Recent Happenings

So, in the past few days, I've finished the draft of the last story for my book (I wrote about that in my last blog post) that will be coming out this year and started writing the next story on my mind. The next one is more of a concept still and not so much a story yet, but it'll get there. 

The other day I took down most of the outdoor Christmas lights and decorations. I hung the curtain rod in Megi's room. I fixed the sliding glass door (it wouldn't lock any more, but does now). And I re-installed Candice's Sims 3 games on her computer because it was crashing all the time. Well, it still crashes, but seems to be performing better than it was. I have to read some articles on how to fix it. Ele¢troni¢ Art$ should stop putting out crappy programs that require computer experts to "fix" your computer after you install their games. That's my opinion of the whole thing. Most other games don't seem to have issues if you have a system (well) above the minimum standard for running the program. It would be nice if a company that gave a crap about the people that bought its product would take over for them, but that'$ too much to hope for... 

Yesterday, I went to see the Sharks-Avs play with Candice.  My team has yet to win when Candice goes to the game.  :-/  But in this case, her team (and my #2 team) won, so it's all good.

Today, we plan to take down and box up more Christmas decorations rather than venture out into the single digit temperatures. The kids want to go outside and build a snowman. More power to them, especially since that's real hard to do here with the snow as dry as it is most of the time. 

 Anyway, that's all I have for this blog, thanks for reading.

Christmas Day So Far In The Bishop Household 12/25/2013

The day started at three o'clock in the morning.  Gabe actually woke up around twelve thirty, but we managed to hold him off for another two and a half hours.  The morning proceeded for about a half hour for Donna and Gabe to see what Santa brought them (and for Mom and Dad, too).  We then convinced them to take some of their stuff upstairs to their room to play with while we tried to get just a tad bit more sleep.  We then got up at seven for Megi to see what she got and for the immediate family to open presents from each other (and from family that would not be in attendance later today).  She handled it much better than I expected.  I expected her to be so overwhelmed that she'd shut down, but instead, she, though overwhelmed, took it mostly in stride and really got into the unwrapping part.  She was not at all pleased with the "quality" job that toy manufacturers do at securing the toys in the packaging.  Neither am I.

Then mom made French toast for everyone for breakfast, which was quite good.  We finished watching A Christmas Carol that we tried to watch last night (until dinnertime interrupted the movie temporarily and then Grandma commandeered the television to watch ID).  Then the kids played for a while as Candice and I cleaned and made preparations for the meal later today when the extended family arrives.  And now Grandma is making more finger foods and nick-knack foods that no one wants just because.

Candice was totally in the Christmas mood this year (for the first time in a while) right up until Grandma started adding to the menu last minute and taking over the space in the kitchen we needed to prep for the meal (along with monopolizing her time that we needed, too, because her "it won't interfere" line was total crap.  It turned into "do all this for me.")  Now Candice is completely out of the mood and dreading the rest of the day.  Grandma is completely oblivious to this fact.  And now, instead of having too many leftovers for the fridge, we're almost certainly going to have too many leftovers for the fridge, plus a bunch of other stuff that no one wants to eat, and it'll sit around until we throw it away in a week and a half.

I was dumb yesterday.  I wrote over a thousand words towards my story Darkness, and then forgot to email a copy home.  It was mostly just rewriting myself back to the point where I was a few months ago, though it feels much better to me now.  There are two less characters and I have a better feel for how the story will progress.  The first death in the second party has occurred and they're trying to figure out the best approach for the immediate future.  Logically, they should turn back and take the body to town, but they're farther away from the town than they are to their destination, and with an unknown predator that they can't be sure where it is, they are essentially stuck until they can decide.  They find that the backpack with the satellite phone is also missing, so calling for help is out of the question.  They're going to decide that there is probably another satellite phone at the campsite they're heading towards, which will push them forward and into the climax of the story.

In a few minutes, I'm going to put the sweet potatoes in the oven, since we're planning on having everyone eat dinner around three in the afternoon.  After that, I guess we need to start boiling the mashed potatoes (I've already peeled and diced them) and make the stuffing.  Then it's get dressed for the big event and enjoy the afternoon.

More purging of toys.

We've filled both garbage cans (the ones we put out for the trash trucks to dump out) with toys not good enough to donate.  We also have a huge stash of toys for ARC (thrift store that helps developmentally disabled people) and a toddler bed (since we converted Megi's crib into a daybed).  It probably amounts to multiple thousands of dollars of toys that we've removed (or are removing) from our house all at once.

We also managed to get two rooms vacuumed for the upcoming holiday visit.  The kids' rooms need to be swept or vacuumed and they'll be clean.

We still need to clean the office and kitchen before the big day.  We also still need to finish the loft (needs vacuumed still) and clean/vacuum our bedroom, and then the house will be mostly cleaned (spring cleaning style, even)!

I haven't gotten any writing done towards my book today, but feel much better about the progress towards the house cleaning project.

That's all for this blog entry, thanks for reading!

Cleaning out the House from Toys

Today, we threw away half the kids' toys from the toy room.  OK, we threw away a quarter of them and have another quarter ready for donation.  We've reclaimed a large portion of the room for walking!

We also put away the boxes for Christmas decorations along with miscellaneous empty boxes.  We're almost ready to clean for company Christmas day.  Hooray!

I'm going to label the toy drawers for the next time they go to pick up various toys, they'll hopefully put things away in the right places.

We still have the loft to go through and throw away/donate, as well as a crap load of toys we "threw away" that are actually in bags in the basement.  Almost all of it will get thrown away or donated (the rest will be kept if it belongs with stuff that we've kept before like doll house furniture, toy cooking stuff, etc).

Today's Writing Update 12/19

Yesterday, I re-started writing Darkness by throwing out 9/10 of it and starting over.  I think the new beginning is much better and flows smoother.  I saved some from the 'middle' just to see if it'll still fit.  It probably will, but will also probably be re-written, too.  Darkness is also the starting point for my zombie story too.  A few paragraphs in the second section will be the opening part of the zombie story.  I think it's a neat idea that the same scene starts two different horror genre stories.  Now, I just have to write them,  If I finish Darkness before I publish my still untitled compilation book, I think it'll be included and will also be the title of the compilation (though I still want something to do with Mary's Painting to be the book cover picture (darkness lays a role in it and most of the other stories as they're all related to dark topics).  If the book gets above 20,000 words, the book will be $2.99.  If it's less but still more than 15,000 I'll price it at $1.99, any less will be $0.99.  Those seem to be the accepted guidelines from what I can tell for self-publishing electronically.  I also think I need to edit Cat's Eye View and Un-Separation to refine them before publishing them in it.  They're still rough around the edges, and I'd hate to put out something I felt was not finished.  My goal is to get it published some time next calendar year.

Yesterday, I also discovered that I was grandfathered in to 750words.com with a free membership.  I had stopped using it because I joined less than a week after what was supposed to be the cutoff without knowing there was going to be a cutoff.  Before my 30 day trial was to be over, I stopped using it because I didn't think I could afford it (though it doesn't cost much of anything).  On a whim after Candice asked if the words I was typing for Darkness last night were for my "500 words", I went back to the website and found out that they'd moved the date to a week or so after I had joined.  So, I'll try using the site again to keep my writing momentum going.

I added a Goodreads widget to the side of my blog, but from what I can tell, I have to update the code myself to get the books in it to change.  I marked a couple more books as finished today and it still showed the old list until I copied and pasted the new code in.  If anyone knows how to modify it to be dynamically updated, let me know!

We're all ready for Christmas (though we still haven't mailed out stuff to my family back east - we'll do that tomorrow most likely).  The only shopping we still have left to do is to buy a few more groceries for the Christmas meal, and some boxes for the aforementioned stuff that needs shipped.

That's about all for this blog entry.  Thanks for reading.