Cranium Outpost

Pictures!

2010-08-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

I can't promise I'll write much, but I'll try to be better with the pictures. I finally downloaded everything off my iPhone so here are some of the more recent photos. I'll get some videos up when (or if) I figure out why the videos off my phone imported upside down or sideways. -- Lisa

The blanket messes with the cool, kid.

Father's day at the beach.

Parked by Daddy's mower.

Fun in the hammock at Grandma and Papa's.

Staying cool, but looks like trouble...

...cooled off with help from Brother.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

2010-08-01T20:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve been blogging here at Cranium Outpost since November 2006. A lot has changed in 3.5 years. I went from this blog being mainly about my family, to a lot of stuff about my writing and a little about my family.

The good news is that for those of you who have come here to read about my family, you will now be less bored by my writing related posts. They’re moving over to http://www.joebeernink.com/blog in an attempt to draw move visitors to my writing related web site, and to ‘consolidate my brand’. Yes, I am now referring to myself as a brand. I am really focusing on my marketing platform this year, developing a marketing strategy, and trying to gain both blog and twitter followers in the anticipation of selling my book, hopefully in 2011.

The bad news is that I now have another blog to maintain, and it is entirely likely that Cranium Outpost will be relegated to 2nd or even 3rd place behind that aforementioned writing blog, and DevScape, my technical blog, which I try to keep up to keep my employers happy and my non-writing career progressing.

For me, the change is bittersweet. I hate stopping doing something that I love to do. But I also know my blogging time is limited, and it is very important for a blog to be consistent in focus.

So my hope is that people who want to know everything that is going on with me will be willing to check out two blogs. For those who only care about my personal life and not my writing, I’ll try to update this when things are happening. Maybe I can get Lisa to do some guest blogging. For those of you who just want to read about my writing, check out JoeBeernink.com. I’ll keep that as current as I can, and hopefully you can be part of the beginning of a beautiful new thing.

A Long Weekend

2010-07-05T09:10:00.001-07:00

Weekends can seem long, or they can be long. It kind of depends on how the kids are behaving, and how much you preplanned to get done during the days.

We didn’t plan a lot for this weekend and the kids seem to be behaving, so this long weekend is both long and a weekend. It also gives me a minute to get caught up on goings on.

We live on a nice little cul-de-sac in Seattle suburbia, and last night we had a neighborhood Mexican Fiesta. Nothing says 4th of July like tacos and burritos and Spanish Rice. After the food came the fireworks. The kids loved them. I’m a little split still on the whole fireworks thing. I think it’s a gigantic waste of money. But I think aliens cruising over our town last night looking for a good place to set down and commence eating our brains would have decided to move on, thinking, “The little ones here spout fire from their finger tips and the big ones all have artillery in their back yard. Their armies must be powerful indeed. Let’s go somewhere easier, like the Middle East.”

The thermometer said it was 65 here yesterday, but that’s a lie. It was brutally cold for July (now called Julyuary). The wind was howling, and by the end, people were bringing out their winter coats, mittens and Snuggies to keep warm.

All that fresh air did me in, and I forced everyone in our house inside at 10:00 and I was asleep by 10:15, with fireworks still going on around us.

I’ll try to get some pictures uploaded today, but we’ve been having technical difficulties with my all in one printer lately, so no idea if this will actually happen.

On our docket for today is to go and buy new beds for the kids. They’re outgrowing their toddler beds, and it’s time to get them big boy and big girl beds in the hopes that they will spend more time in them, especially in the evening, when bedtime is still too much of a fight.

Of course, the likelihood is that the beds won’t fit in their room, and we’ll have to switch them to the guest bed room which is larger, but not painted kid friendly colors, nor does it have the custom closet setup we installed in the kids room before they were born. So I see that buying a couple of beds is going to lead to a lot more expenses in the near future.

The biggest change coming in the next few weeks will be the kids starting full day pre-school at a local Montessori school. For the last three years, we’ve had a fantastic nanny caring for our kids while Lisa and I work, but the time has come to challenge them a little more intellectually, and try to tire their very active brains out (again in the hope that tired brains lead to better sleep at night). This switch is going to lead to a lot of other changes for us like figuring out how to pack lunches for them, how to get them out the door by 8:00 every morning, and how to make sure I leave the office on time every day to pick them up after work. But that was all going to happen at some point, and it might as well be now.

We haven’t watched many movies lately. Just one that I recall - ‘The Pentagon Papers" about all the skullduggery and lying that went on regarding Vietnam in the 50s, 60s and 70s. I highly recommend this movie, and I can’t wait to see the sequel – ‘The Pentagon Papers 2’, about all the skullduggery and lying that went on during the 80’s, 90’s, 00’s and 10’s about Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ll probably have to wait until 2040 to see that though.

I’ve read just one book in the last few weeks as well - ‘Steampunk’ – an anthology of Steampunk stories edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer. I decided to pick this up to better understand this genre, since I’ve never really spent much time with it. Results were mixed. Of the 14 stories in it, I really liked three. Three or four more were good, and the rest ranged between interesting but not readable, to pretentious crap. Only my OCD forced me to read the whole thing, and I’d be hard pressed to recommend it on whole to anyone. I think it probably turned me off reading the genre much further, though a couple of the stories had enough there to make me want to read more of that author’s work. Specifically, I liked

“Benediction: Excerpt from The Warlord of the Air” by Michael Moorcock
“Lord Kelvin’s Machine” by James P. Blaylock
“Victoria” by Paul D. Filippo

As I said in my last blog, I’ve been blocked a little in my writing with a section that just doesn’t belong. I’m in the process of ripping it out, but that’s leading to some other, more subtle plot changes, and that’s taking a while to get done. I was hoping to wrap it up this weekend, but now I’m hoping for the end of this week. Then I have to put the book down for a bit and go back to reread ‘The Forgotten Road’, and finish my prep for the PNWA Conference in three weeks. July is a pretty busy month.

Hard Choices

2010-06-30T20:14:00.001-07:00

I’ve been cruising through my latest novel and have surpassed the 40000 word mark, which is the magical half way point. But if I’m honest with myself, I’ve cheated a bit, and that cheating is coming back to haunt me.

You see, three years ago, I started on a book, got twenty pages into it, and stopped. It was one of those cases where I had a good scene in mind, but no plot to go with it. It was my first real attempt at writing in half a dozen years, and while that story didn’t go anywhere, the act of writing directly led to me buying a laptop and starting to write on the train, which led to ‘The Forgotten Road’ and my enormous success ~~since then~~ to come.

But that scene and that character stuck in my brain, and last winter, when I was brain dumping plots out into my ‘What If’ file (a file I keep of one sentence ‘What If’ scenarios that might drive a plot), I what if’d a great little idea that could use that scene I had in those 20 pages. So all along, from the time I started the outline until today, I planned to have that scene in the book.

Well now those 20 pages are in the story. And they’re bad. Spilling yogurt on the crotch of your pants at work first thing in the morning bad. You can get away with it, pretend no one can see it, and cover it up with your jacket all day and say you’re cold, or you can go to the store down the street and buy yourself a new pair of pants and be done with it. You know you’re going to need a new pair of pants eventually, because blueberry doesn’t come out of light tan Dockers. And you can pretend all day that no one sees that white crusty smear on your pants, but everyone does, and they are all wondering… what IS that smell?

So this scene, and the premise of this scene is spilled into my story, and the blueberry is sinking in, and the yogurt is curdling, and I’ve been sitting there, knowing I need to rip it out, and take the five to eight thousand word hit, and do it right, because not only is the scene out of place, the writing itself is bad. My writing is so much better now than it was three years ago, it’s not even funny. And not only is the writing itself bad, the scene forces the characters to do things and act in a way that they just wouldn’t do based on the rest of the story. It’s gummed up the whole mess, destroyed the flow, and made a mockery of my outline.

And yet, I can’t figure out exactly what to do different… yet.

So even though I’m at the halfway point of the book, I need to take a step back, and read and edit from the beginning, and see if the momentum picks back up, and see how that scene can be removed. I need to by new pants.

Of course I’ll make a backup copy first… and I’ve still got that original scene, just in case I can find another place to put it. I never throw anything (except adverbs) away.

Website Update

2010-06-27T14:54:00.001-07:00

It’s a nice day in the PNW, so what do I do? I upgrade my web site to ASP.NET MVC 2.0, .NET 4 and VS2010. Not too hard, but needed to be done.

I needed to get this done in order to prep for the 2010 PNWA Conference in July. I’ve updated some information there, including posting a new short story that I entered in the Wil Wheaton/John Scalzi Fan Fiction Contest to Benefit the Lupus Alliance of America contest. You can read ‘Under a Molten Sky’ on my short story page. If you don’t read about the contest first, your first question will undoubtedly be “Why?”, or maybe it’ll be “What the hell?”, but it was a fun contest to enter, and who knows, maybe something good will come out of it.

I’ve also updated the first two chapters of ‘The Forgotten Road’, pending another major edit coming in August, and released the first working title (but no details yet, sorry) to my next novel ‘The Unexplored Territory’. The title is not the final one. In fact, I don’t like it at all, but I had to call it something.

So go out, browse, peruse, enjoy.

And by all means, let me know if you find any mistakes or broken things, and let me know what you think of the new first chapters to ‘The Forgotten Road.’

A Quick Howdy

2010-06-21T21:07:00.001-07:00

I haven’t been writing here lately, because I’ve been writing elsewhere a lot lately. As in my latest novel. I’m hovering around the 35000 word mark, which in the world of 80000 word novels, is, you guessed it, almost halfway done. I’m not going to spill the beans on this one yet, but when I read what I have done, it is easily my best work ever, and I think, really freaking good. It is coming so fast, that if I could sit down and write all day, I could knock out the final 45000 words in less than 10 days.

Because I’ve been writing, I haven’t been reading as much, though I did read John Scalzi’s ‘The Ghost Brigades’ (good book, worth the read as the sequel to Old Man’s War).

I’m also reading a book my sister-in-law’s husband gave me for Christmas last year called ‘The Devil and the Dervish’, which is translated from Bosnian, I think. I can read four or five pages at a time, and it’s 500 pages, so it may take me a while. It’s not exactly Grisham-esque in its pace, but it is not…bad…

I’m also reading a collection of short stories called ‘Steampunk’ to become more familiar with the genre… not that my new book has anything to do with that…, and the stories are quite interesting.

Movie-wise, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” last weekend, good movie, a trifle long at times, but so worth it to see Grace Kelly. I admit it, I have a crush.

The weather here in the Pacific Northwest currently sucks bull testicles. It’s that bad. Epically bad. Atrocious. Rain. Cold. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. Rain. More Rain. Sun (tease), Rain. Rain. Rain. You get the picture. The least amount of sun in Seattle since 1953, and we’re an inch of rain away from the all time wettest May-June ever. And we still have 9 days left, with rain in the forecast for every one of them.

To keep our cheery dispositions, we’ve taken to watching uplifting TV series like HBO’s Dexter (Season 2), and the current season of ‘Deadliest Catch’. Nothing like Miami serial killers and arctic storms to make you feel good about where you are.

In other news, I will be attending the 2010 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference in July, and I will be moderating the session entitled ‘Working to a difficult deadline’ which will be given by Gordon Kirkland, a Canadian author and humorist. Two Canadians at the front of a room full of Americans. Last time that happened, their names were Bob and Doug Mackenzie.

Lisa is heading to Denver this weekend for her first dance competition of the year, so I’ll be alone with the little ones by myself for a few days and nights. We haven’t broken the news to them yet (so don’t tell them), since Lorelai freaks out when Momma goes for a twenty minute walk at night. I may be heading to the store on Saturday morning to buy a bunch of movies if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

I was going to write – write tonight, but I had to reinstall a bunch of software on my PC, so you get this update instead. Consider yourself lucky.

Reading and Reviewing

2010-06-05T09:32:00.001-07:00

As I said in my last blog post, I’ve been reading a lot lately, at almost a dangerous pace. So much so fast that it seems I could have a reading crash and injure my dictionary. But I still am not as bad as my wife, who I caught reading while she was walking down the stairs two nights ago. In a house with kids, not watching where you are going is really not a great idea.

So what’s been on my reading list?

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. This is a pretty famous book about a computer science professor from Carnegie Mellon University who is diagnosed with cancer, and the inspirational last lecture he gave to his students and the faculty there. It’s a quick read, but it isn’t always easy, and if you’re not careful, it may just change your life. You should also watch the video of his last lecture (either before or after is fine)

I got a lot lighter in reading after that.

The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans and Revenge of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Yes I read all three of these in the past month). A series of novels about a private investigating family in San Francisco. The books are good, pretty funny and a quick read, but they have one really annoying flaw that drove me nuts. Footnotes. Not footnotes as in references to other books, but parentheticals that constantly distract from the flow of the story. As a writer, I’ve learned to never distract the reader and disturb the flow. A couple of times, this might be fine, but, to do it so constantly is just annoying, and were it not for my OCD and the fact that my wife recommended the books, I would have stopped after book one. My hope is that Lutz stops this practice going forward, or at least minimizes this device. I’d like to read more about the Spellmans, but I’m on the edge about actually doing it if I have to fight through the distractions.

Life As We Knew It – Susan Beth Pfeffer – A great Young Adult Apocalyptic fiction book that will have you restocking your pantry by the last chapter. We bought this book at John Scalzi’s recommendation. Lisa loved this book and so did I.

The Inside Ring – Mike Lawson – A disclaimer here, I’ve met Mike a couple of times at PNWA functions and got him to autograph this book. This is a political thriller revolving around the attempted assassination of the President of the US. It’s a good book, but I can tell that it is a writer’s first book, and it has a couple of flaws that I noticed as a writer, that the average reader my not. I’ll read more of Mike’s work, and from what I hear, the writing gets better in the next book.

As for Movies, with the death of the 2009-2010 TV season, I’ve had more time to watch movies. So here are the recent ones.

Seven Pounds – Will Smith – 3/4 Stars. If you don’t tear up at the end of this one… then you weren’t sitting where I was last night. This was a much better movie than I expected, and I really liked it.

The Enforcer/The Dead Pool – Clint Eastwood. Two movies in the Dirty Harry series. I’ve been watching these to say that I have, but I was really glad they were only about 90 minutes of my time and that I watched them when I couldn’t really do anything else. 0/4 stars. Keep those three hours of your life and use them to take a bath or something.

The Blind Side – Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw – A true story about a white family in Tennessee who takes in a disadvantaged black kid from the projects who goes on to play in the NFL. Not a bad movie, and worth a watch, especially since I’m a big NFL fan and watched the draft where Michael Oher was drafted. Bullock was good, but McGraw stole scenes with some great lines. 2.5/4 stars

The Hurt Locker – Oscar winning film about bomb disposal techs in Iraq. Great movie, with really well done visuals and movie effects. It is about the Iraq war, and there are a number of scenes that might be hard to watch. It doesn’t drown you in them, but it doesn’t let you into a false sense of safety either. 3/4 stars

Crazy Heart – Jeff Bridges in another Oscar winning role. Don’t expect to be uplifted by this, but the story isn’t bad, if not a little cliché at times. 2/4 stars

Notorious – An Alfred Hitchcock classic with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. Good flick which seems a little cliché now… but it’s cliché now because everyone copied them. Every time I watch a Hitchcock movie, I gain appreciation for what he did. 3/4 stars

Surrogates – Bruce Willis – A pretty good, pure science fiction movie that I really enjoyed, but I like both SciFi and Bruce Willis, so this one may have been ideally tailored to me. 3/4 stars

The Lovely Bones – A slightly disturbing but good movie about a serial killer in the early 1970s, told through the eyes of one of his victims. Based on a highly acclaimed book by the same name. I haven’t read the book, but I still might, if I have time. 3/4 stars

The Commitments – A young man from Dublin forms a soul band to try to find a way out of poverty. A great movie, but you’d better be able to understand the Irish accent to watch it, and you’d better like music. 3/4 stars

I think that’s pretty much it, for now. It’s Saturday morning and it’s time to get some stuff done around here, so I can read more or write more or watch more this afternoon.

Gettin Wordy With It

2010-06-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

It’s been almost a month since my last post, and I’m on the train, so his may be a bit jumbled.

The biggest news is that Reece has finally come to terms with potty training. We spent a weekend really close to the bathroom, took away his diaper, and set a timer to go off every half hour. We gave him a warning five minutes before the timer was going to go off. We had a few accidents the first couple of days, but Lisa was quick on the draw when it came to recognizing the early signs of the type of accident that would have forced us to abandon our house and look for a new home to live in. After a couple of days of hard effort, the general idea seemed to have sunk in. The days have been getting easier and there have been fewer accidents, so it looks like we’re soon going to be on the hook for all the things we promised him a few months ago. You know, the bike, the scooter, the baseball glove, the fire engine, the moon.

Lorelai has been really supportive of Reece getting potty trained because when he is going potty, and she goes potty, they both get mints as a reward. That reward had been phased out for her a few months ago, but it came back when he started going. And they also believe that mint rewards carry over from day to day, so if you went potty 4 times yesterday and only got 2 mints, you have two coming to you right after breakfast.

The kids have really gotten into doing jigsaw puzzles of up to 100 pieces, though they’re a little better off doing 75 pieces and smaller. They’ll do the same ones over and over again, and love it. More importantly, we love it as it keeps them busy for hours.

Reece has become a computer geek, and somehow he learned how to type the 3 letter password I put on his login account on the computer, and he’ll sneak into the office and play pretty much any time of the day or night. I blame Lisa’s brother, Eric for that. Because I can.

The rainy weather in the PNW the last few weeks has put a damper on the outdoor fun with the neighborhood kids, so last Sunday we bought the board game ‘Candyland’ to try with them. I knew I was in trouble when the board came out and Lisa disappeared upstairs to ‘do laundry’, leaving me with two of the cheatenist kids you ever did see. It was like they didn’t even care about the rules. All they wanted to do was to get to the ice cream cone. And if their card said to go past it, they stopped on it and refused to move. Daddy almost won the game and put an end to the madness, but I pulled the Gingerbread Man card on what should have been the last play, and I ended up back at the start. The game went on until I helped Reece to win.

Lisa and I took a night to celebrate our 5th Anniversary in Seattle recently. We went to a movie (Ironman 2… better than I expected), and were supposed to eat at a restaurant called ‘The Flying Fish’ but they decided to relocate, and failed to tell us that when we booked the reservation. Since we had already paid for parking, we went across the street to ‘The Queen Street Diner’. The food was pretty good, but not the best I’d ever had. I wouldn’t be opposed to going there again, but it’s not at the top of my list.

The next morning we ate at Lola’s in Seattle for breakfast. If you get a chance to go there, do it. The donuts are amazing, and the potatoes incredible.

I’m back to normal hours at work after a couple of months of long hours trying to get some projects going. We still have a lot going on, but I just couldn’t sustain those hours forever, and the switch back to normal hours is already having positive effects on my writing. The words are coming easier, and my current book is coming along nicely. I’m at about the 1/4 pole, and the plot line is holding to what I had planned out. At this pace, the first draft should be done by the end of the summer. I do have to go back and do some editing on ‘The Forgotten Road’ in preparation for the PNWA Writer’s conference in July, but that should only take me a couple of weeks, and depends on the availability of my ‘Book Doctor’.

One of the side effects of spring is that my TV watching drops down to almost nothing, and my book reading and movie watching (not the same as TV watching, even if it is watching a DVD) goes up. I’ll cover the books and movies in another post, but I’ve been reading at almost a dangerous level, and it feels good.

The garden is just barely starting to produce a few leaves of spinach. The weather has been down right cruel, and things are way behind. We need some warm weather and some sun. I had the sprinklers set up a few weeks ago, and I had to turn them back off as the gardens are just big mud pits.

Lisa is getting ready for a dance competition in Denver later this month, so I’ll have a weekend by myself with the kids, which should be… interesting. I hope the weather is nice, but even if it isn’t, we’re getting out of the house at least one day, and doing something outside.

Anyway, I’ll recap books and movies later tonight, because, as always, my OCD requires I document my reading.

More Words

2010-05-09T16:57:00.001-07:00

So besides the reading and the movie watching, what’s been going on?

I’ve been working a lot the last few weeks, getting a few projects ready to go. Things should start slowing down in mid-July, if we can get a few things out the door. The company is growing, and that’s a good thing. It also seems like the economy is coming back around, and that’s good as well.

I have started working on a new series of books, while taking a break from the Jake Clarke Series. I’m waiting for a book doctor I know (a freelance editor) to free up later this spring to take a look at ‘The Forgotten Road’ so we can polish ‘one-last’ version. Then it’s back to looking for an agent. But until book one in the series has stabilized, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to work on book 3+4. So I jumped into another series that I’ve been working on in my head since before I' started telling Jake’s story. This one is epic fantasy with a Twist. Every author has to write fantasy at some point in their lives. I like this story, and I’ve got it well plotted out, and I think it’s sellable, though I have broken the cardinal rule and not spent a lot of time reading fantasy. Maybe someone else has already done this story, but I’m not going to worry about that until the first book is done and I try to market it. This isn’t fluffy fantasy with elves and magicians and dragons, so no use in polluting my mind with that.

The kids are doing great. We’re still potty training Reece, or rather he’s training us to accept that he will potty train himself at his own pace, not ours. We’ve corrected some of the bed time behavior (thank you Super Nanny!), so we are all getting more sleep now, and we actually slept in till 8:00 AM this morning. Of course we didn’t get home until 11:30 PM last night, but at 8:00 I was actually ready to get up.

The two of them love playing with other kids now, and we can turn them loose out in the cul-de-sac with the rest of the neighborhood kids and no one is coming in bleeding or crying with any regularity.

My sister was out for a few days last weekend, and the kids had a great time with her. They don’t often get that kind of dedicated attention, and it was good for all of us.

We took a long road trip this weekend to Ephrata, WA to see Lisa’s Mom on Friday night, then from there to Richland, WA to see Lisa’s brother Eric and his family. A lot of driving, but well worth it. Eric bought a house a month or so ago down there, and it’s a really nice place to raise a family.

Lisa is doing well, and getting ready for the dance competition season to start up. She’s been practicing a lot, and I’m hoping she brings home wads of cash so she can be my sugar momma while I retire and write for a living.

We’ve had a little problem in the garage the last few nights with stuff getting knocked over. We knew something had snuck in. We hoped it was a neighborhood cat, but after 4 night’s I finally discovered it was a possum (a big one), and it was hiding between the wall and the furnace. We left the garage door open a crack last night, and it was gone this morning. Hopefully it stays gone. Kind of a freaky thing to see staring back at you.

The garden is planted, and things are coming up, though the cold start to the spring has severely affected the tomatoes and the squash. I may have to replant some plants. The garden is a lot easier this year, since I did all the hard construction last year. This year it’s plant, water and watch grow.

Okay, time to make dinner! Gotta go!

The Week+ In Words

2010-05-09T16:31:00.001-07:00

I’ll start with books today, because the OCD in me says I must cover it.

I haven’t been reading a lot for fun lately, mainly because I am working on a novel of my own, am reading more for work, and am working a lot. So this list is relatively brief:

Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. Fforde’s series is unique. I guarantee you have read nothing like it. This one is good, though not as good as the other Thursday Next books, but the man has a great concept and if I had it, I’d be cranking out the books too.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank: Written in the late 1950’s during the height of the Cold War, it’s one of the early ‘end of the world’ novels, better be prepared for a big change to civilization. Not a bad read, but some of the dialogue didn’t age well, and some of the story seems a bit quaint these days. I’m sure it was pretty edgy fifty years ago, but only worth a ready if you are a die hard apocalypse fan these days.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I started following John Scalzi’s blog Whatever last winter when the big confrontation was going on between Amazon and MacMillan Publishing. Old Man’s War is a GREAT science-fiction book, and a must read for anyone who is interested in the genre. It’s a quick and easy read, but a great concept book, likeable characters and inspiring for writers like me.

I’m currently reading Vacuum Diagrams by Steven Baxter, another sci-fi book. I’m struggling to finish it. It wanders through 5 million years of the history and future of the universe, with a series of vignettes that are tied together by very thin plot line. It’s an admirable undertaking. Pure sci-fi aficionados probably loved this book. I’m more in the camp of “I can’t wait to be done it, and I wish I had never bought it.” It’s not that it’s that bad, it’s just that it kills my desire to read anything else. Kind of like having a bad sandwich at the only deli near your office. You know you will eventually go back there, but it might be a while before you get the bad taste out of your mouth. I’ve read Baxter’s stuff before, and it’s generally pretty good, but if I were his agent, I would have held this one back. But what do I know?

Movie wise, if had a few clunkers too.

Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey, Jr. Did not meet my expectations, which were probably too high. It was okay. 2/4 stars.

Robinson Crusoe – The Pierce Brosnan version. I’ve been watching this 20 minutes at a time for the past two weeks. Really bad. Epically bad. 1/4 stars – just because I refuse to give 0 stars to any movie I didn’t just delete from my queue after the first 20 horrible minutes.

To Catch a Thief: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Wonderful classic movie. And now I understand why people loved Grace Kelly. 3/4 stars

The Informant!: Matt Damon. Interesting, but not great. Felt kind of uncomfortable during the whole thing. Kind of Fargo meets Catch Me If You Can. 2/4 Stars

Up In the AIr with George Clooney: Good movie with good dialog. But we have seen so many ‘talkie’ movies lately that we weren’t in the right mood for this one, and it was just not that enjoyable. 2/4 stars

Zombieland: I loved this movie. It’s right up there with Shawn of the Dead in the Zombie genre (did you know there was a Zombie genre?"). 3/4 stars. Brace yourself for the gore of the first 5 minutes. After that it’s not so bad.

A Moment in Time

2010-04-09T07:06:00.001-07:00

I bought my first CD player back in the summer of 1992 while living in Toronto. And then I did what everyone else did who was getting those new-fangled audio devices, I joined a CD Club. BMG I think it was.

At some point during that membership, I bought Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ CD. All I knew about Dire Straits were the songs ‘Money For Nothing’ and ‘Sultans of Swing’. I had no idea that ‘Money for Nothing’ was the song I’d like least on that album, and no idea that that album would change my life. I didn’t know who Mark Knopfler was either.

I listened to that album a lot over the next few years. I fell in love with the song ‘Telegraph Road’ because of the story it told. I wrote my stories, and listened to the stories in that song, and on that album, and I truly appreciated the affect that a song or a story could have on someone. I’m sure that that album had a lot to do with me writing my very first novel, and seeing it through to the end.

A few years ago I bought another Dire Straits CD - ‘On Every Street’. When I found out that Mark Knopfler, the lead singer, had gone out on his own, I started buying his CD’s. I went through a phase where I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I listened to the way he played, and the way guys like Lindsey Buckingham played, and I though I knew I’d never play like that, I at least grew in my appreciation for the skill involved to not only write those story songs, but to play with such feeling, and such heart.

Last night, for the first time, I got to see Mark Knopfler Live on Stage at the Moore Theater in Seattle. I paid an exorbitant sum for the best seat I could find – Row A Seat 5 on the left aisle. I was a little disappointed in the the seat… I couldn’t see part of the band because a speaker blocked my view, and I had to sit a little sideways in my seat to see the whole stage.

But the performance did not disappoint. It amazed. I was 30 feet from Knopfler, and I could watch his fingers move on the strings like I had always imagined they would. And the songs they played! Oh the songs! They started with ‘Border Reiver’, then ‘What it Is’, and covered a bunch of crowd favorites from some albums over the past few years. But then he broke out some old stuff, and the crowd went nuts. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ got the first standing ovation of the night. There was an air of anticipation after that. Woukd they playy any other oldies? When the band started into ‘Sultans of Swing’, pure pandemonium. I got the feeling that they don’t play those songs very often on tour anymore, but I could be wrong. Who knew that was just the beginning?

First though, I’m a crowd watcher at these things, and I watch the band as well. The crowd was in a state of euphoria like I have never seen before, The people at the front are not those who are out for a casual concert. These are devoted fans, who know their stuff. And every one of them had a giant grin on their face. Feet were tapping (I couldn’t stop mine for 2 hours). Hands were clapping, people were singing along and just mesmerized by the talent on stage. And not just Knopfler. Everyone in the band was an amazing musician. Some played 5 or 6 different instruments during the concert, some instruments I can’t even name.

He wrapped up the concert with ‘Telegraph Road’. ‘Telegraph Road’ is eight minutes long on the album, and it was at least that on stage. The crowd went insane. The band took their bows, and the crowd demanded an encore. We got 4 absolutely amazing songs. ‘Brothers in Arms’, an instrumental, ‘My Shangri La’ and ‘Piper to the End’ to wrap it up. There may have been a fifth, but I lost track.

I never thought I would see ‘Sultans of Swing’ live. I hoped for ‘Romeo and Juliet’, but seeing Knopfler play ‘Brothers in Arms’, and ‘Telegraph Road’, all in one night, is something that I think few fans ever get to see. I am so glad I went, and I wish I could go again tonight. But I’m not driving to Portland tonight, not on 4 hours of sleep.

Last night was one of those moments in time that I will remember for the rest of my life. I might not remember ever song, but I will remember just how joyous it was, and what it was like to get sucked up in the excitement, and to put your hands in the air and clap and cheer for someone until your hands hurt and your voice was gone, because they have just put it all out there and you never dreamed your get that when you plunked down your money for a ticket.

The greatest thing was watching how much Knopfler still loves to play. The guy in the seat next to me leaned over and said, “He’s not doing it for the money.” and I agreed. There was heart in the music. Knopfler would close his eyes and scrunch up his face when the guitar solos got difficult, and he put it all into it. The man can play.

I bought a ticket to a concert. I received a memory to last a lifetime.

The Week in Words – 03/24/2010

2010-03-24T06:16:00.001-07:00

I’ll start off with a very funny exchange between my wife and Reece, as mommy was changing a very poopy diaper last Friday.

“That’s a big poop, Reecie.”

“No mommy, it’s not. It’s a Good Lord.”

“What?”

“It’s a Good Lord, Mommy. That’s what Daddy always says.” He sits up just a bit, looks at the poop, shakes his head a bit, and says in a near perfect imitation of my inflection. “Good Lord!”

Who knew that potty training would become such a religious experience for him?

Moving on.

I finished the novella I was working on last week called “Izzy’s Story”, and merged it into ‘The Forgotten Road’. It turned out to be about 9000 words long. I then cut about 2000 back out of TFR, which is sitting right around 90000 now. That’s a little higher than I want it to be. There are probably some more places I can chop, but I still have to make sure I’ve wedged the scenes from the novella into the right places in the rest of the story, and then make sure it actually works done like this. I’m still waiting on replies from two agents who have some parts of my books. If I don’t hear from them by tax time, I’m thinking of trying out a book doctor (a freelance editor) to do a structural edit to see how far I am off target. I think it will be a good investment, and I hope to learn a lot from it.

For now though, I’m probably not going to work on that book or that series for a bit. Until all the aspects of that first book are nailed, I can’t really say book 2 is ready to be called done, and starting on book 3 seems a little premature. Instead, I’ll explore a few other ideas I’ve been playing around with and see if any of them work out.

Work just got a whole lot busier this week as well, as we’re ramping up on a couple of big projects that will keep me busy through the end of the year. I’m back to taking the first train in each day, which means waking up at 4:25 each morning. Tonight I’ve got a 4:00 meeting on site with a client, which means I wont get home until 6:30. Makes for a very long day. But with this new project, we’ll be able to do some hiring to fill some open spots, and hopefully that will make my life easier in the long run.

Last weekend we had Lisa’s mom, dad and grandmother over for a day, and went out to a park in Tacoma with two of Lisa’s brothers and their families. With that many kids running around, there wasn’t much time to sit down and talk to adults. I don’t know why people say life isn’t always a picnic. Sure seems that life is always like a picnic: don’t touch that, don’t eat that, you have to share with your sister, stay away from the water, get out of the mud, don’t you dare throw that stick at her, stay where I can see you, that’s not a pine cone, damn it, does anyone have any antibacterial hand wipes?

Movie wise, we watched a great little movie on Sunday called ‘Saint Ralph’, a story about a 14 year old boy in 1957 at a Catholic school in Hamilton, Ontario who wants a miracle to save his mother who is in a coma and gets it into his head that winning the Boston Marathon is what God wants him to do. Definitely worth the watch.

Reading wise, I’m slowly working my way out of my reading funk, and in the middle of Orson Scott Card’s ‘Shadow of the Hegemon’, a continuation of the “Ender’s Shadow'” series.

There’s a bunch of new technology being released by Microsoft in April, and that means I’ll have a whole new slew of tech books to read. I probably won’t get to read much for fun in the next few months, but maybe all this new stuff will be easy, and the books will be shorter than the last time. Yeah, right.

The Week in Words - 3/13/2010

2010-03-13T16:23:00.001-08:00

I hit the wall last weekend. I’d read myself into a stupor. I tried to pick up a new book after finishing ‘The Motion of the Ocean’, but my give a damn index for reading had suddenly hit zero. This happens to me every once in a while. Sometimes it’s after a really good book that I don’t think any other can measure up to. Sometimes I’ve just read so much in a short time that I’m just tired. I believe this was a case of the latter.

In fact, I even had trouble reading a magazine for work this week, something I have to do for my job. I just didn’t want to read. I couldn’t concentrate. My mind was blasé about reading, but it was spinning with something else.

Instead, I wrote. New stuff. We’ll, not exactly new. It’s still in the Jake Clarke world, but it’s a short novella currently called Izzy’s Story. One of the criticisms I’ve had with ‘The Forgotten Road’, is that not enough happens in the first 50 pages, and another is that the antagonist isn’t introduced until the third act. I’ve resisted making changes to the story to fix this because there’s no easy way to do it. I can’t just go and add two hundred words somewhere and call it good.

In order to do what needed to be done, I would have to shunt in a complete second story line into ‘The Forgotten Road’ without spoiling one of the plot points of the first story line.

What I decided to do was to write the second story as a novella unto itself. I figure it’ll run somewhere between 8000-10000 words. When it’s complete, I’m going to inject it into the appropriate places into the original story. Of course I’ll have to chop out a few thousand words from the original story, and edit this one down a bit as well, but that’s pretty doable. I know where I have to cut.

I do have a fear that the story will end up being too choppy and the dual story line will feel too separate. But if I’m going to fix the issue, I need to start somewhere.

My worst fear is that people will like the second story better than the first. That will completely screw up my vision for where the story is going. I’ll try not to make the second story too good.

Anyway, progress on the second story is going well. I should wrap it up in the next few days. Then I’ll edit it down, figure out where to make the breaks, and insert them into TFR. Then I’ll edit for length and flow. I figure I should be done this revision by the end of March.

That’s the plan anyway.

Bedtime Tally

2010-03-10T20:48:00.001-08:00

Bedtimes for 3 year olds are a bit of a challenge. Tonight was extraordinary.

# of Bathroom trips: 2
# of Poopy Diapers after bathroom trips: 1
# of shredded books: 1
# of broken closet shelves: 2
# of times door opened with one kid crying because he pushed me or she hit me: 2
# of times Daddy walked into bedroom to find kids hanging off the headboards of their cribs: 2
# of times Daddy went upstairs to tuck in / change diapers / pickup shredded books: 6+?
# of times Daddy yelled up the stairs to go to bed: 8+
Time between bedtime and last trip up: 1 hour 35 minutes, and they’re still jibber jabbering.

Aaaaak!

The Music behind the… Man?

2010-03-07T17:56:00.001-08:00

I’m sure I’m not the only one who ties certain songs to phases, days or people of my life. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what songs have are part of my personal history. In some cases, it’s more than a song, its a whole album. The albums tend to remind me of years. SIngles remind me of people, or emotions.

The emergence of digital downloads will undoubtedly have a huge impact on this and the next generation’s view of the world. My generation will probably be the last one to identify a summer with an album. They might identify with a single song, or a one hit wonder, but how many will know about the conversation that the Eagles had with their fans on the Hell Freezes over album, or Eric Clapton saying ‘See if you can spot this one’ on the intro to Layla on his unplugged album, or the way the songs on U2’s Joshua Tree just flowed. You don’t get that effect listening to the album on shuffle on your IPod.

So here are some of the songs / albums that just mean something to me. Not that they are / are not my favorite songs, but I just tie them to a certain something (In no particular order)

U2 – Joshua Tree – High School Bus rides. I listened to that over and over again on the commute from hell.

Mickey Mouse Disco – Our first Halloween Party as kids, and Paul Jensen splitting his pants on a dance move.

I’m Moving On – Rascal Flatts – Reminds me of my move to Seattle, even though I moved before this song was released. It pretty much summed up what was going on in my life at that time

Old LA Tonight – Ozzie Osborne – My days working on the ASPEN project in Oshawa, Ontario for EDS in 1995. Played that song over and over again.

Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet – Ninth Grade, riding the school bus, again, and having the bus driver pull over to tell someone to turn off the music, since we were having battle of the ghetto blasters in the back.

Fire Woman – The Cult – Playing pool at The Walrus, a bar near Pearl St in Boulder, Colorado

500 Miles – The Proclaimers – Dancing with a bunch of friends from college on a road trip north of Toronto either on a long weekend or the beginning of summer. We were all doing this goofy dance, and it was pretty freaking hilarious.

Highway Junkie – Gary Allen – Dancing with my friend Brandy at McCabes in Tacoma. We always lit it up with this song; that was until she caught me with an elbow to the chin on one of the spins and nearly knocked me out.

Zombie – The Cranberries – Living in a basement apartment in Oshawa, Ontario below a family where the husband and wife were always having screaming matches over money. I always heard more than what I wanted to, and I felt really bad for their kids.

Van Halen’s Balance Album – Living in Detroit in the fall of 1995, cruising through town with the stereo on my black Pontiac Sunfire just screaming out Sammie Hagar

When You Need My Love – Darryl Worley – Reminds me of the last girl I dated before I met my wife. That wasn’t such a healthy relationship. I actually told her at one point that this song made me think of her, and she was upset. She probably should have been, but it was accurate.

Half Way Up – Clint Black – This song stuck in my head when I used to ride my bike a lot. Easy to sing, and a good cadence on big climbs

Take Me away From Here – Tim McGraw - The early days of dating my wife

Fortunate Son – CCR – My First Novel. Listened to this one a lot while writing it.

Jack and Diane – John Mellencamp – We had a foster kid for a while named Walter, and he played this, and Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now” a lot. I don’t remember liking Walter a lot, but I remember the music he got me into

Gordon – Barenaked Ladies - My third year of university.

The Best Day of My Life – George Strait – Standing up with my friend Brandon at his wedding, and trying not to cry.

McClaren Furnace Room – The Watchmen – A guy named Randy Irwin who I knew only for a year or two back in 1994-96, who had a tremendous influence on my life. I wish I hadn’t lost touch with him.

Everywhere – Tim McGraw – The first house I ever bought in Broomfield, Colorado

My Little Girl – Tim McGraw – Driving back and forth from home to the hospital after the twins were born and Reecie was in the NICU. I remember rounding the curve on River Road in Puyallup with tears running down my face and worrying that I was going to have an accident. It’s not like there is a place to pull over there.

Workin For a Living – Huey Lewis – Working the midnight shift at the Forest Golf and Country Club and getting in trouble for having the music too loud.

Fred Bear – Ted Nugent – See previous entry

Anyway, that’s all I have today. I’m sure I’ll think of more later. It’s probably easier to list the songs that don’t mean anything to me.

We came, we saw…

2010-03-07T16:53:00.001-08:00

We did not ride. The weather failed to cooperate, and the couch and the kids did. So instead of trying to ride two days in a row, I napped, and drank hot apple cider.

Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Inspired

2010-03-06T19:53:00.001-08:00

As I said in my last blog entry, I just finished reading ‘The Motion of the Ocean’, and also mentioned that I used to have B-HAGs of my own, including my two or three years of long distance cycling.

I was living in Colorado at the time, didn’t know a whole lot of people, and started riding my bike for exercise. I then started getting more and more serious until I was riding organized rides with the Rocky Mountain Cycling Club, and in September of 1996, I completed my first metric century (100 kms) in a single ride.

In 1997, I got a lot more serious and started training for the Denver to Aspen Classic, a 200 miles in a day ride that is pretty damn hard, considering there are 4 10000 foot passes. I rode over 2000 miles in training that year, but in the end, I dropped out of the ride that day at 112 miles due to stiff headwinds, an aching knee, and a bonk that I couldn’t fight through.

My body physically gave out after that summer of training, and I spent most of the fall and winter fighting a case of mono that kept me out of work for 3 months, confined to bed or the couch for days at a time. It was, I believe, the lowest point of my entire life. A walk to the end of my driveway would sap my energy for hours. By spring 1998, I was healthy again, but I had lost so much weight and so much muscle mass, that I didn’t ride more than a few miles that year.

In 1999, I moved to Kent, WA, and never really got back on my bike. I rode a few times, but I had a much busier life, and never felt the desire to ride. Kent wasn’t the most friendly area for bicyclists either. Partway through my first ride, I was nearly made a hood ornament on some redneck’s jacked up pickup truck.

Today, after spending the morning doing yard work and having a late lunch, I looked forward to having a nice nap on the couch. I was actually on the couch, and asleep when two little ones who refused to take their naps woke me up. They were sent back to their rooms, and I tried to get back to sleep, but it was no use. I was awake. And my mind was on.

I was thinking about riding. The weather was beautiful today, the wind was light, and I still had some energy left in my legs. I fought the idea for a few minutes, the decided to just do it.

Things didn’t start out so well. Both tires were flat (expected), and the rubber nose piece fell off my Oakley riding sunglasses as I put them on. The cycle computer was dead, so I’d get no feedback on my ride for length or speed. It took me a few second to remember how to clip my feet into the pedals on my Bianchi, but after a few turns I was off and pedaling. It was just like riding a bike, but not quite.

In the past few years, I’ve lost a great deal of function in my thumbs due to Charcot Marie Tooth disease. I’ve tried physical therapy, stretching and acupuncture, but nothing seems to work. Today, I discovered, that functioning thumbs are really critical for two things: shifting gears, and braking. I figured out how to do both with less orthodox grips on the handlebars, but for a second, I was really worried.

The greater worry was that as I pulled away from the first stop sign, I heard a clunk. I looked behind me to see that part of my bike had fallen off. Specifically, my pedal had fallen off. I had taken the bike in to be tuned up last year, and apparently, they forgot to tighten it down. It took a moment or two to get it back on, and for the rest of the ride, I was a little worried, but it held.

Back when I was a serious rider, I often rode in pelotons, those large groups of riders that you see in races and organized rides that achieve mythical speeds by literally sucking the riders along in a draft. The rides in pelotons were some of the most awesome experiences I’ve ever had (on a bike).

I remember one day, I was about to take my turn at the front of a pack. It was early in the ride, and we were charging up a hill near Castle Rock, Colorado. As I pulled into the lead, I slammed into a higher gear, and shouted with bravado, “Okay boy’s, let’s go. It’s a big ring day.” Which basically meant we were going to keep the bikes in top gear all the way up the hill.

And we did, as I recall. I cranked with everything I had. There was whooping and hollering as we got to the top, and I began to drift back into the pack. One rider shouted at me “Thanks for the pull, buddy”, and the whole pack disappeared down the hill. Without me. I had spent everything I had on that climb trying to impress people with the hope that I could hang on to the tail long enough for the lactic acid to work its way out, but by the time it did, they were out of sight. It think I had 71 miles left that day in an 83 mile ride, and I was doomed.

Anyway, today was not a big ring day. It was barely a medium ring day. On a day with no real wind, I was downshifting on the flats and couldn’t carry speed down the hills. I got off the saddle only three or four times for short bursts of 4-8 pedals. I used to be able to stand up for a quarter mile on a 15 degree grade at the top of an 18 mile climb (Left Hand Canyon, near Boulder, CO, my favorite ride of all time).

I struggled over what might have been 8 miles, to keep my cadence up, and prayed I’d hit green lights at the end of the ride so I wouldn’t collapse on my shaking legs. I got back to the house, and parked the bike, and drank a lot of water.

But a few hours later, when the initial shakes had warn off, the euphoria of a good workout kicked in. The runners high. And I wondered if I could do it again tomorrow.

We’ll see.

The Week in Words

2010-03-06T14:44:00.001-08:00

I finished a couple of books this week, despite a new addiction to the TV show Dexter, which is chewing up my evenings at an astonishing rate, and giving me weird dreams to boot.

“The Motion of the Ocean” by Janna Cawrse Esarey is a true story of a Janna and her husband Graeme’s Big Hairy Audacious Goal (B-HAG)to quit their jobs and take a two year honeymoon by sailing 17000 miles around the South Pacific, from Seattle to Hong Kong. The opening lines of the book are two of the best I have ever come across:

"Somewhere fifty miles off the coast of Oregon I realize the skipper of this very small ship is an asshole.

He also happens to be my husband."

This book is not chick-lit, at least not like the chick lit I ever, um, heard about, so guys shouldn’t fear that it’s all about PMS and the horrible consequences of mismatching nail polish to lip gloss. While the book is definitely from Janna’s POV, being a guy allows me to guess exactly what Graeme is going through at the same time Janna is describing her reactions to certain events. I think guys might get even more out of this book than they think.

My fear of deep water, along with my horrible sense of balance keeps me away from trying to sail around an ocean. Okay, Lisa also keeps me from it, but I remember my days of having B-HAG’s (anyone remember my long distance cycling days?). I know how those goals can change someone, and this book pretty much nails my experience as well. Well worth the money.

I also finished reading “Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us” by Jessica Page Morrell, another local author (she teaches at Evergreen State College in Olympia). It’s a non-fiction book, a writing guide from the point of view of an editor who has been called ‘The Angel of Death’ by her clients. There’s a lot of good stuff in this one, especially what she calls her ‘Deal Breakers’. I know there are a few of her deal breakers that apply to my writing, and at some point I’m going to have to tackle them.

It’s definitely good to read a few different writing books, because you begin to sense the general pattern, and sooner or later the ideas get drilled into your head, even if you don’t remember everything. I still like Noah Lukeman’s “The First Five Pages” the best, but this one is in a close fight for number two with Steven King’s “On Writing”.

As far as movies go, last night we watched a documentary called ‘Helvetica’ about the development of fonts in the last half of the twentieth century. (Don’t we know how to party on a Friday night.) It was interesting, for about the first 40 minutes. It was at least 20 minutes too long for my tastes, and I actually dozed off for at least ten minutes, but to be fair, I was exhausted when we sat down. I would recommend it as one of those that you watch for half an hour while you are riding a stationary bike or something else, but definitely not while driving.

My Feng Shui of Writing

2010-02-27T20:14:00.001-08:00

I wrote my first novel in college, living in a bachelor apartment in Toronto near York University in 1993. It was a very small place, 440 square feet with faux parquet floors, on the 17th floor of a 26 story building, about 3 blocks from one of the most notorious intersections in Canada – the corners of Jane and Finch. This was a place you didn’t walk around alone a night, male or female, and when I was alone, late at night after a night of partying on campus, I usually ran. Jane and Finch was the address for a small shopping center nicknamed Murder Mall. I kid you not. It was a scary freaking place at times.

In that tiny little apartment, in a crappy chair my father bought for five bucks from a bank being remodeled, I wrote that first book “To Cage the Eagle”. I wrote pretty much every day, and the words just flowed to the tune of about 170000 words by the time I was done. Actually, I finished the book in a townhouse in Waterloo, Ontario where I was working during the summer, but that first apartment was where I built a writing cocoon that I have yet to be able to duplicate.

To my left, I had heavy drapes over a glass wall that looked east to another apartment block. If I opened the curtains just a bit, and leaned back in my chair, I could almost see downtown Toronto. If I was brave, I could step out on to the 3 foot wide balcony, and get a better view, but that was taking your life into your hands. More than once there was gunfire in my neighborhood, and standing out on the balcony was just asking to be target practice for someone. The night the Blue Jays won the world series in 1993 was like a wedding celebration in Beruit.

I had a stereo at that point with my first CD player, and the sound was crisp and solid, and I alternated whatever matched the mood of what I was writing. I wrote a chase scene to CCR’s “Fortunate Son”, and wrote the aftermath of a military battle to Dire Strait’s “Brothers in Arms”. Most of my writing was done to Bon Jovi, Enya, Dire Straits and Beethoven. Hey, I had, and still do have, very eclectic tastes in music.

I had an afghan that I used to wrap around my legs, and a huge root beer mug full of hot tea that I constantly refilled as I wrote late into the night. I made sure all my studying was done before I sat down to write, or I would have never gotten it done. I’m just guessing, but I’d bet I routinely wrote a couple of thousand words a night, and sometimes, as many as four or five thousand. I’d force myself to bed at 3:00 AM, exhausted and my mind still churning. These were the days I could survive on 3 hours of sleep, and I routinely did just that.

What I remember most about that place was the way my banker’s lamp, perched high on the hutch over the desk, created a cave of light, barely illuminating anything more than 10 feet from my chair. The rest of the world didn’t exist. I had a small, 13 inch TV with crappy reception, but I never turned it on. I had stacks of books everywhere, and a bike up against the wall to the right of the desk. But those all just disappeared into the darkness. It was me, the blue screen of the computer, maybe some research material, and the story.

When I left college, and started working, I brought all that stuff with me, wherever I went, and set everything back up exactly as I had it, but it was never the same. I worked long hours. I had a car that made it easier to find places to go at night. I watched more TV. I lost touch with the stories in me.

I wrote, every once in a while, from 1994-2008. 14 years of 25 page starts, and then distraction. Writing was suddenly too hard, and life was too busy. I was out in the real world, building my career, making money, and doing all the things I couldn’t do when I was just a poor student in North York. I had a few stories in my head, and I thought, hey, with just a little effort, I could sell my first novel and be a millionaire like Tom Clancy. Writing was my fallback career if this computer thing didn’t work out. And besides, I just couldn’t find a place that felt as right as that little apartment in Toronto. I had to have a place like that back before I could write again, didn’t I?

Fast-forward to 2008, and replace the quiet isolation of the 17th floor, with a commuter train running at 60 mph with fifty people sitting around chatting and snoring and clearing their throats and bumping my arms. And it seems like that is the only place I can write now. The evenings are suddenly too short, and the mood isn’t right, and there’s something on TV I just have to watch, and the kids won’t go to bed, and I have to log on to work.

I still have the lamp, the afghan, the music and the mug. The chair is gone, as is the stereo, and the desk has been replaced. But the ideas for the stories are there, and I know more about writing well than I ever did before. I’m not exactly sure which story is next, but something is coming. I feel the need to write.

And as soon as I get over this cold or flu or whatever it is that has had me bed ridden for the past 24 hours, and as soon as the Olympics are over, and TV sweeps week is done, I’ll get back to writing at home, and not just on the train. Right?

Write.

Random Stuff

2010-02-24T13:08:00.001-08:00

A few happenings and goings on…

Lisa and I have been slowly working our way through episodes of Season 1 of ‘The Big Bang Theory’. Pretty funny stuff. Sheldon is hilarious. I try not to watch too much TV these days, but sometimes you need half an hour of funny, and these guys bring it.

I’ve also been watching a British series called ‘The IT Crowd’ via Netflix on Demand. Also very funny. Especially the first two episodes.

We’ve watched a bit of the Winter Olympics, but since Prime Time for NBC is 8-11 and I go to bed at 9:30, I don’t get to see much. I try to catch stuff on-line once in a while, but it’s hit and miss. NBC’s coverage has been horrible, and as I’ve said many times on Facebook, it sucks Donkey Balls.

The kids are doing well, though their annoying habit of not listening to us is getting really old, especially around bed time. They just don’t get that it is not okay for them to watch TV at the top of the stairs every night. Friday night, I was going to watch the movie ‘District 9’, but one of the previews was for a horror film, and Lorelai saw a scene that was pretty scary, and for a while there, I thought we were in for a really long night.

We spent the weekend doing yard work, and have the gardens ready to go for the year, with the exception of the kid’s garden, which just needs a little more dirt. I don’t think their vegetables are going to grow much this year, since peas and beans aren’t resistant to the Tonka Bulldozer fungus, but we’ll give it a try and see how it goes.

I’m currently reading ‘Boneshaker’ by Cherie Priest, who I met at last year’s Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference. I like the book, though the beginning was a little… forced. She had to cover a lot of back story in a short amount of time. I know how that goes. The middle is pretty good and makes me want to keep reading. It’s my first foray into the genre of SteamPunk and Zombies. I don’t think zombies will make many appearances in my books, but you never know.

On the writing side of the house, my break from writing (to read and do some other things), is quickly coming to an end. I was planning on working a whole other book, separate from the Jake Clarke series, but I’ve been forcing myself to try to figure out the plot for the next book in the JC Series, which eventually turned into the next 2 books, thanks to a suggestion by my wife. I’ve had the 3rd book figured out of a few days, but the 4th was giving me headaches, until this morning, when I finally hit on a plot that made the hair on my neck stand up. That’s usually the sign for me that' I’m onto something. So with a little more refining over the next couple of days, and I’ll have the general outline. Then I’ll dive a little deeper to make sure there aren’t any major holes, and break the plot for each into acts. Once I know where each act is going, it’s time to write. Hopefully this approach minimizes the full scale re-writes that have plagued the first two books. We’ll see.

Heavy Reading – Stephen King, ‘Under the Dome’

2010-02-22T06:58:00.001-08:00

I always keep a book with me when I am riding the train, in case the battery on my laptop dies, or I am uninspired that day, or I just need a break from writing. Sometimes I have required reading for work, a tech magazine, or some new tome to do with software development. These development books are rarely less than 400 pages, and usually closer to 800. I make every effort to read them as quickly as possible so I don’t have to lug them back and forth to work. I set a page count to read on each trip, and will usually stop writing all together while I am reading them, otherwise it’d take me months to get through them, and no one wants to lug that kind of weight around that long. By the end of the book, I am usually page skimming, but that’s okay, I’m just trying to find the good stuff.

Rarely do I find a novel where I need to use the approach that I have to read it fast to get it out of my backpack. I can honestly say I’ve never had a novel I refused to bring on the train with me at all. That was until I got my secret Santa present at Christmas: Stephen King’s latest, “Under The Dome”. This behemoth ran 1074 pages. By my count, at about 315 words per page, and 1050 of actual writing (there were a lot of section breaks) that’s about 330,000 words. That’s 190,000 words longer than my first version of ‘Nowhere Home’ that was rejected because it was too long.

‘Under the Dome’ stayed at home, and I read it at night and on the weekends, and I got a different book (actually several different books) for reading on the train while I slowly worked my way through it.

So how was it? Good. No buts about it. It’s a damn good book. I hated the antagonist, cheered on the protagonists, and empathized with the supporting characters. There were times where I told my wife I just wanted to reach into the pages and strangle the antagonist. That’s how a book should make you feel.

Did the size of the book detract from the enjoyment? Maybe a little bit, but after reading King’s ‘Dark Tower’ Series, I’ve changed my approach to reading fiction. I don’t read to get done. I read to relax and to hear a good story. And this is a great story. It’s memorable, and perhaps the size actually made me enjoy it more, because I knew I was going to be invested in it, and I wasn’t going to read it all on a Sunday afternoon, and have forgotten about it by the next morning.

If you have the time, I recommend this book. Turn the TV off, curl up by the fire, or out on the deck under a heavy blanket, and read for an hour. Then repeat that for a couple of weeks. But don’t treat it like a race. Just enjoy it.

Part of me hopes that I can someday write a book like ‘Under The Dome’, with a huge cast of characters, great dialog, and a ‘faster and faster’ pace. But part of me is utterly intimidated by it, and there are few writers who can do it. King is one of them, and ‘Under The Dome’ is a great book, and not a bad workout as well.

Writer’s Block

2010-02-08T20:11:00.001-08:00

I’ve spent a lot of time editing the last few months, and have done little new writing. I’ve been trying to get the two completed books knocked into shape so I can turn them over to an agent (if I ever find one), and get on with my writing life.

I’ve gotten some feedback on the first book from a couple of different people over the last month or so, and while it’s moving in a positive direction, there still seems to need to be more work done on the first few chapters. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to fix what needs to be changed, but I’m edited out at this point, tired of looking at the same book and the same characters for the last 18 months, and ready to get onto something new.

So, this morning, armed with all the lessons learned from the past two books, and all the reading I’ve done about writing, plots, planning, style and themes, I sat down and tried to write a synopsis for my next story.

And I drew a blank. Not a complete blank. I have scenes in my head for at least four different stories. I have characters in my head. I just don’t have a plot in my head. I can’t figure out what the conflict is, and where to put people to push them somewhere else. And that’s what I need in order to start. Otherwise, I don’t know where the story is going. I’ve been down that road before, many times, and I end up with forty to seventy five pages of a story that goes nowhere. A writing exercise, maybe, but a bad exercise, like lifting with your back instead of your legs. Your writing gets injured like that, stuck in dead end books, and gradually your love of writing dies a slow death under the weight of half finished failure.

I feel the need to get my ideas organized. The software architect in me says I can write some pretty cool WPF application with a SQL Server backend where I can input my story ideas, plot, characters and scenes, and in no time, I’ll be back to writing, inspired by the organization and brain dump. But the realist in me knows that I will end up with software that is barely what I want, (“Look at what I drew Daddy” - “That’s a great turtle, son” -- “It’s not a turtle, it’s you, daddy”) and have burned dozens of hours when I could have been writing, reading or doing something else valuable.

So I’ll spend a little time out on the internets tonight, Binging (not binge ing – bing ing) and Googling for something that already does what I want, and will end up using Word or Excel. Or maybe a whiteboard with post its… it I can keep everything out of the reach of the kids.

Oh yeah, I need to find something to take this fucking glare off this Acer 1420p-iece of crap. This is the first day since I got this thing that the sun has been up / out on the train ride home, and it’s almost impossible to see the screen. Arg.

The week in Words

2010-01-31T16:35:00.001-08:00

I haven’t blogged in a whole week because I’ve been knee deep in editing ‘The Forgotten Road’, integrating some changes suggested by the agent who rejected me a week or so ago. It takes me about a week to get through a typical edit now, and I chopped out about 3500 words on this pass, wrote a new prologue, and tied some themes into the story. I don’t know if a story is ever done, but I feel as good about this story as I have at any point in the last year, so here’s hoping the next round of submissions meets with some type of success.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last two weeks as well. I worked through Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style’ and am about halfway through Christopher Vogler’s ‘The Writer’s Journey’. Both should be required reading for writers. S&W is not an easy read, nor would you ‘read’ it end to end more than once. It’s a reference book, and it’s like reading the dictionary, but every lesson in there is worth learning. I’ll probably pop it open to random pages once in a while and reinforce the lessons.
Vogler’s ‘Journey’ absolutely must be read by every fiction writer, and read early on in their career. Actually, if you love movies, I highly recommend it as well. It’s Hollywood’s Bible about characters and plots, and by the time you’re a hundred pages into it, you will be watching movies and reading books with a completely different eye. For me, it helps to reinforce that I have done some things right, and missed out on a few other things. It will definitely come into play in my next book, and should save me some time by eliminating a number of editing sessions.
I read two books by Jonathon Tropper in the last couple of weeks as well: The Book of Joe, and How to Talk to a Widower. I’d be lying if I said these weren’t a bit of chick-lit for guys. Light and quick to read, with a good flow, they’re pretty good. But I have a hard time believing they’re written by a guy. But if you like Jasper Fforde (which I do), you’ll probably like these.
We actually got through a few movies this weekend as well:
North By Northwest – Classic Alfred Hitchcock movie with Cary Grant. Great story, great dialog, and well worth the watch. 3.5 stars
Monsters vs Aliens – CGI Animated – not really for little kids, and honestly, the animated stuff has lost its wow factor for me (yes, I now take it for granted). Maybe it was because I was sitting next to a 3 year old asking questions every 30 seconds, but I was glad it was only 96 minutes long. 1.5 stars
Yes Man – Jim Carrey – Not bad. Very little gross out, mildly amusing. Wow did I see the influence of “Writer’s Journey’ in this one. Very formulaic. 2 stars
On a personal front, I’m proud to report that Lorelai has completed potty training, and is now diaper free 24 hours a day.
Reece is still working on it, much to our chagrin.

Birthdays and Fire Trucks

2010-01-24T09:43:00.001-08:00

Both Lisa and the twins celebrated their birthdays in the last week. We decided to do an outing for a birthday present instead of more toys, and got a tour of the local fire station. It was a great time for all of us, and I learned a lot too. I highly recommend it as a family outing. Just call up your local fire station, and arrange a tour!

Here are some pictures of the parties and the station.

Lisa’s Birthday party was reserved affair

Fireman Lewis had a couple of shy kids on his hands at the start.

Lieutenant Babcock put on all his gear for the kids

The shyness went away when Reece was allowed to drive the pumper truck.

Lorelai likes being in the driver seat too

Reece liked the ‘moving ladder truck’ the best

A table of our own, with cousin Lily

Time for cake!

Videos later, I hope!

Handling Rejection

2010-01-17T07:43:00.001-08:00

The last 72 hours has been a rollercoaster for my writing. I have resumed sending out query letters for ‘The Forgotten Road’. Writers who have been doing this a while, learn to set their expectations very low. Sending out a query letter has the following possibilities:

No Response. If your query letter is crappy, this is probably what you’ll get. Writing a good query letter is crucial. It has to be perfect, and entire books have been written just on how to write a query letter. You also have to know the targeted agent and what they are interested in reading. Miss there, and you probably will never hear from them either.
The ‘thanks but’ Response. This is probably the most common, now that most agents, or at least the one’s I’m querying, work by email. The ‘buts’ that I have encountered include things like not taking submissions right now or not a market we’re interested in. The only thing you as a writer can do to avoid this response is to do better research. But you will always get some of these responses, as no amount of research will tell you that just lat week that agent was slammed with 200 manuscripts, and they just aren’t accepting any more right now.
The ‘We liked your work, but.’ response. This is different from the ‘Thanks, but’ response. This is definitely a step up from the ‘thanks, but’ response, because it means they got past your query letter and looked at your work, and there was something about your work that wasn’t quite right.
The ‘We loved it. When can we offer you a deal.’ I haven’t seen one of these yet, so I’m just guessing how it might look.

I got a #3 for the first time yesterday. I sent out a query letter on Thursday evening, and received a reply back that they wanted to see my work. They sent the note on Thursday, which either means they really liked the query, or they as fastidious about keeping their email in box clean. Either is fine with me.

On Friday night, I sent the first 50 pages to the agent, and they replied they would try to read it within the next two weeks. Most agents say to allow 6-8 weeks for a response on submitted material.

The response was in my inbox by 1:30 that afternoon. It was a rejection, but they had read the entire fifty pages that morning. That is pretty amazing, seeing as it was a Saturday. An agent doesn’t work normal business hours, I guess. I won’t post their feedback here, but the gist of it was that there is a lack of conflict, of foreshadowing, of ‘something happening’ in the first thirty pages. However, they loved some of it, calling it ‘wonderful.’ They gave me a full paragraph of explanation of why they thought what they thought, and I agree with them. So it’s back to the editing process, adding here, subtracting there. I’ve got multiple ideas on what to do, but it’ll take me a few days to dig in an settle on a course of action.

For me, getting a rejection like this is inspiring. It’s a step forward from the form rejection letters, and a confirmation from someone in the industry that tells me that I am close, that I have some talent. I’ve heard that from friends and relatives before, but they don’t know the industry, and what it takes to sell. So I won’t mind doing ‘1 more edit’ on a book I wanted to be ‘done done’, if it puts me that much closer to getting a #4.

On Writing

2010-01-15T10:33:00.003-08:00

This morning I finished re-reading Stephen King’s book ‘On Writing’. Like I’ve said previously, I don’t reread books too often, but this one I read a couple of years ago (maybe it was just a year ago), and I remember getting a lot out of it then. That was before I discovered that there was more to writing than just letting your fingers dump words onto the screen like a sinking supertanker dumps oil into the water. I learned that you can’t be careless about your words in a story. Every single one of them is important. So I went back to this book because I was sure I would learn something new from it, and I was sure that I had misread or missed parts of it all together.

First, I had a direct recollection of Stephen King saying that a good sized book was 180,000 words, and a vague recollection that he also often wrote first drafts in the 380,000 word range. I talked about this with people at the PNWA conference last July, and people thought I was misremembering. I wasn’t. King does say both things. I blame Mr. King for making me feel like the first draft of the original ‘Nowhere Home’ was woefully insufficient at 139,000 words. Little did I know it was almost twice as long as it should have been.

He also rails against laying out the plot of a book ahead of time. The book is the book. It will go where it goes. Yes, to a point. Writers with 50 publications to their credit can say that, and people will read it. But for a new writer, writing without a plot can be deadly. Not just for the book, but for the writer’s morale. If a hundred pages into the first draft, you have no idea where it’s going, it’s crushing. That said, I’ve written all three of my novels without a plot outline. My next one I am outlining, because I want to write faster and better. That’s not to say I won’t deviate from the plot if the story changes direction. I actually hope to God it does. But the outline is at least my fallback to keep me going when the ‘muse’ is taking a day off.

King also says he reads about 70 books a year. That’s 1.35 books a week. A very impressive number. I would almost bet he didn’t read that much when he was working a full time job (or two). I know I don’t have time to read that much, unless I am not writing. However, it did point out to me that I still suckle from the ‘glass teat’ (television) far too much, and yes, there are bits and snippets of free time that I can use to get more reading done, or more writing, or more marketing for my work.

Those issues aside, I loved this book, and it is a must read for every writer. In fact, anyone who likes Steven King at all should read the ‘CV’ and the ‘On Living’ sections. The ‘On Living’ chapter brought tears to my eyes. King puts you on the shoulder of that road in Maine after getting hit by the van in 1999, and you can’t help but to BE him while you are reading it. After reading The Dark Tower Series earlier this year, the scenes are doubly powerful and interesting.

But the critical question I came out of the book with is ‘Why do I write.’ I would love to say I am as altruistic as King and I write because I can’t stop. Sure, I have those moments. But there are many other reasons.

I write in the hope that I may someday be able to do it for a living. As a child I always wanted to be an astronaut. That dream was given up sometime around 1994 when I squeaked through my last finals in college and realized I just didn’t have ‘The Right Stuff’.

Around the 5th or 6th grade, I realized that not only did I love to read, but I loved to write stories as well. I plotted grand adventures inspired by Farley Mowat (Lost in the Barrens) and Robert Arthur, Jr (The Three Investigators) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan). When I say inspired by, a lot of what I wrote was just pure copy, with my name instead of the original author. Ruth Ann Jensen, my teacher in Grade 7, and the mother of a good friend of mine, really inspired me to start writing my own stories. She’s also the one who, when trying to teach the class the meaning of ‘outspoken’, said:

“For example, Joe is outspoken.” I looked at her slightly hurt, to which she replied. “That’s not always a bad thing, Joe.”

But from the 7th grade on, writing was always my backup plan if the whole science thing didn’t work out. In high school, when it came time to apply for colleges, I actually applied to a journalism school, but chose science instead. Probably better for my pocketbook in the long run, and a better lifestyle for me, but there will always be part of me that wonders, what if I had gone the other way?

So writing is something I’ve always enjoyed. It gives me power over the worlds I create and the ability to have adventures I will never have. It allows me to escape from the mundane and to escape from a physical body that has been limited over the years by a progressive disease that will probably cripple me complete by the time I die.

Writing also allows me to feel productive. I work hard at my job, but, by and large, the work I do is not Important, with a capital ‘I’. It pays the bills (very well), and allows me to care for my family. I don’t have any worries about not making next month’s mortgage, or putting food on the table. I ride the train back and forth to work every day, and if I were to sit there day after day and do nothing but read or do crosswords, I’d feel like both my life and my talents were going to waste. Five years from now, most of the work I have done will be irrelevant. No one will remember it, except that it has sustained the people who used it for that time. There just won’t be anything of it left. There are days where I go to work so I can ride the train and write. If I ever become a full time writer, I sometimes worry that I’ll still have to get up at 5:00 AM and catch the train, because that’s the best place I’ve found to write since I was living in a crappy apartment in North York, Ontario while in college.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t want the fame and the money that goes with breaking out. But that would be part of enabling me to write full time, and sometimes I fear that a rash of sudden celebrity would steal key years from my life with my kids, or destroy my desire to write.

But what writing really gives me, is a chance to leave a legacy. A mark on the world, or to influence the reader in such a way that they feel better for having read my stuff. I am supremely jealous of those who have done that in any art form. I look at the Beatles, and the songs they created, and I wonder if they knew, way back when, what an effect ‘Eleanor Rigby’ would have fifty years later. Did Beethoven know how long his Symphonies would be played?

So I write so I can write more. I write to make me feel like I am inspiring the next generation of adventures. Hopefully someday, as mankind is setting out for a new planet, or a young boy (or girl) is deciding that they want to do something with their lives, that one of the stories I wrote somehow influences them for the better. Hopefully, one of those kids is my kid, or my grandchildren, and they’ll have pleasant memories.

For now, I’ll just settle for people enjoying my stories and recommending them to friends. Maybe someday, I’ll see some stranger reading my book on a train or an airplane, and I can smile to myself, open up my laptop, and be inspired to write the next page.

Book Review: Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

2010-01-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

I’m a big Bernard Cornwell fan. I don’t think I’ve read every one of his books, but I’ve got at least one full shelf of his work, including the entire Richard Sharpe series, The Archer’s Tale Series, and the Uhtred the Viking Series. All are great reads. You know what you are getting with Cornwell’s stuff: a manly-man hero in a historical setting, a small battle followed by a big battle, with one antagonist, usually, but not always, someone who is supposed to be on his side. There’s always a woman as well, a love interest for the hero, put in danger because of the hero’s obligations. The books are predictable in their characters. But I -- and a great many other people -- love them not despite that, but because of that.

What having familiar (some might say cardboard) characters enables Cornwell to do is to focus on the story, which is the character we readers of this historical fiction most care about. I love learning about eras of history of which I only had name recognition prior to reading a book. In fact, some of my favorite parts of Cornwell’s books are the Historical Notes at the end of the books that let me know what was real, and what was literary license.

In Agincourt, Cornwell tells the story of three battles fought between the English and the French in the year 1415: The Siege of Soissons, The Siege of Harcourt and the Battle of Agincourt. The reader follows Thomas Hook, an English archer, through these battles, and through battles with people from his past. The historical aspects of the story are wonderful, especially the second half of the book, with the focus on Agincourt. Unfortunately, this time the cardboard characters are paper thin, the dialog forced, and the writing, well, a little bland and repetitive. Not that it was repetitive from other books, but within this book I saw the same sentence repeated three times in different chapters.

Perhaps I’ve been reading too much about good writing lately, and I start to notice things that should have been caught by an editor. But this book just didn’t flow like the rest of Cornwell’s work, and the result was a little flat. Definitely not his best work, but because Agincourt (the event) is such an important historical battle -- not for the military strategists, but for its place in historical context – I still recommend reading it. If you are a first time Cornwell reader, don’t let it scar you into not reading more of his work. If you’ve read him before, just go into this one with the knowledge that Agincourt (the battle) is fascinating and gruesome, while Agincourt (the book) is almost interesting, and a little gruesome.

Weekend Update

2010-01-11T19:52:00.001-08:00

This was a pretty productive weekend, considering everything we wanted to do involved using cash because we are still waiting for our new credit cards to be delivered since the old ones were stolen last week. But from what I hear, it’s happening to everyone these days, and it really wasn’t a lot to deal with.

Anyway, Friday night we finally broke down and watched ‘The Godfather Part III’, which, except for a few lines that are now social clichés, was a pretty pathetic end to a great series. Sophia Coppola, was bad bad bad. But that’s pretty much accepted at this point. The most disappointing one was Dianne Keaton. Felt like she was reading the words. Glad we saw the whole series, and finally sent the movie back to Netflix after 3 months on our mantle. But at 2 hours and 50 minutes, I was disappointed.

Saturday, we went furniture shopping for a bookshelf, some dressers and possibly bunk beds for the kids, though we won’t use the bunks until they are much older. We were worried we wouldn’t be able to fit everything into the car. Not to worry. The bookcase we want takes 8 weeks to be delivered. I think they have to plant the trees for it yet. And we held off on everything else, so we came home with nothing but full tummies of Swedish Meatballs from IKEA’s cafe.

My thrill for the weekend was a forty minutes nap on Saturday afternoon. That’s two Saturdays in a row now. What a great tradition!

We then went back to South Center for our friend Dave’s birthday bash, at ACME Bowl. It was a good time. I didn’t have a gutter ball all night. But then again, I wasn’t bowling. Hey, with a shoulder the pops out while painting, and a thumb that can’t hold a French fry, it wasn’t going to be a good night for anyone nearby if I started swinging twelve pounds of rock in an enclosed space.

Sunday we had a great visit with Monika and Joe, and treated them to a Sunday morning of parenting. Kids running around, riding bikes, screaming, fighting, hitting, crying, being cute. It’s like a carnival ride. Luckily for Joe and Monika, they could get off the train whenever they wanted.

We also watched “Terminator, Salvation” on Sunday. A pretty good movie, well done, with a good story line. I never even saw T3: Rise of the Machines, and I don’t think I missed much.

That was the weekend, in a nutshell. We lead such exciting lives!

Resolutions

2010-01-10T16:27:00.001-08:00

I’m a type A – goal oriented person, which basically means I set a goal every year to make New Years resolutions, and I have to create a list so I can check them off.

Here are mine for 2010

Get an agent. I don’t know that I’ll get published this year, but by the end of the year, I want to be working with a good agent to develop the plan to get my books into the marketplace. I can control the work I put into getting an agent. I can’t do much about getting a publisher to publish my stuff, besides, of course, writing better stuff.
Be more social. I’ve been a bit of a social recluse the last three years as the focus has been on the kids and on my job. But now that my job is stable, and the kids are not quite so demanding, I’d like to get out more and enjoy time with friends and do more adult things.
Furnish the house. We’ve very slowly added a few items of furniture over the past few years, but we’ve always had higher priorities or sudden unexpected expenses that prevent us from turning the place from somewhere we live, to somewhere we LIVE. All signs point to this being the year we finish the big furniture pieces, paint some walls, and find something to put up so the place doesn’t look like a beige mausoleum.
Blog more consistently. For me, blogging is a way to keep the family informed of what is going on, and a way of creating a record so we can look back on these years and remember what was going on during each period of time. When I go such long times between blog entries, I know I really am going to miss out on things, and the years will go by so fast with no record. The only problem with this resolution is that blogging is the first thing to get dropped when I am writing or working a lot, so something else has to go. For me, my hope is that I watch less TV.
Get my legs back in shape. For those of you who don’t know, I used to be a long distance cyclist. In 1996-1997, I could cycle a hundred miles in a day, and frequently did two hundred and fifty miles a week. Now, I doubt if i could make it twenty. I’ve been exercising my upper body as rehab on my shoulders, but my legs have really suffered, and I miss the power I used to be able to generate there, and the thrill of a long downhill ride.

Those are the top five new things for 2010. 4 out of the 5 things require more time, but to me, that’s just a matter of being more efficient with the time I waste on other things, and making sure that I spend less time at home working. That’s a hard thing to do, especially for the type of work I do. But it is a choice I can make, and I have the power to help instantiate change at my work.

I also am looking for the little things in my life that take up time that can be automate, or outsourced. Not sure what they are, because I think I already run a pretty tight time ship. But there has to be something. Maybe I can get someone else to eat for me….

Some Pictures. Finally

2010-01-07T20:40:00.000-08:00

We went to Hawaii for Joe and Monika's wedding in November. Somebody looks happy.

Reece on the rocks of the Black Sand Beach in Hawaii

Lorelai opening hjer Christmas Orange. (We were all out of coal)

Reece loves his fireman hat

Captain Nemo, I presume?

Pretty damn cute.

Little Rascals

2010-01-07T18:40:00.001-08:00

We all know this blog isn’t about me. It’s about the kids. So I’d better give them some coverage before my sister throws a fit.

The kids will turn three in a couple of weeks. They’re pretty psyched up for that, since just a couple of weeks ago was Christmas, and that was the first time they came to understand what PRESENTS were. Reece has loved Thomas the Train ever since the first time daddy turned it on so he could get five minutes of piece and quiet. Now, Reece will flip through the little catalogs of Thomas the Train gear that come with other Thomas stuff, ask us to read it to him, and say things like ‘I need that one.’ or ‘I don’t have Annie and Clarabelle, yet.’ We’ve gotten him quite a few of the little wooden trains, and for the most part, it’s been a good experience. He’s definitely improved his hand-eye coordination putting them together, though the first week or so I wanted to slash my own wrists with the stupid little bridge that fell apart every time he jostled it. We got the set for both of them, but Reece considers it his, and won’t usually let Lorelai play with it. She doesn’t usually mind, but that depends on the day, and whether or not she’s in a mood to torment him. The great thing is that there will be times he will disappear into the ‘playroom’ and be quite content laying on the floor, running the trains around ‘The Island of Sodor’.

Lorelai, on the other hand, is a social child. And one who wants to be around adults. Kids aren’t that fascinating to her, but if there is an adult conversation going on, she has to be there, and be part of it. She usually just sits there, and has this giant smile on her face, but if there is a conversation going on, and she can’t be part of it, there will be trouble. At Christmas, we were in Ephrata at my in-laws house, and Lorelai’s favorite time was sitting at the kitchen table with Aunt Lori, Grandma and Mommy and having a girls talk.

Other than trains, Reece’s favorite thing is fire engines. He knows what trucks are pumpers, and what are ladder trucks. If a TV show has a fire truck in it, it’s his kind of show. Fireman Sam is a really annoying computer generated carton from the UK that Reece just can’t get enough of. Did I mention it’s really annoying? We changed our TV setup around a week ago, and lost the channel that fills Reece’s Fireman Sam fix. He didn’t take that too well. There was screaming and crying and tantrums involved.

The big accomplishment lately has been Lorelai’s potty training. I hate to jinx it, but she’s pretty much done. I don’t think she’s had an accident in a month or so, and most nights her diaper is dry too. We’re not quite sure when to stop putting a diaper on her at night. She doesn’t quite go at night completely on her own, and we’re reluctant to go back to five wakeups a night. But it sure is nice to be down to fewer bags of dirty diapers every week.

Reece isn’t doing as well in the potty training area. You kind of reach that point where you start to wonder if he’ll ever get it, and worry you’ll be changing his diapers when he’s fifteen. At this point, he eats exactly what we eat, and sometimes just as much, so you can imagine what the poops are like. He knows he’s going. He knows he supposed to go on the potty. He just hasn’t connected the two yet. I’m telling ya, sometimes the amount of crap in his diaper is just wrong.

Bedtime is an adventure now as well. We tuck them in around 7:15-7:30. Then they run around for half an hour, and we tuck them in again, usually after a potty break. Then ten minutes later, we find them on the landing between the first and second floor, where they can see what’s on the TV. Sometimes it’s a TV show. Sometimes it’s a video game Daddy would rather not have them see. Tuck them in again. Twenty minutes later, they’re still singing. Lorelai is the instigator here. She is a night owl. On his own, Reece would be asleep by 7:45 every night. Lorelai keeps him up. But Reece loves to fake sleep. Where ever he gets caught out of bed, he just closes his eyes, and pretends to be asleep. Doesn’t matter if he is standing or sitting, or laying upside down on a stair. He figures it’ll get him out of trouble. It usually does.

Winter in the Pacific Northwest is a balancing act between heavy rain, light rain, mist, and bitter cold. The kids don’t get to play outside a lot, and I think we all miss that. They get out to a lot of places with Courtney, our nanny, but on the weekends, we don’t do a lot of things. Hopefully we can figure out a way to fix that. For their birthday, we’re taking them to a fire station for a full tour. I think that’ll go over really well. The fire station may never be the same.

A few weeks ago, Reece went through a stage where he would say ‘I don’t like this house. I’m running away.’ Then we’d hear the front door open, and then close. 15 seconds later it would open back up.

“Reece, is it cold out there?”

“Yeah.”

He hasn’t done it as much the last week or two, but I warned the neighbors just in case.

Our weekly trips to Starbucks have evolved lately as well. Lorelai likes to order a Chonga Bagel with cream cheese. The baristas there think that is very sophisticated, but we know she orders it so she can lick the cream cheese off the plastic knife. That’s my girl.

Reece likes to have chocolate donuts, but we only do that when leaving him with someone else for the day. He reminds me of an outboard motor for a boat, with no boat, when he has that much sugar. Legs start to spin faster and faster, and next thing you know he’s running in crazy circles around you.

They both still love to read books, but had their nightly book reading privileges revoked when they turned 5 books into snow one night, like the people on Sesame Street did. Paper everywhere. Momma was not happy.

They got little medical kits and Reece got a fireman’s helmet for Christmas, and if you lay down on the floor for any length of time, they will try to ‘help’ you. Be forewarned: You need to protect all places they might think a thermometer should go.

I’m hoping to post some photos and video’s tonight I’m on the train now), so hopefully you won’t hang me for all these words. But this is what happens when a writer finishes a book. The fingers still need exercise.

I lied

2010-01-06T21:25:00.001-08:00

Okay, not going to blog on family stuff. I feel the need to go through the books / movies I’ve read / watched since my last media update. OCD, that’s me.

These are in no particular order since I rearranged my office and cleaned up my shelves, so I have no idea what’s been moved where.

Books:

Hatchet – Gary Paulsen. Young Adult Adventure classic. Can’t believe I never read this as a kid, but I can’t wait to hand it off to Reece and Lorelai

Stephen King – The Dark Tower (Book 7 of the Dark Tower Series). Okay, I didn’t just read this one, I read the whole series. And it’s a long series. Took me over two years to read it all, not like I’ve been busy or anything. A couple of the books were real grinds to get through, and I do remember skipping four or five pages of fluff at one point, I think it was in book 6. But the end of book 7, and especially the author’s notes, hit me hard, and really made me examine why I read, and why I write. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” I will never forget that line, and hopefully the lessons learned from it. There should be college courses taught about the Dark Tower.

The First Five Pages – Noah Lukeman – A must read for any budding or starving author. I will re-read this one a few times. Even Lisa read this one and liked it because it helps her to provide me with good feedback after she reads one of my stories.

A Writer’s Guide to Fiction – Elizabeth Lyon – I’ve been trying to improve my writing, and this book gave me some good ideas, and reinforced a lot of what Lukeman talked about in TFFP. I’d recommend it for writers, even as just a reference book to flip open every once in a while and try to pull some point from the pages.

The Scourge of God – SM Stirling – Fourth Book in ‘The Change Series’. This series and SM Stirling’s Nantucket Series are probably the one set of books I’ve read in the last few years that I can give the most credit to for getting me back into the writer’s chair. This one isn’t as good as the rest of the series, but oddly enough, after reading the Dark Tower series, and learning from it, I think I appreciate this series more, and in particular, Stirling’s great descriptive passages. There were a lot of negative reviews for this book from loyal fans, and a few months ago, I would have panned it too, but if you take a step back, and enjoy the journey of the reading, instead of just rushing through it to get to the end, it is an enjoyable tale.

Ender’s Shadow – Orson Scott Card – Great Book, probably as good as Ender’s Game. Must-read science fiction

Lucifer’s Hammer – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. second time I’ve read this one. Last time was in college. Not as good this time around. I don’t reread books very often (Patriot Games and Lost in the Barrens being the only two I can recall that I’ve read more than twice). I remembered this as being a great book. I was a little disappointed.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy – I was wary of this book because Oprah liked it, and it was very prosy. But again, reading the Dark Tower made me stop and pay attention, and enjoy it. And I couldn’t put it down and read it in two days.

Flipping Out & The Rabbit Factory – Marshall Karp – Good, quick, entertaining reads. Don’t let the size of the books fool you. You can read one of these in a weekend, even if you have a cold and the kids are hanging off you.

Sword Song – Bernard Cornwell – Another in the Uhtred of Bebanburg Vikings in 800 AD stories. Nobody tells these like Cornwell, and I always seem to have another of his on my shelf.

That’s the books (I think).

Movies:

Traitor – Guy flick. Nothing spectacular. Ridiculous ending. 1/4 stars

Shake Hands with the Devil – Documentary about General Romeo Dallaire and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide - Pretty Good, with some hard to watch footage. But not as good as the book. 3/4 stars

Up – Not a little kids animated movie. Adult stuff in here. Funny at times. Amazing how we start to take CGI for granted. Show this to someone from 1995, and they’d be in shock. 2/4 stars

State Of Play – Better than average thriller. Russell Crowe helped this movie. Affleck did not. 2/4 stars

Gone With the Wind – I’d never seen this before, and it was on my bucket list. Pretty amazing considering when it was made. Good thing Scarlet wasn’t whiny the whole time, or frankly, I wouldn’t have given a damn about the ending either. 3/4 stars

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince – best of the Potter series. 4/4 stars

Angels and Demons – Tom Hanks, not the right person for this role. He’s too… big for it. 2/4 stars

The Proposal – Silly chick flick, but not as bad as it could have been 2/4 stars

Appaloosa – Yikes. Bad. 1/4 stars

Get Smart – About what you’d expect. 2/4 stars

I Love You, Man – A cover your eyes, it’s kinda a guy movie with bathroom humor. I laughed more than Lisa did. – 1/4 stars

The Godfather Parts 1&2 – Great Movies. Glad I watched them. Godfather 3 has been sitting on out shelf since October. We’re scared it will ruin the rest. 4/4 stars

X-Men Origins – Wolverine – bad. bad. bad. 1/4 stars

Saving Grace – British humor. Barely. 1/4 stars

I’ll stop there. Most people probably stopped earlier, and are cursing me, and asking me, where the hell are the kids?

Soon. I promise.

Getting Caught Up

2010-01-06T06:59:00.001-08:00

Where to start… where to start? I can’t cover everything in one entry, so I’ll make a series of short entries for each topic that comes to mind. No one wants to read forty pages all at once, anyway.

I’m writing this on the train, a time I usually reserve for writing stories or reading. But I recently finished another draft of my third novel ‘Nowhere Home’, and am taking a little break before starting in on the next one. I’m going to do a little more planning for this one to see if there is enough there to make the three book series a four book series before I begin.

I am still actively looking for an agent, or I should say that I have recently resumed actively looking for an agent. I spent Sept-Dec splitting the original ‘Nowhere Home’ into two books: ‘The Forgotten Road’ and ‘Nowhere Home’. I rewrote a new 30000 word ending to ‘The Forgotten Road’, and carried through the changes to ‘Nowhere Home’. TFR is now about 85000 words, while the latest draft of NH is about 67000. Until I get an agent, TFR is probably at the ‘done’ stage. I’m not planning any significant edits for it. Sooner or later, a book just has to be done, and you move on. NH still has a couple of edits left on it. Lisa just finished reading it last night, and I’m sure she has a few typos and grammar errors for me to fix. I also feel the need to add another 10000 words to it, but I want them to be good words, not just filler.

2009 was the year I learned a lot about writing. I had to go and read some books about the craft. I spent far too much time editing, but in the end, I think that definitely taught me how to be a better writer, and I hope it shows in my future work, which should take less time to get to the completed state. I want 2010 to be about new writing. I’m aiming for a completed book per year while I am writing part time. In the future, if I start writing full time, maybe I can do two.

Since I’m on my way to work right now, I’ll cover work next. It’s been a very busy last few months. I made a trip to Los Angeles in November for the Microsoft Professional Developers conference, which was fun and very educational, but exhausting as well. It was the first time I was away from the kids since they were born. I thought that would just kill me, but… gulp… it was a bit of a refreshing break. It wasn’t a matter of getting more sleep (I didn’t), or staying up late and partying (I didn’t) or even having good food where you’re not rushed and trying to get your food down before milk spills or someone gets a timeout (though that was nice). It was just different, and enjoyable. And I couldn’t do it more than a couple of days a year.

We’ve been working on a couple of very large projects for one of my customers, and I spent a lot of evenings and weekends through October, November and December trying to get stuff to work. We’re wrapping those projects up now, and we were all able to take a little break at Christmas and New Years and get a little recuperation time. I spent four glorious days at New Years not responding to a single work email, and that really helped.

This year, the company has big growth plans, and I’ll be right in the middle of it all, so I expect it to be another busy year. There are lots of things I plan on learning about, so I won’t be getting bored. I do really notice how being connected 24x7 to email through my IPhone and working in the evenings affects my life and my health, so I’m hoping that growth means that we can mature as a company as well, and do a better job estimating work, and a better job getting the work done during business hours. Working at home more than one or two nights a week really wears your down after a while. Doing it 6-7 days a week for three or four months at a time is just plain grueling.

Okay, train is almost to Seattle. I’ll cover the family stuff in the next entry.

PNWA Conference Day 3

2009-08-01T20:55:00.001-07:00

Today was all about listening to successful writers and how they do their craft, how they found success and what we need to do to get there. I met more famous people this weekend than I have met in my entire life. Joseph Finder, Robert Dugoni, Will North, Caitlin Kittredge, Cherie Priest, Richelle Mead, Lisa Mantchev, Kevin O’Brian, Mike Lawson, Royce Buckingham, and many more. Some of these aren’t world wide famous, but are certainly big writers within their own genre, and they know their stuff. They’ve been doing it for a while. They study their craft. They work at it. They love it. They want other people to be good at it. It was like attending a three day Nerd Dinner for writers, and it will have a huge impact on my writing career.

I loved to hear how different writers write. Mike Lawson did all his writing when he was getting started riding the ferry from Seattle to the Bremerton ship yard, much like I do my work on the train.

Royce Buckingham and I talked through one of the short stories I was working on and I think we figured out how to novelize it, and how to get around a particularly bothersome issue in the plot. He liked the story, and that may lead to other opportunities as well. Connections are so important.

I have a really good lead on an agent now, but have some serious work to get done before I send it to her. She said she would wait, and would remember me (for good reasons).

I also met a couple of folks who I am going to work with to try to set up a writing group, which will be good for all of us. I’m excited to read their stuff, and to get feedback on my stuff.

It was also good to get home and see the kids for a few hours before they went to bed. I was talking to Lisa about the possibility of me taking a weekend to go to Manitoba to do some research for my book, and Reece looked at me and said ‘Daddy, don’t go away.’ Awwww.

PNWA Conference Day 2

2009-08-01T06:50:00.001-07:00

Okay, it’s the morning of Day 3 of the conference, and, like yesterday, I’m a day behind on blogging. And yesterday, I was writing this at the conference where connectivity to their network was $7 / minute. Yes, you heard me right. So the day 1 article I just uploaded was written 24 hours ago. Today, I’m up early again, but writing this at home before I leave.

Yesterday was all about the business of writing. All the sessions I attended dealt with pitching to agents, writing query letters, hearing about what is going on in the publishing world. Has anyone heard of the ‘SteamPunk?’ or ‘NewWeird’ genres? Apparently they’re the next Chick-Lit. You know, once chick-lit has run its course.

In the gaps between sessions, you stalk agents. Literally stalk them. Catch them on the way to the bathroom or when they’ve got a mouthful of food. You get about 15 seconds to try to sell your book to them. I’m serious. I’ve spent 12 months working on this bloody thing, and I’m lucky if I get to the third sentence of my speech.

I can handle rejection when it’s based on “Its not an area I work in”, but the hard ones to take are the ones who say they are interested in the area, but not in your book, for one simple reason. It’s too long for Young Adult. And you look at them and say, but it’s not young adult. It’s got very adult themes. And they say ‘But your protagonist is 16. Adults don’t want to read about 16 year olds. Make him 20, and it works. Or make it YA, and cut 40% of it.”

Seriously. 40%. They want me to cut 57,000 words out of my book. Ouch. I took that pretty hard, but it is no use arguing with them, because they are right, and you know this because you don’t hear it once, or twice, but three, maybe four times in the span of a couple of hours.

So after hearing it a few times, and getting through the grief, and it is grief, because you go through the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, you have to decide what to do. I clearly can’t just just 57,000 words from my book. What I can do, is break the book into two pieces. The first two thirds of NOWHERE HOME told one story. The last third started to take the tale in a different direction to set up for what I had planned in book two.

Well, as it turns out, that first two thirds is about 80,157 words. Perfect. The second part is 57,000, but when I pull in some of the work I’ve done on book two already, I’ve got nearly the second book already completed. I’ll have to do a lot of editing yet to cleanup the ending of the first and the beginning of the second, but I know I can do it, and by the end of the summer, I’ll have two completed books: THE LONGEST ROAD, which now becomes the title of the first book, and NOWHERE HOME, which becomes the title of the second book. I’m now looking forward to making this work.

I talked to a lot of people yesterday as I was going through this process, and received a lot of advice and support. I just hope I can stay in contact with some of them as time goes on. Pam Binder, the President of the PNWA is an amazing woman, and she an I have talked a lot during this conference. She saw the look on my face yesterday after a brutal agent rejection, and spent about fifteen minutes talking with me. She had friends waiting to go do something, and held them off until she was sure we had put a plan in place to deal with the length issue. Amazing.

Last night, at the dinner, I got to listen to Joseph Finder speak about how he got his start in writing, how he had a lot of help to get going, and took a lot of risks. He developed a 3 year plan to get a novel published and then to decide whether or not to continue writing, and sold his first book just shortly before his three year deadline. Lisa and I have talked about a 3 year plan here from time to time as well, but I’m not about to quit my day job to pursue writing full time.

One of the things I do feel really good about is that people are amazed when I tell them that I turned out the original 139000 words of Nowhere Home in about 4.5 months, working mainly on the train. Agents love to hear a writer can do volume (as long as it isn’t crap). Now that I know my books should be 80000 words, I could easily turn out two books a year, if not more. I have lots of ideas in my head for books that fall into the area I’ve been writing, I just didn’t think I could stretch them to 120000 – 140000 words. Now that I know I don’t have to, that’s really going to see my output jump up.

Anyway got to go get the kids up and get ready to hit the road. Have a great day.

PNWA Conference Day 1

2009-08-01T06:04:00.001-07:00

I’m at the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference in SeaTac, Washington this weekend. It’s actually early on the second day. There’s no one else in the whole conference center at this hour. I’m a wee bit early, so I thought I’d use the time productively. Yesterday was an interesting day, in many ways.

The conference center is literally right across the street from a building I worked in from 1999 to 2004, so I know the neighborhood pretty well. There’s a Denny’s Diner not to far from here I used to go to from time to time, and since I was early yesterday (and hungry), I decided to swing in and have one of my guilt pleasures, a Denny’s French Slam, with bacon, and true diner coffee.

When I got off the plane from Denver in 1999, I stayed at a hotel just a few hundred yards from Denny’s for the first week. The first night I was there, I met a waitress named Geri. She was in her early 50’s then, the picture of an American diner coffee slinger, the deep voice of a life long smoker, or at least inhaler of second hand smoke, as nice as all getout, and just really friendly. Her husband worked for Alaska Airlines, where I was just starting, and she and I struck up a friendship. I’d swing by once (or more) a month. She knew my order. We talked about the airline, we talked about what was going on in my life. We laughed. We went through Flight 261 together. We went through 9/11 together. This Denny’s was half a block from the airport. Pilots, crew, staff from every airline were in and out of this Denny’s at all hours of the day and night. To Geri they were all family.

When I came in yesterday, Geri wasn’t there. I asked the guy behind the counter where she was. He paused for a moment, and then told me that Geri had passed almost a year ago from lung cancer. She had gone quickly. A few weeks from diagnosis to death, and it had hit the staff pretty hard. I sat there for a moment, a little stunned. Then I started to tell the new waiter about how I knew her, and a couple of my memories. He just smiled, kind of nodded his head, as if to agree, what a great ole gal. Geri, I’ll miss you.

I got to thinking after that, as I often do after hearing news like this, about how lucky I am. I’ve got a fantastic family, a great job, a hobby that is truly fulfilling, and have been fortunate in the past few years to be in the right place at the right time to be financially safe, living in a great neighborhood with great neighbors. Sometimes it’s really important to take a step back and just remember that, and just as important to say it out loud. So to all of who are reading this, thanks. You’re part of the reason I’m so lucky. You care enough about what is going on in my life to want to read about it. That’s means a lot.

Last night, author Terry Brooks (who wrote the Shannara Series, Phantom Menace and 30+ other books) did the keynote speech. He talked about Fame, Fortune, Friendship, and Fulfillment. He said he had achieved Fame. He knew this because his son, who was in his early teens at the time, told him has was famous because he worked with George Lucas on Phantom Menace. He had achieved Fortune. He knew this, because when he asked his publisher one time about a bigger advance on a book, his publisher, Mr. Del Ray, basically wondered why a man with more money than God needed a bigger advance. His talk about Friendship revolved around the fact that his 10 year old son had put all his personal information on a social networking site, and he now had plenty of friends, and didn’t want anymore. But his talk about fulfillment aimed directly at the heart of all the writers in the room. He talked about getting so immersed in a character that you can’t separate them from yourself. He talked about the nerves of starting a new book, and not knowing where it is going to go when you sit down. The relief you have when it is done, and the angst you feel when you are away from the keyboard for too long. He hit it right on the nose.

Don’t get me wrong. I still want my share of fame, fortune and friendship, but that fulfillment piece, that’s where it’s really at for a writer.

I met a lot of interesting people yesterday, and I’m hoping that a few of become good friends. There are some really talented people here, and some that are… a little odd. I’m trying to set up, or join a writing critique group to learn to write better, and it’s important to have people you like and trust in the group. This is where you find those people. Yesterday was a day for practicing your book pitch to fellow authors, listening to feedback, and making alterations. Today is the real deal, where we start to meet with agents and editors. I’ve listened to some really good pitches, and some not so good. My first draft fell somewhere in the middle, but with a little help, I’ve got it tightened up. I talked to Pam Binder last night, the president of the PNWA, and she asked for my pitch, and she said it was really good and tight. We’ll see.

People are starting to arrive now. Have a great day!

Getting back to Normal

2009-07-29T06:58:00.001-07:00

The kids were starting to feel better last night. How do we know this? They’ve got enough energy to get into trouble.

Prior to them being sick, we always closed their bedroom door at night so they couldn’t wander around the house, and so that little noises like a squeaky floor board right outside their door wouldn’t wake them up. But when they got sick, we left the door open so we could hear them better. They were sick, so they made no attempt to close the door again.

Last night, we left the door open and put them to bed. We had a service guy over to deal with some wasps nests outside the garage, and Lisa wanted him to check the bathroom fan vent to make sure there wasn’t a nest there. So I took him upstairs, and lo and behold, there was Reece, quietly standing at the top of the stairs. I put him back to bed.

A while later, I had to run back upstairs. I noticed the door to their room was open wider than what I left it, and sure enough, their was no Reece in his bed. I found him sitting in the rocking chair in our room, presumably getting ready to watch Elmo on the TV in our room. They’ve watched a lot of TV during the last week they’ve been sick. I think he’s getting a little too used to it.

While I was outside with the ‘Bug relocation expert’, apparently Lisa had two more visits from the little tyke exploring his new found freedom. Hopefully they get used to it soon, and just go to sleep.

It’s going to be a scorcher here today, so it’s unlikely that they will get much time outside even if they are healthy enough to go. Which means more Elmo, more Thomas the Train, more Fire Trucks (the TV show Emergency from the 1970s).

It could be worse.

Odds and Ends

2009-07-28T19:32:00.001-07:00

I’m actually blogging this from the train on the way home from work. I’ve got a bit of writer’s block getting going on my next book, and thought, what the heck. Writing is writing.

We’ve got two sick kids at home right now. Reece was feeling better until last night, and then he overate at dinner and spewed it all back up. Lorelai threw up yesterday morning, then started running a fever, and had other ‘gastro-intestinal distress symptoms.’ Her fever was down this morning, but she was throwing up again, and was on the ‘a teaspoon of water ever five minutes’ regimen today. I really hope that this passes soon. It’s really hard to see two very happy, outgoing kids just curled up on your lap, too weak to stand up or walk around the house. Let me rephrase that. It’s not hard. It’s heartbreaking.

Changing topics completely now.

I found a really cool tool at www.PocketDresser.com. I’ve had problems doing up buttons for years, to the point where I only wear button up shirts when I have a lot of extra time to get ready for work. I have CMT (Charcot Marie Tooth Disease), that has greatly reduced the strength in my thumbs to the point where my right thumb is completely useless. I had to stop playing guitar because I could no longer hold a pick, nor could I work the fret board with my left hand. My grip power in my right hand is less than a pound. Most people have 25-30 lbs of grip force. But with this tool, buttons become a… snap? I highly recommend it for anyone who has problems with their wrist or hands. Its a little bit pricey, but I’m thinking of getting a second one, one for home, and one for travel/work.

It’s in the upper 90’s (F) today here, and supposed to top 100 tomorrow, the hottest day ever in Seattle. Not for the 29th of July. Ever. That’s just wrong. The air conditioning at work was busted on Monday morning, and temps crept into the eighties in the office, and are still pretty warm and muggy today. It’s nothing like the summers on the farm baling hay and straw, but back then, I wasn’t such a wus either.

Lisa and I both got IPhones a few weeks ago. I had a lemon at first, and had to take it back after 4 days, but now I’ve got one that works. I know for sure that I will never be a power user, but it did come in handy for checking email when my project was going live at work. I do try to surf with it once in a while, but I’m pretty sure I could live without the web feature at this point if I had to give it up. I guess I reached the end of the internet a while ago. There are very few sites I check every day, and I’m close to a real computer often enough that I already hit sites that way.

Anyway, I’ve now reached the end of my brain. Catch you later.

Catching Up, Again

2009-07-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Slacker, that's me. You'd almost think that nothing has happened in our lives since I last blogged... in February? Wow.

But yes, a lot has happened. There's no way I can do this chronologically, and I'm sure I'll miss stuff, but here we go.

This week has been downright weird. I had Wednesday-Thursday-Friday off work, and planned to do a lot of yard work, a little shopping, and a lot of relaxing. But on Tuesday night, Reece came down with a stomach flu that we have never before seen the likes of (and hope to never see again). It came out of nowhere. One moment, we were tucking him into bed, the next moment he was a projectile puke spewing machine. We stood there like dolts, in shock I think, that vomit could fly that far, and BOUNCE! By the fourth retch, I had him in my arms and running to the toilet. Unfortunately, this was just the first of 20+ vomiting incidents over the next 48 hours. The p0or boy couldn't even keep water down, and we were getting really worried. By yesterday, the vomiting had stopped, and the diarrhea begun, stinking stuff reminiscent of a porta-potty left full all summer long in hot weather. He seems to be doing better today, though we're keeping his diet bland and letting him sleep as much as he wants to.

Luckily (knock on wood), no one else seems to have come down with this one. Lorelai was great through most of it, but we were very conscious not to ignore her while fawning over the sick brother to let her go green with jealousy.

The two of them are growing up so fast now. They're officially two and a half now. We bought them 'Run Bikes' that are like bicycles, but without pedals. They sit on the seat, and use their feet a la Fred Flintstone to power them along. Reece is a natural at it, and was jumping off curbs on the second day. Lorelai is a little more reserved, but she's learning.

Lisa went through a point in May / June where she didn't know if she would still have a job due to layoffs at her client, but she managed to find a new spot and will be there through the end of the year at least.

I just wrapped up a major project at work, building a product for Microsoft called Demo Showcase. You can see the results at www.demoshowcasesuite.com. It's been really well received by the customer and the users, and has built quite a reputation for our company and for myself. I have been blogging about it on my technical blog at http://devcape.blogspot.com. The project chewed up most of my free time in June and early July, so not much else got done (i.e. blogging here).

This week, I'm headed to the Pacific Northwest Writer's Association conference in SeaTac, WA for four days. I'm hoping to learn a lot in the various lectures, but I also have meetings lined up with an agent and an editor, and I hope to make some connections to get my book published. I launched my own website last month at www.joebeernink.com. You can read the first chapter of my book there. I've been spending a lot of time lately editing the book, so that has cut into my 'writing' time, but I hope to get back to that right after the conference.

The garden is doing well. I put in two raised 4' by 8' planter boxes this year, basically tripling the size of my garden. It's quite a bit more work, but so far we've had broccoli, lettuce, cucumbers, peas, yellow beans, tomatoes, green beans and summer squash on our table at night, fresh from the garden. We have Swiss Chard as well, except we keep forgetting to cook it up. We've got a big pumpkin growing and 3 more kinds of squash on the way. Next year, less lettuce (or different kinds perhaps), no spinach (slugs kept getting it), no Swiss Chard, half the amount of broccoli, and a better fence around the peas (the kids pulled them all down early in the season).

Lisa got me into reading a new author named Marshall Karp. His first book, The Rabbit Factory is very good, reminiscent of Janet Evanovich, but bigger plots. I just finished it yesterday and am trying to refrain from picking up the next one from the shelf until after the conference.

Other books I've read in the last few months:

The Eternity Artifact and The Parafaith War by L.E. Modesitt - Pretty good
The Jury Master by Robert Dugoni - okay, not great. I actually met Robert Dugoni at a PNWA meeting a few months back, and got the book autographed.
Sword Song - Bernard Cornwell - excellent as always
Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich - series is getting tired
Last of the Breed - Louis Lamour - Good story, ending is rushed (I know how that happens)
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card - This book was awesome. Scared to read any of his other books. I read one other book of his last year, and I hated it.
The Shining - Stephen King - The scariest freakin book I've ever read. I had to stop reading it at night.
How the West Was Won - Louis Lamour - Not great, but a fast read and enjoyable
Farmer in the Sky - Robert Heinlein - Great Read. Classic SF from the 1950's that is still enjoyable today.

Out movie watching time has dwindled severely, but here are a few we did manage to watch in the last few months:

Gran Torino -Good, but Oscar Worthy... no. 3/5
Marathon Man - I'd bet a lot of movies in the 1980's and beyond we're influenced by this one. Pretty good, if you understand what was going on in the world back then. 3/5
The Golden Compass - Bad movie, skip it 1/5
Marley and Me - average. Not great 2/5
Frost / Nixon -Amazing movie. See this one. 5/5
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Pretty good, worth watching 3/5
The Italian Job (1969) - Not as good as the remake. 1/5
Starter for Ten - Middling... chick flick 2/5
Death Race - If you just sit back and enjoy it for what it is, it'd not bad (4/5)
War, Inc. - Turned it off after 15 minutes (0/5)
How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - Oh what have you done, Simon Pegg (2/5)
Dan in Real Life - Not bad... for a chick flick (3/5)
Twilight - I don't get all the hype. Buffy was better (2/5)
How the West Was Won - not as good as the book (2/5)
Slumdog Millionaire very good, as you have probably already heard (5/5)
Frozen River - Pretty good (3/5)
The Duchess - Very good (for a chick flick) 4/5
Eagle Eye - A stretch to give it 2/5
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - Actually pretty funny (not for you, Mom) (3/5)
Half Nelson - If you're happy and want to be depressed, watch this. (2/5)
Tropic Thunder - Pretty Bad, Laughed once (1/5)
Wanted - Bad. Really Bad (1/5)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - A little bit funny (2/5)
Ghost Town - Eh... (2/5)
John Adams (Miniseries) - Great - Watch this one (5/5)
The History Boys - Okay, but a little uncomfortable to watch (2/5)
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Bad. Oh so Bad (1/5)
First Snow - Okay (3/5)
WALL-E - pretty good (4/5)

What you can determine from this list is that we watch far too many chick flicks, and the guys flicks the last few years have sucked. I'm hoping for a good summer blockbuster, soon.

Okay, we'll call it a day now, and pretend that I've updated you on everything that has happened. But if I'm lacking in good material in the next few weeks, I may just flash back to something else that went on between February and July, but I tell ya, I was working a lot, and a couple of months went by without me noticing much.

Introspection time

2009-02-17T19:46:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I went to a memorial service for a guy a used to work with, back in my airline days. He was 50 years old, with a wife and a fourteen year old daughter. He died of complications due to lung cancer, but wasn't a smoker, and was an athlete and outdoors man all his life. I never really knew him well, but we worked together for about 8 years on and off, and enjoyed giving each other crap and a lot of joking around.

He was diagnosed with cancer in July of 2008, and fought it with everything he had, and a positive spirit. I had lost touch with him after I left the company in January of 2008, and didn't even know he was sick until I was told that he had died a week ago last Sunday. It kind of took my breath away.

I went to the memorial for a couple of reasons. One, to show my support for the family, and to let them know that a lot of people will have good memories of him, far beyond those who knew him really well. The other reason, was probably a little selfish, but it was to see some of the folks I hadn't talked to or seen since I left the airline. I wanted them to know I still was out there, and that I hadn't forgotten all the good friendships when my career moved on.

But what really struck me as I listened to the eulogies, one given by his pastor, one given by his best friend, one by his brother, and one by his brother-in-law, was the long term bonds that he had formed in his life, and how much these people still meant to each other. His college room-mate was still his best friend. They lived close to each other, hung out on long weekends camping together on father-daughter trips, and drank micro-brews together on the weekends.

I felt slightly jealous of that. I've moved around a lot in my life, and was driven by a lot of solo projects and solo efforts. I enjoyed long distance cycling when I was in Colorado for the challenge and the solace. I like to read and write and play golf because it relaxes me and they're all things I can do by myself. I worked hard, and jumped at opportunities around the country (and from Canada to the US) because I could, and I didn't have anything to tie me down in my younger years. I don't regret moving here, as I have a great life, with a wonderful family and a job I love. But I haven't formed those long term bonds that he had. I don't have friends who have known me all my adult life and know all the stories about the stupid stuff I did in college, or that wild weekend in Wasaga Beach the summer of 1992, or how close I came to falling off a cliff in Utah in 1996. I know those stories, and some I'll tell to my kids (perhaps as cautionary tales), but there's something about someone you know coming up to you and asking 'Hey, do you remember that time..." that I probably won't get to experience as often as I'd like.

But I also realized, as I drove home, that it wasn't (hopefully) too late too make the effort to reconnect with some of those folks I used to know. More than to just add them as friends in Facebook, but to try to see them once in a while, hang out, and to help out when needed. Friendship isn't something that's always easy, but at least it's easier and more clear cut for me, since I'm a guy. Guy's have notoriously lower maintenance friendships than that other gender. I'm just saying.

Anyway, we all lead busy lives, and there's a hundred excuses we can find for not doing stuff with our friends. But maybe, just once in a while we need to sacrifice the important stuff, like watching a rerun of some old movie, to do the really important stuff like go and have a beer with an old friend, or to write an email to someone you haven't talked to in five or ten years.

So if you want to hang out and have a beer sometime soon, and I haven't called you already, give me a holler.

Recent Pictures

2009-02-10T20:00:00.001-08:00

What's new?

2009-02-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

Again, it's been a long time since we've updated this. Life gets pretty hectic, and some things fall by the wayside.

The kids are doing great, and talking up a storm. Whoever calls the house these days usually gets the 'treat' of getting to talk to them on the phone for as long as they want to listen. Its cute to us, but probably not so cute to the sales people who cold call us. No, we don't really do that. But we should.

Reece loves to play on the little V_Tech computers we bought them for Christmas. He can count (usually misses #4 for some reason), and knows a lot of the letters by sight now. He's better at some of the games than I am already. But I still kick his but on the XBox. No mercy!

We got out of our routine for a few weeks around Christmas and New Years with parties (birthdays x 3) and holidays, and three of four colds that ripped through the area and made everyone miserable. I was going to say this is the first week since Thanksgiving that everyone has been healthy, but there's a distinct possibility that the kids aren't feeling well tonight. They were asking to go to bed at 6:45 (a half hour early), saying Elmo was tired. And there was all the poop today. That might be another indicator.

We try not to watch a lot of TV, but the kids do love Sesame Street as long as Big Bird and Elmo are on all the time. And they like watching Daddy's Fire Truck show, an old drama I DVR from one of the Retro networks called "Emergency". My mom and I loved that show growing up, and unlike a lot of old shows, it hasn't aged badly. We'll watch an episode on Saturday or Sunday morning sometimes.

Work is going well for me, but extremely busy, and will stay that way until at least the end of July as I am working on a big project. I'm learning a lot, but this is definitely the most high profile project I've ever worked on, and the pressure to get it right is going to be enormous by the end of it.

Lisa is still working as well, and actually added a few more hours per week (now 3.5 days instead of 3). She's dancing a lot and going to another dance competition this weekend.

I finished writing my latest novel on January 1st, and have been going through my old writing and finishing off some short stories I've had laying around before I jump back in to a major effort again. I've been slowly editing it as well, and trying to find a publisher / agent to help me market it, but that, I hear, can be as much work as writing it in the first place. I'm not holding my breath at this point. Once I get this edit done on it, I may circulate it a little bit to see if people like it. It's going to take me a month or two to edit it at the rate I am going right now though.

I haven't done much reading lately, so no reviews today. We also haven't seen any really good movies lately either. We've been watching Battlestar Galactica, House, CSI, and a pretty funny show on the CBC called Being Erica.

I started working in the garden on Sunday, pulling weeds and planning the vegetables for this year. But it snowed here today, so I might still be a little early. Only in the Pacific Northwest do the weeds grow bigger in the winter than in the summer. What a mess.

Anyway, that's about it. I'll post some pictures tonight too if any of the 300+ on our camera turned out. We'll soon see.

We're dry

2009-01-08T06:59:00.001-08:00

Just a quick update on the weather.

We seem to have escaped the flooding in our neighborhood, though I was getting very concerned yesterday. Down river from us, close to Puyallup and Fife, they said the Puyallup River was 6 inches from going over the top of the levees. We have a lot of friends living in those areas, and some, I think , were evacuated, but I haven't heard officially.

The USGS site today listed the previous record for January 8 for the flow rate on the Puyallup River at Alderton (just a mile from Sumner and 2 miles from my house) at 8550 cubic feet per second. The actual rate today: 53200 cfs. 6.5 times the previous record. That's a lot of water. It's the biggest recorded since 1917. I guess that is the hundred year flood.

Anyway, the rain is slowing down, and the freezing level has come down the mountain from 9500 feet to 2000 feet, so the snow melt has stopped. The river has crested, and the worst seems to be over.

Of course, the Sounder (the commuter rail system) wasn't running this morning so I drove in. Not too bad considering everything going on. We'll see how the trip home goes this afternoon.

Monthly Update

2008-12-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

I posted some pics earlier today, so i guess this counts as my third post of the day, which brings my daily average for the month up to ... .5?

Anyway, the last few weeks have been rather hectic.

Two weeks before Thanksgiving (American Thanksgiving, that is) I went fishing on the Columbia River with my father-in-law Roger, and my brother-in-law, Eric. I drove out to Eastern Washington on Friday night, and arrived at Eric's place around 11:00 PM. I made the necessary mistake of stopping at Starbucks in Ellensburg, Washington to get a cup of coffee around 9:15 PM, and therefore couldn't sleep all night. We were up at 4:00 AM to get to the river. We stopped at McDonald's on the way there for more coffee and a biscuit. Those of you who know me will be shocked by that admission. I haven't eaten at McDonald's since 1997, and had a very long streak of avoiding that place that I cherished. I hope I have now started another steak.

It was frightfully cold, but a beautiful day other than that. The stars were out, the coyotes were howling, and at sunup, the fish started biting. I landed a Steelhead at 7:15 AM, and Roger got one at 7:25. We took to the boat around 9:30 and Eric pulled in a Pike Minnow (aka Squawfish) and a Steelhead later in the day. We left the river around 2:00, drove back to Eric's, gutted and filleted the fish, and I headed home, arriving around 7:15 PM, just in time to see my kids off to bed. I slept well that night.

The following weekend, Lisa did a dance competition up in Everett, WA, and I was left with the kids for pretty much the whole weekend. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. They tend to not act up as much when it's just one of us at home. Not sure why that is.

Thanksgiving weekend we went to Lisa's parent's place for Turkey Day, and came back late at night, did our Christmas shopping on-line on Friday, and tried to take it easy. Unfortunately, while playing with Lorelai on Saturday morning, I took a spill and re-dislocated my right shoulder, something I've done four or five times in the past. This one was pretty bad though and I ended up in the ER on Saturday afternoon verifying that I had gotten it back into place correctly. I had, but it was still pretty sore for a few days.

This weekend, we took the kids to the Aquarium in downtown Seattle, and they had a blast. We got pretty tired chasing them all around, but they loved to splash in the tidal pool displays where you can touch the starfish, and it was fun to watch them point at all the fish. We also had lunch at a place called the Fisherman's Bar and Restaurant down on the pier, and they gave us a free pass to the indoor carousel next door. The kids loved riding on the horsees and I had to pry Reece's fingers loose when the ride came to a stop. We met up with Lisa's sister Katy there and she took some great photos of the kids. Lorelai loved running around the pier with her (as you can see in the photos).

In other news, my work is going very well. I'm working on a really big project that is very high profile in my industry. It's going to be a career maker if it works and I'm learning a lot about brand new technology that hasn't even been released to the public yet, doing stuff I never thought I'd get into, and really enjoying it.

My writing is still going really well too. I'm not sure if I will meet my goal of finishing the story I am working on by Christmas since I don't know how it is going to end yet, but it's nearly two hundred pages long at this point and the words keep coming, so I'll keep typing until they don't.

My reading list over the last few weeks has included:

The Sunrise Lands (SM Stirling) - Book 4 in the Change series. Pretty good, but not as good as book 1

Down the Long Hills (Louis L'Amour) - An old west yarn about two kids lost in the prairies. Pretty good and a quick read

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King) - I loved this book about a little girl lost in the woods of Maine.

The Appeal (John Grisham) - Probably my least favorite JG book I've ever read, and I think I've read all his fiction.

Latest Movies
Definitely, Maybe -Yes it's a chick flick, but a good one. I'll give it 4 stars out of 5

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - not bad. I can see why it's so popular, but the soundtrack is pretty bad.

First Snow - Not bad, but not great

Four Brothers - Horrible movie. Skip it

Casino Royale - Had to watch this before we went to see Quantum of Solace (which we still haven't seen due to my shoulder injury.) Loved this movie.

Atonement - Pretty good movie, but a little hard to get into at the start

The Machinist - Freaky movie. Christian Bale dropped to 121 lbs to make this movie and looked really disgusting. The guy gets a little too into his part for my taste.

The Incredible Hulk - Actually a pretty good flick if you accept it for what it is, a comic book on steroids

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - A complete waste of 2 good hours.

Run, Fat Boy, Run - Not bad, but not up to my expectations for Simon Pegg

More fun on the Dock

2008-12-07T14:34:00.001-08:00

Age of Aquarium

2008-12-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

We took a trip to the Seattle Aquarium yesterday, and then had lunch down on the pier with Lisa's sister Katy. Here are a few photos from the day.

Fall Photos

2008-10-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

Hello, Everyone! It's Lisa with a guest blog entry. Joe's sister, Cindy, purchased a new camera and was kind enough to give us her fabulous "old" one. I think she got tired of our slow fuzzy pictures taken with our old digital. I don't blame her. I did, too. Now I actually enjoy taking pictures and am getting MUCH better shots. So, watch out - we may now overload you with pictures. Ok, promises, promises. I recognize it is one thing to take better pictures, and it is another to actually stop the laziness and post them. Well, for now here are a few pictures of two great fall activities of late...

Apple Harvest - Eastern Washington 2008:

That last one is of cousin Victoria and Grandpa in the orchard. Note to my family members -- I took a number of family pictures. Check out the Flickr site here http://www.flickr.com/photos/taleof2/sets/72157608215328819/ for the entire group of photos. Mom, the pictures of your flowers can be found there as well.

Reece and Lorelai at the Pumpkin Patch:

(This is just a selection the full set can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/taleof2/sets/72157608216411179/)

Pics from the Trip

2008-10-12T19:38:00.001-07:00

So, I don't know how this happens, but every time we bring out the camera, my mother disappears. We haven't got one shot of her with the kids. Hopefully, someone else got some.

So I'm not the most reliable blogger..

2008-10-12T15:39:00.001-07:00

Okay, I admit it, I'm not the most reliable blogger, and I'm always full of excuses. Another month has gone by without an update, so I beg your forgiveness, we'll see if I can get you caught up.

In mid-September, we took the whole family for a trip back to see my folks in Canada. We had planned for this long trip for months, and though we looked forward to being there, we were filled with all the fear out hearts could hold when we thought about the actual trip.

It's about 45 minutes from home to the airport. It's a 4 hour flight from Seattle to Detroit. Then it's a two hour drive from the airport to my parent's house. Combine that with getting through security, and getting a meal at SeaTac, and getting a rental car and getting the child seats installed and getting over the border, it makes a for a very long day.

We also had one of the bitchiest TSA agents in SeaTac I had ever come across. I try to put a smile on my face when I go through security, but the system they have set up there must have been designed by complete and utter morons. You show your id and boarding pass to this guy, and 15 feet further on, you have to go through the whole process again while your carry-on baggage goes through X Ray. And if your passes happened to get into the little tray the give you to put all your crap into while you're struggling to corral 2 little toddlers, you get an earful from the TSA, adding to the stress of an already stressful event. I was half tempted to hand one of my kids to her and ask her to hold on while I found my passes.

After a quick lunch of Burger King (yuck in the worst way, but it was the only option in the decrepit hole that is the SeaTac South Terminal), we boarded the flight and hoped with all our might that the kids would fall asleep at some point during the trip. No luck.

While they weren't the worst I could have imagined, they did go a bit stir crazy and I swear Reece was trying to tunnel out of the plane somewhere over South Dakota.

We spent four full days at my folks house, which doesn't seem like a long time, but we packed a lot into those days, and saw as many relatives as we could. The kids just loved all the attention, and went into major grandparent with drawl when we got home, and were real little pains in the pa toots for days.

Reece came down with a cold on the third day, and Lorelai followed the next day, and it hit me the day we flew home, which made the airplane ride even more fun.

I ended up staying home from work the day after we returned as I was so sick I had trouble getting out of bed and couldn't talk for all the coughing. Luckily Lisa didn't catch the cold / flu or whatever it was, and was able to get everyone else healthy again.

We've been trying to get back to our normal routine the last couple of weeks, though this weekend we took a trip out to Lisa's parents' house to make apple cider and see the whole family. I think we had 15 kids running around at the peak of the activities yesterday, and by 9:30 PM, everyone was in bed, exhausted. Kids were passed out on the floor of the living room as the rest of us adults talked about how George Bush had screwed up the country the last eight years. At least that's what I was talking about. I think the rest were talking about something else, being the Republicans that they are.

The cider is really good light and sweet when raw, and event better when cooked with cinnamon sticks and cloves. That's an awesome treat on a cold day.

Those have been the big events, but things seem to be busy every day. I've been writing in every spare moment, and my latest work is closing in on 100 pages, and though I'll have to do some heavy editing, I really like how it's going.

I haven't been reading quite as much these days as I've been writing on the train to and from work. I did read a book 'Playing for Pizza' by John Grisham in a single day while at my parent's place. Not a bad read, perfect for a plane ride or a lazy day in a recliner.

I also read 'Wizard and Glass' by Steven King, the fourth book in The Gunslinger Series. Its a long book, but a good story.

As for movies, we watched 'Smart People', (2.5 Stars, not bad, and not as depressing as it could have been) and The Last Legion (1 star, really bad movie) and 'A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints', (2 stars, a ratty narrative, all torn up and hard to like).

Lisa has been teaching again at one of the local universities, so that has been taking up a lot of her spare time. Building up a syllabus, grading papers, reviewing lecture notes all takes a lot more time than you'd think.

The kids have been pretty good, though the aforementioned colds have been a royal pain. Kids get really needy and regress in their independence when they are sick, only now they are a lot heavier than they used to be, and carrying them everywhere is back breaking. Lorelai has been getting very precocious, if that's the right word for not listening to anything we say, and fighting everything we do.

They're picking up a lot of words now, many just after hearing them a couple of times, like 'Yahoo' and 'apple'. They're pretty shy at first around strangers, but if you offer to read to them, you won't get them off your lap, unless they get up to go get another book. Lorelai's favorite word is 'read', which she says over and over again until you give in. It was cute, at first.

The next couple of weeks should be a little more low key. It's time to clean up the back yard and to clean up the flow pots and vegetables killed by the cold weather. It shouldn't take long, but it's just a matter of finding a couple of hours where the little munchkins are gone or sleeping.

Lisa and I are also happy to announce that we will have a new arrival soon, in our house. No, not more kids. Furniture. Real furniture. We finally broke down and bought a new couch and two chairs (with ottomans!) for the living room, and we've found an decorator who understands what we are looking for and actually has taste (we think). We've been in this house now for 3.5 years, and except for a little bit of bedroom furniture, we haven't bought anything for the down stairs. It'll take us a while to finish, as we're trying to do this on a budget, but get good stuff at the same time, but now we will be able to have more than 3 people in our living room at a time without having people sitting on the floor. We can't wait!

Okay, we have a lot of new pictures to post, and I hope to get that done this week. And again, I'll try to update this more frequently.

Free my markets?

2008-09-29T20:38:00.000-07:00

I have a simple solution to solve the credit crisis, the national debt, speculative trading and the energy crisis. A very simple thing: a Speculation Tax.

A what?

A speculation tax. A sin tax on market speculation. Treat speculation like cigarettes, alchohol and whatever other sins the government taxes. Tell everyone they're bad for you, and that second hand debt will kill you just as fast as your own debt so your children pester you to stop using your credit cards... but have it kick in for everyone. Including the big boys, like this.

If you want to make a short sell on the market, or trade in futures commodities like oil, soyabeans, corns, wheat, natural gas, derivative debt, whatever, anything that doesn't involve a long term buy and hold in a company you'vre done research in and believe in thoroughly, then the government takes a non-negotiable, non deductible, no exemption for being 'Native American', over-65, under-18, minority, disabled, rich or poor, 1% tax on every transaction as it happens, and immediately applies that money to the national debt.

So if, as happened today, a bunch of nervous ninnies went and started selling shares in companies they owned for 45 minutes because the computers told them the fundamentals didn't look as good as they did a few minutes before, a penny of every dollar bought and sold on speculation would go to the government until the debt was paid off.

So if billions of dollars a day are changing hands on the oil markets, then a few hundred million of that would be diverted every day to pay down the debt.

Those who think they could still make money speculating, would still do it, and the debt would slowly dissolve into a sea of capital pulled out of artificially created markets and back into the hands of the government, paying down the debt.

Those who didn't want to lose 1% every time they made a transaction would look for good, long term products to invest in (solar, wind energy, clean coal, Mars exploration), make a determination of how much risk they were willing to stand, and invest more wisely. People spend more time evaluating products to whiten their teeth than what the companies in their mutual funds do. That's just stupid.

The influx of cash back into the US government would loosen the credit markets as the US needed to print less money, and the return on T Bills dropped. Private companies looking for financing to expand operations would have better access to cash since the government wouldn't be competing head to head against them.

As the debt shrinks, less tax is needed to pay for the interest on the debt, and lower taxes spur companies to remain in the US, where regulations may be tighter, but education levels are still relatively good.

The excess from reduced debt service would increase the flow of money into schools and infrastructure (bridges, roads, hospitals, mass transit, healthcare for everyone) to help boost productivity and long term goals.

And on the consumer credit side, the tax would apply to all credit card purchases. We all know credit is not the same as cash. Credit cards have been racking up 3-5% fees on all transactions for years. Now we just need the government to take their 1% off the top, and force the companies to fully disclose it. Pay cash, you pay this much. Pay with credit, you pay 1% more. Smart consumers would switch to cash almost immediately, and the credit card industry would be lowering their rates to compete with cash.

I'm not quite sure how to get this plan out there, but if anyone has Barak's ear, tell him about this, and let's see if the idea works.

Socialism in the US

2008-09-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

In the US, politicans who bring up any concept of Socialized Medicine are vilified and crucified.

But the US Government just socialized mortgages by taking over Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I didn't hear one right wing Republican stand up and scream that it is not the government's role to bail out failing businesses. In fact, the only person I've heard pointing out the real truth hear in the national media is Jim Jubak.

And the 5 trillion which just hit the national US Debt, is not being included in the current government's budget projections. If they had planned for that expense, then they would have a much larger deficit, and that would be really bad for the Republican party. They would have to cut back somewhere, or *gasp*, raise taxes to pay for it. Either way, that would be bad for their election hopes.

I hear that Sarah Palin has a couple hundred million stashed away somewhere, maybe that could be used to pay down some debt. Oh wait, that's free money. A gift from the other 49 to #49, and they can use it for whatever they want.

Isn't that called a transfer payment then (not even an earmark)?

Sounds awfully Socialist to me.

Socialized medicine in the US is disliked by business because it affects profits. Socialized debt relief in the US is liked by big business because it affects profits.

I would rather have my government running the medical system than the banking system. Let the banks rise and fall on their own. Lift the people up when they need a hand, not the other way around.

Catching Up

2008-09-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it's been almost a month, where have I been?

1. Enjoying the summer. Neighborhood barbeques, going to Eastern Washington, playing with the kids in the yard and going to the park. My Saturdays and Sundays are much busier than they were a couple of years ago. The kids are doing great, learning new words all the time. They love to talk on the phone and it's fun to call home from work and talk to them. We are now working on the jealousy and discipline stuff, and that's hard, but hopefully this phase will pass quickly. Timeouts are getting common again, but less for safety issues, and more for trouble caused.

2. Working. I've been pretty busy at work, with 3 different projects for 3 different clients going live in the last three weeks. It seems like it all came together in the last 8 days, and we've been driving pretty hard for that, and I've even been... gasp... working from home at night and on the weekends. That should wrap up after this weekend though and get back to normal.

3. Writing. I've been writing consistently (almost every day) since I bought my new laptop, and it's going very well. Hopefully I'll have something to show for all the effort by the end of the year, but if not, at least it's gotten my creative juices flowing again. It does make it harder to sleep when my mind is on all the time, but I'm getting use to it.

I've slowed down on my movie watching and reading a bit lately since my spare time has been more spoken for, for here's a summary of what I have read or watched since the last update.

Book: The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldemann. Ehhh. It was okay, but not thrilling

Book: The Dead Zone by Stephen King. Pretty Good. Made me want to go out and NetFlix the TV series based on the book. We watched the first three episodes. If I was ever stuck on bed rest for a few months, I get more episodes sometime in the second month, but I'm not going to spend my valuable time watching borderline TV right now.

Book: The Wastelands by Stephen King (Book 3 of the Dark Tower Series). I really like this series. King has done a wonderful job with the main characters, and I'm already into book 4 (Wizard and Glass).

Movie: Inside Man - how can good actors just thud so badly? Bad writing.

Movie: Zodiac - Mildly Scary, but good movie, especially if you weren't around in the early 70s to know much about the Zodiac Killer in California.

Movie: 21 - College Kids from MIT try to break Vegas. Could have been better.

Movie: Collateral - This was on Lisa's to-watch list for a couple of years and it finally arrived. Not a horrible flick. A Saturday night, just kick back and root for the good guy movie

Movie: The Bucket List - We saw this 2 days before Morgan Freeman's big car wreck. It was a good watch with some funny lines.

Movie: Death at a Funeral - Some funny moments, but not a brilliant movie like 'Hott Fuzz'

Anyway, that's been the last month or so. I'll try to write more often in the future. As the weather gets bad, it gets easier to find the time, but with the good weather, we're outside as much as we can be.

Some More Pics

2008-09-08T20:31:00.001-07:00

Some new(er) pics

2008-09-08T20:22:00.001-07:00

Yes, I've been slacking, but with good reason. Here are some recent pics of the kids

As you can see, Lorelai is a HAM!

Wow. Just wow.

2008-08-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.komonews.com/news/27349064.html

I am amazed this hasn't caught national attention yet? Where is the ACLU? Why aren't they protesting this? This isn't an immigration issue. It's a constitutional issue.

Just wow.

This and that

2008-08-14T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day I drove to work since starting my job in January. That's pretty much 5 days a week of riding public transit for 7 months (give or take a day or two for holidays and work from home. It's 35 miles from door to door each way for me to work. That's 70 miles a day. 350 miles a week. 26 weeks. 9100 miles. My truck gets about 16 mpg (yes, I know, that sucks). That about 569 gallons of gas. At $4.00 per gallon = $2275 for gas. Now add $10 a day for parking (50 * 26 = 1300). That's a total of $3575 every six months, or 7150 a year. I pay 1683 for my commuter pass on the train for the year. No parking cost. I drive 3 miles a day back and forth to the train station. That $195 worth of gas (48 gallons for the year). That's a total of $1878.

So by taking the train, I've saved myself $5272. I've also been able to cut my insurance bill by $15 a month for driving so few miles, and instead on needing to replace my truck in 2 years, I should be able to make it last another 5. Plus now I'm doing oil changes because three months have passed, not 3000 miles.

Someone told me I could buy a pass on Craig's List for really cheap. Basically I could buy one that is being sold by someone who gets it subsidized by their company. It's technically illegal, but the cards aren't tracked, so no one would ever know, except me. But I'm already saving money, and I'm using public transit, so why shouldn't I pay for it? People looked at me like I was an idiot when I said that, but I really wonder what they think is going to happen if people who use things don't pay for it?

Anyway, I drove today because I had to go to the Department of Homeland Security for my Biannual Biometrics Scan (people who are in process for getting permanent residence get to do all kinds of fun things). I got there just as people started to queue up for a Citizenship ceremony. There were people there from all over the world, with their families in tow, just so happy and nervous to be there. I was lucky that I got there when I did, because by the time I got through security the line was out the door and down the sidewalk.

As I watched them go through the last of the paperwork process, led by a middle aged gentleman who obviously loved what he was doing, I wondered if I would ever decide to take the plunge and apply for US Citizenship. As a Canadian, I can have dual citizenship, and having American citizenship would allow me to take certain jobs, to come and go more freely, and to vote. But I really haven't decided yet. I don't know that I can be two things right now. I am still Canadian, no matter how long I've lived outside the country, I still consider myself Canadian. Perhaps at one time, I wanted to be American more than anything else. And I am happy to be living here, with an amazing wife and incredible children, a nice house and 'the American dream'. But I can't say I want to 'become' American. I can't put my finger on it yet. perhaps someday, my daughter will come up to me and ask me why I don't vote here, and I'll realize that it's time to take the leap. But for now, I'm happy remaining Canadian. Maybe it's because I still have the thought in the back of my head that someone will come up to me and make me an offer to run for Prime Minister of Canada. Since I can't be President in the US, and I haven't gotten them to buy off on me as Supreme Emperor yet, I don't want to bury the possibility of leading Canada at some point.

Oh, and the other thing being on the train has allowed me to do is to read a ridiculous number of books this year. The latest reads include:

The Wandering Fire / The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay. I don't usually give my sister much credit for good taste in books, but wow. Just wow. If you liked Lord of the Rings, you will love these books (Start with the first one of the trilogy, The Summer Tree). I've never had so many goose pimply moments in a book series. It's almost as good as the Hyperion Trilogy by Dan Simmons, and a heck of a lot easier to read. And as a former World of Warcraft player, let me tell you that there are parts of the game of WoW which are definitely stolen (homage paid to?) from these books.

I also finished the second book of the Steven King Gunslinger Series (The Drawing of the Three), which is pretty good. If you start this series, makes sure you have lots of time on your hands. It's seven books long, and characters from many of his other novels make appearances in these books. When I'm done, I have to go back and reread The Stand and read The Shining (yikes)

And yes, I am using my new laptop to write (not at the moment), but on the train each morning. The creative juices are flowing again, and I'm hoping that writing in a scheduled way really helps me to eliminate my procrastination. I'm already finding I'm cutting back even more on TV in order to read and write. If I could only shake my addiction to 'The Daily Show with John Stewart', I could go entire nights without turning on the tube. It's amazing how at one time I couldn't live without ESPN, now I can't remember the last time I watched Sportscenter.

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I've played Fantasy Football a lot in the last few years. Well it doesn't look like it is going to happen this year. Last year's commissioner embezzled the league fees and got fired from his job for illegally selling airline passes on EBay, and the league just kind of fell apart. So this year, I am just going to try to watch the games for the sake of the games, not the money. Who knows, I may be able to cancel my NFL Sunday ticket soon too. Depends on how much the Lions suck this year.

Well, I was going to read tonight, but it looks like it's bed time, so till I have another update. C ya.

And, oh, Eclecta... Fire the prick.

I'm mobile

2008-08-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

Look at me! I'm blogging... from the train! I'm mobile now! Lookout world. Holy exclamation points, Batman.

Okay, I got my new laptop half an hour ago and ran to catch the early train home so we can drive out to Eastern Washington tonight. Now I'm sitting here, hands on the keyboard of my new Toshiba Satellite U405-2854, wondering, so what else can this thing do?

Election Timing

2008-08-08T07:20:00.001-07:00

A coworker and I were talking about now that the Olympics and the NFL Season are starting up, most of the American public will divert their attention from Barak O'McCainia to more of what they really care about. I said there is a reason why elections are held in November. People care about football and Christmas presents in Novemeber.

But hold the election on April 15th each year (tax day), and see how much people care about who's running up the biggest deficit in American history. I'm betting there would be major changes a'coming then.

Backyard Fun

2008-08-03T21:37:00.001-07:00

Promised Pictures

2008-08-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Weekend Wrapup

2008-08-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

Friday night we had our nanny come over for the evening. Lisa picked me up from work in downtown Seattle, and we had dinner at a wonderful little restaurant called The Palace Kitchen. Quite possibly the best ckicken I've ever had, and I've had a lot of chicken in my life. Then we saw "The Dark Knight" (Aka Batman, again). A pretty good movie. Heath Ledger was great. I would have given the movie 5 stars, but I've found I don't like Maggie Gyllenhal. She just annoys me.

Saturday, a morning Starbucks run, then assembled a new toy for the kids (photos in a bit). They absolutely loved it. Next, a sandbox is on order from Amazon. Lot of outdoor time. I also bought a big shade for the patio / sandox so the kids can be out there without SPF 1000 every day.

Today was more backyard fun. There's a lot of teething going on in the house right now, and Lorelai hasn't been her cheery self quite as often as she used to be. Molars are painful, I guess.

The rest of my time I've spent looking for a new laptop computer. I'm currently leaning toward a Toshiba U405-S2833, with the thought that I could carry it to work each day without breaking my back, but I'm not sure I can justify the expense. What if I never use it? Anyway, I'll stop writing now so I can try to post some pictures.

Greate Quote

2008-08-01T12:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know who gets the credit for this one, but this is just great.

"Science shouldn't lie just to make you more comfortable. That's religion's job."

Weekend Flashback

2008-07-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, brief summary of the weekend

Friday: Worked from home, took the kids to their 18 month checkup at the doctor, took them to city hall to apply for their passports, worked from home some more

Friday Night: Haircut for kids, watched 'The Spiderwick Chronicles'. Not bad. Probably a good kids movie. Sometimes they translate well to adults. This one requires that you have maintained a bit of the child within.

Saturday: Starbucks, work a bit on a work project, off to a company picnic so my wife can meet all my coworkers. Kids do an excellent job of being their normal cute, but high-energy-selves. Return home, talk to my sister on the phone for an hour. Solved all her problems, I think. That's what brothers do.

Saturday night: Watched 'Death at a Funeral'. Dark British Comedy. I'll give it 3.5 / 5 stars. Not bad. Laugh out loud moments, good acting, but not for everyone

Sunday: Starbucks, finally went out and bought a new office chair for at home. My old one was killing my back. This one is so much better, but I think I still need to tune it in some more. A lot of play time with the kids in the afternoon. Weeded the garden, cut the grass, talked to my folks on the phone. Tried to find a sandbox for the kids (everything around here is sold out for the year apparently).

Sunday night: Watched the video of the Last Lecture posted on my sisters blog 'Eclecta'. Interesting and pretty amazing for a guy with so little time left to still be so happy. Inspiring really.

Finished one book this week for fun, and I wish it was. I got lured in by a display for a novel called 'Endwar' that made it seem that Tom Clancy had a new book out. What it really was (if you read the fine print), was this David Michaels guy writing an absolute stinker of a novel about a VIDEO GAME Tom Clancy's company is producing. So horrible. Good thing it was a quick read, because the plot was paper thin, the characters lacked character, and the dialog atrocious. The only good thing about it was that it raised my belief that anyone (including em) can get published.

Anyway, the kids are doing great. A couple of scrapes and bruises from falls on concrete, but nothing they won't recover from. I've been trying to get some better pictures, but nothing has turned out very well lately, so we'll see what we can do this week.

By the way, does anyone have a recommendation for a service for web cam sharing for the grandparents to see the kids (and vice versa). Let me know.

Train of Thought

2008-07-23T07:59:00.000-07:00

What I wanted to say to the woman next to me on the train last night, who was on her cell phone the whole time

"Lady, this isn't your office. Now hang up your cell phone, and STFU!"

What I actually said.

Nothing.

But I gave her a couple of really dirty looks.

Maybe I need to get some TShirts made up with this slogan on it. I should copyright it. I'm sure it will catch on.

If I ran America, Part 1

2008-07-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

So, a few years back, I started a blog that lasted two entries (which I believe have been deleted), about what a better place the world would be if everyone just listened to me. I still have thoughts on the subject, but not enough to justify a devoted blog. Besides, I've lured in a bit of a crowd here with cute baby pictures, and why would I give up this opportunity? So, every once in a while (interspersed with pictures of cute toddlers so you keep on coming back, I'm going to drop in a few messages to the world.

1. To solve the US Medicare funding problem: Since insurance companies won't insure anyone with a smoking / drug use / obesity background, why should the government? I say set a deadline that is reasonable (i.e next Friday), and let people know that if you are still smoking, doing drugs or eating that triple Big Mac with extra large fries and the 36oz Big Gulp from 7-11 beyond that date, you are no longer eligible for Medicare or Medicaid. Test for nicotine before every check gets sent out, test for drugs, test for body mass index. Make all the anti smoking treatmenrs, anti drug programs and weight loss programs cheap / free. Legalize the drugs (tax them) so we don't have to spend billons on hunting down traffickers and pushers, add a fat tax on fast food, and presto, the deficit is cut in half. If people want to live fast and die young in their younger days, make them realize they won't be around in their older days to change their minds.

2. The problem with Public Transportation is the 'public' part of it. Why is it that some people just can't wait 30 minutes to get home and talk to their spouses instead of sitting next to me on the train, gibber-jabbing away about their day? And do you really want to talk to a potential customer about how you can undercut all your competitors while sitting on the train with God knows who listening? Really? And if your IPod is loud enough for me to hear it three rows away, don't look pissy at the people who give you dirty looks when they need to change seats because they want to protect their hearing. Oh, for a good stun gun on my morning commute.

3. I'm starting to drift towards the camp that thinks the Baby-Boomer generation should really be called the 'Free Loader Generation'. All these entitlement programs, funded on the backs of their kids and their grandkids? Selfish much? Granted, selfishness is the American way. Whether it be Social Security, the housing bubble, roads and transportation... no one is willing to pay their own way anymore. No one is accountable for their own mistakes. If I took out a loan I couldn't pay back, that's my own damn fault. Stop blaming everyone else. Stop expecting the government to bail you out. Stop bitching that the fat cats are making billions while the middle class gets screwed. You had your chance to vote these bastards out of office many times, and you just keep electing the same group of crooks becuase they offered you a quick buck (how many people sent back their Econmic stimulus check because they thought it was wrong? I'm betting the number rhymes with HERO. How else do guys like Ted Stevens in Alaska, and George Bush (x3) get elected over and over again? It's not the system's fault, it's the public's fault. People are just too stupid and lazy. Democracy is hard, and it takes up a lot of evenings (Oscar Wilde gets the credit for that one).

Okay, I'm done ranting for now. We now return you to your regular internet surfing programming.

Random Notes

2008-07-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

Great Movie: The Lookout with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Jeff Daniels. After a lot of ho-hum movies this year, this is one of my new favorites. In fact, I watched it last night while Lisa was dancing, and then watched it again this afternoon with her. Really, really good. And is iot just me, or is there just a stunning resemblance between Levitt and Heath Ledger?

Bad Book: Fifty Degrees Below Zero by Kim Stanley Robinson. Second book in a trilogy that got good in the last 10 pages. My OCD will probably force me to read book three... but I so don't really want to.

Good Book: On Writing By Stephen King. Got me back in the mood to write again. Now if only I could get rid of my procrastination issues. I want to write, but stuff keeps taking priority. I just need to set realistic goals. Today, I'm updating my blog, and reading one of my old, unfinished stories.

Okay Book: Lean Mean Fourteen by Janet Evanovich. Quick read, pretty much formula JE.

Bad Movie: No Country for Old Men. SPOILER ALERT: If you kill off the main character 75% of the way through the movie, you had better either bring him back to life, or make the ending so incredible, that you forget it happened. Niether happens in this one. Boo, hisss...

Dr Horrible

2008-07-18T21:07:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen this.... you must watch it, before July 20. Amazing!

Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Feeding your picture monster

2008-06-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Here are some recent pictures

News and Notes

2008-06-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's been a while I guess, but it's been for good reason. I've spent all of my spare time the last 5 weeks or so, working on putting together DVDs of the kids first 17 months for posterity, and let me tell you, that's a lot more work that you think it is when you get started. We weren't very organized in the first few months, and the pictures and videos just kinda stacked up, so I had to locate them all, organize them, add them to the video software I bought, which then crashed every time I tried to burn to DVD, until I got a patch from the manufacturer to fix it. Then it was a matter of finding the right music to go with the videos, made harder by the fact that you can't add music you bought from ITunes to a video, because of the Digital Music Encoded copyright embedded in the download. One of the many reasons why I am now using Amazon.com for music downloads.

Anyway, I'm just about finished with that project. I just have to find the music for the final hour of video, burn a few more discs, and we're all good, as long as we don't fall so far behind next time. If there are any budding video editors who want some experience editing together clips of really cute kids interspersed with liberal shots of the carpet, the ceiling and people's feet, have I got an opportunity for you!

Other than that, I completed my first major ebusiness web site rollout for a client last week, which meant putting in a few more hours than normal, but not nearly as many extra hours as I use to work when I had to worry about planes falling out of the sky, so it wasn't a big deal.

The kids are just wonderful these days. This morning, when Lisa was feeding them, Reece blurted out 'baby' for the first time when he saw a picture of a baby on a box of Baby MumMums. They're learning to drink from cups with straws, which they love to do because there is even more water to spill down their fronts. With as hot as it has been here (mid 90's yesterday), we didn't think they were getting enough water, so we had to try something new. They've got enough now.

Lorelai is being absolutely adorable all the time. If she burps, she covers her mouth. If Reece burps, she covers his mouth. She loves to talk (baby talk mostly) and sing, and we're pretty sure we're picking up patterns in the words that sometimes sound like real words. She definitely has a word for Reece, but I don't think humans are supposed to make that sound.

We had my folks over for a week two weeks ago, and Lisa's mom spent the weekend here, and the kids just love having grandparents around. They get a little bit spoiled for attention, but it's not as bad as it used to be.

I've still been doing a fair amount of reading, since I'm still riding the train ever day. Here are my latest book and movie reviews

Shake Hands with the Devil - Story of Genocide in Rwanda, as told by the Commander of the UN Forces in Rwanda. This book was shocking in it's detail and it's coverage. I highly recommend this book, but not for the faint of heart. I had dreams about, and needed some downtime after reading it. I almost broke into tears on the train to work one morning.

From a Buick 8 - Steven King - A quick read about Pennsylvania State Patrol Unit, and an old car kept in the garage behind their barracks. Good story, likable characters, good read.

The Summer Tree - Guy Gavriel Kay - My sister loved this book, and I liked it a lot too. It takes about a hundred pages to really get into it, then it becomes very good. I've got the next two books on order from Amazon.

The Gunslinger - Steven King - The first book of the Gunslinger 7. Interesting read, not the best book I ever read by King (i.e. The Stand), but right along the lines of what you might expect. I hear it gets better in the next 6 books.

Janet Evanovich - Motor Mouth - fast, fun read. There aren't too many chick books I will read in public, but JE writes good books for just throwing the world away for a little while and relaxing.

Jasper Fforde - The Thursday Next Series - I'm into book four of this series now, and though it's a more difficult read, all I can say is that this guy is a genius. I've never read such original, funny, thought provoking material before. Start with The Eyre Affair, and keep reading. It's science fiction, and it's a little work, but damn good stuff.

As for movies, it's been some slim pickings, but here's the good and the ugly

IronMan = Good fun, would watch again. Wish this movie had come out when I was a kid. Makes me wonder what I missed by not reading comic books

Into The Wild = Thought provoking, depressing and overly long.

The Darjeeling Limited = didn't really get it, but at least it held my attention

Juno = Awesome movie. This biggest issue I had was that the damn song stays in your head for days

Shawn of the Dead = Good movie. Simon Peg is a genius

I am Legend = horrible. Turned it off half way through

There Will be Blood = Really didn't like it. I admire the artistry, but ehhh, wasn't my cup of tea.

Charlie Wilson's War = so-so

Anyway, that's what I have been up to. I'll try to post some pictures soon.

A few Pics

2008-05-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Yeah, like that last one isn't going to be used against her later in life...

What's New?

2008-05-10T11:31:00.001-07:00

I'm writing this post from a secret location in Eastern Washington where we are visiting Lisa's parents for the first time in many months.

We drove out last night after dinner, and kids did really well. They fell asleep about 20 minutes before we got here, but really didn't fuss at all on the trip out. That gives us great hope for a planned trip to Canada in September. We'll not count our chickens yet, though.

The kids are really fun right now. They aren't talking a lot (besides Mama, Dada and Uh-oh), but they are learning sign language quite quickly. About a new word every couple of days or so (if we remember to try it). Fortunately, our nanny is more diligent than we are, and she's taught them things like 'More', 'All done', 'Airplane', 'Please', 'Thank you', 'Milk', and 'Water'. They do, however, understand pretty much anything you tell them to do. I asked Reece yesterday to help Lorelai get off the little step we have by the window, and he ran right over to her, grabbed her arm, and pulled her off the step. Apparently, I need to be more precise.

They're really getting out and exploring the world around them, and we're trying to let them experience more of it, by taking them places and not being such home bodies. But, let's face it, they're still fascinated by rocks, dirt and the neighborhood cats, so I don't think they would truly appreciate the wonders of Mount Ranier just yet.

I've been doing a lot of work in the back yard the last couple of weeks, putting in some new vegetable garden areas, converting one of our lawn sprinkler zones over to drip lines, and planting the garden. I've got all of our potted plants now hooked up to drip irrigation on a timer so I don't have to go out and water them ever night. If only I had some automated way of pulling weeds.

Work is going well, but very busy. We've added a lot of new people to my company in the last few weeks, including one of my former co-workers from my old job. We're nearing the end of a really big project, and since it will be a public facing web site, when we are done in a few weeks, I'll post the link here so you can view what it is I do for a living.

I've slowed down on my technical reading the last few weeks to avoid burnout, and have been reading novels instead. Here's a few I have finished:

Pierre - A collection of letters and stories gathered from friends and acquaintances of Pierre Trudeau. My sister gave me this book at least a year ago, and it sat on my shelf until a couple of weeks ago. It was a pretty good read. I was to young to remember much about Trudeau and all the history that was made during his time in office, but I did gain a certain amount of respect for him by reading it. I found myself wondering if I could ever run for office. Oddly, I would never do it in the US (even if I was a US citizen), but I would consider it in Canada. I guess I am more patriotic than I thought. Of course, that would involve moving back to Canada, and don't get your hopes up on that. We're pretty happy where we are.

Florence of Arabia - Another book my sister gave me at least a year ago. A pretty good read, not what I thought it was going to be at all. I would recommend it to anyone who sits a little to the left of center. I don't know that those way over to the right will get it.

Forty Signs of Rain - Kim Stanley Robinson wrote one of my favorite trilogies of all time with the Mars series. This is the first book in a trilogy of stories around global warming. I just finished it an hour ago, and while the OCD in me will have to read the other two, I found it to be a little, ordinary. Not bad, just not extraordinary. It's hard when your early works sets the bar so high.

The Eyre Affair - Lisa recommended this one to me, and I started it three or four times and couldn't get into it. But after the first hundred pages, it got really good, and left me wanting more. Good thing there are more.

One the movie side of things, we've been watching BattleStar Galactica Season 3 on DVD. This is probably the best science fiction show of all time. I'm stealing a quote from Brad Paisley here, when I say, that you get into watching an episode, and you're saying to yourself that the episode you just watched was the greatest you've ever seen, and then you realize you haven't hit the opening credits yet. It blows my mind on every episode. It's dark, it's innovative, it's amazing.

Another movie I really liked was 'Hott Fuzz' by the same group of folks who did 'Shaun of the Dead', which I haven't seen yet. Really well done, laugh out loud funny at times, snicker at others.

Of course, May means the return of 'Deadliest Catch' on the discovery channel. Best show on TV right now other than BSG (though I can't say there is much in the way of competition.)

We'll have some videos of the weekend posted in the next couple of days, I think. We've got a bust next couple of weeks, but we'll do our best to get things organized.

Video Backlog

2008-05-10T11:26:00.001-07:00

Here are some videos from recent times (more coming soon, I promise)

Balloons

Eating and Dancing

Chase

Photo Woes

2008-04-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Guest blogger: Lisa

So, I have been trying to keep up with posting pictures of the little ones for those of you who, while love to hear about Joe and I, are really here for baby updates. I am happy to support this, but I just have to make a note that posting pictures of the little ones is more difficult that you might think.

Exhibit 1 - most of our pictures look like this:

I like to think the quality of this picture (or lack there of) is due to the fact that our kids are just lightening fast. Or, I'd really like to blame it on our not so stellar digital camera (it was purchased with travel in mind, not constant motion kids). I'm certain it has nothing - at all - to do with operator error. No way.

Anyway Exhibit 2 - most of our other pictures look like this:

Yes, Reece is trying to get the camera. We have 30 million pictures of one or the other in this pose. In fact most of our videos end this way as well. It's as if they think they can do a much better job at this picture taking thing than we can. Given Exhibit 1, they may be on to something, but an up the nostrils picture half obscured by the outstretched hand, is not really fantastic photography.

Then there are the pictures that are a lovely blend of Exhibit 1 and 2, witness...Exhibit 3:

Now that is top-notch photography. That all said, I do aim to persevere and keep taking a multitude of pictures hoping for a few good ones. If that fails, I believe Auntie Cindy is planning on visiting in a month or so, and she takes MUCH better pictures. Meanwhile, here are a few recent ones that didn't turn out half bad:

Reece in a box:

And because one is not enough... Don't you just love the kicked back chugging on the water pose?!Lorelai enjoys sitting in the box as well - when her brother finally gets out.

Ok, this one is evidence of a bad parenting moment. I paused to take a picture instead of rescuing my son from the drawer that he got himself stuck in.

Here I'm distracting Reece from climbing on the coffee table by looking through it.

Lorelai with basket hat:
Here are two with Daddy's smiling mug included in the fray:
And, last but not least, Lorelai about to go for the camera, of course.

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

2008-04-05T06:50:00.001-07:00

My reviews of a few books I've read and movies I've watched lately. * = stars

The Good:
Movie: Ice Station Zebra. *****

Very good movie made in 1968 starring Rock Hudson. This movie has been on my list since someone recommended it to me back in high school. Thanks to NetFlix for helping me to locate it. Think Cold War, nuclear submarines and a race to the north pole.

Movie: A Fish Called Wanda *****

Just a really good British comedy. There is one scene that really just cracked my up, and I still smile when thinking about it a week later. A good, relaxing movie to watch on a Friday night

Movie: In the Valley of Elah *****

Well acted, kind of sad, moving story of a man trying to find out why his son was murdered after return back to the US from of tour of duty in Iraq. Not too much gore or trying to make you squirm. The characters and the story drive this one. I was pleasantly surprised.

Movie: Michael Clayton ***
Pretty good flick. Definitely not your typical movie. About what I'd expect from George Clooney. You don't like anyone in this movie at the end, but the story is good and the writing is great.

Movie: Keeping Mum ****
Dark British Comedy with a lot of twists and some funny running gags.

Movie: Gone Baby Gone ****
This one is dark and brutal, and hard to watch at points. Its hard to call movies like this entertainment, because I don't want to be entertained by stories of violence and evil. But if you judge a movie by the acting, the dialogue, the camera work, the plot, then this is a very good movie. Just don't watch it if you want to feel good at the end of it. You won't.

Movie: Blood Diamond *****
Amazing good, but very harsh. Just a horrible story, but one that needed to be told. This is where Hollywood does a service to the world. Tell the stories the news won't tell. Bring in the big names so that people go and watch, and come out looking at the diamonds on their fingers, and wonder how many people died to get them that little rock. Movies like this should make you mad at the end. Mad enough to change the world. This one does, and does it very well.

Book: Lords of the North, Bernard Cornwell *****
I'm a huge fan of Cornwell, and his series about the Danish invasion of England in 800 AD is a real page turner. This is the third book in the series, and the fourth is out in hardcover. I nearly went out and bought it, and I normally only buy paperbacks

The Bad:
Book: The Terror, Dan Simmons. **

I've read a lot of Dan Simmon's stuff. His Hyperion Series is probably my favorite Sci-Fi series of all time. The Terror is a fictionalized recount of the story of the real HMS Terror, ice bound in the Canadian Arctic in the 1840s. The book is vivid in its description, but the rest is just a little off. I didn't like any of the characters that survived the first half of the book, and the as soon as you did start to like one, poof.

Movie: Blazing Saddles **

This is one of those that I've heard a lot about over the years. Some say it is the funniest movie ever made. I can understand that it might be poignant, but it is not the funniest movie ever made. I stopped watching halfway through though, so maybe I missed the funny part.

Movie: The Ultimate Gift **
I would have given it 3 stars, but the beginning of thee movie was pretty corny, and it is quite preachy, but cute. Perfect for my mother, but not my sister.

The Ugly:
Book: Empire by Orson Scott Card. (notice the absence of stars)

This is, without a doubt, the worst book I have ever read to completion. And I only finished it because I'm pretty sure my OCD wouldn't let me stop. The only book worse than this that I have ever started to read (and stopped, back when I was younger and stronger), was called The Red Defector. That one I put down after 30 or 40 pages. Empire is the story of what might cause the next American Civil war. The plot is idiotic, the characters completely hokey, and relies on coincidence so much that I can't even believe that a publisher paid money for this. Until you read the Afterword and realize that Card was contracted to write this as a plot for a new VIDEO GAME. Arrrgh.

Movie: Beowulf *
We started to watch this last night and turned it off after 30 minutes. I don't know what I was expecting, but a computer generated movie of real actors was not it. It took a while to get past the animation, then you realized that the actors and dialog were bad.

Some New videos

2008-04-03T20:57:00.000-07:00

Reece is either going to be a politician or a salesman. He loves to talk from his truck.

Reece hasn't learned yet not to fall for my traps.

We had a great time at the zoo, watching the Otters.

This is just a cute video of Lorelai waving

I can't believe I got this on video. Pretty funny stuff.

Happy Easter!

2008-03-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone! It's Lisa here. I am filling in for Joe a bit. I think he has gone on strike with posting to the blog. It probably has something to do with the fact that I keep saying I'll help him get pictures up for everyone to enjoy. Well, I guess I should put my money where my mouth is...

The big Easter festivity we planned was to go to the Easter Egg hunt put on the fire fighters at the local football stadium. Who knew that it wouldn't be so much an Easter EGG hunt but more of an Easter Have-a-bunch-of-candy-in-the-center-of-a-big-circle-in the-middle-of-the-field-surrounded-by-a-hundred-or-so-kids-and-their-parents-who-are-standing-around-waiting-for-a-buzzer-to-sound-so-they-can-make-a-mad-dash-to-the-center-to-get-the-big-stuffed-animal-in-the-center Hunt? Of course, Joe and I seemed to be the only ones who were overwhelmed. It didn't seem to phase Reece or Lorelai one bit. They each had their own method of enjoying the event. Reece got in to the swing of things when he realized one of the candy boxes made a nice rattle noise when you shake it. From there he proceeded to select those for additions to his bucket. Lorelai's technique was a bit different. She found a spot, plopped down on her butt, picked up one piece of candy and placed it in her bucket. Then she took it out and put it back on the ground. Then she picked it up again...rinse and repeat.

All in all it was a fun day. I bought some plastic eggs to hide (i.e. toss on the lawn) for the kids. On Sunday it rained like the dickens, so we did our egg "hunt" on Monday instead. They had a good time. Reece would put the eggs in his bucket and Lorelai would follow him around and take the eggs out of his bucket. It worked out well, because there was a constant supply of eggs to either pick up or take out depending on their choice of activity.

Here are some pics of the Easter egg event:
Lorelai is showing of her piece of candy.

Reece is getting into the action.

Here they are checking out their loot.

Reece liked the candy ok, but the CONES were really something to write home about.

And this is what the kids really liked to do with their buckets.

Catching up on video backlog

2008-03-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

Here's a video from the twins first birthday. The balloons were a huge hit!

Here are several random videos of daily life:
Flying Baby
Moo Cow
Lorelai's favorite hat
More Hats

Finally, Reece LOVES to clean the floors. (Unfortunately he likes to make them dirty too, but we'll leave off video of that for now.)
Vacuuming
Sweeping

--This blog posting was a joint production by Joe and LISA :-)

Amazing Grace

2008-03-06T07:50:00.001-08:00

If you haven't seen the movie Amazing Grace with Ioan Gruffud (Horatio from the A&E Series Horatio Hornblower), you really should see it. Gruffud plays William Wilberforce, a young British Lord in the 1700's who rises to power and makes it his life's mission to fulfill his uncle's dream of ridding the world of slavery. His uncle, a former slave ship captain, is the same man who wrote the song, Amazing Grace, and later became a minister to try to atone for his sins.

It's a very powerful movie, well acted and inspiring. Definitely worth watching.

Morning Glory

2008-03-05T07:21:00.000-08:00

Lorelai was awake and standing up in her crib this morning before I left. I just watched her from the doorway. So cute. She was trying to sleep standing up I think, and kept rubbing her nose with her blanket. She sounded really stuffy. A couple of times she made little sounds that Reece responded to, even though I think he was asleep. He really doesn’t sleep very deeply. I was a little late getting out of the house because I stood there so long.

Watched a movie last night - The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper and Jennifer GArner. Pretty violent, but a great plot, well scripted, acted and directed. Didn't feel great at the end of the movie, but it did keep me watching.

So where the heck have I been?

2008-02-22T21:12:00.001-08:00

Okay, okay, I know I've been gone a while. I wouldn't doubt if many readers have stopped visiting. I don't blame you. Life has just been changing a little bit.

Like I said in one of my last posts, I started a new job, and have been focused on getting up to speed on technology so I can be effective in my new role as a lead systems architect. Well, I don't know how effective I am, but I have been keeping to my word about studying my ass off. I've finished three technical books (one over 1500 pages), read god knows how many web sites, and spent my work days cramming as much into my brain as possible. I've been working on ASP.NET 3.5, CSS, LINQ, SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server Reporting Services. Yay for me.

To relax, I've spent time reading (probably 7-8 novels/books since Christmas), and playing with the kids. (I'll get to them in a minute, hold yer horses). I just finished a reread of one of my favorite books from my childhood, Lost in the Barrens by Farley Mowat, which wasn't as great as I remembered, but was still a good story. I also finished the last of the Sharpe's Rifles series by Bernard Cornwell (22 books plus short stories in that series that I've read over the past 2 or 3 years), and six books from SM Stirling, which I started last fall. I also read a book called Life In a Medieval Village, which was quite dry, but interesting at times. Basically, I've been a reading machine since I started riding the train. It helps that the writers strike has made TV pretty much irrelevant so I have time at night as well. I don't really miss TV.

I've got a lot more technical reading to do over the next couple of months, but I will try to intersperse it more with something fun. I read for at least 2 hours a day, sometimes longer if I need to, and I think it is paying off. My confidence in my skills is growing, and I really feel that I made the right decision to leave my old job.

The kids are doing great. Both are walking/running around the house. Both have 'Mama' and 'Dada' down pat, and both know that a cow says 'Moo', though Lorelai says it more with a "Mllllll' sound. Her tongue gets in the way a bit.

We went out last Saturday after to a Rhododendron garden nearby to buy some plants for our yard, and they just loved running around by themselves. Reece is high speed all the time, and I spent the time there chasing after him. He just loves being outside. Fortunately, the weather has been great here for the past week, and they've been outside a lot.

Our nanny took them to play time last week at the local elementary school gymnasium, and they both seemed to like it. They were a little in shock, with 30 kids running around, from the sounds of it. Boys kept coming up and hugging Lorelai, which I guess was okay until one of them knocked her down. Reece wasn't used to kids taking toys away from him, since he is usually the taker, but he survived as well. I really wish I could have been there to see it.

We're getting more photos done tomorrow, which is great, except both kids have bruises on their faces from recent falls. Hopefully they can touch that up.

Lorelai is our reader and constantly walks around with a book in her hand, looking for someone to read to her. She's also practicing all the sweet facial expressions and actions to bend us to her will. She loves to lay her head down on whatever is nearby and flash those huge eyes and big eyelashes. I don't know where she learned that from.

Reece is just go go go all the time. He's sweet too, and loves to cuddle, for a minute, then he's off again running circles around the living room. He likes to be thrown high up into the air, and loves to wrestle. He is all boy.

Lisa is doing well, just enjoying her time with the kids. She started talking about doing some blog posting here as well, so she may drop in from time to time to post pictures of the kids. I'll believe it when I see it.

The other thing I have started to do again is write. I have a story in my head, and it's just begging to come out, so I've been spending some time getting it down. I know it's not very good yet, but writing is something you need to practice, and that's what I'm doing. I would really like to get to the point where I could write for a living, but I need to get some success under my belt first. Maybe if I wrote a seven book series about a boy wizard....

Anyway, I'm hoping I may have more time to be blogging in the near future. Things are just settling down, and I'm into a routine where writing is becoming more important in my life again. Of course, the good weather and longer days are just around the corner, then who knows what will happen. We'll see.

Birthday Pictures

2008-01-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

Just to thoroughly confuse the kids, we held a surprise birthday party for the twins on Sunday. Not only was this not their actual birthday, they didn't even know what a party involved. By far, the biggest hit of the day were the balloons that Courtney brought. Reece nearly, actually did, fall over with excitement. Lorelai was also quite thrilled.

We had all the grandparents here, as well as their Aunt Katy and Courtney of course. Here are some pictures of the occassion. Note that both Mommy and Daddy were quite busy (and taking videos) so there aren't many still shots, though other may have some they may wish to provide us with.

Overwhelmed

2008-01-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm past the one week mark in my new job, and I am officially overwhelmed. There's a lot to take in, and everything seems so new to me. I can't believe how stale my professional skills have become over the past few years. I don't even know where to begin. It's incredible how much I have to pack into my brain every day, just to try to get up to speed, and I'm not even talking about what I need to know about the customer's systems that I need to design and build. If you thought I wasn't updating my blog enough over the past few months, you will probably be disappointed with the next couple of months. I'm going into lock down mode. 'Back to school' as we are calling it around here.

The people at my new job are all incredibly smart and the place just buzzes with energy. Everyone is a true beliver in what they are doing and that we can get the job done. There is very little of the cynicism or defeatism that infested my last job. Here, if you can't do the work, you won't be there long. It's really driving me to educate myself and get ahead of the curve.

The commute makes for a long day. I get up at 5:00AM to be at the train by 5:40 to get a good parking spot. The train leaves at 6:02, and arrives in Seattle at 6:50. From there it's up the stairs, across the street, around the corner and down the stairs to the bus tunnel. Hop on the closest bus, take it 3 stops. Off the bus, up 3 escalators, walk about 5 blocks (jay walk when you can or you'll be there forever), up four flights of stairs, and you're there. Normal time, about 7:05 AM.

I leave the office between 3:50 and 3:55 and reverse the route to get to the train which leaves at 4:20, and I arrive at home around 5:15PM. The total time in transit is about 3 hours a day, which is about double what it used to take me to get to my last job, but so far I've read 2 books and 2 magazines (1 technical book, 2 technical mags and one novel). I consider that time well spent.

I do really miss the hour and a half to two hours a day I was spending with the kids in the afternoon, and by Friday last week, I was ready for the weekend, which was again far too full for our liking. But I try to make the evening time and the time on the weekend quality time as much as possible. We did put a brighter nightlight in their room so I can see them before I leave in the morning, and I turned one of our leftover Christmas cards into a bookmark. It's not a substitute, but it helps.

Anyway, it's far more likely that my other blog (devscape.blogspot.com) will see more action in the coming weeks than this one will, as I document some of the techincal stuff I am learning. If you are really interested in design patterns, LIQ, SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 3.5, Sharepoint, CSLA, EntityFrameworks, etc, please feel free to stop by and comment, or give me crap for not posting there either.

Otherwise, I'll try to post here when I can, and when I have the energy.

Getting Organized

2008-01-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

Maybe its that I'm switching jobs and I feel the need to get some projects done at home before my life changes. Or maybe its the middle of winter and there's nothing on TV due to the writers strike. Maybe I'm going through a mid-life crisis. Or maybe I'm just procrastinating from getting started writing that story or novel. Whatever the cause, the result is I've been getting organized and checking some things off my to do list.

On Monday, I cleaned out the garage.

Yesterday, I took my entire collection of photo negatives in to a camera store to get digitized onto CD's

I finally arranged to get flood insurance for the house.

I've been researching Life Insurance

I've been working on my will (some day I'll get Lisa to do hers too)

And I've gone through an old book of photos of my early childhood years that my mom gave me a few years ago, and digitized them. You can see the results on our flickr site or by clicking here.

Next is the process of making DVDs of all the videos we taken of the kids over the past year. Actually, I was all caught up a few weeks ago and had the video ready to burn to DVD when my Windows Vista crapped out on me and corrupted my compiled movie. I lost all my work, about 16 hours. Anyway, Vista is a piece of crap operating system, and had I not just bought a new computer last summer, I would be buying a Mac right now, despite the fact that I develop Windows software for a living.

Some New Pictures

2007-12-28T19:25:00.000-08:00

Customer Dis-service

2007-12-27T19:23:00.000-08:00

Maybe its just me, but I've noticed a disturbing drop in customer service skills lately. I'm pretty sure that this is the effect of people not caring about their jobs because for most people, their jobs are just a way to pay their zooming credit card bill. But I also believe that the companies they work for are to blame just as equally. The scripted upsell, the making a customer who wants to cancel their service wait for ungodly long wait times and to transfer them a bazillion times before they are allowed to actuallt cancel their service in the hope that they will just hang up and keep paying, and the general lack of loyalty to their employees and long standing customers has led to a mess in the arena of customer service.

But the power of the internet gives me the ability to warn my friends in the hope that they will be able to avoid what I have been through. But I will also give out kudos where it is due. We'll call this the first annual Cranium Outpost Kudos and Slugs awards (slugs because of a nasty incident we had here last summer)

Grand Prize Slug Award goes to

Cingular Wireless - (now AT&T Wireless). Just a horrible customer service experience from beginning to end. Never was I so glad when the contract came to an end

1st Runner Up Slug Award goes to
Salesguy Peter at La-Z-y Boy Gallery in Tukwilla. This guy barely let me into the door of the store before he was all over me trying sell me a couch, before I even had a chance to look at what they had. I got rid of him for 30 seconds while he ran to get flyers, then he physically directed me towards one of their displays by pushin me. Then when I started for the door, he actually got in between me and the door to stop me, and put his hand on my arm. Now he was recently in from the Ukraine, and I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that personal space is a little different there, but had he not removed his hand from me pretty quick, I might have... well I faked him out with a juke move towards a chince covered ottoman and made a dash for the door.

2nd Runner Up Slug Award goes to
DirecTV for the old bait and switch. Two years ago we bought a DirecTV HD system with the promise that more HD Channels were being added all the time. After two years, we had 7, and recently they cut two of those out and said that those were only supplied as a sample of what else we could get and that program had expired, after 2 years. And yes, we had been paying full price for the HD package for 2 years, but it turned out that our receiver (which we own), was out of date, and for just $300 more we could upgrade to the latest equipment, and get the oher 30+ channels we had been paying for for the last year or so but never got. After a lot of talking, they offered to reduce the price down to $200. At which point I told them just to cancel my HD service. I didn't need it. At that point (half an hour into my 3rd call), the line went dead (not on my side). Anyway, we're quite happy with our regular TV, which I barely watch anymore anyway.

Now for some Kudos

Grand Prize Kudos Award goes to

The local Starbucks. Anyone who has been around us the last year knows how much our weekend trips to Starbucks meant to us, and how nice those baristas and the manager were to us. We did spend a small fortune there over the last year, but that was our refuge, our little trip out of the house. Our movies, our dining out, our trips to Hawaii. That was our entertainment for the past year.

1st Runner Up goes to
The guy at Circuit City last Sunday, on one of the busiest days of the year, who took about 15 minutes of his time to talk to me about televisons and home theatre systems and 1080i vs 1080P vs 720P vs standard definition. And this was after I told him that I was probably not going to buy anything that day.

2nd Runner Up goes to
I'll just give this one out to all the great waiters and waitresses we've had over the past year or so. Not that we've gotten to go out a lot, but I really respect the people who serve the food and make good, honest recommednations of what to eat and give you that look when they don't think something is up to par. I can't say every place has these people, but there were some, and I thank you!

Some pre-Christmas Video Presents

2007-12-24T15:52:00.000-08:00

A few quick video shorts

Lorelai is destined to be a hunter - tracker.

Reece and Lorelai have invented a new language. We think it's called screamish.

The twins have caused some trouble lately. And even though we have them on tape, The clain they are innocent. Framed even.

News and Notes

2007-12-21T07:20:00.001-08:00

I know, it's unusual that I post during the day, and no, there is nothing wrong. It's just that I'm at work, there is no one else here, and since I've been such good employee for so long that I don't have a whole lot of last minute emergencies that just must get done before I leave two weeks from today. I'm actually contemplating digging in to a couple of new projects I hadn't started yet, but they might take longer to get done than what I have time for, and that would just bother me for years. So instead, I blog, and I read.

The kids are both doing really well. They turn 11 months old tomorrow, and they are really getting around. I took some good videos last night I should be be to post tomorrow. Reece is running around the house, and doesn't fall nearly as often as he use to. We've even let him run around outside , though we're pretty careful around curbs and things. I'm not sure his depth perception is quite there yet, and curbs may be an issue for the foreseeable future. He does have a thing for chasing the neighborhood cats, and they've already learned to be afraid. Be very afraid.

Lorelai is standing and cruising (walking holding on to things), but not yet independently walking. She crawls at high speed and squawks like a truck backing up as she does so to let everyone know 'I am on the move!'

We've spent the last couple of nights trying to finish up putting a large collage of pictures into a frame that we bought about 6 months ago. Choosing your favorite pictures of your kids is really hard. What's worse is printing a picture of your kids, then finding out it doesn't fit properly into the frame, or something else was wrong with that print. Then what do you do? Destroy a picture of you child? Just throw it in the trash? Seems... wrong.

We had made up Christmas pictures to send out to everyone but we got started on it late, and then found out that they spelled my name wrong on the card. My first name. Really? Yes, really. So we had to get them reprinted. So expect your 'Happy Holidays card' to arrive just in time for Martin Luther King day.

Of course, I've been dealing with the fallout from resigning at work. Most people here are happy for me, or a little jealous. They assume that since I'm becoming a consultant, I'll be making a ton more money. That's not really true when you take into account some of the benefits I am losing because I am going to a smaller company that just doesn't have things like 401K matching and Employee Illness Leave. This wasn't really about the money. It was about the opportunity to expand my skill set and to move on to the next step of my career. 8 1/2 years in one spot in the IT industry these days is a very long time. Most jobs are 5 years or less these days. It's not that I don't appreciate the stability, but it has its price. You get comfortable. You stop training. You stop paying attention to what is going on in industry. Next thing you know, you're so far behind that you can't get caught up without taking a year off and going back to school and hoping you can get a job after that. There's no doubt that this a risk, but life without a little risk gets pretty dull after a while.

Lisa and I have been shopping for furniture for our living room and trying to decide what to do with our TV / stereo, etc. We think the TV is too big for our space, now that we have kids, so we may sell it and downsize a bit. If you know anyone who wants to buy a 2 year old Hitachi 50" Widescreen LCD Projection TV, let me know. Buying furniture when you have two young kids in the house may seem a little ridiculous, but mostly we're buying it to allow us to put things into places they can't get to, so we're justifying the expense that way. We actually took them shopping on Sunday and they did pretty well. Lorelai always does better when she is on someone's shoulders, though she tends to pull hair and chew on your head.

Our plans for this weekend include more furniture shopping (and hopefully furniture buying if we can find something we like), maybe a little yard cleanup if the weather isn't too bad, and ~~just some relaxing time laying on the couch reading a book~~ playing with the kids.

All things must end

2007-12-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

Today was a pretty big day for me. I turned in my resignation to the company I had worked for for the past 8.5 years. I've accepted a new position as a consultant in downtown Seattle at a small company, and I start January 7th.

It's very hard leaving something you've been doing for so long. Jumping outside your safety zone is nerve racking and scary Hopefully everything works out okay, and I enjoy my new job and it doesn't negatively affect my home life too much. Time will tell.

One of the really good things about my new job (at least it seems good at the moment), is that I will be able to take the train to work each day, about 40 minutes each way, instead of driving 40 minutes each way. I'll count this as down time in my day, where I can read or study or write or sleep. Hopefully I'll spend the time wisely, and use it to rest to be more awake and present with the kids at night.

I'm looking forward to starting the new job, but at the same time, I will miss some of the old one, mainly the people I have known for so long. It's also because of this job (which brought me to Seattle from Colorado), that I went to Italy where I bought a T-Shirt. I was wearing that TShirt when I met my wife for the first time, and we talked about Italy for hours while dancing at a country bar. So, overall, this job has had benefits far beyond the monetary kind.

Anyway, my last day at my old job is January 4th. Just 12 more working days. Time is already flying by.

Serious Danger!

2007-12-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

For the last few weeks, I have been going to Occupational Therapy to try to resolve an issue with my right thumb. No big deal, but today, while I was in therapy, a man came into the therapy clinic with his 21 year old daughter, who was confined to a wheel chair, and looked to be suffering from cerebral palsy. At least that was my assumption. But there was something different about her. Her eyes were bright, she was quite attractive, and seemed to be very quiet yet expressive, very intelligent. Yet she was unable to move her arms or legs, hold her head up on her own, or redirect her eyes. She was only able to talk at a whisper.

Anyway, after a few minutes the therapists began to recount her trials and tribulations. It turns out that she had only been in this condition for about 11 months. Back in January, she had taken some Ambien CR to help her sleep. This is over the counter medicine you can buy without a prescription, and it nearly killed her, and has left her wheelchair bound for probably the rest of her life. I didn't hear her whole story, but at one point, her parents were told to prepare for the worst. She was in the ICU, and they were told to say goodbye.

After her father told the story, she made it very clear who was to blame.

"Ambien. Horrible drug." she said.

I'm not a big believer in frivolous lawsuits, but this is definitely one of those times where I'd be lawyering up.

Our flickr site

2007-11-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, I've been remiss in posting this, but here is our flickr site. Permanent link on the side bar

Tale of 2

Christmas Pictures

2007-11-27T19:01:00.001-08:00

We took a trip to the local photography studio last weekend. Here are the proofs. You can order photos from the site if you want to. The pictures will be up for 2 weeks, then they'll be gone.

Videos of recent days

2007-11-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, some recent happenings

Reece has really got his walking down as evidenced by this and this

At Halloween, our kids decided they wanted to be a pumpkin and a pirate.

Reece might try rowing his way to fame and fortune.

And Reece always must be the star of the show

Boo!

2007-11-13T19:33:00.001-08:00

Some Halloween shots and others

The teeth doth cometh

2007-11-13T19:06:00.000-08:00

After many months of constant drool, fingers in the mouth, grumpy behavior and sleepless nights, I've finally figured out that it's the kids that should be constantly drooling, putting their fingers in their mouths, being grumpy and not sleeping through the night, not me.

Yes, the first teeth have arrived. Reece popped one on Sunday, and a second one on Monday, both on the lower jaw. And not to be outdone by her brother, Lorelai seems to have popped one today. I don't know if that is normal for siblings (twins) to do it at around the same time, but it seems a little surprising.

They're both doing fairly well with the whole thing, more fascinated by the new sharp thing in their mouth than pained by it. Both are waking up more during the night and needing a little more comfort, but it's not full on wail all night long like I've heard other kids go through. Of course, these are tiny little teeth, not molars or anything, so we're not throwing away the Oragel just yet.

Reece suddenly started clapping his hands yesterday too, and finds it quite amusing to do when he is already happy. He becomes quite ecstatic after a few little claps.

Lorelai has really picked up her crawling pace, and Reece is able to walk around the room, maybe 15 steps at a time without falling if he doesn't get too excited. They're pulling themselves up on anything they can so watch where you lay down around here, or you may end up a baby supporter for an hour or so. Of course standing a lot means falling a lot, and there have been bumps and bruises and scrapes already, but they're learning how to fall better all the time.

We've started taking more walks outside without the stroller when we are both available, with a baby on our shoulders or in our arms, or walking with them as they hold our hands. They love to laugh and giggle as they feel the wind and see leaves moving on the sidewalk. Everything they see is new to them, and amazing to them, and it's wonderful and depressing at the same time. I would love to be able to go back to see all these things for the first time, and to remember it more clearly. We're trying to take pictures and videos when we can, but it's hard when no one has a free hand.

However, they are starting to play together more. Yesterday (Veteran's Day here), we spent the day at home after a quick trip to Target, watching the rain pour down and the wind howl. At one point, Lisa and I were both ready books, and the kids were playing for almost 45 minutes. It dawned on me later that night that they're starting to become more independent and from now on, they'll need us less and less every day. As liberating as that sounds, it also made me kind of sad, in a nostaligic kind of way. That feeling lasted until about 3:00 this morning when I was trying to find a way to get Reece back to sleep without handing him back to Lisa. After 45 minutes, she took pity on me, and probably figured she'd get more sleep if she just stuck the boob back in his mouth, and I went back to sleep. Nostalgia. Bleah!

The additional free time has allowed us to get more projects done, like hanging pictures of the babies up, and organizing and cleaning up the office, and putting together picture collections for the baby books. Projects don't always get done the same day (week) we start them, but they are getting done, and that's what counts. I imagine I'll have even more time if the Hollywood writer's strike goes on much longer and the few shows I watch go into reruns. The only ones we watch anymore are Heroes, House, My Name is Earl, and CSI (Vegas). I try to keep my TV watching to a minimum except for football on Sundays and sometimes the history channel on Saturdays. Sooner or later I'll get back to writing again. Does this count?

My Digitized Life

2007-11-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's pretty easy to get overwhelmed by technology that is supposed to make your life easier. If I was to really spend some time with my cell phone, I'm sure I would find out that it does a lot more than make / receive phone calls. Sure, it takes pictures, but I have absolutely no idea how to get those photos off the phone.

These days, my pet project is getting a grip on al the photos and videos which have accumulated over the past few years. I'm in the process of putting together a DVD of the videos of the kids' first year, and I'd like to go through all the photos and negatives I have from the last 36 years of my life, digitize them and put together an archive.

But, again, when it comes to technology, I'm pretty ignorant. Don't assume that because I write software for a living means I know anything about technology. To me, software is just logic and a language and it's easy, just like some people can learn French, Italian and German in a summer. I could too if I worked with them every day for a few weeks.

Anyway, I have 3 major projects, and if anyone has any advice on the best ways to do the following, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts:

1) How do I go about digitizing the collection of photo negatives I have accumulated? Would a camera shop be able to do it pretty cheaply, or would it be better to buy my own equipment. I'm pretty sure it's the former, because I also don't have much time to do these projects, but I thought I'd check.

2) Can you recommend photo and video editing software that isn't too expensive, is easy to learn and helps to make good looking, high quality images and videos?

3) I've burned picture collections to DVDs and CD's. What are the advantages of each?

Anyway, I'm playing with this stuff a bit tonight. I'll see how it goes.

An entry with no pictures?

2007-11-01T21:21:00.000-07:00

Yes, an entire entry on my blog with nary a picture. I decided to go with the a thousand words builds a picture theory. As in a picture of what's going on in my life these days.

I can't go back to the last blog entry I did and recap every moment, but here's a few high / low lights

First of all, I'm on call this week for work, which makes me instantly grumpy beyond all belief. I've been on call in some way, shape or form for the last 13 years. Not continuously, mind you, just one week on, and right now, about 8 weeks off. But when I'm on, it's 24 hours a day, call me anytime someone sneezes, for no extra pay, no overtime, no comp time, zippo, zilch, notta, nothing. I hate being on call with every fibre of my being. It's an invasion of my time, a disruption of my family's life and my sleep. Tonight, while waiting for my wife to get home from work, the on-call phone rings, and in the two minutes it takes me to decide that the issue they are calling about is not worth looking into till tomorrow, the babies go from moderately happy, to wide mouthed, inconsolable screaming. Doesn't make it easy to talk on the phone, but it sure makes it easy to hang up and say they'll have to call someone else. Of course, just because you hang up the phone, doesn't mean the babies stop crying.

We now have a pretty good routine going around here. Lisa works Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, during which time we have the nanny take care of the kids until I get home around 3:30, then I take care of them until Mommy gets home around 5:15-5:30. Sometimes this involves going on a walk, or just playing on the floor, or maybe going outside and watching the neighborhood kids play 4-Square in the driveway. Reece and Lorelai are fascinated by kids playing. Strange adults generally make them cry if they get too close, but kids are a whole differnet story. They both love being carried around outside and just laughing at evrything they see. It's so much better to them than being couped up in the stroller.

Some weeks, Lisa works four days, and I stay home for a day and take care of the kids. A full weekday by myself with the kids is definitely tiring, but oddly enough, it's easier than when both of us are home with them on the weekends because you don't try to get any projects done. You might make a few phone calls, and maybe a load of laundry, but anything you get done is a bonus, whereas on the weekends, failure to get all your tasks done is cause for depression.

Reece is working on his walking, and Lorelai is crawling quite well. Their talking is limited to Da Da Da and Ba ba ba and Daaad deee, and sometimes Mum mum mum.

We think they're both getting ready to pop some teeth, but we've been saying that for quite a while.

We have been getting more time to ourselves lately, including last Saturday where we left the kids with Courtney and went out on a date. We had lunch on the Tacoma waterfront (Dukes Chowder hourse, very good food, but a bit over priced), then hit Half Price Books, REI and Borders Books.

Speaking (writing?) of books, I just finished one of the best books I've read in years. "Dies the Fire" by S M Stirling. Its a little bit of science fiction, mixed with a little life in a post apocalyptic world, mixed with boyish adventure. If you liked "The Last Canadian" (Mom, this means you), you will like this book. It's the first book in a series, and while I've got most of the series now in my possession, thanks to Half Price Books and Borders, I'm holding off reading the next one until I get a few things done around here. It's one of those books I couldn't put down, and I ended up spending a whole weekend on it. By the time I finished reading it, I was ready to move to the Willamette Valley in Oregon (where the book takes place), build myself a little place in the hills, and wait for the "Change" to come.

While I haven't been writing on this blog, I have done some other writing, which I am hoping to get published in a magazine sometime, as soon as I do some editing, and find a magazine that would be willing to publish it. I would so love to quit my job and write full time, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

Anyway, this post is getting a bit long now, so I'll sign off, and promise to write more frequently. And yes, I'll keep posting pictures and videos.

Some videos to make your day

2007-10-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

Lorelai has learned to crawl too.

The two of them are now learning to get into trouble together.

And if you catch them in the act, they'll get you!

Some more Pics

2007-10-29T20:52:00.001-07:00

A conversation

2007-10-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

As Lisa was finishing up nursing Lorelai and Reece before bedtime tonight, I was standing in the middle of the living room, ready to take them up to bed. Lorelai turns her head, looks directly at me, and says,

"Da Da Da"

Okay, they've both been saying "Ma Ma Ma and Ba Ba Ba and Da Da Da" for quite a while now, but that was just indiscriminate babbling. This was directed talking, with intent.

Reece then looks up from his boob, and says

"Da Da Da"

Lisa and I exchange glances, and I say, "Did you see that?"

"Holy Cow!"

"Lorelai, can you say Da Da?" I ask.

Her mouth moves as if she is saying it, but no sound comes out. She stops briefly, and tries again. "Da Da Da"

"Yay!" said both parents in unison. Reece returns to his boob, apparently unimpressed.

I pick Lorelai up and give her a big hug. "I love you so much, little girl!" I say to her as I squeeze her tight.

And with the impecable timing that is a sure sign of a sense of humor she must have learned from me, she turns to me, and in her final words of the night, says...

"Thhhhhhhbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbtttttttttttt." Right on my cheek.

We can thank Grandpa Tony for teaching her that one.

More Movies

2007-10-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Soon I write something. I swear. For now, enjoy these

Reece and Lorelai enjoying a joke (we think it was about us)

Lorelai and Reece experience fish for the first time

Reece is getting mobile.