We never do our presents at the time society thinks we should...

So I bought my wife's Mother's Day and birthday present today.  It's the torch she wanted for her lampwork art projects.  We practically never buy and give the presents when the occasion happens, instead we seem to do them as we see fit.  She still has lots of supplies to buy before she can use it, but that's one less item she has to worry about buying for her art business!

The hockey sticks were hung by the staircase with care...

And no injuries befell me!

About the only thing that comes without effort is old age.

It’s Friday!  This weekend I plan to hang the hockey sticks on the wall above the stairs.  This is not an easy task.  Among other things, I have to set the ladder on the stairs in order to drill, hammer, and screw the mounts into place.  I also have to get the measurements pretty darn accurate as being off by just a hair means the sticks won’t go in the mounts (there are two custom made [by me] mounts per stick that are about 2 ½” square).  So wish me luck, but don’t wish for me to “break a leg” – it’s a real possibility.  I’ll try to post a picture if it is successful (hopefully of the mounted hockey sticks and not the broken leg).

Not much else is going on.  The orphaned kittens we’ve been raising from their first day’s life without a mother (you can read about them in my wife’s blog at http://mistressmasochist.blogspot.com/) are doing well, though there was a recent scare with Spectre.  Shadow has started to show an interest in them finally, but more in a “can I play with them like I’d play with living food” kind of way.  Ghost will probably drive her nuts when she gets big enough to poke back.

Donna is learning lots at her school (Day Care on Tuesdays and Thursdays).  She’s a smart little cookie.  And she’s starting to ask questions like “what is that” – and unlike most two year old kids I’ve met before – she only asks once.  But her whining and fits because she doesn’t get her way is driving me and Candice crazy.  We’d probably have diminished it to a minor occurrence by now if Grandma didn’t always give in to her so that she thinks it’ll work most of the time.

On to writing.  Well, not really, more on to thoughts on writing.  One of my biggest pet peeves about being a writer is when someone asks you to spontaneously come up with a story.  For me at least, that kills the whole creative process and practically shuts down all desire to create stories when I’m put on the spot to tell stories (unless it’s reading one that’s already written).

I’m currently reading the second book in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series (the ones that HBO’s Game of Thrones is based on), and am half-way through it.  I’m really enjoying it.  I have no idea what will happen next in the story (nor do I want to know until it happens) since he’s pretty unpredictable in many major events in the stories.  I also find there are characters I like a lot on competing sides of the struggles and wars as well as characters I dislike on the different sides.  I’m really enjoying it.  You should give it a read (or a listen as is my case).

It looks like Erie, Colorado’s Halloween House has officially moved one house to the west.  Our neighbors will no longer be going all out in decorating for Halloween, and will be giving us the window boardings and some cemetery fencing to go around our front yard (which is much smaller than theirs).  We’d been making a decent effort to catch up to them, but it was going to be a long way away.  Last year we hung (literally) a bride and groom skeleton couple by nooses from the eaves above our garage.  This year we have plans to build a horse-drawn hearse (and if we have time, a skeleton horse to pull it.  So, needless to say, our plans for convincing the entire cul-de-sac to all become “Halloween Central” in Erie has taken a major hit.  But at least Halloween House will still exist, just not as grand as it used to be for a while.

That’s all for this entry.  We’ll see when I randomly get around to writing another entry.  Check back every week or so to see if there’s more.

Preface

For more than half my life, I’ve wanted to be a writer.  But I was only effective at it when I was super depressed and/or experiencing a turmoil of different emotions, especially unfamiliar ones.  By nature, I’ve never been a very emotional person.  And writing was my only method of dealing with them when they came in large quantities.  I also was drinking heavily when I wrote effectively.

Fortunately, I’ve not had to deal with much depression of unfamiliar waves of emotions since I met my wife.

Unfortunately, that has meant I haven’t written pretty much anything.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of brilliant ideas all the time.  I just am not effective at putting the ideas into the appropriate words to make a good story.  Now I probably could still do well with that since there’s a lot of horribly written stories that stem from good ideas.  (Read: Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyers, etc).  But I wouldn’t feel good about associating my name with a crappy story even if it gave me millions of dollars.

Many people that know me will be surprised that I included Stephanie Meyers as an example.  I think the idea behind her premise is fine (except for the sparkling vampire crap), but they are among the worst written stories ever made.  That’s for another blog though.

I ‘d love to start writing good stuff again, but I don’t want to be in the situations I have been in previously which led to be being an effective writer.  And I don’t want to “force it,” because every time I do, I just churn out crap and it deteriorates into worse crap if I continue to “force it.”

As for drinking, I drink from time to time, but never more than 2 drinks on a day.  I don’t plan to change that, as I don’t have the need to escape from life any more.

That’s it for my first blog entry.  We’ll see what develops over time.