Happy New Year (and some updates!)
Long time, no post!
I have been on vacation for the last 11 days. Well, let me rephrase that. I've been away from work for 11 days, and on vacation for about 3.5 days. In a little more detail:
Friday 12/23: Got up early so my insane wife could go shopping for several hours. Spent more hours trying to blow up two "hoppy balls" for the kids using an air compressor that always said it was charged, but turned out to be anything but. Oh, and the damn thing can't compress air while charging its battery. Hello, design flaw. My wife informs me that she volunteered to host both Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas dinner. This basically ruined my already perfect mood.
Saturday 12/24: My wife freaks out while trying to ready food in time for it to cook before Brenna's Christmas pageant. The sink in the kitchen begins clogging. She sends me out twice, with the kids, to get something to unclog the drain. By early afternoon, I'm taking apart the trap under the sink to try to get water to flow. Nothin'. So I have to ask my surly brother-in-law for a snake to run through the drain line. Since we have to host dinner, I can't work on it until after dinner, after setting up for Christmas morning, etc. I can't get the snake down the line, so I give up. While in the basement, I go into the bathroom...and realize where the problem is. Water is bubbling up (along with lots of Drano) through a crack in the floor. Around midnight on Christmas Eve. Yay.
Sunday 12/25: Christmas morning goes relatively well. Brenna and Riley are happy kids who immediately set to fighting over the toys they each adore. Of course, as I try to make breakfast (using the basement sink, since it's not creating a hot spring in the concrete), my waffle maker implodes. So much for breakfast. Meanwhile, my mother is getting hysterical about when to show up for dinner, my wife has no idea how she's going to make dinner, and I'm losing my mind. Easily one of the worst Christmas-es in a long time.
Monday 12/26: The Day After. The plumber came and explained that they would have to pull up the basement bathroom floor. Cost? $2500. When? First thing Tuesday morning. Yay. Needless to say, we order dinner in and eat on paper plates using plastic cups.
Tuesday 12/27: Got up early, only to find that the plumbers didn't think they had to show up until 10:30. Since they have to hammer through concrete, my wife is annoyed because that will now happen during Riley's naptime. And so the attitude continued. Put delicately, we haven't been communicating well for quite some time, so all this stress wasn't helping. I use this time to order tickets for myself and Brenna to see "Narnia" on Thursday.
Wednesday 12/28: The first relatively quiet day goes to Hell when I try to install the VCR/DVD Recorder from my parents. The wife wants to swap DVR units between the basement and living room. OK...not as easy as it sounds. And of course, in the process, my elaborate sound setup goes south. After two hours of great annoyance, I finally determine that it's a broken digital optical sound cable. At the very least, it was my excuse to get an hour or so out of the house without the family. The first such excursion, I might add, since coming home from work on Thursday.
Thursday 12/29: First the wife, and then Brenna, come down with a stomach virus. All morning long. So, no movie. Also, with the terrible weather, stuck in the house all day with Riley. At least he was a good boy for me, thanks to the liberal use of his new Thomas the Tank Engine toys/DVDs! But, stuck in the house. And since I was the only one to keep Riley from being sick, when my stomach started bothering me, I had to use liberal amounts of Pepto-Bismol to keep myself from being sick.
Friday 12/30: The first bright spot emerges. The morning was dicey, of course, since I was up half the night trying not to hurl. But my noon, I was feeling fine, and Brenna was recovered enough to take a chance with the movie. We went right after Riley's naptime and she had a great time. She didn't freak out once! While the wife was a little annoyed with Brenna's hyperactivity when we got home, I chose to ignore the sniping and just be happy with the time alone with my daughter.
Saturday 12/31: Not a bad day, overall. Sure, my wife invited her mother over for dinner on Sunday without consulting me on the idea, but I got some time to myself, got plenty of rest, and generally had my first full day of actual vacation. And the Giants won, too, which was a good thing! I was alone, of course, at midnight, but I wasn't expecting much.
Sunday 1/1: A morning of pancakes with the kids, and then an afternoon of football with hopes of winning the Survivor Pool. I made it to the last week, but lost in round 4 of the tie-breaker. That's all right, though...it was fun! Dinner was a little annoying, but we had a working kitchen this time around, and it went quickly enough.
Monday 1/2: Another good day today, even if I was regretting how little actual rest I had over the break. I took the opportunity to go through my closets and what not to add the new clothes and get rid of things long overworn while watching my Hokies win the Gator Bowl! Now I'm trying to get my brain around the idea of going back to work and getting back on a schedule again!
So that was my 11 day vacation. It would have been one thing if the stress had been normal...kids, etc. That's something I expected. But the plumbing, the illnesses, the attitude...it was all a bit much.
***
Despite all the drama, I did manage something I consider very important and rewarding. I finally finished the main outline for "Morituri". This was a formal breakdown of how the story would progress, if it were to be written to conclusion. I had so much of this in my head, but I had to take the time to put it on paper, so to speak, and see how it all worked out. And now, hopefully by the end of the week, so will everyone else.
I said, a few months ago, that I had to face facts: "Morituri" would probably never be finished at the rate at which I was working on it. Yet I still felt that the readers (however few) should get to see where the story was going in something more than a quick rundown. This is a full 30+ page outline of the entire story, scene by scene. In some places, it's still little more than a tease, but the resolutions are all there on the page and if I never finish the full version of the story, at least the ideas are in a complete form. After all, how many writers of long stories leave readers hanging? That's not happening here.
I will have the outline in both Word (.doc) and Acrobat (.pdf) versions on my main website. I'll also have a bit of an explanation for why it's there and what the next steps may or may not be. I'm likely to write some, if not all, of the material in full. Some of the scenes would still be a lot of fun to write, especially the very last dozen or so scenes, and when I have the time and interest, why not?
Beyond that, I feel this fulfills my promise. One way or another, I told the story. I may tell more. Believe it or not, the final outline forced me to cut a few things, just to make the story flow. So there's a lot of other ideas that remain in play within the concept. Perhaps that's best...it gives the entire story a more "lived-in" feeling.
What's next? Well, besides putting this to bed within the week, I'll be devoting time this year to my original novel's outline. My goal is to have the detailed outline w/notes in place to begin writing by this time next year. Why not faster than that? Well, because I want to ensure that the story exists within a fully-realized context that I have worked out beforehand. I want to understand why things happen and who the characters are before letting them loose into the scenario I have in mind. And I want to take this step-by-step so that the first draft doesn't stall when I hit a difficult question.
So...that's the writing update.
***
On to reviews!
OK, so the stretch between January and May is rough. Very rough. The next few weeks are going to be brutal. The next week or so will ramp things back up for a lot of series, and I hope to end the reviews for older series (Buffy, Angel, X-Files) with the respective season finales that I've been working towards (4th, 1st, and 5th). That's a good place to stop, especially since I can always turn to "Fight the Future" during slow moments before picking up the final stretch on those series by the end of the year. Yeah, it's vague, but it's a plan...LOL!
One thing I will have to do, of course, is put together a rough schedule for January once I get a better sense of when shows are airing in mid-month. The premiere of "24" is going to be a bear, but I'll get through it somehow! This year I continue my association with 24 Fanatic, so please visit them when you get the chance (I'll post a link at some point, and it's on my site already). I might actually start posting a regular updated projected schedule for which reviews are pending, here and on my LJ.
More on that when I get a chance to post!
***
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I hope everyone else had a better Holiday and I have great hopes for a Happy New Year for all my friends and acquiantances!
I have been on vacation for the last 11 days. Well, let me rephrase that. I've been away from work for 11 days, and on vacation for about 3.5 days. In a little more detail:
Friday 12/23: Got up early so my insane wife could go shopping for several hours. Spent more hours trying to blow up two "hoppy balls" for the kids using an air compressor that always said it was charged, but turned out to be anything but. Oh, and the damn thing can't compress air while charging its battery. Hello, design flaw. My wife informs me that she volunteered to host both Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas dinner. This basically ruined my already perfect mood.
Saturday 12/24: My wife freaks out while trying to ready food in time for it to cook before Brenna's Christmas pageant. The sink in the kitchen begins clogging. She sends me out twice, with the kids, to get something to unclog the drain. By early afternoon, I'm taking apart the trap under the sink to try to get water to flow. Nothin'. So I have to ask my surly brother-in-law for a snake to run through the drain line. Since we have to host dinner, I can't work on it until after dinner, after setting up for Christmas morning, etc. I can't get the snake down the line, so I give up. While in the basement, I go into the bathroom...and realize where the problem is. Water is bubbling up (along with lots of Drano) through a crack in the floor. Around midnight on Christmas Eve. Yay.
Sunday 12/25: Christmas morning goes relatively well. Brenna and Riley are happy kids who immediately set to fighting over the toys they each adore. Of course, as I try to make breakfast (using the basement sink, since it's not creating a hot spring in the concrete), my waffle maker implodes. So much for breakfast. Meanwhile, my mother is getting hysterical about when to show up for dinner, my wife has no idea how she's going to make dinner, and I'm losing my mind. Easily one of the worst Christmas-es in a long time.
Monday 12/26: The Day After. The plumber came and explained that they would have to pull up the basement bathroom floor. Cost? $2500. When? First thing Tuesday morning. Yay. Needless to say, we order dinner in and eat on paper plates using plastic cups.
Tuesday 12/27: Got up early, only to find that the plumbers didn't think they had to show up until 10:30. Since they have to hammer through concrete, my wife is annoyed because that will now happen during Riley's naptime. And so the attitude continued. Put delicately, we haven't been communicating well for quite some time, so all this stress wasn't helping. I use this time to order tickets for myself and Brenna to see "Narnia" on Thursday.
Wednesday 12/28: The first relatively quiet day goes to Hell when I try to install the VCR/DVD Recorder from my parents. The wife wants to swap DVR units between the basement and living room. OK...not as easy as it sounds. And of course, in the process, my elaborate sound setup goes south. After two hours of great annoyance, I finally determine that it's a broken digital optical sound cable. At the very least, it was my excuse to get an hour or so out of the house without the family. The first such excursion, I might add, since coming home from work on Thursday.
Thursday 12/29: First the wife, and then Brenna, come down with a stomach virus. All morning long. So, no movie. Also, with the terrible weather, stuck in the house all day with Riley. At least he was a good boy for me, thanks to the liberal use of his new Thomas the Tank Engine toys/DVDs! But, stuck in the house. And since I was the only one to keep Riley from being sick, when my stomach started bothering me, I had to use liberal amounts of Pepto-Bismol to keep myself from being sick.
Friday 12/30: The first bright spot emerges. The morning was dicey, of course, since I was up half the night trying not to hurl. But my noon, I was feeling fine, and Brenna was recovered enough to take a chance with the movie. We went right after Riley's naptime and she had a great time. She didn't freak out once! While the wife was a little annoyed with Brenna's hyperactivity when we got home, I chose to ignore the sniping and just be happy with the time alone with my daughter.
Saturday 12/31: Not a bad day, overall. Sure, my wife invited her mother over for dinner on Sunday without consulting me on the idea, but I got some time to myself, got plenty of rest, and generally had my first full day of actual vacation. And the Giants won, too, which was a good thing! I was alone, of course, at midnight, but I wasn't expecting much.
Sunday 1/1: A morning of pancakes with the kids, and then an afternoon of football with hopes of winning the Survivor Pool. I made it to the last week, but lost in round 4 of the tie-breaker. That's all right, though...it was fun! Dinner was a little annoying, but we had a working kitchen this time around, and it went quickly enough.
Monday 1/2: Another good day today, even if I was regretting how little actual rest I had over the break. I took the opportunity to go through my closets and what not to add the new clothes and get rid of things long overworn while watching my Hokies win the Gator Bowl! Now I'm trying to get my brain around the idea of going back to work and getting back on a schedule again!
So that was my 11 day vacation. It would have been one thing if the stress had been normal...kids, etc. That's something I expected. But the plumbing, the illnesses, the attitude...it was all a bit much.
***
Despite all the drama, I did manage something I consider very important and rewarding. I finally finished the main outline for "Morituri". This was a formal breakdown of how the story would progress, if it were to be written to conclusion. I had so much of this in my head, but I had to take the time to put it on paper, so to speak, and see how it all worked out. And now, hopefully by the end of the week, so will everyone else.
I said, a few months ago, that I had to face facts: "Morituri" would probably never be finished at the rate at which I was working on it. Yet I still felt that the readers (however few) should get to see where the story was going in something more than a quick rundown. This is a full 30+ page outline of the entire story, scene by scene. In some places, it's still little more than a tease, but the resolutions are all there on the page and if I never finish the full version of the story, at least the ideas are in a complete form. After all, how many writers of long stories leave readers hanging? That's not happening here.
I will have the outline in both Word (.doc) and Acrobat (.pdf) versions on my main website. I'll also have a bit of an explanation for why it's there and what the next steps may or may not be. I'm likely to write some, if not all, of the material in full. Some of the scenes would still be a lot of fun to write, especially the very last dozen or so scenes, and when I have the time and interest, why not?
Beyond that, I feel this fulfills my promise. One way or another, I told the story. I may tell more. Believe it or not, the final outline forced me to cut a few things, just to make the story flow. So there's a lot of other ideas that remain in play within the concept. Perhaps that's best...it gives the entire story a more "lived-in" feeling.
What's next? Well, besides putting this to bed within the week, I'll be devoting time this year to my original novel's outline. My goal is to have the detailed outline w/notes in place to begin writing by this time next year. Why not faster than that? Well, because I want to ensure that the story exists within a fully-realized context that I have worked out beforehand. I want to understand why things happen and who the characters are before letting them loose into the scenario I have in mind. And I want to take this step-by-step so that the first draft doesn't stall when I hit a difficult question.
So...that's the writing update.
***
On to reviews!
OK, so the stretch between January and May is rough. Very rough. The next few weeks are going to be brutal. The next week or so will ramp things back up for a lot of series, and I hope to end the reviews for older series (Buffy, Angel, X-Files) with the respective season finales that I've been working towards (4th, 1st, and 5th). That's a good place to stop, especially since I can always turn to "Fight the Future" during slow moments before picking up the final stretch on those series by the end of the year. Yeah, it's vague, but it's a plan...LOL!
One thing I will have to do, of course, is put together a rough schedule for January once I get a better sense of when shows are airing in mid-month. The premiere of "24" is going to be a bear, but I'll get through it somehow! This year I continue my association with 24 Fanatic, so please visit them when you get the chance (I'll post a link at some point, and it's on my site already). I might actually start posting a regular updated projected schedule for which reviews are pending, here and on my LJ.
More on that when I get a chance to post!
***
Anyway, I just wanted to say that I hope everyone else had a better Holiday and I have great hopes for a Happy New Year for all my friends and acquiantances!
posted by John Keegan | 19:03
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