I don't feel much like writing these days. I think I enjoy blogging a lot more.
But hey, today marks fifty days in a row I've been writing. I went to that park I keep going to, wrote a little bit, and was shocked to see how many people were out and about. We're supposed to keep six feet away from other people, but holy smoke, there were bicyclists, joggers, a bunch of Hispanic futbol enthusiasts, a huge gathering of dogwalkers, fudgin' skateboarders, old folks out for a walk, a shitload of children, and a rollerblader. It was like a hot air balloon festival, or a church social, or a Mike Bloomberg rally or something.
It actually made ME uncomfortable, and I only did the stairs once before turning tail, crapping my pants, and getting back in the car again. I did think about how really popular, really social people (okay, one person in particular) are going out of their freaking minds right now without the possibility of hanging out with their twenty-five closest pals, making human snowmen, or rollin' around in a mosh pit at whatever they call a rave in 2020. It must be pretty hard not to--
What's a human snowman, you ask? Well, Seth, it's that thing where you stack three naked midgets on top of each other, and put pieces of coal and a carrot inside them.
Regardless, I have heard people with friends complain about social isolation, and to be honest, my vast storage tanks of empathy are running a little low in that regard. Let's talk about something else.
I went to the storage unit again, went through a box, and grabbed out the, say, five most valuable figures from it to sell on the internet. Have I mentioned that people are still buying toys? It's a little baffling, but I can definitely use the money.* I am obligated to do a song whenever I go over there (three trips this week means three songs in the can), so I asked Fake Sean if he would do one for me. As a reward, I discovered that the rear passenger tire on my car was flat.
That ate up a bit more of my Saturday, and I honestly only got a few words of writing in the whole day. I'm still working on my "Dead & Breakfast" story all about Meechelle, and I am trying to make the ghosts in this one a bit scarier, a bit more malevolent. It probably makes no sense that the ghosts are willing to help and comfort Mason Bradley, but they seem to want to torment poor Meechelle, whose only crime is having a terrible name. But ghosts can be like that, right?
And maybe it's not a ghost that's after her. Maybe it's something else. Hmm.
I also thought about my story "Who You Gonna Call?" which was the last D&B story I completed, and wondered if maybe I shouldn't call it something else. That title is a little . . . I dunno, too on the nose, or too trademarked or something. Later in the day, I heard the Boingo song "Sucker For Mystery," and hadn't heard it in ten years or so. I love Oingo Boingo as much as you love . . . well, your cat, probably, since everybody but me loves cats.
I read through the lyrics, hoping I could find some inspiration there, but it's quite a dark song ("I've seen children with such angry faces, When you look in their eyes, it makes you want to cry. Now it doesn't seem fair, But who cares-- they're someone else's, As long as they don't come close to mine?"), and "Who You Gonna Call?" is easily the lightest of the D&B stories. I guess I don't have to decide till I publish it or podcast it, which, depending on the length of the work-from-home, could be soon.
Oh, so today, I decided to climb the mountain I had intended to hit a couple weeks back. It was a warmish day (in the upper fifties), with lots of sun, and I drove around, looking for the goshdarn make-out point I couldn't find last time, and managed to find it with lots of time to spare. I parked and hiked up the mountain trail . . . finding a whole heck of a lot of other people with the same idea (once again, social distancing seems dubious with this many people on the hill, but I imagine they're all relatively healthy because it's a four mile hike). Is that crazy?
I went to the storage unit again, went through a box, and grabbed out the, say, five most valuable figures from it to sell on the internet. Have I mentioned that people are still buying toys? It's a little baffling, but I can definitely use the money.* I am obligated to do a song whenever I go over there (three trips this week means three songs in the can), so I asked Fake Sean if he would do one for me. As a reward, I discovered that the rear passenger tire on my car was flat.
That ate up a bit more of my Saturday, and I honestly only got a few words of writing in the whole day. I'm still working on my "Dead & Breakfast" story all about Meechelle, and I am trying to make the ghosts in this one a bit scarier, a bit more malevolent. It probably makes no sense that the ghosts are willing to help and comfort Mason Bradley, but they seem to want to torment poor Meechelle, whose only crime is having a terrible name. But ghosts can be like that, right?
And maybe it's not a ghost that's after her. Maybe it's something else. Hmm.
I also thought about my story "Who You Gonna Call?" which was the last D&B story I completed, and wondered if maybe I shouldn't call it something else. That title is a little . . . I dunno, too on the nose, or too trademarked or something. Later in the day, I heard the Boingo song "Sucker For Mystery," and hadn't heard it in ten years or so. I love Oingo Boingo as much as you love . . . well, your cat, probably, since everybody but me loves cats.
I read through the lyrics, hoping I could find some inspiration there, but it's quite a dark song ("I've seen children with such angry faces, When you look in their eyes, it makes you want to cry. Now it doesn't seem fair, But who cares-- they're someone else's, As long as they don't come close to mine?"), and "Who You Gonna Call?" is easily the lightest of the D&B stories. I guess I don't have to decide till I publish it or podcast it, which, depending on the length of the work-from-home, could be soon.
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| Better, right? |
Oh, so today, I decided to climb the mountain I had intended to hit a couple weeks back. It was a warmish day (in the upper fifties), with lots of sun, and I drove around, looking for the goshdarn make-out point I couldn't find last time, and managed to find it with lots of time to spare. I parked and hiked up the mountain trail . . . finding a whole heck of a lot of other people with the same idea (once again, social distancing seems dubious with this many people on the hill, but I imagine they're all relatively healthy because it's a four mile hike). Is that crazy?
 |
| I like the JJ-inspired lens flare in this one. |
And wow, I did struggle the first half of the way up the trail. I had a long-sleeve button-up shirt, and was sweating in it hard enough I wished I had brought something lighter. Here's my usual photogenic self:
I listened to a few tunes, took a few pictures, and struggled to keep going without stopping. Eventually, I caught my second wind, and went all the way to the top where, once I sat down and watched the sun fade away, I realized I was cold instead of hot.
I listened to a few tunes, took a few pictures, and struggled to keep going without stopping. Eventually, I caught my second wind, and went all the way to the top where, once I sat down and watched the sun fade away, I realized I was cold instead of hot.
 |
| I thought this was cute, including my feet in the picture. |
I took a couple (fairly spectacular) pictures, but because I was paranoid about infecting someone with my dumbassery virus, I didn't dare ask anybody to take my picture, like I totally would have two weeks ago. I saw so many people gathered at the top of the trail that, again, I felt nervous, just because the media has tried to make us nervous.*
And then, it was time to make my way back down the mountain. Because of my experience two weeks back (falling down and not being able to see where I was stepping), I wanted to get down before it got too dark. Also, the trail is so steep that, two years ago, when I came up with my nephew, he quite literally ran all the way down the trail, and I tried to keep up. There were moments when my feet (in 2018) barely touched the ground, and I felt like I was flying.
In 2020, all by myself, I have to admit that I didn't trust the rocky dirt trail like I did following a child. I let myself run on one straight stretch, and it was exhilarating (the gravity pretty much pushes you faster and faster and, yes, it feels just like you're either flying or being puppeted by that Fantastic Four villain that always makes Sue take her top off [he's underused]). But I kept thinking about what would happen if I slipped, or hit a loose rock, and what would happen to me if I broke my leg up there, or threw out my back, or go my whole life without ever visiting a gloryhole . . . and I had to stop, force myself to go at a slow, safer pace.
Flight was meant for birds and Brandon S, I suppose.
I made it to the bottom of the stretch in approximately 1/5th the time it took to climb up it, and though I was sweaty (and probably smelled like a Gamorrean Guard's litterbox), I had the energy to jog the rest of the way to my car. When I got to the parking lot, I discovered that a) it was full of cars, and 2) a lot of those cars had fogged-up windows, just like in the movies. It made me laugh, and I got in my car and talked to Big Anklevich for a while, listening to him tell me of his many experiences, uh, steaming up windshields.
The car to my immediate left had a couple in it that I could occasionally see the legs of (I nearly typed "sans pants, of course," but that would be a lie, an embellishment to make this town quite a bit sexier), which made me feel like I shouldn't be looking over. More vehicles arrived while I was sitting there, the one next to me filled with co-eds there to enjoy the rest of the sunset, and hopefully, letting their fingers do the walking for a while. Must be nice.
And then, it was time to make my way back down the mountain. Because of my experience two weeks back (falling down and not being able to see where I was stepping), I wanted to get down before it got too dark. Also, the trail is so steep that, two years ago, when I came up with my nephew, he quite literally ran all the way down the trail, and I tried to keep up. There were moments when my feet (in 2018) barely touched the ground, and I felt like I was flying.
In 2020, all by myself, I have to admit that I didn't trust the rocky dirt trail like I did following a child. I let myself run on one straight stretch, and it was exhilarating (the gravity pretty much pushes you faster and faster and, yes, it feels just like you're either flying or being puppeted by that Fantastic Four villain that always makes Sue take her top off [he's underused]). But I kept thinking about what would happen if I slipped, or hit a loose rock, and what would happen to me if I broke my leg up there, or threw out my back, or go my whole life without ever visiting a gloryhole . . . and I had to stop, force myself to go at a slow, safer pace.
Flight was meant for birds and Brandon S, I suppose.
I made it to the bottom of the stretch in approximately 1/5th the time it took to climb up it, and though I was sweaty (and probably smelled like a Gamorrean Guard's litterbox), I had the energy to jog the rest of the way to my car. When I got to the parking lot, I discovered that a) it was full of cars, and 2) a lot of those cars had fogged-up windows, just like in the movies. It made me laugh, and I got in my car and talked to Big Anklevich for a while, listening to him tell me of his many experiences, uh, steaming up windshields.
The car to my immediate left had a couple in it that I could occasionally see the legs of (I nearly typed "sans pants, of course," but that would be a lie, an embellishment to make this town quite a bit sexier), which made me feel like I shouldn't be looking over. More vehicles arrived while I was sitting there, the one next to me filled with co-eds there to enjoy the rest of the sunset, and hopefully, letting their fingers do the walking for a while. Must be nice.
Afterward, I started up my engine and, backing out of my spot, I discovered that I had fogged up the windshield of my own car. So . . . there's that.
And that's it for this blog entry. I finished a That Gets My Goat episode, which I'll probably post next week (it's a part two of this week's part one), and started editing a story for another podcast. I also spent over an hour watching old David Letterman clips someone uploaded to the 'Tube. I love David Letterman almost as much as I love Oingo Boingo.
I meant to publish this last night, but I couldn't get it to work. I'd try to upload a photo, and the entire program would crash. So I'd start it again, and it would crash. Finally, I realized that it's been bugging me for days about a system update, so I closed all my open files (including the audio project files that always sit open, in case someone invokes the name of Brandon Sanderson, or an episode needs some outtakes), and restarted the laptop.
When it started up again, it said "Windows is updating, do not turn off computer," and said it was at 0%. And ten minutes later, it was at 2%. So, I retired for the evening, and that's fine, I guess, except for I really should've written a little more, or at least recorded another couple of chapters. But climbing a mountain tired me out, I guess, and my fiftieth day ended on a fairly weak number.
Words Today: 382 (pretty sad, considering this post is nearly 2000 words)
Words This Month: 27,213
Words Total: 75,165
*Actually, one of them has sold since I started typing this.
**And I have been told, by a person in the know, that I SHOULD be nervous. That being blase about all this is exactly how entire communities get infected and quarantined. Dumb and self-centered millennials that think they're immortal aren't the only ones who will doom us all. I believe the exact quote she sent me was "Are you frightened? Not nearly frightened enough--I know what hunts you."
And that's it for this blog entry. I finished a That Gets My Goat episode, which I'll probably post next week (it's a part two of this week's part one), and started editing a story for another podcast. I also spent over an hour watching old David Letterman clips someone uploaded to the 'Tube. I love David Letterman almost as much as I love Oingo Boingo.
I meant to publish this last night, but I couldn't get it to work. I'd try to upload a photo, and the entire program would crash. So I'd start it again, and it would crash. Finally, I realized that it's been bugging me for days about a system update, so I closed all my open files (including the audio project files that always sit open, in case someone invokes the name of Brandon Sanderson, or an episode needs some outtakes), and restarted the laptop.
When it started up again, it said "Windows is updating, do not turn off computer," and said it was at 0%. And ten minutes later, it was at 2%. So, I retired for the evening, and that's fine, I guess, except for I really should've written a little more, or at least recorded another couple of chapters. But climbing a mountain tired me out, I guess, and my fiftieth day ended on a fairly weak number.
Words Today: 382 (pretty sad, considering this post is nearly 2000 words)
Words This Month: 27,213
Words Total: 75,165
*Actually, one of them has sold since I started typing this.
**And I have been told, by a person in the know, that I SHOULD be nervous. That being blase about all this is exactly how entire communities get infected and quarantined. Dumb and self-centered millennials that think they're immortal aren't the only ones who will doom us all. I believe the exact quote she sent me was "Are you frightened? Not nearly frightened enough--I know what hunts you."
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