July Sweeps - Day 168

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Storage Unit Serenade 23

So, I was hesitant to release this one, because it didn't come out as well as I wanted it, and it's really one of my favorite songs. But here you go and I'll try to do better next time (a weird promise, considering I shot the last one two months ago).

Stats
Pre-Eighties Songs: 7
Eighties Songs: 7
Nineties Songs: 5
Aughts Songs: 0
Teens Songs: 4

Logo by Gino "Funny How It Seems" Moretto.

Februly Sweeps - Day I Dunno

I should be at the cabin today, but I didn't go yesterday.  It was probably a mistake, but ah well.

I sold my last Dark Phoenix action figure today, one I got as Toys R Us was circling the drain.  Sad to see it go, but happy to make so much money from it.  Hasbro could reissue it, if they wanted to, or make the white costume version out of it, if they wanted some easy money.  Like the man said, "Sometimes I just don't understand human behaviour."

In other good news, I got a new Patreon supporter, which baffles me, but I sure appreciate it.  Feel free to join him.

I turned on a YouTube video yesterday, and left the room just as it was ending.  I guess AutoPlay automatically got turned on again (the bastards), because when I came back in, hours later, it was playing something not even remotely connected to what I had been watching, twenty or thirty degrees of Kevin Bacon away from it.  I know that's not interesting, but I can't sleep, so I typed it.

I got most of my work done, then went to the park, threw a blanket under a tree, and wrote for a half hour or so (maybe it was an hour, I dunno) on my egg story.  It was a story where there were two teenaged protagonists, a boy and a girl, and neither of them were remotely based on me.  So today, I introduced the girl's father, and he's totally fashioned after my idea of what I would be like if I were the parent of a teenaged girl.  I really don't know where the story is going (except the dog's gonna get it), so the dad may or may not have much to do later in the narrative, and I may end up feeling he's a totally superfluous aspect to the story.

I may have gotten carried away with my writing there, because I didn't stop until I got to the point where the egg hatched, and then I took my blanket and computer to the car.  For good measure, I ran the stairs twice (which is kind of masochistic on an afternoon in July).

I might've gotten my audiobook recording done, but instead I did a podcast with Marshal, our first in a month or so.  I hope somebody out there enjoys it.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 2371 (less than a thousand sit-ups away from my goal*)

It looks like I'll be spending part of next week in Las Vegas, helping my aunt and her husband move.  It'll probably be around 110 degrees, which is tough, but doing manual labor in that is tougher.  Plus, somebody somewhere said we'll have to wear masks while we do it.  I might sneak off to the cabin again tomorrow, hoping I get mauled by a bear.

Words Today: 1979
Words In July: 14,633

*I wonder if I could do a thousand sit-ups in a single weekend, if I went to the cabin and set the goal to do it.  It wouldn't benefit me in any way, but it would be an interesting experiment.

July Sweeps - Day 166

Well, I didn't go to the cabin today.  Turns out, I totally could have.

But I think I can still write today, or salvage some kind of good from-- Aww, who am I kidding?

Even though the world is still currently on fire (though not in New Zealand, I've heard), child baseball season started up again today, and since I was home, I took my nephew to his very first practice.  The coach wore a mask (which was nice), and insisted the boys stay six feet apart, but germs gonna germ.

Well, I brought my laptop with me, and I managed to sit and write while he had his practice.  I got nearly a thousand words on my egg story, and got to the point where the egg is hatching.  And that's good, I guess.  Isn't it?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 2260

I wanted to watch TV for a little while before I went to sleep, but figured I'd sit down and record a bit more on "Three-Time Visitor" before I did.*  I spent less than an hour, and had to stop.  The story is split into three parts, as you can imagine, where the main character of Alonzo visits the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast three different times (February, July, and October), and if I really wanted this darn Coronavirus to be cured, I would get off my lumpy backside and put it out there, even if I then had to do something as awful as this:

Sexy enough for you?

Anyway, I said I'd put it out, and I'm really going to do it this time (even if it means we're going two or three weeks without a Rish Outcast).

Words Today: 1011
Words In July: 12,654

July Sweeps - Day 165

I got nothing.

I was going to go outside and sit in the sun and force myself to write until I've got more words than yesterday.  It's doable, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, ad infinitum, I don't want to.

I keep thinking about writing more "Lara and the Witch" stories in which Old Widow Holcomb teaches Lara's classmates little lessons, like she did in "Remember the Future."  It's actually a pretty decent set-up for a series of stories, maybe one on a girl who is too vain, maybe one on a boy who  tells Lara that love isn't real, maybe one on a teacher who forgets the names of his students, maybe one on a boy who likes to slap people on the ass.  The witch can be cruel and her curses can be over the top.  What's not to like?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 2149

So now I'm sitting in the sun, semi-roasting, squinting at this screen.  I have zero words so far.

But the hot sun has a way of motivating, and before long, I started on my egg story (cleverly filenamed "Egg Story"), which I pretty much abandoned back in June.  I wrote a little, totally expendable romantic scene between the boy and the girl (one track mind, me), and decided--arbitrarily--that the story would take place in Washington state.  So, I put in a reference to the Seattle Supersonics, and a couple more bits about basketball, thinking I'd drop in a player's name when I got back inside the house.

My nephew adores basketball--it used to be his big thing, but once Plague Year 2020 hit, he has now shifted his obsession with the sport to fishing (which is much worse, believe me*)--and I asked him who the most famous player on the Supersonics is.  He looked at me like it was a trick question, and I said, "What?  Isn't that a team anymore?"  He told me they were the Oklahoma City Bagladies or something now, which makes less than zero sense, and so I said, "So, what's the team in Seattle called now?"  He told me there were none, so I had to substitute Portland for Seattle.

So, I Find and Replace-ed all the Supersonics references to Trailblazers, and then further discovered that Trail Blazers is two words, so that ended up helping my word count.  So, thanks, basketball.

Words Today: 984
Words In July: 11,643
Words I Would Need To Feel No Shame: 80,000

*He goes fishing multiple times a week, and just this one, he was casting a line and hooked his little brother in the back.  It went so deep in that their father couldn't get the hook out, and he had to go to the emergency room, where they cut the hook to force it out and gave him a tetanus shot.  So, yeah, fishing is worse.

July Sweeps - Day 164

Happy Harrison Ford's birthday!

I was filling in my work on the Magic Spreadsheet Big and I share, and I've fallen so far behind him--over ten thousand words--that if we included February on there, I might still only be a dozen words ahead.  But who's counting?*

Well, the Magic Spreadsheet, apparently.  And when I only got 101 words the other day, it considered my writing streak over.  I might as well have written zero words that day, because it started me over the next day, and there's nothing I can do about that except with a rigged-out DeLorean.  But I can continue to work each day in the future, as best I can.

Today, I have seven words so far.

Despite that, I rewarded myself with one of those blue Mountain Dew sodas (Voltage, I believe it's called), which are so delicious . . . I guess I'll drink three.

Well, I only ended up drinking one.  But tomorrow, I will strive to do better.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In July: 2038

As far as writing goes, another piss-poor showing.  We're getting to the point where there are more of those than there are impressive days anymore.  Part of it is just writing fatigue, but it's also having finished two stories in a week, I either have to work on one of my abandoned projects (which, I suppose, now includes my novel), or start on something new.  Daunting, isn't it?

Words Today: 323
Words In July: 10,659

*I was thinking, just the other day, that if I could count all this daily blogging as writing, I'd be at a million words by now.  Heck, I may have put that in my blog before, since I'm better at it than I am at the other kind of writing, or even sit-ups.

Video - "Rest Stop"

I had been talking to Big about doing a couple of video readings of my stories, maybe for a Dunesteef episode, so I dug out two--one I could do myself and one that we could do together.

The first time I went up to the family cabin this year, I sat down next to the pile of the last of the winter snow (except it ended up snowing again the next week and the pile got way bigger) and did this reading of my short story "Rest Stop."  Of course, my intention was to film the whole thing, rather than only a couple of minutes, but my phone is consistent, if not reliable.

It was a learning experience:
1.  The wind affects a phone way more than a microphone.
2.  Next time (if there is one), I'll have a phone with a lot more recording time. 
3.  And hey, try not to sit down in the snow for a half an hour.

July Sweeps - Day 163

Because of my piss-poor word count the last two days, when the sun woke me up this morning, I told myself to turn on my computer and write, and any words I got in before my alarm would count as part of yesterday's total.  Pretty good idea, no?

Well, in theory.  I wrote a sentence, then briefly checked my email.  Then I followed a link from one of those emails . . . and then my alarm went off.  Sigh.  I got seven words in before it was time to get up.

Mama, oooooh, didn't mean to make you cry.

Sit-ups Today: 166
Sit-ups In July: 1927

So, I dunno what to say about today, except, well, I did better today than the last few.

I went into this weekend with a bunch of unanswered questions in my mind about my Halloween decoration story.  For example, Should their mother be away at work on Halloween night, or should she be at home with them?  What happens to the boy who tried to warn Katy about breaking the rules?  What happens to the little brother?  Whoops, I have one character named Tristan and one character named Tevin: should I change one of them?  Is it stronger if Katy sticks to her guns or changes her mind at the last moment...but it's too late?

Well, somehow, I just gave arbitrary answers to those questions and wrote the story through to the end.  Yep, I got to type those happiest of words, and that means I've finished two stories in less than a week.  So, as a reward, I think I'll make tomorrow all about me.  Maybe I'll eat a donut, maybe I'll eat some chili fries.  Maybe I'll get up early, or maybe I'll sleep through my alarm (doubtful).  Maybe I'll have a bunch of people on Facebook send me greetings.

Heck, in preparation, I think I'll go do fifty more sit-ups.

Words Today: 1396
Words In July: 10,336

Storage Unit Junk Cascade

I failed in uploading a new Storage Unit Serenade video this week, partly out of laziness, and partly due to . . . a mishap.

So, I went to the unit only once this week, but figured I'd record something (I got a new phone with a much nicer camera, after all), but when I opened the door, something was pushing on it from the other side.  I forced the door up, and a huge tidal wave of boxes and bags full of action figures and such assorted garbage came pouring down on me.  Apparently, at some point in the last few days, something collapsed in there and a bunch of boxes had toppled, just waiting for a poor, unfortunate merman, like myself, to open the door.

I was talking to Big Anklevich at the time, and took this picture to show him what I was up against:

Normally, I would never share a picture like this with you, since it's not unlike sending you a photo of my undercarriage.  But I hung up on Big and spent an hour--AN HOUR--cleaning up packages and restacking boxes, the whole time baking in the ninety-five degree sun.  When I was done, I certainly didn't feel like singing, and I would've looked even worse than usual all sweaty, dirty, and disheveled, doing a Lionel Richie or Chaka Khan song.

So, I just called it a day and grabbed a couple of the Star Wars boxes that had been most damaged to take back to the house and sell loose.*  Even then, the door still wouldn't come down right--a Ghostbusters box had slid into its path and was summarily crushed when I tried to close the door (whoops).

*Love those Star Wars collectors.  On my auctions I tend to write, and I quote, "the package is in ____ condition, but not Mint-On-Card, NEVER Mint-On-Card."  And I had a guy just the other day still insisted on returning his figure for it being "Not As Described."  I wrote eBay a somewhat upset email, since they always side with the buyer (it's funny when I hear liars claim that they don't, because they are, what's the word?  Oh yeah, liars), and though I didn't hear back from them, the guy never sent back the figure for the refund he demanded.

July Sweeps - Day 162

So, it was a big hiking day today.  Busy before, busy during, and busy after.  But I like busy, because it makes me feel social, and alive, at least a little.

When I went hiking, what, a month ago, with my high school buddy Rhett and his son, he asked me about the various places around here that one would go on fun and/or arduous hikes.  One of them (with a waterfall at the top of a mountain) was one of his favorites, and I told him I'd been planning to hit it before too long.  Well, he told me we'd get together and do that hike, and not to go without him.  He was pretty adamant about it, otherwise, I think I would've hit it by now.  He even called my old friend Dennis, who lives about a half hour from the mountain Rhett wanted us to climb, and arranged a day when the three of us could go climb it together.

I hadn't seen or heard from Dennis since 2017, which is kind of sad, but I understand.  He remarried and moved away to a new town, with a new family and, in a way, a fresh start in life.  I can't blame him for leaving the old one behind (which, I'll be honest, he did a long, long time ago, first moving up to Alaska--about as far removed from the rest of America as you can get, and then marrying a woman with young children that he could look at as his own).  Although I'm just guessing.

Dennis was coming from the north, while Rhett and I were coming from the south.  Because Rhett is fundamentally incapable of getting anywhere on time, and even though I myself was ten minutes late, I still had twenty minutes to sit in the car and write.  Little did I know that that was all the writing I would get in for the day.

It was an extraordinarily warm day to go on a hike--over a hundred here in town, and probably close to that at the start of our hike.  But I guess these months of running and hiking have conditioned me, because I survived just fine.

Rhett brought his teenaged son along again, and he was exactly the same as he was the last time--the opposite of introverted, and very eager to listen to and be part of the conversation the adults were having.  Dennis had brought his young step-son, who I had no memory of meeting, although he would've been much smaller the last time I saw him.  Dennis, in actuality, was absolutely unrecognizable.  He had a long greying beard and wore a floppy hat, and if he hadn't waved at me when I was walking around the parking lot, I'd not have known it was him.

He said it was his pandemic beard, and was the first one he'd grown.  I find that kind of interesting, since the only time I don't have a beard is when I have to shave mine for a part.  I remember the last time I shaved it, I wasn't able to recognize myself in the mirror.  I imagine it'd be even stranger now, since I'm nearly twenty pounds lighter than the time I shaved it for a Joker costume.

There was practically no place to park, due to the abnormal number of visitors to the mountain, but Dennis (who drove all of us in his little car from a lower parking lot) simply parked alongside the road, and we walked three quarters of a mile to the trail head (which was fine when we started, but miserably hot and distant by the end of the outing.

I've been on a dozen or more hikes in this plague year of 2020, and this was easily the busiest and most overflowing with people I've been on.  In the past, I've shied away from people because of fear of contamination, but the path up the mountain was so narrow and so jammed with hikers, that we might as well all have been in an elevator together.  A sweaty elevator.

There WERE a few people hiking with masks on, and while I admire their dedication, I couldn't have done that.  I'd have just stayed home.

Both Rhett and Dennis had been there before (and Rhett goes often), so I kept asking them if now would be a good time for a picture, or if it was going to get better.  I'm just too old school to remember that with a digital camera, you can take a hundred pictures, and if they're not special, you can always delete them.

It was an intense climb up a mountain, where there was a quite spectacular waterfall waiting, and a huge crowd lounging around by it, or actually standing under it in various stages of undress.  Because it was so hot out, the nearly-ice cold water felt pretty refreshing, but there were a lot of girls and children screaming because of how cold and (ironically) wet it was in the splash zone of the falls.

The two kids that were with us wanted to play around in the water, and we three adults did not.  But later, when I was feeling particularly hot, I did go stand underneath the falls, and got quite wet taking photos like this:

Or video like this:

I took a crazy number of pictures because who knew if I'd ever use my old phone again (I thought I'd give it to my nine year old nephew to take pictures/video with, but now I'm thinking I might keep it just for hikes and the cabin and stuff, because it has fallen to the ground dozens of times and never once cracked or scraped, whereas my new phone has fallen twice and cracked fifty percent of those times*).  I'll put a couple of them up, but it'll probably take me a few days to upload them (I had to de-install Dropbox on my old phone because they don't let you use it on that many accounts . . . unless you pay a premium).

The two boys wanted to climb to the top of the waterfall, but Rhett and Dennis didn't want to. So I said that I would, because I am adventurous, I guess. Or I might have just not wanted to seem old to the kids. Before I went up, Rhett warned me that his son could be "rambunctious," and that he ought to go along too. And this is going to sound strange, but I thought about it, and I have to admit that I didn't know what that word meant. I still don't.

It was a steep climb to get to the top of the waterfall, and only the most foolhardy or physically fit made it up there. It made for some good angles for pictures, I will admit.

Dennis was not feeling great, so Rhett led us on a quicker path through some really dense foliage.  Honestly, it reminded me of Hawaii (where I've never been), specifically JURASSIC PARK, and that's always fun.

We went down the trail for a ways, only the five of us, and only encountered a single teenaged girl walking by herself.**  We let her past, walked about half a mile, and then ran into some kind of resort employee/security guard, who told us the path was one-way only, and we had to turn around and go back to the falls. Rhett absolutely didn't want to (and called the guy a bastard a few times before the day was done), since we'd made it close to the road at the bottom of the mountain, but the guard actually walked with us all the way up the trail again until we were back where we'd started, then announced to someone on his walkie talkie that he'd taken care of the trespassers.

So, we had no choice but to climb up to the top of the mountain again, find the trail we'd taken to get there, and go back down on the other side. It took a while, and we were so high that we could see the path we'd been taking, and how close to the bottom we'd gotten before being stopped. There were these resort guards all over, we discovered, policing the high number of tourists out walking around.

This route was where Dennis started having problems, and we stopped a number of times to rest.  It was very hot, but I had been smart enough to bring two bottles of water I carried around in my backpack.  Three would've been even better.

 Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In July: 1761 (more than halfway to my goal)

At night, I was lucky enough to get to see the greatest sequel of all time, and the best of the Star Wars movies, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, on the big screen again.  That makes three times I've gone to see it (once in 1997, once in about 2003 at a Q&A screening with Irvin Kershner, and once in Plague Year 2020).  It was more glorious than ever in its fortieth anniversary, and I wish everybody had a chance to see it.

And that everybody had a chance to be loved.  Or fondled by a stranger during a church picnic.  You may choose.

I saw EMPIRE with my cousin, who has always shared a love for The Trilogy, and with whom I watched "The Mandalorian."  Now, while I'll almost certainly die alone (and soon), I count myself as fortunate to get to go to it again, when a big chunk of the moviegoing public can't go see anything.

You see so much more on the big screen, with zero distractions, and we both laughed when we saw Willrow Hood run by.

Good old Willrow Hood.

I'm sure you get tired of hearing "I didn't feel like writing today," but it's the truth.  I knew I needed to sit down and write before I went to bed, but I laid down and closed my eyes anyway, with the lights still on, figuring I would write in a couple of minutes.  I woke up to find it four am and my brain in shut-down mode, so I got up, put my laptop on the floor, and turned off the lights, not even thinking about writing any more.

Still, I will try to do better tomorrow (Sundays are my hiking days, but because I did that today, I could maybe write instead?).  I'm twenty days away from having written every day for half of a year, so I might as well keep going.

Words Today: 389
Words In July: I dunno, seven?***

*I did order a case for it this weekend, but to quote SATURDAY THE 14TH, it's a little bit like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children.

**He said he never saw any teenaged girls along the trail.  Worrisome?

***8940.

"The Calling: Reunion" Available on Amazon

Well, it looks like it won't be until the end of August or September that my sequel to "The Calling" will be available over on Audible.  Heck, it could fail to pass their QC a third time, and I'd probably miss releasing it in 2020, despite having finished it in January.  And that's sad, but out of my hands.

If you'd like to read it, it is out there AT THIS LINK in text form, as well as a lil bundle with the first story, which is necessary to read to enjoy the sequel, if enjoyment is possible.  I still have a Rish Outcast sitting around announcing it, one recorded before there was a pandemic or so much unemployment or even more political divide than previously.

I'd sure appreciate it, and maybe you'd enjoy it.

Also, the sequel to "Like A Good Neighbor," "You're In Good Hands" is out there on Amazon as well.  It's the second installment in the Lara & The Witch series, despite the several short pieces I wrote about a teenaged Lara Demming.  It's funny, it's been years and years since I saw either of the women I named Lara and Old Widow Holcomb after, and here I am, still name-dropping them.  I'm hoping that the audio passes Audible's requirements the first time through, but it seems kind of unlikely.

In the meantime, you can find the text over at THIS LINK.  Thanks.