Wednesday, August 31, 2022

You Don't Need Motivation, You Need Discipline - Day 52 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Vigilance! Just keep going! Develop the discipline to avoid any slip-ups and you will be good. You don't need to be motivated. You simply need to develop the new habits that are associated with daily discipline. You can do it.

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It Beggars Belief

I eat meat all the time, and it's doing me a lot of good. I have become much more healthy since I started doing that. 

Of course, there's some hazards...no, I'm not talking about cholesterol. That BS was a theory that has proven to be completely untrue. No, I'm talking about this:

Yeah, that's my cat Juno. Every time I sit down with some food, the cat comes and stares me down like this, waiting for me to pitch some of my lunch her way. Every single time. If I was eating cereal or broccoli, I don't think I'd have to deal with this. So, keep in mind if you're thinking of trying it out, that there are some hazards.

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Avoiding Accidental Slip-Ups- Day 51 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

It's pretty easy to accidentally slip up and eat something you shouldn't, after all, we've been eating that garbage our whole lives without ever thinking about it. How can we avoid torpedoing our progress with a stupid slip up like that?

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Countertops!

This summer has been about as garbage as a summer can possibly be for me. Instead of doing things that summer is known for like relaxing, having fun, and going on vacation, we've spent the whole summer working on our house with every available moment of free time.

I told y'all about the stuff we did to get our damaged floors redone. The new floors were in a month and a half ago, and since that day, the work hasn't even paused. Instead, it moved to a new focus. Now we're trying to get our kitchen put back together.

It looked like this when I did that post back in mid-July:


And we've lived with this ever since, as we steadily added to it, assembling Ikea cabinets, mounting them, painting the door front, etc. We've had no countertops, no oven, no stove, and no sink this whole time. At least we were able to keep the refrigerator going.

It's been a monstrous pain in the ass, and I have to say that there is no way the finished product can be worth what it took to get there. My wife would probably disagree, which is a little weird since she has done more of the work on it than I have, but she really cares about shit like kitchens and floors. This was what she wanted in the first place, so I suppose she will be happy when it's all done.

We worked on the kitchen every weekend this summer, and it went from what you see above to this:


 Then to this:




When it was mostly assembled, my wife started painting all the doors to the color she had chosen. And the kitchen looked like this:




The doors had to dry inside the house for the most part, because the humidity of Houston made it impossible for the enamel to harden completely otherwise. Of course, it also has been raining every few minutes here as well, which makes it tough for paint to dry.

With some doors painted, she started putting them on, and our kitchen began to look like a real kitchen.




Now that it was looking like we were close, my wife decided it was time to order the countertops and get the installation appointment set up. It was set for yesterday...which gave us a deadline. We had to have everything ready for the countertops to be installed. Worse yet...well for her, not so much for me...I was scheduled to work the two Saturdays leading up to the installation, so I was only going to be around to help for half of the weekends we had available.

We struggled out way through it. If you've ever done home renovation, then you know that nothing works like it should, and everything takes at least twice as long as you expect, and each problem you solve actually causes two more problems you have to deal with. But yesterday morning, we had it as ready as we could get it.




The installation guys didn't even show up until after noon. They had scheduled to be here for two days to put all the countertops in, but instead, they just worked non-stop until 9:30 at night. By the end of the day, we had new countertops, and our kitchen really did feel like a kitchen.

It's pretty amazing to have a stove cooktop right there available for use.


And look at this amazing thing. It's a sink!

Don't get too excited, it's not hooked up. It still can't be used. Tomorrow, a plumber is coming to hook up the sinks. That will be a red letter day for sure.

The bar got extended, so it can be used as a place to sit and eat at if wanted, instead of just a place to pile crap and make a big mess.

Since we'd already paid for the slabs for the kitchen, there was enough left over to get our bathroom countertops too. So those were replaced with the quartz that my wife picked as well.


As you can probably tell, the sinks there aren't hooked up yet either. We are without any sinks on the entire main floor right now. We have to use the bathtub in the master bathroom to get any water or wash any dishes right now. Hopefully everything will go well when the plumber comes tomorrow, and we won't have to deal with that much longer. I'm tired of living like it's 1900 before indoor plumbing became a thing.

So, that's where we are. There's still a lot to go. The vent over the stove is something that we are going to have to build from scratch. There's several cover panels that need to be put in place to fill in gaps, gotta bring in the dishwasher and hook it back up, get the new oven mounted and hooked up, and stuff like that.

It'll probably be well into the fall if not past the winter solstice when we finally finish all of this shit, but at least it's starting to feel like we're over the hump and onto the downhill slope.

My wife has complained about how this year has felt like we haven't done anything fun. We did go to Disneyworld in February, but after the summer we had it feel like a distant memory, like we actually went there in February of 2018 instead of February of this year. I have to agree.

The real problem isn't that we haven't done anything fun, it's actually that we haven't done anything normal. We spend all our free time on the kitchen, which means our kids get none of our free time, and our family is suffering because of it. Hopefully, we'll be back to normal soon, and we can do things like watch movies on a Sunday afternoon with our children, and let them see that we still love them and think about them sometimes.

All I can say is that if you are thinking of re-doing your kitchen, save up enough money that you can pay someone to do it for you, and get it done in a week or two. Using every moment of your free time for months on end is no way to live, and no kitchen, no matter how fancy it turns out, is worth that price.

Monday, August 29, 2022

Working That Fasting Muscle Makes It Stronger - Day 50 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Marshal kicked butt on a 48-hour fast, and did so well that he didn't even feel like he'd done enough. That's what happens when you fast...or do many of the other things that can bring about more health.

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Is This Weird?

I'm not a cat person, so I don't know, but I'm guessing this is not normal for cats. I have a cat that likes to play ball.

That's not a normal thing for cats, is it? Everybody knows that dogs are known for playing ball, but cats?

The ball is one of those little Nerf things that can be used as a bullet in a particular Nerf gun, and it's just the right size for her to grag in her mouth and carry around. It cracks me up every time I see her pick it up in her mouth...it's just so dog-like.

She plays with the ball all by herself, knocking it around with her paw, or backing up and then pouncing on it. And she chases it every time you kick it across the floor.

She hasn't quite figured out the ball game, though. She picks up the ball in her mouth pretty often, but not every time, and she brings the ball with her in her mouth, but she doesn't bring in back to me so I can throw it again for her. When she get that down, I think we can officially start calling her a dog.

Maybe that's why I like this cat so much more than our other one. She's basically a dog in cat's clothing.

Sunday, August 28, 2022

When To Consider Expanding Carnivore Back Towards Omnivory - Day 49 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

When is it okay to eat from the plant kingdom again? Is it ever? Is there a hard and fast rule or does it depend on each and every person?

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Mandos

Star Wars is definitely Mandalorian crazy these days. It's the thing they have that is successful, so they've gone whole hog, gone ham...uh, gone bacon? Why doesn't that expression exist?

I've been getting a bunch of Mando figures, because that's the figures they've been releasing. Within the last month or so I've added all of these figures.

There's a few more I could add as well, if I was willing to pay a couple of dollars extra.

All these Mandos arriving at once are destined to go on my Ankletown Station display. Ankletown Station is what the book I have been writing for the last two months is, but so far I haven't included any Mandos in it. Do I need to change that? Should there be Mandos? A whole group of them? Maybe they're a gang that is always causing problems? Maybe they're bounty hunters (makes sense right) that are after our heroes? 

Or, am I better off keeping Mandos out, so Disney doesn't come after me with their lawyers to destroy me and grind into powder that will be carried away like dust in the wind? All we are is dust in the wind. Everything is dust in the wind. Same old song. Just a drop of water in an endless sea...whoops, sorry, got carried away there.

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Fasting More Or Fasting Less, What Should You Choose? - Day 48 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Fasting can be a great tool for weight loss, but it can also be a very stressful thing for your body to go through and torpedo your progress. What should do? Fast? Fast more? Fast less? What is best?

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Tie Fighter

Little went to the dollar store the other day, and found that they were selling Halloween-themed bow ties...for cats. Well, he couldn't turn that down, and it was only a dollar. Something he couldn't possibly just walk away from. It's like Russell said on Pixar's Up.

When fate looks you in the eye and smiles, you don't just walk away, folks. You take her up on her offer.

So, they got Jupiter a Halloween-themed bow tie.

Now, anyone who has ever owned a cat...or really, any pet...knows that they aren't interested in or fond of wearing clothes. You might be able to train a dog to wear a sweater, but this is a cat we're talking about.

He came home and put it on her, and she immediately tried to get it off. Eventually succeeding. A couple of days later, he tried again, and this time, he made sure to get a picture as soon as he got it on, because he knew it wouldn't last very long.

Isn't it darling? The funny part is that, since cats don't make facial expressions, you can't see the utter disgust that she's feeling at being forced to wear this stupid bow tie. She almost looks like she's posing proudly, showing off how great she looks in a bow tie.

If it were video, however, you'd know. If by nothing else than the fact that she struggled her way out of that tie in seconds flat.

Oh well, at least we got a picture. That's worth a dollar, right?

Friday, August 26, 2022

Bacon Grease! Fat Makes The World Go Round - Day 47 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Marshal tells us about his strategy with bacon grease, and I talk all about why fat is so important to health. It's a big ode to fat today on Big Anklevich on Health.

Wind Sprints

I really didn't feel like writing yesterday. It was the first day that I've hit the doldrums so deeply since I started this back in July. I never used any of my spare time or lunch break at work to write, I just laid there. Time and time again, I thought, I need to write, but I don't want to. So, I didn't.

I came home from work last night, and now I was up against it. I had to get at least five hundred words, but preferentially closer to 900 if I wanted to make my goal I set for myself on the tenth, and I still hadn't even started.

Yesterday, however, I started reading a book buy an author who Abigail Hilton recommended to me. She said I needed to check out the book, Write to Market by a guy named Chris Fox. I went and looked Chris Fox up, and found he had a whole series of books about writing and publishing beyond just Write to Market. I decided I would read them all.

I picked up two of them to begin with, the aforementioned Write to Market (which is the third book in his writing/publishing series) and the first book in the series called 5,000 Words Per Hour. Well, yesterday I started reading that first book to see what his secrets might be to get to 5,000 words.

The very first thing he tells a writer to try in chapter one is something he calls writing sprints. Take a timer out, and time yourself as you write. Then clear the decks so that nothing will distract you, and write as much and as fast as you can in those five minutes. His first exercise was to do this for five minutes, then count your words, times them by twelve, and that's your speed for one hour.

I read the chapter of the book in the morning, but never did the exercise, so I figured here, at 11:45 at night, I could give it a shot. Maybe having a timer would help me to get to the word count I needed quicker than I would otherwise. After all, it was time to be in bed, and I was just starting my writing instead. Quicker would definitely be preferable. 

I hadn't wanted to write, but putting a timer on it, and trying my best to go as fast as I could really made a difference for me. I typed like the wind, and when the alarm went off after the first five minutes, my word count was 180. Not exactly lighting the world on fire, but 180 x 12 = 2,160. So, my initial wph is 2,160. That's pretty good.

Obviously, I know that's not a real words per hour. That's a wph for five minutes. I'd have to sustain that pace for sixty minutes, which at this point seems unattainable, but still, it's a good start. And it was fun. Writing was feeling like a terrible onus on me earlier, but now, by making a game out of it, I was having a good time.

I tried a second sprint...and screwed up the timer. I realized that I must have passed my five minutes somehow, and looked at my timer, and found that it was counting down from fifteen hours and five minutes. I'd bumped the hour dial by accident somehow.

So, I reset it, and did another five minutes. 179 word this time. The math isn't as clean on that one, but it makes 2,148. Still good.

I did one more, and did far worse, 166 words. That multiplies out to 1,992. I wasn't improving per attempt, but I was getting my words in, and pretty quickly. I checked my word count total, and with the three sprints, the accidental badly timed sprint, and the few words that I'd written in to fix things I'd missed after each sprint, I had 939 words, and I'd done that in probably half the time I'd expected to.

It was time for bed, and I'd gotten through my words way quicker than I'd thought possible. I was expecting to be there for an hour, with my eyes burning, begging me to head for bed. Instead, I cruised through and was heading for bed still feeling good.

This sprint thing is a pretty good idea. I'm excited to see what else he might have for me in the book. It could be worth my time...worth saving my time.

Thursday, August 25, 2022

Never Cheat! It Only Starts A Quick Slide Into Addiction - Day 46 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Marshal is sorely tempted by cookie dough. Is it okay to just give in one time? It's just once right? It won't be a big deal, right?

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Pollywogs

I went out for a walk this morning, and on my way to the greenbelt trail, I walked past this puddle like I do every time, and something caught my eye.

Tadpoles in the puddle! So cool. When I was a kid, I lived right next to a huge park, our back fence backed up against it. There was a huge swath of undeveloped land in the park that was left to nature. The area was part of a type of environment that I learned (when they put the sign up in the park that taught visitors about it) was called Vernal Pools.

This meant that, for part of the year, there were naturally forming ponds that would cover the landscape, and it provided a habitat for certain plants and animals. I think this was when they started trying to prohibit people from enjoying the park anymore. They put up signs that insisted you had to stay on the path, and not provide any sort of disturbance to the environment. 

This was okay, because by this time, I was older and all I did was take my dog for walks on the trails, but up until that point, I'd played in those ponds all the time. How could you not? I mean, look at this place:

Those ponds are only knee deep. Can you imagine a place more suited for a young boy to play? Of course it didn't look like that year round. It was only in the spring that it was this verdant and inviting. When summer came, it looked like this:

The ponds dried up, the grass turned brown (and very flammable...I know that from experience), and only the deep rooted oak trees were able to stay green.

But in the spring, the ponds were filled with tadpoles...although as a kid I called them pollywogs. I find that nobody calls them that anymore. Weird, is that one of those localized terms that is said only in Sacramento? Or have I just only gone places that call them tadpoles, but if I'd gone in the other direction everyone would be saying pollywog. Of course, also, pollywogs don't come up in conversation much.

Tangent aside, I spent so much time wading in those ponds trying to catch pollywogs and bring them home as pets that would sprout legs and turn to frogs. As is the case, of course, when you're a kid you never consider how to keep a pet like that alive, so any pollywog I caught was doomed to a slow death of starvation. It's good that they were always so very elusive.

Except the one time when I came out to the park as summer was getting on, and all the grass was crisping up and turning that yellow-brown you see above. The ponds were drying up, and there wasn't much water left. At one spot, I walked past the last remnant of a pond, it was only a puddle now.

As all the ponds dried up, the pollywogs had steadily migrated, sticking to the water that remained, and here was this final puddle with probably no more water than you could fit in a bathtub. The thing was teeming with pollywogs. The water looked solid back. There seemed to be more pollywogs than water left. The whole thing was churning with movement as the thousands of remaining pollywogs jostled and splashed in their tiny confines. So much so that it almost seemed like there were fish in the pond and not just tiny pollywogs.

I remember looking at that as we walked past to head to the playground, and commenting to my friends that this was the greatest opportunity for catching pollywogs ever. If we went back to the house and grabbed a bucket, we could have the biggest score ever. It was like winning the lottery in my childhood mind. So many riches to be had.

Of course, then all the tadpoles would just die in the bucket instead of here in this drying out pond. I was like that man who scoffs at the kid throwing the starfish back into the ocean from the story you hear on the internet frequently ("It matters to this one!"). There was no way to save them. As much as I wanted to. Nature is a harsh old monster that doesn't care that much about life, and has evolved all sorts of strategies that involve life getting wasted by the truckload. Even as a kid, I already instinctually understood that.

I had to walk away and let nature take its course. And that was that. Sad, and, truthfully, not what I was expecting to write about when I sat down to do a really quick blog post about the puddle full of pollywogs that I found on my walk.

All I really wanted to say was that I like pollywogs.

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

The Halfway Mark! It's Hump Day! - Day 45 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Marshal and I have been doing this for 45 days now, exactly half of the 90 days that we set as our goal. What did we do to mark the occasion...well, you might be disappointed, unless you really like pork belly recipes.

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Podcasting Future

No, we didn't get together like this, this is an old picture from my visit in 2019

Last night, Rish and I got together (well, virtually got together) and recorded a segment for his Rish Outcast. It's the third week in a row that we've done this now. Is that weird? Or is it an indication of what's to come?

We haven't done much in the way of podcasting for years, which led me to decide that we really needed to give the Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine its proper finish, instead of letting it fade away and be forgotten. 

I came up with a new way to try to keep things going with the Anklecast, and started working towards that. And we finally, after talking about it on and off for years, recorded the final story and the final show.

Putting in the work to complete those shows felt so good, not because I was killing off the Dunesteef, quite the contrary. The whole time I worked on editing, I felt like I was mourning. It felt like putting together a tribute video to play at the funeral of a dear friend or something. 

But it felt good to do the work of a podcast. It had been a long time since I'd edited a story, added lines from various voice actors, put in music, sound effects, and scary drone. It was a blast from the past, and so very fun.

Getting together with Rish (virtually) was wonderful too. It felt like the old days, where we would meet once a week and podcast whether we wanted to or not.

So, even though the Dunesteef is over, and there won't be anything more, it weirdly feels like it's never been more alive. 

Rish and I both have our respective shows, the Outcast and the Anklecast, where you can find us podcasting at. He's already up and going, getting shows out at a pretty good pace. My first Anklecast is coming at the start of September. 

And the both of us are getting back into the habit of podcasting together. He's going to be on every one of my shows, and it looks like he's making a little room for me to be on his show as well. So, maybe, even though the Dunesteef is gone, what you've really gotten is two Dunesteefs in place of the one.

That's pretty cool if you ask me.

Tuesday, August 23, 2022

Mandos Mandos Everywhere

Is it just me, or has the Mando become the new clone trooper? Everything Star Wars makes has a Mando in it now.

What Is It About BBBE That Fills You Up And Makes You Happy? - Day 44 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

What is it about eating carnivore that makes it so easy? Why does this diet work so much better than counting calories? Marshal stumbles upon the answer today when he finds himself very hungry despite eating a ton of food the day before.

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My Favorite Announcer

For those of you who have listened to that final show of the Dunesteef already, I thought I'd share a picture with you. This is me and my friend, Bob Schildmeyer.

This is from Schildy's retirement party back in 2016. I haven't seen him since then, but he's been with me all the same, every time we put out an episode of the Dunesteef. And now, with the Anklecast, old Schildy will be following me over again, and we'll keep going with the fun. Thanks for all the help you gave us over the years, Schildy. You are a star.

Monday, August 22, 2022

Carnivore Satisfies Way More Than Snickers - Day 43 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Why does carnivore work so well? One of the main reasons is that it keeps you from finding yourself in a nutrient deficit. It keeps you happy from the fat, and so you aren't desperate to eat the treats that are set out like a minefield in today's environment.

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The Final Episode of the Dunesteef

Rish and I recorded this thing back in 2011 as a failsafe in case we got in a fight and never wanted to speak to each other again or one of us (probably me considering my commute) died in a car crash. Luckily, neither of those eventualities came to pass, but we're releasing the show anyway, because the time to end the Dunesteef has come.

It just went up over at dunesteef.com, so it should show up in your podcast app any minute. Or you can head over to the site to get it. You can also download the episode by right-clicking HERE. Or, you can just click the play button below. If you're anything like me, you might need some tissues to get through it all, then again, you might not be a weirdo like me, and you'll be just fine. I don't know. There's got to be some non-weirdos that come to my blog sometimes.

It's been a wonderful, strange trip, and I'm so glad that you came along with me on it.

Sunday, August 21, 2022

When To Flee And When To Stay And Be Strong - Day 42 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Sometimes, you can find yourself in a very unfriendly situation to carnivore, fasting, and BBBE. What do you do? Just grin and bear it? Or make a run for the exit? Marshal and I ran into situations like that today. We give a few examples, and I talk about it afterwards.

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Patreon Pics

When I launched my Patreon a week ago, I had to go with the stuff that I had available.  Particularly, the little pictures that went with each tier of membership. I wanted something that was personal, but the best I could come up with was the Memojis that you can design for yourself on your iPhone.

It was okay, I mean, it was me...but it also wasn't mine. I wanted it to be mine, so A) Apple couldn't come to me some day and dump a cease and desist on me or demand royalties or something and B) people didn't look at it and say, "What a loser, he just used stupid Memojis for this. That sucks. I ain't gonna support this chump."

I bugged my daughter a lot, and she did as kids do and tried to avoid doing the effort. Yesterday, I finally broke down and made my own drawings of the Memojis, and asked her to just digitize them for me. I think she felt guilty enough that she finally put in the effort, and made me these amazing little cartoons to use on the membership tier page.

I think they're really cute, and definitely preferable to the ones I had before. Doesn't the tier page look so much better?



I bet it makes you want to rush over to Patreon and sign up. Don't wait, act now! Supplies are running out!

Saturday, August 20, 2022

Giving Up Convenience Is Actually Important - Day 41 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Cooking meals every day can be much more difficult than eating cereal or throwing Hot Pockets in the microwave, but it is completely worth it. It's necessary to re-acquaint yourself with the process of making food if you want to be healthy, and BBBE Carnivore really helps you do that.

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Not Quite Another Third

I've been doing updates on my writing progress about every ten days. Giving an update as I completed one third of the month. The last one I posted on the 11th, entailing the first ten days of August.

Yesterday was the 19th of August, so my next update should come tomorrow. But Rish thought I actually ought to do it today. Because, if you add up the 31 days of July and the 19 so far in August, then I have been writing for 50 days straight.

That kind of seems like a big deal, right? How has it been going? I feel like it's been going pretty darn good. Here's my chart for the the last two months.


So, in my first fifty days, I have written 31,940 words. That's an average of 638 words a day. That seems pretty good, considering that first month there were a lot of days down in the three hundreds, and relatively few above 1,000. 

I did an average for July. That month I was getting about 565 words a day. So far in August, my average is 757. That's pretty impressive, considering that only ten...well actually nine...days ago, my average for August was only 660. In the last nine days, I've brought it up almost a full 100 words a day.

Of course, that's important, because in that last writing update post, I made the goal of reaching 25,000 words for August, even though my daily goal should only require me to get to 15,500. I wanted to push it. Was it wise? I don't know, but I did it anyway.

So, at nineteen days in August, I'm at 14,400 words. I have twelve days left to get 10,600 words. That's almost an average of 1,000 words a day I'd have to write...though it's actually only 834 if you do the math. That's still a lot, but it's what I need to do. Starting in September, my goal will rise to 1,000 words a day, so I might as well get ready to deal with it.

So, what does my progress bar look like at this point in the month?

14400 / 25000 (57.60%)

I'm only at 57.6%. I've really got to step it up these last twelve days to make it to 25,000. But I can do it. I know I can. What about my overall goal, my yearly goal?

31940 / 304475 (10.49%)

It doesn't look nearly as pitiful as it did in some of those early blog posts that I made. 10.49% isn't a huge number, but at least it shows up on the progress bar as a line of more than one pixel width.

All in all, I'm pretty excited. I'm full of beans about this whole process. I've been writing on my new novel, which I am presently calling, "A Fire in the Center of a Million Universes." Can't decide if I'll keep that...it's kinda long.

All 31,940 words I've written so far go to that novel. I'm expecting it to be around 90,000 words when it's done, so that means I'm a third of the way through. In terms of pages in a book, to help you understand where I'm at, 31,940 should equal about 128 pages. We're just about to find out what's really going on, and get started on our quest. I wrote the end of chapter 6 last night.

So, that's what's going on. 50 days. 30,000 words. 130 pages. It's all going pretty good. Can't wait to share it with y'all when it's done.

Friday, August 19, 2022

Somebody New For Ankletown Station

Shae Vizla and her Final Faction droid backup, in case things go badly.

Another Milestone Day, But Not Over The Hill - Day 40 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Adding salt to my water and eating the good bacon is my new routine. Marshal wants to know which is better, butter or bacon grease. What I want to know, though, is how do I turn bacon grease into my own lard.

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Shrooms

I pulled into work the other day, and was greeted by this sight:

I come from California, a place where it's just never wet enough to create something like a mushroom, so seeing a big group of them just growing in the middle of the lawn in the parking lot kind of blows me away. It's almost like someone who grew up in Ecuador experiencing a snowstorm. No matter how many times it happens, I'll probably never get used to it.

I just couldn't help myself, and I had to go over and take a couple of pictures before going in the building. I thought I'd share them with you. Aren't they cute?

Are they hallucinogenic? Or just the deadly kind? Anyone know? I assume that they're all the deadly kind.

Thursday, August 18, 2022

One Thing Remains

Vader. You must confront Vader.

Getting Into The Routine - Day 39 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

Today was a pretty routine day, both Marshal and I cruised through the day, and we couldn't even manage to make our video last a full five minutes. Wild, huh?

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Are You My Conscience?

It's time for another pedantic grammar post. Yay!

I was watching the Astros game the other day, when I noticed this super about the keys to the game:

There's a grammar problem in there. It might be hard to find if you don't speak sports though. 

First of all, to clear things up, the White Sox pitcher has the last name of Cease, so that first line will make more sense if you know that. 

Secondly, JV stands for Justin Verlander, the Astros pitcher, not Junior Varsity, like it usually does. That wouldn't be a typo, but it might seem weird for them to be talking about the Astros Junior Varsity squad, since the Astros are not a high school team.

Lastly, there is no missing word at the end of the second line. A fastball in means a fastball thrown to pass over the inside of home plate, or the side of the plate closest to the batter. So, that's not the typo either.

If you do speak sports, then you saw right away the transposed word. They say that the pitcher needs to make the White Sox conscience of his fastball. Oops. The word I think they were looking for is conscious. The White Sox need to be aware of that fastball so that they don't crowd the plate and take away options from the pitcher as to where he can throw it.

As to the White Sox conscience? I don't know how they're feeling about things right now. Do they feel guilty because they get to play a game for a living while getting paid more than people who work grueling difficult jobs cleaning sewage or picking up their garbage? Did one of them hit his dog before coming to the game and can't shake that nagging feeling that he did wrong? Maybe one of them shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, and still hears the screams echoing in his mind every time he tries to sleep at night. Who knows, but I don't think it has to do with the fastball in.

Or maybe the White Sox should feel guilty because they just keep beating the Astros day after day, dammit.

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Another Non-Scale Victory - Day 38 - BBBE Challenge Daily Update

It's not always just the scale that tells you that it's working. Today Marshal had another non-scale victory in his journey toward health.

Join our Facebook group, and find support for your struggles against a crazy world eating unhealthy food.

Oops, Shoulda Fixed That First

I was at the dollar store the other day, and they had a bunch of Halloween crap out to buy in August, you know, in case it's important to you to be the very first on your block to have Halloween crap on your house. While I looked at the stuff, I noticed this sign:

I can't decide if that is just a typo that somebody never fixed because Photoshop doesn't have a spellcheck or if somebody got a little too clever with their design and shot themselves in the foot. 

Is the S on the end of pumpkins a mistake, because it should say "Welcome to our pumpkin patch" not "Welcome to our pumpkins patch," or is it supposed to read "Welcome pumpkins" but then they tried to get clever and make it say something more if you saw the smaller print added on in white...kind of like this mug we got for my old boss when he left us a few months ago:

Only in this case they forgot to make sure that both phrases worked. What do you think? I'm actually guessing the latter. I don't think it was a typo. I think it was someone trying to be too clever for their own good.