Tiring

Have you ever had a task to fulfill that should be really simple but instead was so complex that you just wished you could quit and walk away...except that you can't, because you were still miles and miles from home?

The other day, I was talking with Rish on the phone as I was driving home. It had been raining all day, but the rain was gone, and the only times I used my windshield wipers was to clean the water that cars in front of me had kicked up onto my windows. At one point, I hit a spot where there was a decent amount of standing water on the freeway. There was a big splashing sound and the car yanked a little to the left, but I held fast to the wheel, and kept it straight.

Turned out there was more to worry about than just getting in an accident. All of a sudden, my car was thumping. Something was wrong.

"Uh oh," I said to Rish, "I think I might have a flat tire."

"Oh man, well, I guess I'll hang up on you and leave you alone, and let you take care of that then," he said, and was gone in a flash.

I happened to be right next to a freeway exit, so I steered over to it and pulled off onto the side road. It was a lonely empty side road, with only one spot to pull off on, the entry driveway for a construction equipment rental lot. The good thing was that it was a very big lane with plenty of space for me to take care of the tire.

I got out and took a look at it, yup it sure was flat. It was over and done with. There was no repairing this thing.

Okay, well, this wasn't the first time I'd changed a tire. So, I needed to get to work...except that it was the first time I'd changed a tire on this car. I'd never thought to look for the jack or the lug wrench. In fact, I had no idea where the spare was. This was my first truck. The tire was obviously not in the trunk, because there was no trunk. I was pretty sure it was secured to the bottom of the bed, but I'd never even checked to see. Did I have a spare? I supposed that would be a good place to start.

The ground was all wet, so I got out my coat and put it on so I could climb under the bed and check for the spare. After getting a little soggy, I was able to confirm that we did indeed have a spare. What's next?

Well, I thought it might be a good idea to text my wife and let her know that I had a flat tire so that she didn't worry, but also so that she could call someone if I never made it home. Her first response was to ask if I had a spare. She didn't know either, so I wasn't alone...and the truck had been her idea. She wanted something to haul around supplies for all her home renovations she loved to do.

She told me of our roadside assistance number and I told her that I had a spare, but didn't know where anything in the truck was. In my head, I scoffed at the idea of roadside assistance. I didn't need that. Maybe I should have considered it, but I didn't. I knew how to change a tire, I just needed to find the necessary implements to get the job done.

I went searching for the jack, and found it behind the seat, secured by a bar that held it in place. I tried pulling it out, but found that it was in there fast. I looked for a clasp or a hook or a button that would release it and found nothing. At last, I gave up and searched YouTube for a video on how to get the jack out of a Nissan Frontier. I found this video, which went on for more than two minutes, but all it showed me was where the jack was...which I'd already discovered on my own. It never got to the point where the guy pulled the jack out to use it.

Gah! My phone was very low on power too, and I'd wasted possibly half of my remaining 3% battery power watching a useless video. I searched again, and finally discovered the trick.

Duh! It should have been obvious, but I didn't consider that altering the jack was the way to get it out. I thought I needed to adjust the bar that was holding it in place.

Now I had me a jack. While trying to figure out how to get the jack out, I found the lug wrench, and the bar used to pump the jack up. Now that I had that, I could do something...except I didn't have all I needed yet. I still had to get me a spare tire. It was under the bed, but how did I get it off? I went to look on YouTube again. I was running low on battery, but I hoped it would last through this video.

I got far enough to see how to lower the tire, but my phone died before I could see the rest. I had to plug the phone in and run the car engine for a while to charge it up enough that I could watch some more instructional videos that could fill me in on all the tricks involved in changing a tire on my car.

I missed the old days when things were simple enough that I could just do it without any special training or tips and without a pocket computer that could find instructional videos for me.

While I waited, I used the jack handle in the slot at the back of the car to lower the tire down. I tried to pull it out, but it was still stuck fast to the chain. How was I supposed to get the chain off? It seemed like it would need a pretty secure fastening to make sure the tire didn't just fall off on the road while I was out driving around. I crawled around on the wet street trying to figure it out, and then finally gave up and went back to see if my phone had charged enough.

When I finally saw the trick to get the tire down, I couldn't believe how easy it was. I should have been able to figure it out on my own, but I think that my problem was that I hand't lowered the chain enough to make the simple trick of turning the peg sideways to become apparent.

Okay, I was really in business here. I had a tire, a jack, and a lug wrench, so I went to work. I got five of the six lug nuts off, but encountered a problem with the last one. The wrench couldn't attach to it. There was something different about it. I realized that I had what they call a lock nut on my tire. It is a nut specially designed to foil people who might just steal all your wheels while you were inside a store shopping or something.

How did I get that off? crap, I had no idea. Well, my phone was back in service...for the time being, it had only charged a couple of percentage points...so I searched how to remove lock nuts. I didn't even have to watch a video for this one. Once I saw this thumbnail on the google search I did, I realized what I needed.

Oh, crap, I'd seen this before. you have to have a special attachment to get the lock nuts off. I remember once when I got a tire worked on at Walmart, and then got back in the car and found the socket in my cupholder. I went in with it and told the guys they'd left one of their tools in my car.

"No," he said, "That's not ours, that's yours. That is the special locknut remover. You'll need it again later."

Well, he sure was right about that. I went to where I'd stored it, attached it to my lug wrench, and was finally able to get that last nut off, and remove the tire. I quickly swapped the spare out for the blown tire, and had my truck on four sound wheels again.

Now I knew all the tricks. I was able to get all six lug nuts on because I had the special socket. I was able to get the blown tire snug up against the bed of the truck by reversing the process of getting it down. I was able to get the jack back in place, because I knew how to tighten it back in. It was all so easy once I knew what I was doing.

It took me forever to figure it all out and get the tire changed...about an hour to an hour and a half, I think. Right as I was tightening up all the lug nuts, my wife called.

"Are you still changing your tire?" she asked.

I started telling her about the ordeal, but before I even got very far, my phone ran out of power again and died. For all she knew, a man with a hook for a hand had come up behind me and ripped my throat out.

Once I had everything all sealed up, I got back in the car and headed the rest of the way home. When my phone charged enough to wake back up, I texted my wife to let her know I was okay, and on my way home now.

Funny thing is that I noticed that she had texted me a video made by Nissan themselves that had the answer to most of the questions I had during the process. 

I don't know when that text came in, but I never saw it. Maybe it came while the phone was dead and needed to charge. Too bad I didn't see it when it could have helped. But then again, of course I didn't. It wasn't that kind of a night for me.

It wasn't terrible, though. I mean it had rained all day, but it wasn't raining while I was flailing around trying to figure out how to change the tire. It could have been horrible. In fact, the rain held off until pretty much the moment I finished. As I was getting into the car to leave, the rain began anew.

I have to say, though, that next time a tire blows, I'll be ready. I'll be a freaking expert. Not that I want to have to deal with it again, but if I have to, I'm all set.

Christmas Still, Are You Kidding?

I know, I know, you're sick of it, but I'm here to show off another Christmas toy I got. Yesterday, I mentioned Snarf coming in the mail. Well, also in that box was this elf to go along with my Santa Claus figure and the two elves that I got back in 2022 just before Christmas.

I didn't order him the first time around, because he was the evil elf, he has a scary look on his face, like he's up to no good. I just wanted the nice elves. Each elf comes with alternate heads, but there is only three options. There's Spike here, then Betty and Freddy. If I wanted only nice elves, then I had to use two of the same head when I put the three elves up. Then I noticed that one of my elves is actually cast in a darker plastic. It's supposed to be a racially distinct elf. It's not obvious, but it's a little different, so I figured I'd get Spike, and switch him out for the white one, then use the racially distinct head for the other elf. Then, wham-o, I've got three complete and separate elves. Here's what I have Spike looking like now.

Who knows, the Naughty or Nice line keeps expanding, and I even ordered a couple of other elves from the next wave. They haven't arrived quite yet, but the page says it should be soon. Seems dumb for it to be soon...you're a little late, guys, Christmas was last month, but maybe? I don't know, those arrival dates are pretty unreliable these days. Covid put a kink in the supply line that's never quite worked itself out.

Anyway, maybe one of the heads on the other elves will be preferable. We'll see. I'll just keep switching them out.

At The Risk Of Being Further Mocked

There was a time on this soccer message board back in 2006 that I signed up and made my name Snarf, picking a random thing to identify myself with. It didn't matter, it was just a message board. But, this was a message board for an in-stadium supporters group, and I started meeting these people in real life. Each time, I would tell them my name but then have to say, "or uh, Snarf on the message boards." After a while, I got tired of that, because it was super annoying, and it tended to make people want to talk about how they also liked Thundercats when they were kids. I had nothing to say about them, really, so I changed my name on the message board to simply be my first name. So, then I could just introduce myself and stop at that.

That's about the most overt thing I've ever done as a person who once appreciated the Thundercats when it came on TV back in 1985. Nonetheless, I get constantly mocked by Rish on his podcast for that fleeting appreciation. I never even saw the second season of the show, but somehow he felt it necessary to put a needle drop sounder of the Thundercats every single time he mentions my name.

Why do I mention this? Well, I'm risking further mockery from Rish by talking about what came in the mail for me the other day, but I'm going to do it anyway. A company called Super7 has been making a fancy set of Thundercats toys over the last few years. I thought they would be fun to have. I could put them on my shelves along with the Firefly figures, Wall-E figures, Star Wars figures, GI Joe figures, Pez dispensers, and many many other things I had displayed.

I just wanted to get the main Thundercats from the show...the first season of the show, not the characters they added in later years that I never saw. So, I grabbed Lion-O and Panthro. Then, after a few more months, they announced that Cheetara was coming, and I pre-ordered that one. They put out a wave or so with only characters I didn't want, then eventually Tigra was announced, and I preordered that one.

By this time, the price for each figure had gone up $10. I grumbled about it, but I figured, in for a penny in for a pound, I needed to carry through with my quest to assemble all the main seven Thundercats characters. After Cheetara and Tigra came, there were many more waves of figures with no characters I wanted.

Finally, after what seems like forever, they put another one of the main seven out. This time it was Snarf, the one I had to change my name away from on the message board. I pre-ordered him, even though the price had gone up another $10 per figure, and waited for more than a year for him to finally arrive. Well, when I got back from Sunday Funday last weekend, the box from BigBadToyStore was waiting on my porch.

They always come in such fancy packaging, with a cool reflective slip cover over the top. Inside...

There he is, the annoying, whiny companion to the main character, Lion-O. These figures are so overbuilt. They come with tons of accessories, extra hands and heads. I guess, they feel like they need to justify the outrageous price. Sadly, I don't care about any of that crap. I just want the figure, and would be happy if that was all that came...and they charged $20 less.

I put my favorite head on Snarf.

Then I stuck him in the cubby hole where the rest of the Thundercats are located.

I'm getting there. There's only two more figures left to arrive. I've already pre-ordered them both as well. Wily-Kit and Wily-Kat will eventually ship my way, probably a year or two from now. And then I'll be done, and won't have to worry about getting further ripped off by Super7.

Of course, that sounder will still play every time my name is mentioned even after that's all over. Hell, the Thundercats symbol will probably be etched into my gravestone. That'll be the headline of the newspaper when I die. THUNDERCATS FAN DIES IN GRISLY TRAFFIC ACCIDENT THE DAY BEFORE RETIRING.

Sunday Funday Not Over

I talked all about Super Happy Incredible Toys' Sunday Funday event on my last post, and showed off what I picked up there, but it turns out that Sunday was quite a big day for me when it came to toy collecting. It wasn't over after I left the Funday proceedings.

I was driving right past a Ross that I sometimes visit on my way to work when I have left early enough to have the time to stop, only today it was a Sunday, so I had all the time in the world. I decided to stop, and it turned out to be good that I did.I picked up about as much at Ross as I did at the Sunday Funday.

Walking up to the toy section, I saw that they had new Star Wars Vintage Collection offerings. There was the Mythral from the Mandalorian show.

I have that guy, but I thought I could use this one to make a custom. After all, it's only four bucks. I'm not going to pass up a Star Wars alien at $4. I slapped cuffs on that fugitive and brought him home with me.

Then they had these three guys.

It's that goofy guy from the death star with the underbite-looking helmet. I saw some of these a while back, and got them, and then you add these three, and I now have five. I really like the way they look. There's just something about that helmet.

I think they could be good functionaries at the space station's control center. I think of them sitting behind a computer at a normal desk but wearing that crazy helmet, and it makes me chuckle. I could see them as being the staff in a picture like this one by Empire Toy Works.

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Although that control room looks a little too space-age. It would be even funnier if they were seated in front of a more normal office desk but yet wearing that crazy helmet if you ask me.

They had one more thing that I thought might be worth buying. I picked up this blue Halo guy.

I have an awful lot of these Halo guys, but none of them are this blue color, so I thought it could be a good one to add to the group.

I mostly expect to turn them into custom figures, pulling those helmets off and trading them out for alien heads or something like that. I just got that other red Halo guy the other day too.

I guess this wave of Halo figures is hitting Ross right now. Maybe I'll be buying even more as they come in.

Sunday Funday

Here in Houston, there's a vintage toy store called Super Happy Incredible Toys. They often put on events where vendors can come and sell second hand toys along with them, and this past Sunday was one of those days:

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If I remember correctly, they did these Sunday Fundays on a monthly basis in the past, but when things like Covid came along, it died off. Well, when they first posted the notice of the event, they said it was back by popular demand. Maybe that means they will be doing it monthly again. That would be cool.

Of course, in the past, when they did it, I never went to any of them, because I am lame. It's kind of a long drive, and I always found other things to be doing. This past Sunday, however, I actually make my way out there to check it out. Rish had told me a lot of stories about how many things were available and at what cheap levels you could find them at, and I wanted to experience it for myself. I hoped to add some residents to my Ankletown Station population. So, I put on my Guardians of the Galaxy t-shirt (so I would fit in with all the other nerds), and drove down there.

It wasn't a huge event, but it was decent. There were something like fifteen different vendors there, and I circled for a while, looking at everything that they had, and trying to decide what I was going to waste my money on. I saw a few things that I liked, but I didn't start blowing my cash until I asked the woman about this ship:

I knew it was a T-16 Skyhopper, but I couldn't tell if it was meant for 3.75 inch figures or what. I couldn't figure out how to open the cockpit and see if a figure could sit in it. I asked the lady selling it, and she didn't know. She asked the guy who was with her, and he didn't know. She went around to other people in the venue, and they didn't know.

"I'll give it to you for $5 if you want it," she said. It was marked as being $10, so I was motivated to accept her offer. Just then, I figured out how to open the cockpit as well. It definitely was a 3.75 inch ship, and I thought it would make a fun addition to Ankletown. Gettin a ship that was good to go for $5 was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to do, so I bought it, and at the same time, I bought a set of Ewoks they were selling too. She marked the Ewoks down from $10 to $5 for me as well, and I happily gave her a ten. 

Then I asked what she would mark this goofy Force Awakens droid to if she was marking everything down.

It was marked as $8, which was about double what I would have been willing to pay for it, but she said she'd take $4 for it, which was exactly where I was willing to give it a shot. So I bought that too.

Now that I'd lost my buying virginity, I was ready to start spending. I went around to the other booths and picked up several more things. I think I spent about $30 altogether, and here's what I came home with:

So, there is the blue alien protocol droid from Force Awakens.

Her name is PZ-4CO. It's a kind of goofy looking droid, but that's fine. I'll see if I can't get a good wash onto it, and make it look as good as it can for Ankletown.

I am pretty low on droids, and they are one of the things I want to have the most of, so I need to keep adding more wherever I can. She also came with these rocket boot things.

They have little clips that you can attach to someone's ankles, but that would be pretty stupid. I don't know why they were included. Rish was telling me on the phone that all of the Force Awakens figures came with some stupid play feature to make the toys more toyetic, so I guess they had to include it because of that mandate.

Doesn't matter. They look like random greebles that could be hanging on the wall of a sci-fi space station, and I suspect that's what I will do with them. They'll be a good addition in that respect.

There was the 2-pack of ewoks as well. That one included Wicket and Logray.

I have one Vintage Collection ewok. That one is Teebo. These two 5POA figures could be nice along side of that guy. Since he would be way more poseable, he could do all the heavy lifting, and these two could be the background players. I always thought it would be funny to have ewoks that lived in a kind of homeless hovel kind of a hut in some alleyway in Ankletown. In fact, I even wrote a scene in my Ankletown Station novel where the main character get attacked by an ewok intent on making him its lunch. So, it's definitely a part of Ankletown that I need to follow through with.

I got some more droids, there was a set of R2-D2 and C-3PO from Force Awakens that I picked up as well.

Sadly, this one was $8, but since it's a 2-pack, that means each figure was only $4. That's not terrible. I suspect that I will try to paint these two in different colors at some point probably, to make them look like different robots than the ones we all know so well.

Although who even recognizes Threepio with that red arm? This one came with another one of those action features. Artoo has this contraption that you can put on him that makes him able to shoot electric blasts at somebody.

You remember when he did that in the movie, right? Oh, wait, I think he was powered down for the whole movie so they could bring in that exact replica of him that served the exact same purpose in the remake of A New Hope that was BB-8. Anyway, the electricity bursts are kind of useless, but in the same fashion as the jet boots I showed earlier, the rest of the machinery could probably just be mounted on a wall and look pretty cool.

So, those things will be useful in the end after all.

The last thing I picked up there was this Marvel Universe Iron Man figure.

Iron Man is a dude in space armor, so her definitely fits in on Ankletown Station. There were actually several different varieties to chose from, but I picked the most standard movie looking version this time.

He comes with an energy blast that is supposed to be coming out of his repulsors in his palms, but instead it clips to his wrist and curves around to give the appearance of coming from his repulsors.

I suspect I will never again put that thing on his arm. Who know, but it's not really useful to what I'm doing at Ankletown.

So, that was it for Sunday Funday. I went into Houston, bought a bunch of goofy stuff I didn't need, one guy said my shirt was cool, and then I came home. We'll see what I can do with all of this crap in Ankletown some day. I look forward to writing a new blog post about it for you. See you then.

 Star Wars: The Christmas Awakens                                                                                                      

I was at Ross again the other day (how many hundreds of times have I opened a post with that phrase), although this time I didn't even go there for toys. My wife wanted me to get a suit jacket for formal night on an upcoming cruise we are going to, and we were hoping to find one at Ross for cheap.

Well, we found a thing or two, but most of all, I found toys. I'm always looking for them, of course, but I never expected what I came across this time:

Looks like somebody was unloading their Star Wars Holiday Edition figures. I've been wishing I could find some of these figures in the wild, much less be able to afford them, and all of the sudden I get both at once.

In one of those early posts about the Star Wars Holiday Edition toys, I mentioned how I would love to get these guys, and if I did, I would build an Endor bunker, and make it look like it was made of gingerbread, then pose these guys in front of it. Now it looks like I have to live up to that promise, because here they are.

They come with some little buddies, like all the Holiday Editions do. This one gets a stupid porg in each package.

Yup. Cheesy-ass porgs dressed in Santa suits. Fun, I guess, if that's what you're into. I feel like the porgs should get the treatment that Chewie gave them. Roasted over the barbecue pit.

I'm pretty dang excited about these guys though. I can't believe I found two, let alone one. That bunker is on its way. I'll definitely put up a post about it when I make it too. See you then.

Final Update For January

Okay, yesterday was the last day of January. I had some pretty big goals for the month. How did it come out? Did I beat my all-time best month of writing?

That's the final tally. 41,309. That's pretty good for one month, right? Did I beat my all-time best month? Well, since my all-time best month was last month, December, I can just throw up the charts side by side.

There you have it. Last month hI got 38,046 and this month I got 41,309. That's more than 3,000 words more than my previous record. That's pretty awesome if you ask me. I kicked that record's butt. Here's how it would look put in writing meter form:

41309 / 38047 (108.57%)

That bar just broke right on out of the meter there, because I got 108% of what I was shooting for. That's always fun. Even though I just did this the other day, I'll let you see the year-to-date totals too.

I'm well over 100,000 words for the year now, and my average words for the month were 1,332. That's pretty rad. Here's my progress toward the overall goal.

106268 / 304475 (34.90%)

So, I'm scooting along there as well.

The story that I'm working on, "The Elephant in the Room," is ballooning. When I started it, I expected it to be a typical BD Anklevich short story with something weird happening that eventually leads to an unhappy and hopefully scary ending. Instead, I'm growing this thing bigger and bigger, and looking for a way to give it a more positive ending, at least a hopeful one if not an actual happy one.

Also, I keep coming up with things that need to be explored before calling it quits on the story. At this point, it is at 23,052 words. That's well into novella range, and if I don't watch out, I may well get all the way to novel, which according to the Hugo Awards is anything over 40,000. I don't think I can take it that far, but it's getting up there toward being one of the longest non-novels I've written. 

Up until now, that honor belongs to "Do Over" which is 27,357. I remember back when I wrote that story. It took me months to get through, but here I am in 2024, writing a story that's just as long, and doing it in less than three weeks so far. It's kind of crazy how productive you can be if you just make daily goals and actually fulfill them. Whatever your thing is, I encourage you to make some daily goals and work toward them. It'll change your life.

Well, what do I do for next month? Do I take it up to 1,500 words a day? That's something that I may do, but I don't think I want to go there this time. I think I'll hold that for a future month. There are many things that I need to accomplish as an independent author beyond just churning words out. 

One of my biggest failures over the years has been never publishing much of my stuff. Last year, I got going on that for a short period, and managed to publish two collections of short stories, and to separately publish all of the stories contained within them. Weirdly, I stopped, and now I think I might have to relearn the process if I want to do it again. 

I think I need to get back into that, so my goal for this month is going to be to write 1,250 a day and to publish a story on Amazon a week...or more appropriately four stories this month. Some things might come up this month that might impede the story a week thing, so I'm going to hedge my bets and give myself a chance to catch up on the days when I can for the days when I can't. 

So, watch for that. Each story, as I publish it, will get a blog post on here, so you can track my progress, and see how I'm doing. Feel free to chide me if you see that I've slacked off way too much. That's always helpful to tell you the truth. We'll see if I can't get everything that I've written published, even down to the novels like Sunny & Gray.