Ahhh... That's more like it.

Wrote on my lunch today. It's good to be the producer rather than the consumer. I like where the story is going, At an action part, which always seems to flow the best. More to come later.

Busy Busy

Busy weekend.

My son's 4th birthday party was this weekend. He and his friends had a great time at E2 Toy to Try. And He got a ton of legos, so we had a good time building some of those when we got home. His grandmother got him Darth Vader's Tie Fighter, which is really cool. Had fun putting that together for him.

Sunday we got a new dryer, so finally getting caught back up on some laundry.

Didn't read anything or write this weekend. Played a little Warhammer Online and Left 4 Dead. Man that game was brtual. Anyone ahve suggesttions for a good co-op game for my wife and I to play? She's not much into shooters, but any other suggestions would be welcome.

Need to rectify the lack of writing, but school has been keeping me so busy I haven't been feeling it. Once the kids have gone up to bed, it's been either homework or just chilling with a video game.

Musically, enjoying Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. and Nirvana - Live at Reading. The Nirvana disk is pretty much every great song they have. I highly recommend it. The End is great too. Only song I can say I don't like on that is Party All The Time (which gets a "well duh" from me). Also snagged the Halo 3 soundtrack, which I'm assuming will be great to write to once I get back to that.

Finally, a bracket I care about...

Yes, it's getting close to that time again. I'm already hearing all the rampant chatter around the office. So I decided this year I'd have a bracket of my own, you know for stuff that actually matters. So, here it is:

So you ask...

What have I been up to lately?

I have gone to great lengths to overwhelm myself. Yes, that was entirely the goal. And it's succeeding! Go me. I started classes last fall at a local community college working toward a Software Development degree. Last semester was just one class, Biology. I was late getting to registration and there wasn't much left. This semester, I decided to take 4 classes, two "easy" and two I knew I'd have to work at. School has always come easily to me and I don't want to be dragging a 2 year degree out to 4 years. My two "easy" classes are easy, but it's still a good chunk of work.

So what else has kept me busy? Still working full time. The kids are doing great (it's no longer safe to spell words around my daughter). And my wife decided it was time I got an XBox 360. I resisted getting this for a long time. Why you ask? Because I love it! The great thing about getting it so long after the release is that all the games I have wanted to play are dirt cheap at Gamestop. Picked up Halo 3, Fable II, Gears of War 2, and Left 4 Dead 1. And there are still plenty more games I want to grab.

Also been taking the time to read lately. There has been a book here or there lately, but I haven't really made much time for reading. Have started reading The Dwarves by Markus Heitz and Heinlein's To Sail Beyond the Sunset. Also reading Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb from my wife's e-reader.

I almost stopped reading The Dwarves. There was a prologue, and it really wasn't catching me. But I love dwarves, so I pressed on. 150 pages in now and enjoying it quite a bit.

Sunset is great so far. This is the first Heinlein I've read besides Starship Troopers. But I felt like there was a gap in my SF reading and found this one so snatched it up.

Haven't gotten far into Assassin's Apprentice yet, but I think I'll like it once I do.

My wife is currently going through the Dresden Files on her e-reader, so I'm sure I'll be getting to that shortly too.

I was thinking there was something else too, but I can't think of it right now. I'll go through them in more depth later.

Look at me, an abundance of time on my hands

Yeah, right. (haha, I originally used write instead.) Unfortunately, I've neglected this page for too long. I think that is because I've tried to keep it mostly focused on writing, and that's not all I've been doing. (And yes, I should be doing more writing.)

So my plan is to open this up a bit, comment on movies, games and whatever else catches my interest. Have started getting into some podcasts lately, and I'd like to comment on that too. Perhaps not overly innovative for a blog, but stuff I enjoy, so that's how it's going to work.

I'll see you when I come up for air...

Writing.

testing this out from igoogle

I had tried igoogle before, but not really played with it. It is really slick. With one window I can check gmail, google reader, facebook, livejournal, and twitter. And update my blogspot blog. So far, I'm pretty happy with it.

Bingo Story

Well, it was rejected at the first spot. Sent it to Strange Horizons now. Who knows what will happen. On the plus side of things, I didn't write about anything they said they'd seen too much of.

Spam Poetry

This poem brought to you courtesy of my spam email subjects. Enjoy!

Come check boobs
The air around you will smell like love.
Who was he?
Horrible news from the white house
Medications that you need.

I have no doubt more poetry will surface in the future.

Small Update

Just a small update here.

I haven't in general made time for updating this lately. Time being finite and all. And wanting to have something worth saying, not just filler. Suppose though that this post counts as filler. I have some writing related posts I want to make, but as I am a relative nobody in the writing field at this point, I doubt that stuff would get read too much anyway.

I guess the bottom line is that the writing is important, all else is secondary. Until I've "Made It" (TM) all of this stuff is secondary.

I've been working on the midsommer madness over at liberty hall, but at my own pace. I don't know what made me think I'd be able to keep up with their schedule, that lasted about a week. But the projects Mike created for it have been great. I'm just a bit farther behind than the rest. Still working on it Mike!

My wife got me an awesome hand crafted pen for father's day. The middle of the pen is made of wood. It's pictured above. It writes wonderfully. Of course, without me to use it, it serves little purpose. That leads to the obvious conclusion. I must write.

It's funny, but something so little as writing down the date next to my current writing has prompted me to keep at it lately. Having the date there as made me 1) not want to miss a day and 2) want to write at least as much as I did the day previous.

Should mention that the current project is tentatively titled the Dragon Lords. Or it will have another title and be "A Dragon Lords Novel". The bingo story wasn't as done as I'd thought. But now it truly is done, conclusion and all. Need a final read through then I'm sending it out to the wider world.

Thanks to Joshua over at Blue Ink Alchemy for inadvertently prompting this post.