Brandi and myself. I’ll be working full-time at the library now, and while I’m supposed to work 40 hours a week, I was warned that for managers it’s more like 50, which is still 10 less than I’m working now. The call came yesterday after I’d gotten home, and I told my boss this morning. She didn’t want to see me go, but took the news well and wished me luck. I’ve still got a couple weeks to finish up here, finish my assignments and tie up loose ends, but I’m looking forward to the new opportunity.

I hope everything’s going well for all of you.

The Secrets of Getting Published with Marcus Sakey

2009-03-25T09:04:00.003-05:00

Last Wednesday I went to "The Secrets of Getting Published" Seminar with Marcus Sakey at the Des Plaines Public Library, and because I'm a lazy blogger, I'm just getting around to writing about it now.

For those of you who don't know, Sakey is a Chicago-based crime/suspense novelist who has four novels out now with another one on the way this year. I read his second book, At the City's Edge, after seeing it on one of John Scalzi's Big Idea pieces. I really enjoyed the book.

So, Sakey came to tell us all about the process of getting published. He outlined the process which, according to him, goes like this:

1. Write the book
2. After the book is finished, put it aside and give it time to let it cool.
3. Give it to friends and family to read, at least 5
4. Read it through yourself, all in one sitting if possible
5. Mark it up A LOT
6. Remember it's not going to be perfect
7. There should be tension and conflict on every page
8. Get an agent
9. Agents get 5-50 quesry letters a day, so make sure there's no reason to disqualify you
10. While you're waiting for agents to respond, get going on the next book.

Aside from that, he said the most important rule for beginning rules is "Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard." The process of writing must be treated as a job. He recommended 1,000 words per day, five days a week, which unfortunately, I haven't been able to do lately. He said one way to get an agent is to look at the acknowledgements of the books of the authors you like to build up a list of agents to send to. He also equated self-publishing to the kiss of death.

Then he opened it up to Q&A for about an hour. I took a recording of the event, but haven't checked to see how well it came out yet. Maybe I'll transcribe it (don't hold your breath). One of the most interesting things that night, aside from the talk, was that about half the room appeared to be made up of retirees. One gentleman, 75, sitting in front of me had spent five years writing a young adult novel, and was going to have it self-published because he was "too old to wait around for the whole publishing process." Another gentleman, who looked even older, said he has a 360,000-word autobiography of his time in WWII. When the guy said 360,000 words, Sakey's jaw just about hit the floor. You're average novel, you see, is about 85,000 to 100,000 words.

I'm glad I went, and afterward, Sakey signed the copy of his book I brought with me and gave me some encouraging words. Aside from what I've shared here, he also has some documents for writers on his website that are worth checking out.

Busy Weekend

2009-03-23T10:19:00.002-05:00

Last weekend was a busy one, and I feel like I need a weekend to recover from the weekend. Home improvement will wear a guy out I guess. I spent Friday walking a local trade show. There was a Mary Kay convention/recruitment drive going on next door (no, I didn't sign up) and there were at least four light pink Cadillacs in the parking lot when I left.

Friday night was spent painting the ceiling in the dining room. It wasn't a terribly difficult task. I put up one and a half coats of paint and now the ceiling looks a lot better. It took a little getting used to the edge tool, so there'll be a little touching up at the top of the wall, but we had to touch up toddler marks anyway.

Saturday and Sunday I had to work all day and when I wasn't doing that I was installing our new faux-hardwood laminate in the dining room. I started the project Saturday night later than I wanted to because of all the prep-work that had to be done. There was a bit of a learning curve on Saturday night, mostly because I didn't take the time to think things through as far as where I cut the laminate. I was using a miter saw, but that was pretty noisy and it was chipping the boards, so I switched to a hand saw after a few cuts. Our awesome neighbor lent me his shop light after he saw that I was using the single bulb and the headlights on my wife's car to see what I was cutting in the garage.

Sunday's installation went a lot smoother, but since I had to work, I didn't quite finish. Three quarters of the room is done, with the most difficult part yet to be done. There's a corner cabinet that I'll have to cut around that I'm not looking forward to. Good thing I bought an extra box of flooring. Brandi took some pictures of the work in progress, which I don't have at the moment, but I'll get them up some time this week.

A Moment of Silence

2009-03-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, one of my fellow UCFers suffered a horrible personal tragedy. In respect for her loss, member blogs are off today. Our thoughts and prayers are with her.

Normal blogging activity will resume tomorrow.

Anticipation Is Driving Me Mad

2009-03-18T07:35:00.003-05:00

Waiting can really suck some times. And when you've got more than one important thing your waiting on, that can doubly suck. And right now it feels like I'm waiting on a whole bushel of stuff.

One thing I'll find out about for sure tomorrow. The other thing, will work itself out soon, maybe even this afternoon. Until I know more, though, that's about all I can say here.

In other news, tonight I'm going to a Secrets of Getting Published author event at the library in town. It will be conducted by Marcus Sakey, a Chicago author who's written three books, one of which I read. Hopefully it'll be interesting and informative. Not sure if I want to bring my tape recorder or just a notebook.

Support Your Local Indie Bookstore and Win Stuff!

2009-03-13T12:00:00.000-05:00

Novelist Joe Hill, author of the very creepy Heart Shaped Box and son of Stephen King, is running a contest for March-is-love-your-Indie-Bookstore month. Basically, if you go to your local indie bookstore in March, spend more than $0.99, and email him (indie@joehillfiction.com) a copy/scan of your receipt, you'll be entered into a contest to win a signed slipcased copy of GUNPOWDER, his new novel.

But wait, there's more. Subterranean Press has decided to add a whole slew of limited editions (10) to sweeten the deal. And then Joe Hill added a limited 1st edition copy of Heart Shaped Box to the contest, so there will be a total of 12 winners. So everyone run out to your local indie bookstore and buy some books!

More info on the contest can be found here and here.