Nano Day 3 – Gaining speed, Fondue, Toronto, and the new house is close to being done

Made really good progress on writing today. A scene I originally planned as being one chapter is actually turning into two. Not a bad thing when the whole story occurs during a single night. I’m closing back on to doing 90,000 for November, which would be awesome.

As a combined birthday present, my wife and I went to The Melting Pot for dinner tonight. A friend took the kids for a few hours, so it was nice. We talked about the move, how life is finally settling down a bit, and various back street ways to get around in San Antonio. Initially, everything depends on 281, which can be a total nightmare at various times of day. Finding ways to get around that don’t involve 281 can be a godsend. The fondue was excelent, and we have a small booth in an alcove where we sat at a 45 degree angle to each other. It wouldn’t be my initial choice for sitting, but it ended up working out really well.

The Toronto trip moves along. There were several emails back and forth trying to get the paperwork lined up for me to go there. Since a business partner is making the request, it’s more complicated than normal. The latest word is the customer will have the contract signed and returned on Monday, and wants me onsite as soon as possible. The reality is, it might take a week before everything is set up on our side. It’s kind of funky that I was setting my nano story in Detroit, then get an engagement that has me up in the Great Lakes area in November. Google maps says it’s a 4 hour drive to Detroit, and if I stay the weekend, I might give it a shot.

After dinner tonight, we drove past the new house. The lights were on, and the doors were unlocked. Apparently that’s common in Texas. Seems like an open invitation to have high school kids trash your house with a wild party. The appliances and sink/toiiet fixtures aren’t in, and there is some clean up stuff to get done, but the house is really getting close. Given that we had an original estimated move in ready date of early January, I’m almost a little nervous. How are they getting it done this fast? Have all the other sales fallen apart, and they’re just trying to get us done so they can get some money? I think we need to really have someone do a very thorough inspection of the place before we accept it.

Nano Day 2 – Frog legs, keeping my stride and Canada

Work intruded pretty heavily on everything. Several customer issues and beautiful weather sent me scurrying up 281 past highway 46, home of the Antler cafe. I sat at one of the picnic tables on the extended deck in front of the aging double wide and ordered me two helpings of froglegs. A crazily colored cat circled around and around, but didn’t get any. When I got back, I still did about 2.5 miles, down from my goal of 3 miles a day, on the treadmill before returning to work.

With a late night rally, I pulled a decent word count for the day. Just like the treadmill, I didn’t keep the pace of 3,000 words a day, but I did get close to 2,500 by midnight. It was like I had an internal shutoff switch today. It isn’t all pretty, but I’ll take it. Usually I’m still recovering from a horrible word count after the first two days. This time I’m well ahead of the curve for 50,000 by the end of the month.

A late breaking development is that I maybe flying to Toronto for an extended engagement at a customer site. Part of me is excited, part of me is nervous, part of me will hate being away that long. They are talking 9 consecutive days, 2 onsite, two back here working on deliverying solutions, and then 5 days the following week back on site. It’s going to chew up my schedule, but the boss is happy. Nice, simple flat rate fees to charge. We’ll see how it actually works out. I could be flying as soon as Monday.

Nano, Day 1 – 3099 and I didn’t even break a sweat

Yeah, yeah. Big talk on day one, mister!

My schedule is really screwy right now. I was dialed (yes boys and girls of the broadband age, dialed) into a customer sites at 2 AM, writing in between the jobs running on their system. “The Last of the Duke Street Kings” started almost painfully slow, even though I thought I had the first chapter pretty well planned out in advance.

I was stiff, slow. I wanted to quit. But, after a while, I kind of hit a stride. Then I slept for a few hours between 4:30 and 8:30; got back onto work things and started writing again around 11. Things really seemed to flow then, and I hit 3099 around 12:30.

Worked some more; ran on the treadmill at 3. Back at work, and now I’m winding down. I have some more night work, so I’ll see if I can rinse and repeat.

All that said, it’s a really rough first draft. I posted it on my nano profile page:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/47723

Halloween in Texas

WTF?

We took the kids out for T or T tonight. Colorado prides itself on having clear sunny skies 300 days a year (on average). Yet one of it’s dark secrets is Halloween is routinely one of the coldest, most miserable days of the year. The only thing worse than a snowy Halloween is a cold, rainy Halloween. Colorado gave you either, sometimes both, on a regular basis. As a kid, you were guaranteed one thing: nobody could see your costume under the layers of clothing you had to put on to survive Halloween night.

Tonight was in the mid 70’s. I was in a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, walking the kids from door to door. Last year, the dad next door and I snuck Schaaps with us and took shots to keep warm. This year everyone was out on their driveways in lawn chairs, talking to neighbors and handing out candy. One guy even wheeled his grill around and was serving up hotdogs. Really good hotdogs.

I could get used to this.

T-minus on the Nano countdown and 9 minute miles!!!

The final day before the start of Nanowrimo!

I have a fair amount of the book mapped out (for me, anyway). In a fit of insanity I have decided that the tone I want to try and create is sort of a beat narrator for the story. I’ve downloaded Kerouac and Ginsburg reading their works to my iPod and have been mainlining on them whenever I can. “Howl” is still an amazing poem, and I still remember the smugly pleased expression on my college professor’s face at the end of the class when we discussed the poem.

“If you want to understand the importance of this poem,” he said, “remember this: I never have to prepare a discussion for this particular class, and, usually, the only contribution I ever have to provide is to monitor the discussion to make sure it remains civil. Decades after it was written, no one can read this poem and NOT have a passionate opinion about it. And sometimes, like today, I get to sit back and watch my entire class actively participate in a discussion of not only this poem, but what is and is not art and what responsibility, if any, the poet has to society. Thank you.”

At the time, I put up the strong opposition to even accepting that “Howl” was a poem to attending a conservative trust fund kid college during the Reagan years. Now I wonder if anyone even tests the Focus on the Family crowd by bringing Ginsburg into the classroom.

I only started reading Kerouac recently. I’ve had the requisite copy of “On the Road” sitting on the shelf, but have never read it. What I have read is a small book of poetry (packed now, given my transient state), that I bought with a gift card to the Tattered Cover. I’d only heard parodies of beat poetry previously, but actually reading Kerouac and hearing him read his work really appeals to me. Some day I’ll end up with a soul patch goatee, sitting in some dark coffee bar and snapping my fingers while an emaciated being bares his tortured soul.

On another front, I don’t know if it’s the change in altitude or what, but I am suddenly able to run a lot more easily than before. It’s all still on the treadmill, but I can crank out 3 miles with an average pace of 9:11 per mile multiple days in a row. At this rate, a 10K shouldn’t be a problem very soon, AND, the little thought has been planted: marathon at 50! (ssssshhh… not so loud! It’s waaaay too early to even think of another marathon!)

SUMMATION:

I’m pumped!!!

I’m pumped for Nano!!!

I’m pumped at slipping back under double digits for a mile when I run!!!

I’m pumped about being in Texas!!!

I’m pumped about being 10 minutes away from a little cafe that is a converted double wide with picnic tables out front where I can order frog legs and a beer for lunch!!!

I’m pumped about living somewhere where I actually want to sit outside at a picnic table this time of year!!!

(Ok, the froglegs thing may be information no one else wants to know…)

The Welcome Wagon

Oct 2nd. (Pay no attention to the date generated by the ghouls behind the scenes. They do not understand the true nature of time and space, or the laziness of some bloggers in posting to their blog!)

Today we got our first surprise visitor. The apartment has some of the wolrd’s cheapest carpet installed, so we’ve been insisting that everyone takes off their shoes when they first come in. I was going to be incredibly efficient, and told the kids to put their shoes away in the front closet, but, when opened, we found a scorpion clinging to the side wall.

I called the kids over, we all observed the scorpion and discussed how cool they look. then there was a moment of silence, and I told the kids to go upstairs. Dad had some work to do. A really brave person would have tried to capture it and release it, but… well…..

After a furious exibition of shoe fu, the scorpion had been rendered to a smear on the closet wall and a crumpled mess on the floor. I cleaned it up and we have all moved on.

Hello world!

Welcome to the bunker!

I’ve just moved from Colorado to Texas. I didn’t have to do it for my job, my job currently allows me to live where I want. Let’s see how this little adventure works out!

main( ) {
extrn a, b, c;
putchar(a); putchar(b); putchar(c); putchar(’!*n’);
}
a ‘hell’;
b ‘o, w’;
c ‘orld’;