All the Billion Other Moments

It was a busy week with the holiday. I haven’t had any time since I posted last, but I finished revising Chapter 4 this morning. I hope to get to Chapter 5 today. We’ll see.

I moved about half of Chapter 3 to a spot later in the book, and rewrote the remains around it. The chapter that remains is a bit shorter than I’d like, but I’m not seeing any obvious way to remedy it, so it’s done for now. We’ll see what happens when I drop the other section back in.

I never managed to make it back to the book today, but I do feel like the day was fairly productive, which is a rarity for a weekend. Denise managed to find my missing stack of notecards (thanks!), so I’m ready to dive in tomorrow.

I got 24 pages revised. Not great, but it’s a start. That covers up to the end of Chapter 2. I removed a large section that was slowing things down.

I hoped to do more, but there a large section of Chapter 3 that needs to be moved to a later chapter, and I can’t find my stack of notecards for it. That’ll teach me to clean my desk! Hopefully I’ll get more time this afternoon and tackle the next bit. For now I’ve read it over so I can bounce it around in my head while doing other things.

I set the alarm for 5 today so I could get some work done on the book before the family is up and about. Took me a bit to clear my head and catch up on email and such, but I’m diving in now. Wish me luck!

These are the things I read online this week that I feel are worth sharing.

• Glenstal monk shows his cards — A Benedictine monk of Glenstal Abbey wants to reclaim tarot for Christianity.
• OMG Girlz Don’t Exist on teh Intarweb!!!!1 — Whitney Butts tries, unsuccessfully, to convince people that she is a girl, and she does exist.
• Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far and it’s follow up More on Sony: Dangerous Decloaking Patch, EULAs and Phoning Home — Sony/BMG’s attempt to ensure you don’t fully enjoy your purchased music has some nasty side effects. I can tell you I won’t be buying any music from them for the foreseeable future
  

It’s been a rough time since I last posted. My day job has changed again in ways I don’t fully comprehend yet (although so far, so good). My youngest daughter has been ill and after a trip to the ER and numerous doctor’s visits and sleepless nights we now have the pleasure of pinning her down to take nasty tasting antibiotics twice a day for the foreseeable future. She’s doing better now, and that is, of course, what matters. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to writing every day again soon.

I’ve been blog-tagged by Holly.

I could take the easy way out. I did use “joy” in my last post, but that’s unfair, because I already knew I was tagged by the time I posted. I have to say, when searching the blog for the term “happiness“, it was a little disheartening to see what the internal search engine came back with.

Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.

Ouch!

I think of myself as a somewhat cynical person with a generally positive outlook. That might be completely untrue, as I haven’t really spent too much time in close self examination of late. I figure I know me pretty well, but I could be wrong.

So what’s my “One little thing that fills you with warmth, that bubbles you over with quiet happiness, or tickles you with its good-hearted hilarity, or makes you glad you just took a breath, and are getting ready to take another”? It’s pretty simple, really. It’s watching Vanessa when she’s watching her older sister, Rachel, play. The look of pure joy on her face when she watches her big sister is just indescribable. You get the feeling that there is just too much happiness for her little body to contain, and it’s beautiful.

Alright, I tag the following:

• Bohdel
• Dursin @ SecretMonkey.net (it’s not a blog, but it’s close enough)
  
• King Tractor
• markm
• Neil Gaiman (that’s my long shot)

The rules are here, so get to it!

I spent all day Friday September 30 and most of Saturday October 1 at Wizard World Boston. I spent a good deal of time (almost all of Friday) at the The Secret Monkey/Turbo Comics table, helping my good friends Dursin, John, and Ray try to sell their books with mixed success (a lot of people took the freebies, but not so many parted with the $2.95 for a copy of the book). You can read Dursin’s take on the show here.

My friend Brom called me up saying he wanted to get together with our buddy Dursin and go out to dinner sometime. We made plans to meet up the day before my birthday. I showed up just before they did, and I did a double take to see Frank and Dream getting out of the car with them. I admit it, I was surprised. They had planned a birthday get together for me, and I hadn’t expected it at all.

We had a fun dinner, and afterwards, Brom mentioned that Junction 18 was playing a show at Drifters. Junction 18 is the younger band that used to practice across the street from Brom’s band when we were in high school. I’d never heard of the place, but it was right around the corner from my house, so we headed on over. It was interesting to be one day away from 29 in a room full of high school kids. There’s some strange sort of angst nostalgia feeling I can’t quite describe. Drifters was a nice clean place, the sort of place I would have liked at that age. Anyway, the guys from Junction 18 rocked, and they even dedicated a song (Battle Ax) to me for my birthday.

I’m not sure what the next year of my life will bring, but my friends made sure it started out with a bang. Thanks guys!