I've never seen this Weezer video before, but it came out the same year that we had our first Dunesteef Broken Mirror Event. The prompt that year was, "someone arrives in town, and discovers that everyone there is exactly the same." This must have been Weezer's entry in the contest.
Wish they'd sent us an email and let us know about it though.
I did it, y'all.
I often have big dreams, but not very often do I actually live up to them. Since I was very young, I wanted to be a storyteller. I tried a few different ways of doing so--feature films, comic books, documentaries--before finally deciding that novel and short story writing was the way I wanted to do it.
Once that was decided, I proceeded to do a whole lot of nothing in pursuit of that goal. Well, that wasn't completely true, I would write a short story or two a year, honing my craft about as quickly as a stream eats its way through a rock. If I lived a million years, I might have managed to become a real writer at that rate.
Here and there I tried to muster some perseverance and work more diligently on the goal of writing, but I always petered out in the end, letting the pressures of life sidetrack me until the next thing I knew it had been months since the last time I'd written a word.
When I turned 40 back in October of 2014, I made the goal of becoming a writer in five years. I even made it the focus of my solo podcast, the Anklecast. Of course I didn't make it, or even really put in all that much effort toward the goal.
This year, I decided that wasn't going to happen. I turned 45 years old in October of 2019, and I made the goal to write 300,000 words over the course of the next year. That seemed pretty doable as long as I stuck with it, and for once in my life I actually did stick to it.
I made the goal to write 1,000 words a day, and for most of the last eight months, I've managed to do so. Sticking to that goal made the larger goal pretty simple, because there's 365 days in a year. I only have to write 1,000 for 300 of those days to make it to the finish line.
I started out really slow in November and December, keeping my goal at a low 500 words a day, and forgetting to write on many of those days, but I didn't give up. In January, I upped my goal to 1,000 a day, and I guess the rest is history. Siri tells me it's been 307 days since my birthday, and despite many of those days being well below 1,000, enough of them were above 1,000 to make up for it, and this month I crossed the line over 300,000 words.
During that time, I finished two novels, one of them clocking in at 100,738 words, the other hitting 120,485 words. I also wrote eleven short stories of varying lengths in that time as well. The year isn't even over yet, either. September is just beginning, which means I have nearly two more months before I turn 46.
I must admit that this year has been a success, and I am determined to build on that. I'm starting to work out my goals for next year, which will involve a lot of publishing of the words that I wrote this year, as well as the ones that I have written in years past.
Am I the only one who finds these to be redundant?
Why meatless vegetable patties and strips? Isn't vegetable strips enough?
Thought I’d post these pictures just for fun. These are the windows around my front door. Sopping wet, but it was not raining today. That’s pure humidity condensing on the windows. Crazy.
Last week, there was an extremely unusual thing going on: two hurricanes forming in the gulf at once. One storm, Hurricane Marco was coming up from the Yucatan area, and looked like it was heading right for us. The other, Hurricane Laura, was way over by Florida, and looked like it would probably make landfall way over in Mississippi or Alabama. I went home from work for the weekend expecting Marco to be a big deal come Monday night.
Over the weekend, however, things changed. Marco fell apart, increase in wind shear weakened the storm, and it changed its course away from Houston as well. Monday night, the storm came ashore near the mouth of the Mississippi River as a weak tropical storm, and dissipated without doing much damage.
Laura, on the other hand, was now getting stronger and stronger, and headed our way. On Tuesday, this is what they were expecting out of Laura.
She should be a category 2 hurricane, and the cone of her passage looked like it would have Houston right on its edge.
And she was looking pretty scary:
This news had people in town on edge. They canceled school for Wednesday and Thursday, even though they'd only just begun this week. Everyone was struggling to get prepared for the possible worst. We got prepared with most of the things we needed for the storms of past years, and we picked up a few more supplies at the store over the weekend, so we were not in any dire need. However, on Tuesday morning, I wanted some bacon and eggs for breakfast, so I headed to the store to pick some up. As had occurred during the panic from Hurricane Harvey, the shelves at Kroger had been cleaned out of the non-perishables. Here's the bread aisle:
Must be a lot of college students in the area, because this was what the ramen and Instant Lunch aisle looked like:
Same for the macaroni and cheese aisle:
And either everybody was planning a party, or there's a lot of those picky people who can't bear to drink water in our area, because this is what the soda section looked like.
It was nice not to have to care.
I went to work that day, and this was what they were expecting out of Laura now:
She had intensified significantly, and was now expected to be a category 4 hurricane when she made landfall. At work, they wanted us to do twelve hour shifts for the hurricane coverage, which meant I would be getting off work at about two in the morning, the exact time the hurricane was supposed to be hitting. I brought a mattress, a pillow, and a change of clothes, because, even though we were on the far edge of Laura's cone of destruction, I expected the conditions to be pretty unfavorable for a late night drive home.
It was still sunny early in the day, but by the time I was on my way to work, the clouds filled the sky. It started raining softly as I drove, but when I got to work, and just as I stepped out of my car, the rain's intensity quadrupled. I had to run for the awning, as did the several other people who were arriving at the same time as me. I went inside, and the rain only got worse. It was pouring buckets, raining cats and dogs, the old man was snoring. I was wondering just how I was going to get my mattress and pillow out of the car for the my night's sleep if it was going to be like this all day.
However, it wasn't. The rain let up an hour or so later, and as the day went on, things looked better and better. I finally went out to the car to grab my bedroll after the early shows ended, and this is what the sky looked like:
Not even a cloud. Was it going to be less than I thought? I still planned to stay the night at work, because I expected that conditions would change later, but I was starting to have my doubts.
We had a reporter in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the storm was supposed to hit, and he had to hide out in the parking garage of one one of the casinos there, and do his live shots from inside that relative safety. Western Louisiana and the far eastern edge of Texas took it on the chin. Things were torn apart by the winds there, but here in Houston, we skated free.
When my shift finally ended at 2:00 AM, I considered heading upstairs to where I had stashed my mattress and going to bed, but the conditions outside looked just peachy. It would be a lot nicer to sleep in my own bed rather than a spare room in the station. I talked to the assignment desk manager, and he looked at the traffic camera along my route. There was nothing to worry about. I was convinced, I ran upstairs and grabbed my stuff, took it out to the car, and drove home.
I didn't deal with a single drop of rain the whole way. Laura had completely spared us. We had dodged a bullet...or a cannonball, really. The next day at work I saw what the coastal cities in Louisiana looked like, and I was very grateful to have been spared.
I grabbed this still from our tower camera at work. I never thought I'd live so close to the Dark Tower.
I'm being told that it totally isn't the dark tower, but is in fact a building called the Williams Building, and that there is no truth at all to the fact that there are beams radiating out from it in spokes that hold up the tower and support all reality. Sorry for any confusion.
My son has been watching the Incredible Hulk cartoon that's on Disney+ for the last week or so. It's only one season, and it's not particularly great either, but it is kind of fun seeing the "ever-lovin’ Hulk! HULK! HULK!" get his pantheon on the TV.
After all he was "belted by gamma rays" and became completely "unglamo-rays". Nobody cares much about the others that populate his world, like The Leader or The Abomination or The Gargoyle. He's the only character in the MCU to fail to get a sequel. On top of that, his earlier effort, made by multiple Oscar-winning director Ang Lee, also failed to get a sequel when almost every superhero movie got one.
Anyhow, I'm going on too long about this for the small payoff that will come from it in the end. Sorry.
So, I was in the room while he was watching an episode the other day. Bruce Banner was sent to get some parts for the scientific contraption he was supposed to be making. He, and his escort, Crusher Creel, go into some kind of storage unit, and Bruce starts looking around at what is available. He likes what he sees. What he said, made me laugh out loud when I heard it. I shot the segment with my phone. Here it is:
If you're hip to my jive, then this clip made you laugh out loud too. If you're not picking up what I'm laying down, then let me fill you in. Those two things he mentioned aren't all pieces of scientific equipment. The first thing means nothing to me, but it sounds legit. To most people, the second thing would sound legit too. A transformer is a piece of electrical equipment. Nerds like me usual think of a different thing when we hear the word transformer.
If you don't know your Transformers, then you would be unaware that Unicron was the giant planet-sized robot that everyone had to fight in the 1986 Transformers movie.
But if you watched that movie as a kid like me, and had it make the kind of impression on you like it did on me, then you'll never hear the words "a Unicron Transformer" used like it was in this clip without laughing.
Okay, now that I've made this whole thing as completely boring and awful as possible by over-explaining the hell out of it, I will bid you adieu.
At the start of the month, I made a bunch of goals that I wanted to accomplish during this turn of the moon. We're nowhere near seeing all the moons phases yet, but I managed to complete one of the goals that I set. Which one? Well, I made this goal:
Goal #2: Finish off THE GAUNTLET this month.
That's right, just the other night (Friday to be exact) I got to write those two sweet words onto the end of the document that I had been working on for something like four months.
I have finished writing The Gauntlet. It's pretty dang exciting to achieve something so large as that to me. The crazy thing is that it's now the third time that I can say that I have accomplished such a thing. This one was the largest so far. Here's a shot of the final word count for the book:
According to an article in Writer's Digest that I just found searching the internet, 120,000 words is 480 pages. That's a pretty good value if you are shopping for a book to read, right? Hopefully it will keep readers happy as they make their way through it.
When I finished writing it, I got that buzz of excitement, that feeling of satisfaction that comes with achievement. It was pretty neat. Unfortunately, I don't really have anyone to celebrate it with. I texted the pictures above to Rish Outfield, but I didn't hear anything back from him that night.
He had called me earlier in the day, thinking I was probably already done, so that he could suggest what he thought I should write next, and we'd talked for about an hour, but now that I was actually done, he wasn't available.
I called my wife as I drove home, but she's not a writer, and doesn't really like the kind of stuff that I write. I usually don't share it with her, because I fear what any disapproval from her might do to my confidence to continue. Once, years ago I stupidly shared an in-progress work with her, and her comments derailed me.
She was nice, and told me congratulations. I wanted to celebrate somehow, but the endless yawns she was giving me over the phone made it clear that it was going to be unlikely that she would be awake when I got home, and by the time I did, she was snoring away, not interested in partying with the likes of me.
By the next day, the buzz was gone, of course. So, I didn't really do anything at all. I guess that's the breaks when you have no friends that live nearby.
This morning, Rish called, and asked me what I had done to celebrate. I told him the story I just told you, and said, "maybe I should get myself a diet soda to celebrate with." You see, as a sugar addict, I've celebrated with food my whole life. I've commiserated with food too. I've soothed my anxiety with food. I use food for just about any occasion that I can think of, really.
I decided to grab a soda, and celebrate with it. Which of course led to me cheating with a few other things as well, as I knew I would if I opened the door and gave myself permission. Now it doesn't feel like a celebration at all. Just a stupid addict doing what a stupid addict does. I guess it kind of removes a little of the triumph of the achievement really. Especially considering that another one of my goals for the month was:
Goal #3: Eat a Zero-Carb Diet this month.
What I did today caused me to fail in the achievement of that goal. Now, I didn't expect to be 100% perfect. I was trying to get as many days zero carb as possible, and today has been one fewer day. Not the end of the world, but just a bit of suckitude mixed in with the triumph.
Maybe after my next book, I'll have figured out a better way to celebrate. When we were on the phone, Rish also suggested that I buy myself a toy for my collection instead. I probably should have gone that route instead. Maybe I'd feel better about myself if I'd done that instead. I'll keep that in mind for next time. Maybe even save up some money so that I can buy something really cool without busting the budget. Have that money sitting there, but unusable until I finish the book. Could be a good incentive too.
Unfortunately for him, his tooth fairy has gotten pretty out of practice, because it's been a little while since he lost his last teeth.
My wife started the tradition of giving the kids candy or a toy along with their money when they lose a tooth. This can be a big pain for me, because I often have to run out to the store late at night to get said candy or toy, because I either haven't heard that the child has lost a tooth or I forgot and failed to get something earlier.
This has only gotten worse now that the coronavirus has arrived, because all the stores close early, even the Walmart, which was always my go-to because it was open 24 hrs, closes early, long before I get home from work.
So, a week ago, my son lost a tooth, put it under his pillow, and nobody told me. The next morning, he checked under his pillow, and found that the tooth fairy had neglected to come by. He told me to call the tooth fairy and let her know, so that he wasn't forgotten again. Except that I forgot, and the next morning, he checked under his pillow and got that sad, dejected feeling again. He reminded me to inform the tooth fairy about his tooth, and I kicked myself for being forgetful.
I told myself I would make sure not to forget again, and get something for him, but then I had things I had to take care of in the morning, and I left for work without remembering to get him something. Once I'm at work, it's too late. Everything shuts down before I get home. I was driving home that night when I realized that I'd done it again.
I was berating myself as I drove home, and thinking that I would have to go out to get something for him first thing in the morning, when I drove past the gas station by our house. Its lights were on and blazing brightly. I had an idea. I could get him a bunch of the things he always wants to buy from the gas station when we go together. He never just wants a regular old candy bar. Instead, he always wants to buy the candy that is also a toy, some kind of car, or cement mixer, or helicopter that also comes with candy.
Kind of lame, at least to me, but to an eight-year-old, it's not necessarily so crappy. It was either that, or leave him disappointed again when he looks under his pillow for the third day in a row. I quickly pulled a U-turn and headed back to the gas station. I bought him a little plastic toilet that had flavored powder in the bowl, and came with two suckers that looked like plungers. You licked the suckers to make them tacky, then plunged the powder filled toilet to cover the plunger suckers with the powder, then licked the powder off. Then repeat until the powder and suckers were gone. Yes, the tooth fairy has some real class.
I got him a big bag of his favorite candy, and a baby bottle sucker thing, and called it good. I took it home, and snuck it under his pillow, and could look forward to him not being let down by his forgetful father again.
The next morning, I got out of bed and found my son on the couch watching TV, and chowing down on all of that candy the tooth fairy brought him. He was happy. None of that stuff was legitimate toys, and it would probably all be in the garbage can by the end of the day, but he liked it. It was better than the nothing that he had gotten from the tooth fairy for the last few days. So I felt good too.
My daughter later told me that she saw him right after he woke up and found the stuff under his pillow, and he said, "It looks like the Tooth Fairy went to the gas station."
He knew where the stuff had come from, and knew that it was lame, but as I said, it was better than nothing. He just kept on believing, because, I suppose, he might be afraid that if we found out that he knows the tooth fairy was us, then the treats might stop coming.
Only a few days later, I got a text from my wife:
He caught my wife texting to me, however. "What is that?" he asked. "It says 'Do you have any tooth fairy stuff?' Who are you texting that to?"
My wife had been caught red-handed. She had to come up with something fast.
"I was just texting the Tooth Fairy," she said.
"But it says Big there on the top," he countered.
Now she had really been caught, but she was quick on her feet.
"No, it says Brig. It's short for Brigit. That's the Tooth Fairy's name. It's like Big, but different."
My son accepted that, and went away excited to know the Tooth Fairy's name. A few days later, I heard my daughter mentioning Brigit to my son, and had to ask what they were talking about. She told me the story, and it made me chuckle (though I made sure to do it inwardly so I didn't give anything away to my son).
He chimed in when she finished the story, "Yeah, Brigit's name sounds like that, but it's spelled exactly like your name."
"That's interesting," I said, but only smiled inwardly. Funny stuff.
That day, on the way to work, I grabbed my son a couple of Lego Minifigures that he wanted from Walmart, so the early closing time couldn't get me again. When I went up to his room that night to slip it under his pillow, I found this:
That is his trap for the Tooth Fairy. When the Tooth Fairy walked into his room, she would kick the string, making noise that would wake him up so he could get a look at the Tooth Fairy. It was supposed to be a bell, but we didn't have one, so he got the next best thing he could think of, a set of keys sound like a bell sometimes. My daughter forewarned Brigit about the trap, however, so I was able to easily avoid it, and get him his treat.
The next morning, he was upset to find that his trap had never been sprung. When he wondered how, I told him that the Tooth Fairy surely flew over the top of the string.
He enjoyed the Lego guys, and was already plotting what might work better to catch a glimpse of the Tooth Fairy. Worse yet, he's already got another loose tooth.
