Posted 1:55 PM by Tim
News on the NaNoWriMo front. A local reporter is thinking of running a story on writers participating in the event. I'm volunteering. Why? I have no idea. In some sense, I suppose that it'd be good publicity for me personally. Maybe some huge publisher will read the little local paper and suddenly I'll be catapulted to stardom. Hmmm... I thought I was supposed to hold back on the fiction until Saturday. :)

Anyway, getting my name in the paper now and then can't be a bad thing (no, wait, it could be a bad thing... but I doubt this will be one of those times). Of course, assuming the editors think that this story is really worth their time, I could be in for a few Q&A sessions about writing and noveling in general. I really don't know what I'd say about that. I suppose I can look at it as another "special cirumstance" for next month. What's the special circumstances? Well, I've got a lot going on in November. Three tournaments (two I'm running), one wedding, at least one LARP game and a shift change from afternoons to evenings towards the end (when ususally I'd be putting on the push to get the novel done). That's just on the weekends though, so I'm hoping to get some serious writing done during the weekdays.

In other writing news, a little bit of the ending is starting to form in my mind. Always a good thing. At least I have a direction to start pushing the characters in now. We'll see how that pans out.

UPDATE: I've got an interview with the reporter on Friday. This is going to be an interesting month.

Posted 10:23 AM by Tim
Only 3 days left to NaNoWriMo! I'm really starting to get excited about it.

Posted 1:26 PM by Tim
NaNoWriMo starts on Saturday. Only 4 days until I officially start writing again. I've been giving a little thought to the whole thing, and I've got some ideas. Getting started could be a bit of a stretch, but I think that I can find a reasonable way to get the story going.

This weekend is looking to be exceptionally busy for me. I've got to get a LARP game on, and also, hopefully, attend a major tourney as well. I'm not sure what state I'll be in come tourney time, so I may not end up attending. Besides, I still have to build a deck for the tourney.

Posted 12:50 PM by Tim
I got back from Nathan's wedding late last night. I'm still a little sleepy, but that'll pass. The trip meant driving from Kitchener to Danvers, Mass. A 10+ hour drive. I was looking forward to it, because that meant that I would get to see part of New York state and also the Masspike. I wanted to see the Masspike becuase I'd heard it mentioned in a song that I really like. Of course, the Masspike is just a huge road that runs through Mass (I'm not using the full word for the state bacause I don't know the correct spelling, and am too lazy to look it up.)

Let me start by saying that the wedding was beautiful, and there were no serious issues or problems for the bride and groom. Bren and I, however, ended up arriving late. Still it was very nice.

Good things about the trip included us sticking around long enough to give a few stranded friends a ride from the wedding to the reception. Wayne's digital camera worked as advertised. And, we got the hotel room we stayed at for a steal.

Bad things about the trip: Mass has this odd idea that highways do not need on- or off-ramps. A simple right turn onto the next highway should suffice. Occasionally, that means a full stop too. The hotel we stayed at turned out to be in serious renovations. So, we had inconsistently hot water, a toilet that didn't work very well, and the smell of paint in the hallways. We also didn't find out that we were across the highway from the groom and his family until after the reception. It would have been nice to know that so we could have hung out a little more.

The ugly things about the trip: Mass off-ramps. Why do you need to go from 65mph to 25mph, while on an off-ramp, to a dead stop just before entering the next highway, then boost up to 65 again just to outpace the oncoming traffic? Ramps are your friends!

Now for something somewhat different.

While in Mass, I went looking for cheap magic cards. The stores in Danvers and Salem are not cheap. Boxes of cards ranged from $95 (~133 CAN after taxes) to $120 (~170 CAN after taxes). Single cards were priced very high, up to $1 each for commons! There was no good stuff to be found. Apparently, Yu-Gi-Oh is very popular down there right now, so that's where all the focus is. Anime, however, is amazingly available. Every store we went into easily carried 100 titles of anime DVD and Video, and more titles of manga. If I had more money, I would have picked up some stuff.

On the writing front, there are only 5 days left before the official start. I'm getting ready.

Posted 2:44 PM by Tim
The hardest part about putting something in the blog lately is just sitting down and starting to type. I'm not sure why that is. It's not like there's so much else going on that I really can't manage to type up a few thoughts, or is it?

Much of my life has been devoted to work and also to making and saving money lately. In order to save money, I'm taking a shift from 4PM till 12AM. This means that I'd get home about 1AM, if I didn't waste much time on the way. But, I know that I've got to make up a few spare hours so that I can go attend the weddings coming up. So, I've been working until 1AM, putting me at home at about 2AM. Then I can sleep. The late start of the shift means that I don't have to send my daughters to daycare before school starts. It also means that I can take my youngest to school personally (she starts at noon). This saves us about 8 hours a day of daycare - or about $40 a day.

In exchange for that $40, I give up seeing much of my children, have a strange sleeping habit, see my wife only on the weekends, and basically give up all social contacts outside of work. I'm beginning to wonder if $40 a day isn't worth all that. Of course, the job that I have right now doesn't really pay enough to do more than cover the bills - mostly. Gas for the car out there (not to mention the cost of paying back the family loan for the car), food, cola (a bill onto itself), and daycare all add up. So, if we're to get ahead of the game, I have to work more hours. It's not feasable for me to stay later at work, and it's not so easy for me to arrive early. Work has a limited number of terminals, and they're totally filled during the day shift.

What I'm left with, is working on the weekend. Remember how I said that I didn't see my wife unless it was on the weekend? Well, if you've got a 6 day work week, the weekend is pretty short. Most of that time I'm trying to fit in all the things that I don't get a chance to do during the week. Like play a few games, see some people and get away from the house. Overall, it's not working out. But - I can't quit. I've had 9 months of unemployment already, and I must say that I'm really tired of it.

If I could find something that I could do from home that made the cash that I'm making now, we could cover the bills and be alright. I could even drop almost all the daycare expense becuase I'd be home (I'd still like to take a day off now and then of course). Problem is, though, that I can't find anything to do that will make me that much money while I'm at home. At least, nothing I'm qualified to do right now.

Enough with the complaining, right? Yeah, let's move on.

First topic: ASL - American Sign Language. I've had a soft spot for languages for forever. ASL is pretty unique to me because it involves the body. Also, I've got this thing for disease and body disfunction (like deafness and blindness and such). Anyway, when I was younger, I had an opportunity to learn enough ASL to be conversationally compentent. That's a roundabout way of saying, "I can talk with people and not seriously embarass myself doing it." There's some history about why I needed to learn this, but the short story is that I was instructing the deaf (more or less) and they knew ASL, so it was pretty simple. There's a fun story about teaching a French boy to speak in English ASL so that he could hit on one of the deaf girls, but that's for another time.

Anyway, one of the ladies at work has a nephew who is deaf. Apparently, only the mom has bothered to learn ASL with the boy, so he's pretty ostracized at home and so on. She's interested in learning it so that she can talk to him too. I think that's great. Of course, my well stocked library just happens to have a book on ASL in it, so I've loaned it to her. This has brought out my interest in the subject again, and I'm all fired up about learning it again. But I've got nobody to really practice with. That's the main reason that I'm not fluent in languages that I've had an opportunity to learn. I always end up moving away from the people that speak that language and I forget it all from disuse. I know that given a few weeks in an immersive environment, I'd be speaking a language pretty damn well. But there just isn't that opportunity. And I'm pretty shy about just walking up to people and saying, "that's a neat sounding language there. Can you teach it to me?" You'd not be surprised by the strange looks such a statement gets you.

I've been toying with the idea of taking a course in ASL, just to get the whole thing out of my system. But that's an expense and we just don't have the funds to take something like that on a whim. Maybe another time.

Next topic! NaNoWriMo. There's only 15 days until the official start of NaNoWriMo. So many ideas are floating in my head right now that I'm certain to forget some of them. Too bad they're all for different stories. :( I'm sure that I've got some things that will stick for me once I get started. I've been looking at what's happening in Novemeber to see what kind of difficulties I'll have in getting everything written. The main issue that I can see is that of motivation. I'm likely to get some support from my friends and family (since I've done this once already and they know that I can do it). Still, my motivation is likely to wane about the 15 or 20th or so. I'll have to do something to get myself back on track around then.

It won't help that I've got at least the trip to Nova Scotia on the 15th. The ride in the plane will be conducive for the writing (if I can get the laptop set up on the flight), but the whole trip thing will probably be a little distracting to the whole project. I've been giving a little bit of backhanded thought to doing the challenge put forth on another blog. Write not one, but two 50,000 word novels in the month of November. While enduring a hardship. Like being constantly poked by someone, or such other nonsense. The idea of writing 2 novels isn't too bad. That means that I'll only have to write about 4,000 words a day. Given the previous experience, I know that that translates into about 2 hours on a good day, 4 hours on a slow day. Can I squeeze 4 hours of writing into my day? Probably, but it'll mean that I'll be putting a lot of pressure on the rest of the day. Sleep, work and family schedules will all feel the pinch. Given the situtation I'm already in (see above), I doubt that the family can handle me writing for 4 hours a day.

As an alternative, I've been thinking about using the time to force myself to edit last year's novel. It needs doing. I've edited up to somewhere in Chapter 3, and that's been over the last 10 months. Really, I'm just not making progress here. I've tried the editing thing, and I'm just not abole to keep myself motivated. Forcing myself might be the best way. After all, the best way to finish something is just to do it.

A couple of quick topics now. First, I'm not exercising or doing anything severe with my diet. As expected, nothing has happened with my weight. Still weighing in at 210. Next, the tournament scene in Midland is probably dead. I made a stretch with the tourney budget (borrowing about $70 from myself) and it doesn't look like things are going to pan out. Bren's made a proclamation that I must show a profit of $50 by the end of November to be able to continue with running tourneys in Midland. Given the current $70 deficit, there really isn't any way that the tourney can possibly make that much cash back. I'd have to have a take of $125 just to cover the previous balance, and then make $50? Maybe that's not what she meant. Maybe she meant gross $50. That's pretty likely to happen. Netting that much will be difficult - especially counting expenses.

As a last little note, my sister is pregnant. More grandchildren for my mom.

Posted 6:28 PM by Tim
Once again, a week between posts. Seems like I should really start calling this "weekly ideas." Anyway, everything is creeping up on me. Only 2 weeks until my friend's wedding. November is coming up like mad, and it's thanksgiving already (for those of you in the USA, your's is coming, you haven't missed it.) There's a tournament on the horizon, and things just keep getting stranger about that. (More in a second on that). So, busy, busy, busy. Of course, I haven't even bothered with figuring out what to do for my whole "exercise thing."

Now for the details. First up, the coming wedding. We're going to the Boston area, and there's a few places that I've always wanted to see there. First, Boston. Then Salem and Cambridge - well, Harvard campus anyway. I've got a list of places that I'd like to visit one day. I've already managed a couple of them - Novelty,Ohio, Vancouver, BC, Toronto, ON, Quebec City, QC, Montreal, QC and Cleveland, Ohio. Still more places that I'd like to see. Dinosaur, Utah, and Nowhere, Louisiana are on there. New York City, NY is one of them too.

Now for the tournament details. The tourneys that I hold up in Midland are about to get very strange. See, the local store was robbed. Lost about $16,000 in the theft. Apparently (from my semi-reliable sources), the crooks have been found. Several of the players from the tourney are responsible, at least in part. Here's where the trouble for me starts. Will I ban them from tournament play? I can't see a reason why I should. Logically, I can only ban people for things done in and around the tournament. Even though they stole from other people, it didn't happen at the tourney, nor just before or after. Nothing related to my tourneys. Of course, if I don't ban them, I'm bound to get complaints. Someone is bound to be upset. Nothing that I can do though. Like I've said, there's no reason for me to ban them from playing.

That's all for now. I'm sure that there'll be more later.

Posted 12:01 AM by Tim
Right, I promised more, so more it is.

I've been starting to think about my weight again. Well, to be most accurate - my shape. I'm more or less balooning outwards in ways I really don't want to go. Right now, I'm holding steady at 210 pounds. This has been my weight for a while now. Given my activity level and eating habits, I'm surprised that I can maintain this weight. I feel that right now, I'm about 30 pounds overweight. I'd like to lose that much.

I know that a healthy amount of weight to expect to lose in a week is about 2 pounds. That's gonna mean 15 weeks, at least, of eating better and exercise. I'd love to get that down to about 12 or so, but I just don't see it happening that quickly. The plan (like all the exercise plans), will be based on the "stop eating so damn much" diet, and the "get off your butt" exercise plan. I'll also be trying to drink more water. I'll keep you all posted on the progress.

Posted 12:15 PM by Tim
I've been more or less avoiding blogger lately. Not that I don't want to blog, just that the last few times that I've tried it, I've lost the entry. I've got to say, it really sucks to type up a few pages of blog, and then just lose it all. Maybe I should be working on some way to keep things from disappearing like that? Maybe I should be typing up everything in word first, then pasting it into blogger?

There's about 20 days until the first of two weddings happens. I'm really looking forward to it. A few days with just Bren and me. I've been thinking about places I'd like to see while we're away. We've come up with Boston, Cambridge and Salem. Salem looks like it's a little bit of a stretch, but we're probably going to try to get there. Me, I'm hoping to at least drive through the Harvard campus in Cambridge, just to see what I might have missed out on. :)

More in mind for now, but I'll post it later - if this little bit goes through.