Tomorrow is my birthday. I will turn 38 years old, which is old enough to have been “legal” for two decades. As a present to myself, and a kind of personal experiment, I will be completely offline tomorrow from midnight-to-midnight inclusive. This means: I will not be checking email I will not be checking Facebook,…
I haven’t started the new story yet, or for that matter, done any writing at all since sending the latest one off on Monday. There have been lots of distractions: Zach has an ear infection (his first). We have contractors at the house repairing a closet that was damaged by a leaky shower. It’s been…
We received our 2010 census data capture form in the mail today. I just finished completing the form and it is ready to go back in the mail. It was easy to do. The one quirk in it was that the form kept asking how many people lived in the house on April 1, 2010.…
Wow! I just checked my list and discovered that I have never, in 15 years of record-keeping, have I rated 2-consecutive books at 5-stars. Until today. On the heels of completing Connie Willis’ stunning Blackout, I just zipped my way through Robert Silverberg’s wonderful collection of autobiographical writings, Other Spaces, Other Times. It was an…
When I arrived home yesterday, Kelly was unloading groceries from her car. One of the bags contained boxes of cereal and among the drab Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats was a bright red box with yellow lettering: Lucky Charms. “Why’d you get Lucky Charms?” I asked, since it was in our repertoire of breakfast…
Connie Willis’ newest novel, Blackout had a lot of things in its favor even before I read the first page: (1) it was written by Connie Willis, whose work I admire; (2) it’s a time-travel story, which is a minor passion of mine; (3) it takes place in London in World War II, a setting…
This evening I am making an end-run at finishing up Blackout by Connie Willis. Each time I pick the book up, it gets more and more difficult to put down. I promise to stop at the end of the chapter. Then I read the first few words of the next chapter and before I know…
A quick recap of today’s dramatic events for those who might have missed them: 1. Very little sleep last night 2. Banged my knee on my desk 3. Busy day at work. No lunch 4. Grilled cheese for dinner 5. Off to bed a few minutes after Zachary End message.
I didn’t write this morning. That’s okay, because Kelly has a girls’ night tonight and I figured once I put Zachary down (assuming he cooperated) I’d have an hour or so to make more progress on the third draft of the February story. As it turns out, Zachary did cooperate and at 7:15, I found…
South Carolina is doing an advertising blitz in the food court of the shopping mall upon which my office building sits. They’ve got a full-sized speed boat with a para-sailor up in the rafters, some kind of interactive beach ball video game, kiosks which presumably give you lots of information about vacationing in South Carolina…