Distracted

The Broncos are playing right now, so I will be slightly distracted.

It's Monday anyway, so nothing happened right?

Definitely not at work, where it was a really slow day. Very slow. Boringly slow.

Enough about that.

Uhm, where was I? Oh yeah. Slow day. I was distracted by a really dumb commercial for kgb, about the dumbest team mascot.

Let's see if I can save this and talk about...

The fact that I have been easily distracted from my main task at hand this month, which is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

It happens every year. I think that maybe I should just quit trying these silly things and motivate myself in a different way.

I know, maybe I'll just quit my job and make our lives dependent upon my writing. Okay, let's not even joke about that, a completely unwise decision. I should just do my thing and roll with that, all I know is that I am getting tired of talking about it, as I am sure that people are getting tired of hearing me talk about it.

UGH! The Broncos are ticking me off at the moment.

Consider that the bell.

Nine-Day Warning!!

That's right folks. Nine more days, until the craziest month of them all, November!

Why is November crazy?

Glad you asked.

November is crazy because it is NaBloPoMo, and NaNoWriMo.

Yes, it's National Blog Posting Month - where you leave a post every day! On anything you'd like. Sure, it may sound easy, but wait until it's 11:30PM and you are settling down for a long winter's nap, when all of a sudden what should appear, a reminder that you need to post something in the next thirty minutes. That's what.

Then there is the grandaddy of them all National Novel Writing Month, where you are challenged to write 50,000 words, that all go together. I think it's roughly 1700 words a day. Doesn't that sound like fun? Especially if you are like me and do not have an idea for a story, just yet.

Panicking doesn't help, so don't even bother doing it. Just flow with it. :)

For more information on either"challenges" you can visit their websites here and here, I'll leave the links as a surprise.

So, interested? Wanna join me on this crazy month? How about a challenge among friends? Let me know.

Of course you could just keep coming back everyday for updates... that will be fun too.

On the Sixtieth Day, They Rested

Now the fine folks at Blog365 (you know, the reason I am blogging every day) decided at the beginning of the year, that tomorrow February twenty-ninth (leap day), would be a day of rest. Why sixty days in, as opposed to, one hundred eighty days is beyond me.

I like taking breaks as much as the next guy, but I think that it would do more harm than good. Too me at least. I enjoy doing this, and I feel that I might even be getting a little better, both in content and writing ability. Well, at least I have had lots and lots of practice, right?

Now, I wonder if I can do a floating holiday, of sorts. You know, take July 4 off instead of February 29? Who do I need to talk to about this predicament? Where is your manager? Who am I kidding, by then I'll have one-hundred eighty-seven days in. Do you really think that I'll want to stop then.

I'm already thinking of contingencies to blog daily from Disney World, in DECEMBER!!

Yes, I have been bitten by the blog bug, and it feels good. Maybe I have finally found my drug, eh? I wonder if I can get paid to do this? Probably would have to clean it up a bit, grammatically, but I think I could do that. All I have to do is write the posts out first, then post.

Hmmm.

I should be able to do NaNoWriMo for sure this year. No excuses, except maybe blogging. I've only "tried" to do it for the past three years, with the total number of words equaling less than the number of fingers on one hand, that is being used to pick some 'gold' out of my nose.

Yes, if you are still with me, after that, my word count total for all three years combined is: Zero. I had noble ambitions each and every year, and refuse to "prepare" for the month, thinking that it was cheating. I mean if you write an outline of what you are going to write, then... know what I'm saying?

Plus, I'm not an outline kind of guy anyway.

This will be the last sentence for this entry, how long it is, depends on how long I continue to type without hitting that period key, over there, because I can ramble on, as many of you have noticed if I were to post a comment on your blog, either because I found you witty or deep, or maybe it was deeply witty.

Okay, I lied. :)

PITA - Time!

Whew!

What a day, let me tell you. I have a fairly normal and consistent routine when I come in to work in the morning. I arrive anywhere from 4:30 (Ha!) to 6:00am, fire up the ol' computer, go fill my cup with ice and then cover that ice with some refreshing Diet Coke. Yummy, so satisfying, hard to believe that I want to drop it from my life forever.... we'll see.

Anyway, after doing all the above, I come back to the computer, where it should be ready for the new day. It takes about five minutes on good days to get up to speed, somedays a little longer. (Like Mondays?) Then I go through my morning backlog reports , where I take them and spread them to the world of the lab, and they welcome them with open arms, no, really they do. :-)

To put into perspective the day I had, I still haven't sent out the backlog reports. No point now, really, besides there will be tomorrow's. My problems began with my trying to get a new backlog report downloaded to my computer, then it was let's pull Roger in to as many directions possible. First it was LD, then SM, then EC, then JS, then.....

Yikes! I finally got the email up and running by, oh 11-ish. Then it was lunch and networking, which gave everyone back at the office time to reload. :-) Now, I am here by myself, trying to get motivated about getting some work done. Ugh! Actually, I'll be saved by the bell soon, because I have a "Cookie Mom/Dad" meeting for Jenni's Girl Scout troop. I haven't benn the last few years, but they have made some changes, so... I should probably go. I hope it's a relatively short meeting, but I somehow doubt that will be the case.

Okay, my mind just blanked. I kid you not, I was going to write so much more, but nothing's there. Heck, I'm surprised I have typed this much. Maybe I'm working through the block, and this will become an eight thousand word entry.... NOT!!

More another time - at least tomorrow, gotta keep the NaBloPoMo streak going, you know. At least it's better than my NaNoWriMo stats, I have probably two thousand words for one story, two thousand for another and several hundreds still in my head... but my enthusiasm there has waned a bit, and I really am losing interest there. I should just work at my own pace... zzzzzzzz.... SNAP OUT OF IT!!!!

Bye bye

Driving Myself Nuts!!

I think that I am putting too much pressure on myself with this NaNoWriMo stuff. I mean I have these story ideas running through my head, some of them even pretty good, but when I start to write them down...

POOF!

They are gone or, as in the case today, I start writing down what is in my head and thinking that it's going to translate well on the page. Guess what? I wrote myself right into a freaking hole! One that I am having a hard time digging myself out of, at that.

Now, I know that the whole point of NaNaWriMo is to just write, but apparently I am the type of writer that takes my stuff too seriously, even this believe it or not, that if I see one problem wrong with it... then I don't want to have anything else to do with it.

What the heck is wrong with me? I mean, I KNOW that I have the talent, as I have proven to not just myself but others, to write, but.... I don't know if it is just an insecurity issue or what. Trust me, I have plenty of support at home, I may joke that I don't, but I know that my family wants nothing more than for me to succeed with my writing.

So here I am at forty years of age haveing the same self-doubt issues that I seem to have had my entire life. I need to get over it, but HOW?

Does anyone know? Is this just a bout with writer's block? Should I just give it all up?

I don't think so. Giving up never solved anything for me before. I just am hating the way I am feeling, and I don't really think that I need any kind of "help" from anyone in the psychiatric world, thank you very much.

Maybe I'm just too arrogant.

That's a different approach, but there may be something there. I'm too arrogant and therefore I am filled with self-doubt because if I end up writing something that reads like crap, then my world will come crashing down. I am my own worse critic. For the most part I am my ONLY critic, because I don't like to share my, in my mind, inferior work.

Maybe I'm just lying to myself.

Interesting, afterall who amI hurting by doing that? Just myself, which then leads back to the whole self-doubt issue and....

Should self-doubt be hyphenated there? Or should it just be self doubt? I'm starting to think the latter sense I'm not really trying to combine the two words, right? Ugh. English is such a fun language, don't you think?

Want to hear something funny, or read it I guess? My current boss, JC - and he isn't The JC, told me that my evals that I wrote for him were going to need to be work over and improved by him. Oh my goodness, what a liar he is! Trust me I have seen them and if there are any changes, there are very minimal and don't do anything for what I wrote. Can I just call him puddwhacker from now on?

Sure can, it's my blog afterall.

Three days in...

And still blogging.

If you can call it that.

Now I wonder if I need to sign in to the web site for NaBloPoMo to be involved... Not sure, but can't check it from here, at work, because the filters say that it is a dating site.

So, now I will have to try and remember to do this later.

Tonight, with six kids crawling over me... ({[editor: okay, in reality it will only be the two youngest - they still like him!] - when did I get an editor, and am I using this correctly?} - now what?!?)

Maybe I can look into it tomorrow, when they are still sleeping. Preferably, when I am awake. Now I don't know which of these "contests" will be harder. a) Taking the time to write 50,000 words put together so that there is a coherent story about (fill in your blanks here), or b) Write jibberish about whatever the heck I feel like for thirty (count 'em) thirty straight days.

Sounds like "b" is the winner doesn't it?

I thought so too, at first. But, I believe that writing jibberish can sometimes be a daunting task, and not everyone can do it. Don't believe me? Take a look at all those blogs out there that have one or two entries per week, month, year, ever! Just look at my previous blogs (which I would still be utilizing if I could only remember the password.) as proof.

See, I haven't always had this "talent" for jibberish - not true, but go along with it.

Now granted writing 50,000 words isn't an easy task, by any stretch of the imagination, and for them to all tie together and make me BIG bucks! Nearly impossible, but I can dream, write (catch that?). While my word count at 3 days (still zero) isn't very glamorous, I can still "catch up" by writing 2,000 words per day, as opposed to the recommended 1667. I mean, I started this post figuring it would be a couple of lines, and it has turned into (how many? 347), in a short period of time (say ten minutes). If I were to average that many words for just one hour, I would have written 2082. I'm not even counting these words which still fall within the ten minute zone.

***Side note: I didn't realize that I can type 34.7 words per minute. Actually more, since it still hasn't been ten minutes.

Like the Dollyrots say... 'Because I'm Awesome!'

Okay, I'm over myself, for now. I shall retreat back to work. Oh and I don't feel guilty for doing this at work, by the way. I spend less time per day doing this that the smokers spend sucking their lives away.

So there.

NaBloPoMo?!?

What the heck is that? Well thanks to me being bored at work, I stumbled upon this blog and she explains it all. So there.

Okay NaBloPoMo is National Blog Posting Month, which advocates posting on your blog everyday during the month of November. Way easier than writing a novel in a month, but... I shall not give up my novel writing this month for nothing (total word count: 0) [never said I wasn't a procrastinator]. Interesting, I never thought of using those with English.... hmmm.

Where was I?

Don't know, something about writing something everyday about ... something. How about that?

So now I have two NaMo thingies, maybe we can create something else, like NaEa3MMo (National Eating 3 Musketeers Month), it's worth a shot, all I need is a website and some press and voila! It is set in netspace stone, or something way more creative!

Yikes!

Two days down and 28 to go... I think I can succeed at this, no problem. The novel? Talk to me on Monday, or better yet Saturday (Dec 1), and I will let you know. Of course I can't keep that away from here too long, so...

Stay tuned.

Happy November!

Welcome to November, everyone!!

Don't have much else to say, so I won't.

Whatever.

I always have something to say!

At least I'm not double-spacing this post. What's that? I am? Oh, sorry about that. It just looks better to me this way. And since this is my blog, I can do whatever I want, correct? So there.

Okay, day one of NaNoWriMo and I have exactly 0 words written. Can you believe that? Me neither, but it is true. My mojo has gone away for some reason, so now all I have is my guilt trip, to myself, via this blog. Now if that isn't a case for psychological help, I don't know one.

truth be told, I run several story ideas through my mind, at all times it seems, and then I critisize the snot out of it, and discourage myself and.... voila, JK Rowling is the richest woman in the world, and I'm working at a job I don't necessarily care about. See how that works? So, I need to read some motivational stuff and write 10,000 words this weekend. That'll make me feel better. What would be even better would be that all 10,000 words help move a story along and ... well I think you know the rest. :-)

Halloween was cool. Nothing like watching the kids go around begging for candy to make my day. Actually, I started feeling better after the lights were turned off and the candy was all passed out. Why? Glad you asked. Because it's now November dummy! That's right November, which has Thanksgiving, and gets us all closer to Christmas. Best time of the year in my book. I love it!

If you don't like Christmas and all that it stands for, then you probably won't like being here for the next two months or so. That's right it's Christmas and holiday happiness abounding throughout the blog! Best part is it goes through the Epiphany in January. Now after that I'll probably go back to my normal depressing self. Cheerful thought, no doubt.

Well, I should head out, gotta family to see and a pillow with my name on it. Maybe, just maybe some words will be typed onto a word processor that will become the beginning of something wonderful!

See ya!

Yikes!

It's Halloween - ooh scary!

What's up with the costumes these days? Do I really want my daughters to be parading around looking like some skanky version of Alice in Wonderland? Ridiculous. I would have added a link so that you could see for yourself, yet that would be promoting the nonsense, don't you think? Look ma! I wanna dress up like Paris Hilton! Not in this lifetime kid, at least while I'm still here.

Atleast there have been some stories out there talking about what trashy costumes are out there, and what kind of parents would buy their kids these items, because it's cute. It is also degrading and tasteless, but we don't want to look at that. Having a sense of morality is just so boring!

Okay, so tomorrow at midnight - a mere seven and a half hours away - NaNoWriMo starts. Let's see if we can actually get something written for a change. It would be nice to have a spark of creativity that takes me off into a fantastic world and then allows me to start a new career. Wouldn't that be cool? I think so. So does my family, who are probably tired of hearing about how I 'want' to be a writer. I need to actually give it a chance this time, so I will know if this is what I am called to do. I hope it is, because I have been wanting it for so long now.

Not meaning to jump topics like this and all, but I hate driving on Halloween. Too many kids with costumes that have poor vision, and being hyped up on all those sugary treats, can lead to many a bad situation. I hope and pray that no one gets hurt tonight.

So, Jeff wants me to organize a "Field Day" for the lab. A time where we clean up the lab, usually for a special guest, etc.. Normally, I have a couple of weeks to organize it.... he wants it for this Saturday. How does that saying go, 'a lack of planning on your part, does not make it an emergency on mine.' I really DO NOT want to work cleaning up the lab this weekend. Especially for someone that will see the lab for all of five minutes. Oy! I sent out the "invites" now we'll see if I get any positive responses. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Will this be my last post for October? Probably, here at least, unless I see something worth noting tonight. May happen.

Finally, someone wins against these morons.

Hope that link worked. Basically, it's about these extreme fundamentalists that believe that God is punishing us for allowing gays in the military (or something to do with that lifestyle), and killling our servicemen in the war. So what these braniacs do is go to as many military funerals as they can, and protest. I thought that we were supposed to respect our dead. Especially someone whose life helped to keep those free speech rights alive. Anyway, they are getting socked with a $2.9 million in compensatory damages, the punitives are yet to come. Maybe now they will shut up and read the Bible about compassion, etc.

Okay, I think that I am done here, and I need to go check on my own little 'goblins.' Talk at you later.

Is it cheating?

To come up with ideas and maybe even an outline for my NaNoWriMo work? I think so, but am I really supposed to be starting from scratch? Does everyone else? I doubt it, especially considering all of the pre-event stuff that I'm getting emails about.

So, I do hav an idea, but I won't share it just yet, since I think that if I write any of it down, I would be cheating some how. Of course it is all just an honor system thing until the end when you have to submit proof of your 50,000 words written. I wonder of anyone has just submitted 50,000 'apartments' for credit? Now, that would be cheating.

Okay, I'm off to watch some Sesame Street with Danny - speaking of 50,000...

New Stuff!

I found a place where I can add links, and I don't even have to deal with HTML, how nice is that? Of course, I wish that the widget would have been set up to allow the links to pop up in a new window. Oh well. I couldn't find anyway to change it either, so it will have to stay that way for a while, I guess. Unless I want to spend some time reading about all that HTML stuff, which I'd rather not do - I am a simple man, with a simple mind.

My week as supreme boss-man is almost over. Wasn't too bad, and there was minimal drama involved which should be resolved soon-ish.

Supposedly.

Right.

We'll see.

Until then I will continue to come in and do my job to the best of my abilities, and hope to grow and prosper, blah, blah, blah!

Truth be told, I don't really know what I want. I am thinking about fasting for a week though. Is that crazy? Maybe. Maybe not. I've heard and read that there is a lot of beneficial things to fasting. Mostly, I think I want to cleanse my self of whatever kind of crap is in there. Figures that I want to do this now, so close to the holiday eating season. I don't know why, but it just sort of popped into my head, so maybe my body is talking to me.

I think the hardest thing to give up will be the Diet Coke, because I tend to get headaches when I go without. Maybe that's another reason I should give it up. I'll let you know if and when I decide to do this. I figure I'll try just water, but if it gets to be too uncomfortable, then maybe I can mix in some Jell-O! It's almost like I'm planning for my colonoscopy now, when I don't need one for another ten years.

Ugh, I just has a train of thought blast through my head... couldn't catch it, so this is all you get.

Pretty boring, eh?

NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, only six more days. I think I have an idea of what I want to build my story on, just trying to figure out how to get this character into the situation that I want to write about. Did that make any sense at all? If not, don't worry about it, it's my story anyway! :-)

Gotta go!

11 Days and Counting...

Until the first of November and that great invention... NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which aspiring writers, like myself, try to complete 50000 words for a novel or story. One that hopefully makes sense and can be refined and edited to become the next "BIG" thing. I mean all I want is to be half as rich and famous as J.K. Rowling - no big deal. :-)

Anyway, the problem that I have always found while partaking in this adventure, I never seem to get started. Granted, two years ago, I found out about it around Thanksgiving, which would have given me something like four days to complete 50000 words! You do the math, that's 12500 words per day. I like to write, heck I even love it at times, but 12500 words a day for four days straight!

Last year, I got ready and actually signed up early, October 20-something I believe. Then I proceeded to forget and lack time and lack creativity andblahblahblahblah! Excuses upon excuses, what can I say... Procrastination is for me!

Well, now that I am forty, I am hoping that I have matured enough and will be able to partake in this adventure, complete at least 50000 words, send it off to a publisher and receive a big fat check and a travel schedule that will occupy my time next August. Again, not really too much to ask for, right?

I have a job where I can sneek in some writing, like now for instance (shh don't tell!), and I can never get to bed before 11pm it seems, so that should - in theory - give me at least two hours every night after the kids go to bed to write, plus sneek in an hour or two during the day. Sounds like it will be a succesful mission to me, what do you think?

In other news, Andy actually asked me for some help, and I was able to give it to him. See turning forty has its benefits. Granted it was only after Jenni told him to ask me, and that came after she told Andy that his girlfriend could not come over to help. It's a start.

Baseball news.... The Red Sox won game five to force a return to Bean Town for at least a game six. The Indians of Cleveland lead the Red Sox of Baoston 3 games to 2, in a series to determine who will play the COLORADO ROCKIES!!!

In other news from that great state of Colorado, the Denver Broncos will battle against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Invesco Field on Sunday night. All I have to say about them, for now, is that I never thought I would see the day that the Rockies would over shadow the Broncos. Of course, the way the 'donkeys' are playing right now, it shouldn't surprise me. Hopefully they will get a shot in the arm and a boost to their confidence on Sunday night.

Cliche-ville there, sorry.