Day6: Thursday was a good word day. Wrote three times in three different places. Finished a difficult scene and now today I am faced with beginning of my unplotted section. But this is the essence of NaNoWriMo, jumping headlong into the abyss, eschewing ctrl-z in favor of ctrl-s. (2052)

Day7: 4:30pm@randombucks. It's a bit odd of a time for me to be starting my daily writing but I've been on errand duty all day. It's Saturday and I purposefully didn't schedule a writing time on the weekend to accomodate all that pesky family stuff. So I'm here now in a Starbucks and who works here but the emo mutton chops mullet guy who likes to sit and read at my primary writing table. It was actually kind of comforting to have part of my Boulevard Coffee experience rise up here at the 'bucks. (1667)

Day9: Wrote almost nothing all day and then put in a mini-marathon before bed and finally had a 3k day. Trying to freestyle this whole Academy arc is proving difficult, even with all the anime I watched for inspiration all summer. I'm finding myself more boring than I remember. Haha oh well. Time to work on plotting. (3008)

Day10: Woke up too early and had no peace today. Got a few hundred words in before five year old hell started but none at all the rest of the day. Kind of disappointing but I am still pushing at that wall. In the free hour I had to work I went over a bunch of the characters and plot paths. (303)

Day12: Early morning start. Coffee is beautiful. No idea what is going to happen today in my novel but something will. Insecurity is really trying to wrest control. It's the unknown territory. (1800)

17,611 words.

It's getting harder and harder to delay the arrival of The Editor Mind but so far the gates of NaNo Fortress still stand.

To doubly torture myself (and keep focused) I've decided to write a NaNo journal. Just a few words each day for anything I might be thinking about or want to remember when I relive this experience in my head later. This place seemed as good as any for some future self-torture. =p

I'd meant to write them at the end of the day as a sort of decompress but so far each one has been written while I wait for my laptop to boot up right before my morning writing session and are about the day before. Can't I do anything the right way?

DAY3: Good Morning Tuesday! It's a little too soon to be jubilant but I would be lying to say I wasn't feeling very up and more than hopeful about this whole thing. None of my doubts have washed away, I am eternally in their squeezed fist, but my plan is working. I am writing every day and just doing that is sustaining me. Oh not because any of it is good, it can't be or at least I can't be thinking about that right now. What's bringing me joy is knowing that it's crap and not feeling the embarrassment and shame of producing it; knowing it's crap and being happy to get the story out of my head regardless. 

Word counts: Day 1 (1966) Day 2 (2422)

DAY4: Tuesday started really well and ended very nice. The word count has increased each day and I find myself looking forward to the next scheduled writing session. I wonder if actually scheduling my writing times is making the difference this year. It's all giddiness at this point. Probably, I think I am writing this down for when the dark times come next week and I wonder why I even started this damn this again. I want to record a measure of the joy so my depressive self doesn't forget entirely. It can be done! And now on to Wednesday.

Word count: Day 3 (2655)  Day Four (1035)

DAY5: Wednesday was a slower day. Just over 1000 words in the morning and then no writing at all for the rest of the day. I was tired and didn't want to push so I caught up on some of the stuff clogging my DVR and a show about Steven Hawking and his obsession with black holes. It turns out black holes aren't the universe destroyers that I'd grown up understanding them to be. Nor are they trippy portals to an alternate dimension like in Disney's The Black Hole, but I guess I already knew that (can we have the robots though please?). More likely is that they are giant engines of universal creation, big bang in miniature. I was so glad that I stuck around long enough for that plot payoff. It's hard to watch live TV these days. The urge to go channel surfing every time commercials pop up is very hard to resist.

Right now (this moment) I am sitting waiting for one of my "writing" tables to open up at Boulevard Coffee. If any of you are ever in Sacramento, I'll take you for a cup there. Best coffee in town (by a long shot).

Since I don't really post here much these days, I'm sure I didn't mention that I'll be doing NaNoWriMo this year and by doing it I mean I am finishing this year. 50,000 words in 30 days.

My daily goal is 2000 words but I have to write at least 1667 a day to keep on track. So far my character has woken up to find that he has no memory of anything other than his name and that the stars he is seeing out of of the window are all wrong. Soon he will be at the Academy, will meet friends and rivals and love interests and my shoujo space opera religious story can really begin.

My oven died the day after my seasonal baking urges were waxing enough to overcome my inertial float

Be Seeing You?!

Hi LiveJournal how ya been? Yeah I've kinda been spending a lot of time over at Facebook's house. She's pretty laid back and doesn't mind if I have nothing to say as long as I like her and occasionally show her some pictures of my son being cute. Yes, I know I am a total lazy bum. Did you see who I got for the Movie Character Icon Quiz? The Dude. Can you believe that?

In any case, I promise to come back over to your house soon and hang out. I mean, you've still got boxes of my stuff in your garage so it's not like I am just gonna disappear or something.

Thayer's Quest, Road Blasters, or more probably Blasteroids!

February 6th 2009 - I joined WinForMe with the full year package. Random chaos-driven riches are the sweetest because they always have such wonderful timing. Maybe I'll get nothing all year but the giddy undercurrent that something might mysteriously appear. That could end up being worth the 70 bucks regardless.

edit: I should credit theferrett  for first pointing the site out to me a year ago! I wanted to join but I was skeptical. And then he recently posted about the flotsam that showed up on his shore and I was converted.

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 6.02, Libertarian: 4.47

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -6.37

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Culture War Stance
Score: -6.05

Political Spectrum Quiz

Just in case you are wondering, all those files behind him are Naughty/Nice records and I did sneak a peak at some of yours. Total Information Awareness is actually Santa's middle name (as translated from ancient Nordic).

I always fall for the optimistic tone of stories like this one about something very simple and elegant that might change everything. Sure it sounds way too good to be true and it might be.

Everywhere you look today there's a new technology that is going to ween us off oil. Wired and Popular Science have run stories about ever more efficient solar and next gen super batteries but these technologies are always in their genesis and seemingly long years from anything practical. But still all the time there are more and more people coming up with possible solutions. You have to hope the odds say one of these ideas will eventually work and just thinking that makes me happy. Hope doesn't feel too bad really but it takes awhile to get used to I guess. And it's a lot of fun to imagine what happens next with each new possible life altering technology that peaks its head onto the internet somewhere.

So I love these stories; not because I am delusional and think any one of them will solve our problems but mostly because it means there are people out there who don't care what I think and are going to try all this crazy imaginative shit anyway. I love those people.

As promised, my low res videos* of the Five Minute Blizzard.









*taken with a Canon Powershot SD630

Attribution unknown but it made me laugh nonetheless.

"While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who's hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Sarah Palin and her bid.

The old rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Palin is a 'Post Turtle''.

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.

The old rancher said, 'When you're driving down a country road you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'.

The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. 'You know she didn't get up there by herself, she doesn't belong up there, she doesn't know what to do while she's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dummy put her up there to begin with'."

Yesterday, while popping bubbles I was blowing Jack became too eager for me to finish a really big one and stuck three fingers in my right eye trying to pop it. Scratched eyeballs don't really hurt but they annoy incessantly. It's like something in your eye that wont come out.

Today, in the midst of a "no nap" fit, Jack ran square into my Big Shoe* and broke his toe. The poor boy was more worried about the treatment than the injury. He feared that shots and medicine were in his immediate future (he's more afraid of the latter). While getting an x-ray he asked if they were going to take his skin off to see the bones. In the end his treatment consisted of some consoling and some taped together toes. Honestly, he cried very little. He wailed 10x more yesterday after jabbing my eye.

Hey, isn't that the way girls like their guys; Tough but sensitive to the pain of others? =P

*For those who don't know I have a two inch lift on my left shoe. The term has become synonymous in our house for my handicap hence the caps.

For some reason, this stunning and amazing discovery has me all jazzed and energized. Sometimes just a little piece of something positive, something truly hope-inducing is exactly what I need. Now, I'll try and forget about it for awhile so I don't obsess and can be jubilant again when they start rolling out this tech to the people.