September Sweeps - Day 589

This doesn't count as a hike, but my nephew begged me to take him up the canyon to see if we could catch any frogs or salamanders.  I'm always a sucker for that stuff, so I loaded him in (along with a net and a bucket), and we drove first to the town where my sister lives, to see if there were any at the golf course there (my brother-in-law says he sees tons of salamanders when he goes golfing there).

My nephew was super nervous about us going there, sure we were gonna get caught, thrown out, arrested, or hit with golf balls.  I told him no one was going to care, and indeed, the only time anyone even noticed us was when they zoomed by on their golf carts, even then not noting we didn't have clubs with us.  I hadn't been to that golf course in years and years--I remember jumping in the water hazard pond as a teenager, which is only slightly less mature than I am as an old man--but I was surprised to find deer walking around between the holes, lazily looking up as the two of us walked past, then going back to grazing.

After that, we went up the canyon, caught a few fish (minnows) for him to feed to his remaining two frogs, and then headed to the next town, where construction got us lost for about twenty minutes (the main road into town was closed down, so we took a back road that eventually took us miles out of our way and into another town completely.  We caught a few more fish there, and then it was time for him to get home, since he has school tomorrow morning.

Like I said, I'm not counting it as my hike for the month . . . but I could.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In September: 1338

Push-ups Today: 140
Push-ups In September: 1569

Darn, I really ought to write something about it being twenty years since September 11th.  It was truly a life-changing day, and I still remember how it started, and how it ended with me calling my mom to patch things up after we'd had a fight over religion.  There were so many tributes, so many people sharing their feelings and memories, and SO many memes on social media that I just didn't feel like I had anything to contribute.  Still don't.

Words Today: 107
Words In September: 8901

I know it's close to nothing, the words I've written these last few days, but I'm honestly fine with it.  I had planned to quit writing completely, so any little bit is something.  I set up my microphone in the afternoon, planning to start recording another story or book (either "Hatchling" or "Underdecorated" or "Winter Break"), but my nephew demanded I take him somewhere "before it got too late," and I totally gave in.

At the end of the night, my mic was still plugged in, so I sat down and started recording "Underdecorated," the shortest of the three projects, thinking I might be able to get it done that very night.

However, I had stayed up until nearly six in the morning the night before (thanks to my extensive nap), and I paid for it trying to record an audiobook.  After twenty minutes, I started getting sloppy, and by half an hour, I was falling asleep at the computer.

I stood up, knowing I still had push-ups to do (I think I was supposed to do 219 today), but went in the other room, got a big drink of water, then came into the room to check the internet.  And that was it--I conked out with the lights on and the laptop next to me.  Whoops.

September Sweeps - Day 588

The other day, my pal Big Anklevich made a comment on my blog about my goal (for September) to finally stop writing every single day.  He said that it had been a year since he stopped writing every day (his goal was to reach 300,000 words--which he did achieve), and since stopping, not only had he not written, but other aspects of his life had fallen apart as well.

His last year, according to him, has been absolutely terrible (at least that was my interpretation of "a purposeless, shitty year"), and he lays at least some of that at the feet of quitting his laudable, impressive daily writing effort.

So, I did have that in mind on this, the first day where I no longer have to write, and would probably be best situated for moving on and starting something new . . . but his message did give me pause.*

I fell asleep while wasting time on Facebook, and ended up wasting the whole afternoon.  I mean, I didn't even try to go to the library, because it would be closing twenty-five minutes after I got there.  What would I have written about anyway?

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In September: 1227

The day ended, and I didn't get a single word.

I figured that was that.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In September: 1429

Heck, the night was getting close to over, and I hadn't written anything (that lengthy nap really recharged my batteries, I guess, because I wasn't tired at midnight, nor at two, nor even at four).  And that was fine, really.

But I kept thinking of what Big said, and so, as crazy as it sounds, just after five am, I opened up a document and wrote a paragraph.  Then I wrote two more.  At quarter to six, I yawned, and said, "Alright, good enough," and went to sleep.**

Words Today: 201
Words In September: 8794

*There are a lot of people who have to make mistakes on their own in order to learn for them.  But verily I say unto thee, 'tis better to learn from someone else's mistakes, not having to make them yourself.  Thyself.

**Okay, even that's a lie.  I typed all this blog post, and then I let myself go to sleep.

September Sweeps - Day 587

"Well, I went today,
Maybe I will go again tomorrow;
Yeah yeah, well, the music there,
Well, it was hauntingly familiar."
                                Stevie Nicks

Alright, here I am, at the library again (I was here on Tuesday, but just for about twenty minutes), and I'm going to finish my book.

Except, big shock, now all I want to do is write in my blog.*

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In September: 1116

I think I ought to come up with a birthday for Lara Demming, that was I'll know how old she is in any given story (the problem is, in the years that I've been writing these, the timeline has to have shifted.  I can't mention Obama being president in the first story and have Biden being president "two years" later in the narrative.  I think there will just be little inconsistencies that sneak in, no matter how hard I try to avoid them.

I wrote for a couple of minutes, then surfed the internet like a big dumb bastage, then forced myself to go back to the story, since I was right on the edge, the edge of seventeen.

And it only took a few more words.

I'm done with my book.  And it's by far the largest thing I've ever written.

Word count?  How's 77,210 grab you?

Thanks, man.

Push-ups Today: 218
Push-ups In September: 1379

Anyway, I guess I'll go home now, run around the neighborhood, and maybe eat a pizza.  

Okay, half a pizza.

Words Today: 404
Words In September: 8593

*My brain hates me, I've long suspected.

September Sweeps - Day 586

Okay, let's finish this sucker today.  I believe I mentioned last night that I was ninety-nine percent done with "When You Need It Most," which you may think--perhaps rightly--is an awful title.  But wait till you read the book.  Its awfulness may far outshine that of its title, kids.

I woke up incredibly early today (like Marshal Latham or Count Dracula early).  It was dark, but there was the hint of light in the east, so I simply went back to sleep.  An hour or so later, I woke again, and the sun was now appearing over the hills and trees, the cabin a eerie orange color.  I went back to sleep.  The next time I woke, the sun was higher in the sky, still more than an hour before my alarm would go off.  I got up, ate a donut, edited some audio, and found my stomach aching (some kind of unpleasant cramping), so I laid down again and read my bo . . . and I slept.

My alarm went off, and I snoozed it, and ended up getting up--for real this time--later than I would on a normal day.  But ah well.  At least I'll be taking no naps this afternoon (though you never know).

The first thing I knew I had to do was to clean up the mess I'd left outside (once again, be warned).  I put on my shoes, grabbed a pair of gloves, and went out to the woods to dig a hole.  It had to be much bigger than the holes I put squirrels or woodchucks in, and it took a little while to dig a three foot hole that was two feet deep.

I went back to the house, afraid of what I'd find.  But the animal was indeed dead, seeming much less vicious now, though I took a picture of its claws, which are formidible.*  I hefted the trap with the badger in it and carried it into the woods, and was amazed by how much it weighed--I was lugging fifty pounds here!  I opened the trap and the large animal tumbled out into the grave, and it stuck out on the side--I hadn't dug it deep enough.

I buried the animal, and then took the trap to wash off in front of the cabin.  To my surprise, the big metal contraption still weighed twenty-five pounds or so, so the badger hadn't been quite as gargantuan as I'd imagined (I had had this idea yesterday of using a broomstick to move the trap out into the sun, not quite daring to pick it up with a vicious animal inside, but I might not have been able to manage that, despite doing an unholy number of push-ups every other day).  

I washed the trap as best I could, then filled some buckets and went back to where the trap had been and tried to clean up the mess I'd made.  It took four buckets full of water, but there was still blood visible in the puddle I'd created, slowly sinking into the gravel there.  

I guess it's going to be useful information, for the next time I write about killing somebody.

Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In September: 1016

Well, I spent most of the day--wasted most of the day, my father would've said--reading, finishing one book and starting another.  I also recorded an old Ambrose Bierce story, and am leaning toward recording one more, before it starts getting late enough to pack up my stuff and head back in a northerly direction.

As far as writing goes . . . so far, I have twenty-three words for the day.  A part of me doesn't want to write the last bit of my book, because it's going to be the end of the road for our weary travelers, and the company has been--though frustrating at times--pretty fine.  As soon as I'm done, I'll get to work on publishing stuff.  First up needs to be the one-two punch of "Meet the New Clerk" and "The Last Friday In December," both of which are ready to go (except for recording the author's note on the latter), lacking only the cover art.  

This may or may not be the last time I see my friend Lara Demming for a while.  She's a character who is dear to me, whose defining characteristic (in my mind) is not that she's particular smart or beautiful, but that she's good.  I dropped a couple of details about her past in this story--which takes place her last year of high school--such as a scar on her leg and having taken a human life, which will hopefully have me returning to her before too long to figure out the story/ies behind them.  

It would be nice if, the next time I write about her, I'm not the only one curious what's been going on with her.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In September: 1161

Well . . . I could have finished the book today, if I really wanted to.  But I must not have wanted to, because I started on the last scene, wrote half of it, and called it a day.  Self-destructive much?

Words Today: 288 (not a lot, I know.  It must be psychological)
Words In September: 8189

*It had been much easier to shoot the creature last night when it was snarling and hissing at me, a little like the way Old Yeller went in the end: "That's not your dog anymore, Arliss."

September Sweeps - Day 585

I nearly didn't come to the cabin today.  I was here for the weekend, and felt, I dunno, lazy or indolent or something to return after two days.  But it occurred to me a little while ago that I won't be able to come next week, because there's a convention out of town (the first since the pandemic), so it's a good thing I'm here.

My mom had left me a list of chores to do every time I came to the cabin, and one of them was to take the remaining pile of gravel beside the house and spread it out in wheelbarrows along the driveway.  The next door neighbors had done so a couple of weeks back, but they'd used a machine to spread it.

I only managed five wheelbarrows full of gravel, but it was so darn hard to wheel them down the hill without it rolling out of control that even five was an accomplishment.  If I do five every time I visit, I'll have the whole driveway completely done by, say, January (despite November being when we close everything up for the year).

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In September: 905

On Monday, I had my oldest nephew re-bait all of the traps around the property because I hadn't been able to catch anything with the stale peanuts I loaded them up with (in fact, my brother moved one of the traps, leaving the peanuts on the ground, and they were still there a few days later, the animals deciding to steer well clear of them).  And to my surprise, there was something in the biggest trap waiting for me as I pulled up to the cabin: my friend the badger from a couple of months ago.*

I think I mentioned how pretty an animal I thought it was the last time I saw it, but that its dog-like growling disturbed me.  Well, I still feel the same way, that it's an interesting mix between a rodent and a dog, but when I got near, it raised up its nose and growled, producing a long stream of saliva from its mouth--something I've only ever seen in movies featuring wolves or vicious dogs (slavering, I believe the word is).**  

It was a large animal, between two and three feet long, and shaped unlike any other animal I've encountered, with their wide, flat body and stubby legs more turtle-like than rat-like.  Anyway, I didn't dare get very close, just because I'm a coward, but I did take a couple of pictures, and then decided to drive up to the dam to ask my brother what I should do about it.

See, I figured he was just going to shoot it, but that you could also choose to drag the trap into the sun and see if the heat would kill it (like it does to woodchucks or ground squirrels), or maybe drown it, like we sometimes did to skunks on the farm.  But I also thought that there might be value in leaving the animal undamaged, so that it could be stuffed and displayed, since I've never encountered a badger before, and thought it might make a cool . . . what do you call it, taxidermy trophy.

But my brother said that they're greasy, stinky animals, and it would be like trying to preserve a skunk, and was worried that it would pry up the cage and escape if I just left it there for him to retrieve on Saturday (it occurred to me that I could have dug a hole and buried it alive in the trap, if I didn't have access to a rifle that he keeps at the cabin).  He said, if I wasn't able to shoot it***, that I should put logs on and around the trap so it couldn't get away, and he'd deal with it on the weekend.

Well, the sun was going down (it gets dark earlier every time I come here, sad as that strikes me) while I was talking to him, so I told him I'd take care of it, but I'd better race back before it got too dark to shoot anything.  I did ask him how many shots it was going to take to kill it, and he said, "One, if you get it in the head."

So, hey, skip two paragraphs ahead, if you don't want to read about this bit, okay?  I drove back, but it was already dark by the time I got to the cabin again, and the animal was completely hidden by shadows.  There are no outside lights at the cabin, and I considered just leaving it until tomorrow, but I worried that it would escape during the night, and I'd have let both my brother and myself down.  So I pulled my car up in front of the cabin, turned on the headlights to point toward my prey, and went inside to get the rifle.  I'll not pretend to be tougher than I am: I was a little bit afraid to shoot it, having a delicate constitution, and remembering my brother's botched execution of a skunk a couple of years ago****.  But time was wasting, I chambered a round, walked right up to the trap, and put the barrel inside one of the spaces between the bars.  

The animal, meanwhile, was hunkered down, hissing and drooling, its razor-sharp teeth bared, its eyes black with threat, and I thought, "I'm going to miss, aren't I?  Even this simple task is beyond me."  But I aimed, right above its eyes, steading the weapon, and squeezed the trigger, expecting a deafening blast.  But it was just a POP!, and then, the animal flipped over, like a dog playing dead.  A ghastly noise issued forth from the badger, and a pool of bright-colored Dario Argento blood spread out from beneath it, it shuddered, and went still.

I have to admit that I was disturbed by it, and the experience was something I did not enjoy.  It makes me a bit sickened to describe it here, and most upsettingly, it reminds me of watching my father die.  I went to the car, turned off the lights, and took the rifle back into the cabin.  I'll take care of the corpse tomorrow, since I had no desire to dig a hole in the dark.

Push-ups Today: 217
Push-ups In September: 1095

I had intended to record a piece from a new book of short stories I grabbed from the library today (one which hopefully has normal-sized print in it), but ran out of time.  I did get my lines from the second-to-last episode of "The Deadbringer" audio drama recorded today, though.  I guess I should plug that show better than I have been.

As far as my writing goes, I think I have one more section, or mini-section (like a couple of paragraphs) to write, and I'm done.  That's nice, and I know if I just did a few jumping jacks, I could find the energy to write those paragraphs now, even though it's 2:11am.  But I'm going to go to bed, resting assured that with my book 99% finished, tomorrow will be The Day.  See you then.

Words Today: 592
Words In September: 7901

*My brother had shown me on his motion camera that it had been lurking nearby again, and something that torn open one of the traps to get at the potgut (squirrel) that was inside, so he put two and two together.

**Xenomorphs apparently do this as well, in a strikingly similar, mechanical way.

***There was an implicit criticism in this statement, that I wasn't man enough to kill the animal myself, but that he could do what I couldn't when he came up here.  It didn't insult me--hey, I'm not a macho dude in any way, shape, or form, and have been known to sing Air Supply and Elton John songs with gusto.

****Which I retold almost exactly in "A Sidekick's Errand."

September Sweeps - Day 584

Today was crazy busy.  I still got a few words in, then picked my nephew up from his football practice, then took him to see SHANG-CHI, then took him to get dinner, then took him home, then did some sit-ups, then drove to my cousin's, then watched TV with my cousin, then fell asleep on his couch, then woke up and drove home, and then did some push-ups, then went to sleep.

I'm so very close to finishing my book.  In fact, I typed those greatest words a writer can know, but wasn't quite off the hook, because there's also an epilogue.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In September: 805

Push-ups Today: 55
Push-ups In September: 878

Words Today: 245
Words In September: 7309

September Sweeps - Day 583

Well, this was nearly the day that I broke my writing streak.  In fact, I could stop typing this right now and go to bed, and I'm done.

But I'm sitting here now, and I'm awake, so I might as well type something.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In September: 705

I bought a half gallon of milk the other day to make protein shakes with, and finally opened it tonight, and discovered that it had gone bad.  I took a sip, winced at the gross, bitter taste, then sniffed it.  Yuck.  I checked the expiration date, which was still four days away, and took another sip.  It tasted awful (though not as bad as it smelled).  I ran to the computer to find out what would happen if I drank a whole glass of sour milk (could be vomiting, could be stomach cramps, could be diarrhea, could be an uncontrollable desire to "own the libs"), and made my protein shake anyway, thinking that mix would cover the taste up.

It didn't do so entirely, and though I drank one big swallow, I couldn't manage to drink any more of it, dumping the glass and the carton down the drain.  I waited for the sickness to come, and I started to feel something, but then went to sleep and forgot about it (I think it was just my mind convincing me I was going to get sick, because I never had any ill effects from the, what, quarter glass that I drank.  I guess a real tough cookie would've drank the whole thing down, and then taken a big bite out of the carton for good measure, but that's never been me, and it's too late to start now).

Push-ups Today: 216
Push-ups In September: 823 

Words Today: 489
Words In September: 7064

September Sweeps - Day 582

I stayed another day at the cabin, but not to get work done.  Mostly, it was time spent with the family, and that's fine, but it wasn't a trip to accomplish much.  My brother wasn't here, at least, so we weren't given chores to do.

Today was the day--first time this year--that my nephews and I went looking for frogs and salamanders, something we tend to do every year.  There are tiny little chirping frogs up here by the lake, and they are impossible to keep alive (mostly due to their size and fragility), but there are good-sized salamanders, which are bigger, but still hard to feed.

We caught a bunch of the tiny frogs, which I told my nephew he could use to feed his two remaining big green frogs, but which he was too soft-hearted to do.  We didn't see a single salamander, and I'm not sure that was the case this year.

At one point, while walking through the woods, we saw a huge fallen tree that had landed on--and knocked over--two smaller trees, and was wedged partway up on two other large trees.  I didn't describe it so well, but I took a couple of pictures, and made my nephews climb on top of it (the thirteen year old was worried his weight would make it fall, and I explained that it weighed over a thousand pounds, and his weight wasn't going to make a difference).  

Then, I climbed up myself, and thought it would be fun to walk up it as high as I dared.  But as high as I dared turned out to be about ten feet, as a lot of the bark had fallen off and it was slippery to walk on, and I was afraid of falling off.  Trees are fun, though.* 

As far as writing goes, I didn't even try to match yesterday's productivity, and I don't know that I'd want to.  A guy I know told me that it's good to take a break when you do anything creative, so you can start generating excitement and new ideas again, instead of what I'm currently doing, which is shoveling coal into a train's engine without ever stopping to refill the coal bin.

I'm now, if I had to guess, at about 97% finished with my book.  Maybe only 95, but that's it, the last lap, the home stretch, the final inning, the ultimate sports metaphor.

Sit-up today: 144
Sit-ups In September: 655

At one point, my brother-in-law's older brother came to the cabin with two of his kids and a new daughter-in-law, and my sister realized we didn't have enough food to feed them all (my uncle and his family was also coming up today), so she said she was going to drive down the canyon to the little town to pick up some more food.

We didn't remember it was Sunday, though, and the only grocery store within thirty miles of here is closed on Sundays.  We did find a dollar store in the next town over, though, and loaded up on an unbelievable amount of junk food and candy.

When we were driving back, we had to stop in the middle of the canyon, because a long line of cars were stopped ahead of us.  No vehicles were coming down the opposite way either.  After a couple of minutes, we killed the engine, and noticed that people ahead of us were getting out of their cars and walking around, to stretch their legs, or to go up the hill to see if they could find out what was going on.

About ten or fifteen minutes after that--we hadn't moved an inch, but there was a breeze blowing and Classic Rock on the radio--an ambulance came up the road behind us, followed by a sheriff's truck, both with their lights flashing.  The ambulance drove down soon after.

For more than a half hour the traffic was stopped in both directions, and then the police had each lane take turns going around the wrecked truck and camper that were still blocking one of the lanes.  I didn't believe there were fatalities--the damage to the truck didn't look that terrible to me--but a crash is a crash.  As we were driving away, we could see a red helicopter approaching in the sky, and I assume it came from the hospital.

Push-ups Today: 111
Push-ups In September: 607

In the book I've been writing, I've had in mind that one of the characters gets in a car accident, driving their vehicle off the very road we were stuck on (up ahead, various cars and trucks did three point turns and made their way back down the mountain, deciding to go somewhere else, or maybe make the hour long detour to get up the mountain without going up that particular canyon road).  While I THINK I've described it in this blog, there's a long winding road I take each time I go to the family cabin, and the road is narrow and remarkably close to the edge of a sheer cliff in many places.  

I have often noticed how there's no guardrail, and how easy it would be to simply plunge over the side, and wondered how many accidents there are on it every year (I'd have said fewer than one, since I never saw any in the years I've been coming here--though unless there were skidmarks, it's totally possible a car could drive off the edge, and not be discovered for hours or days [or longer]).

It was disturbingly ironic that today was the day I wrote about that car accident in my book, and it was the first time I'd actually seen an accident on that road (though I did see a vehicle off the side of the road, having just hit a deer just two or three weeks ago).

I've only ever been on the edge of the canyon road once, so I have no pictures (besides this one) of how steep it is.

Later, though, I thought about it, and wondered why they needed a life flight helicopter, when the road allowed an ambulance to go up and down.  And I put the pieces together: why the helicopter, and why there was only one crashed vehicle on the road when we finally drove past.  If they had somehow towed the second vehicle away, or it had driven down on its own . . . that wouldn't explain the helicopter.  No, the most likely thing is that there was only one crashed truck on the road because the other one wasn't on the road at all anymore.  Very dark.

Words Today: 739
Words In September: 6575

*There are uncountable trees up here in the woods, but a great many of them--maybe one in twenty, maybe one in a dozen--are dead.  And when it rains, or the wind blows hard, and especially when it snows--I'll bet--some of those dead trees fall over.  My brother wants to chainsaw a couple more before the season is over, but have me hold onto them or yank them with a rope so they fall someplace safely, instead of across the road or onto the cabin or the shed.  Apparently, chainsaws are fun too.

Big, Rish, & Marshal Talk EWOKS: BFE

Do you miss That Gets My Goat?  Well, Marshal and I corralled Big Anklevich to come on the "Delusions of Grandeur" podcast again, and talk to us about "The Ewoks: Battle For Endor" TV movie.  It was the first time I had seen it since 1985, and I think Big remembered it even less than I did.  Marshal Latham himself had never seen it.

But it was not a bad movie, in my opinion, and the episode of us talking about it, is one of our best.  It took practically forever for me to edit, but it made me laugh more than any other "Delusions" episode we've done.

Check it out HERE . . . but make sure to bring your boob armor.

September Sweeps - Day 581

We got up early this morning (not quite 7:30, but a little while after), loaded up a bed and mattress into my brother's truck, and then I thought I could sneak back to sleep for a little while, because my brother-in-law had been delayed and wasn't home yet.  But I remembered a little song I was going to stick in the next Outcast episode, but had been unable to do so because I edited it at the cabin, where I have no internet.

So instead of snoozing, I found that (awful) song, downloaded it, laid it into the episode (there was just silence where it was supposed to be--if you ever hear silence in one of my shows, it's because I forgot to stick something there), and republished it before anyone was the wiser.  It is out of character for me to choose responsibility over sleep, but I did it twice in a six hour stretch.

You know how a song will be stuck in your head, and you wish you hadn't heard it, for that to happen?  Well, I read an article yesterday (no idea why) that said that Warner Bros. had restored the original Paula Cole song for the opening credits of "Dawson's Creek," after having them unavailable for a decade or so.  While this doesn't matter much to me (I haven't watched the show in almost twenty years, though I do think about it, from time to time), it made me think of Eric Cartman's Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper on an old "South Park" episode, and can't stop thinking about him singing, "I don't wanna wait, for my Trapper Keeper to be over."

Maybe Dracula was right.  True love never dies.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In September: 511

I didn't manage a lot of push-ups or sit-ups today.  It was a matter of time management, I suppose.  But man, I got a lot of words.  I really focused on this book, and wrote the big climax as best I could, even though I feel like it's too long, and not as powerful as I wanted it to be.  I started on the denouement, or resolution of the story, but didn't finish (I got close, though).

Push-ups Today: 170
Push-ups In September: 496

I did a few push-ups, then snuck back to my computer to jot down a couple lines for the epilogue, which became an entire page.  I feel like it too isn't perfect, but is closer to what I wanted to say when I came up with it . . . which was either yesterday or today, I can't remember which.

All I know is, this has to be the most words I've written in a single day since I was in college, and had to jam everything in for a deadline or due date.  Even then, I'd had to have been pretty dedicated to reach three thousand words.  And I'm not sure I've ever been that dedicated.

Words Today: 3687
Words In September: 5836

September Sweeps - Day 580

I'm at the library, and going to do the bare minimum of words today (like yesterday!).  I'm quite serious about not writing every day in September (it's Goal Number One), but another of my goals (Number Five) is to finish my novel, so I gotta figure out a way to do both.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In September: 461

I went to see SHANG-CHI tonight with my cousin.  It wasn't really one I was looking forward to (the ad campaign, while much better than that of SNAKE EYES, was pretty similar, and I could forgive someone for confusing them), but I felt obligated to Marvel Studios for the countless hours of joy they've given me, so I will go to every one, until the magic is gone.*

I had mostly avoided spoilers (someone said a title character from another movie shows up, someone said it was basically a remake of BLACK PANTHER but with Asians, and someone said it had a nearly perfect Rotten Tomatoes score . . . and the first one ended up being true, but in the most throwaway manner imaginable), and hoped I would enjoy it as much as Marvel Studios' lesser films.  I was worried about Awkwafina, because she tends to be so grating in every role I've seen (like a less endearing Gilbert Godfried) that I feared she'd taint the whole production.

But I needn't have worried.  It was as excellent as ever, with fun, action, pathos, laughs, and special effects and scenery that weren't like anything I'd seen before.

I had played back seat movie producer for the last couple of years, wondering why Kevin Feige would feel the need to spend two hundred million dollars on a Shang-Chi movie, on a Eternals movie, when the safer bet would be to make a much smaller, much cheaper movie out of characters with much more limited appeal (not every Marvel film has to be THE AVENGERS in cost and scope).  But his attitude seemed to be Go big or go home, and gosh darn it, he knocked it out of the park again.  

Guess that's why I pay to watch the movies instead of being paid to make them.

Oh, and I even ended up liking Awkwafina's character, which is even more amazing.

Push-ups Today: 55
Push-ups In September: 326

Oh, I meant to say that I got home from the movie, packed up my things (my family was going to the cabin at 7:30 the next morning), and got in bed, turned out the light . . . and remembered I hadn't done any push-ups (I had done sit-ups and my run before it got dark).  I laid there for about thirty seconds, debating what to do, then forced myself out of bed, into the living room, and zomped out a few push-ups, then went back to bed, knowing I had eked out the bare minimum effort in life once again.

Beats the alternative, though.

Words Today: 1095
Words In September: 2149

*This applies even more to THE ETERNALS, which has been--so far--even less appealing than SHANG-CHI, as far as characters and situations I'm invested in.