Things are about to get interesting

It’s been a while since I posted. There has been a lot going on. There is much to update.

Well… more than usual.

For the first time since I began participating, I did not win NaNoWriMo this year. I ran into some personal issues which prevented me from reaching 50,000 words. I’m bummed, but the issue far overdue to be addressed. It has been addressed, and I’m very happy for it. The lingering effects of November will continue to affect me for a while to come I am sure, but I came out of that month better for having survived it.

Two major changes came about as a result. The first is, I’ve cut way down on my caffeine intake. I’m down to one 20oz Mt. Dew a day, or at the most, two 12oz cans. I’m sticking with these regimen because the last time I quit cold turkey, not only did I go through terrible withdrawal, I went back to it in a big way. Not cool.

The second big change came after much consideration and a visit to my doctor. I am now on the same ADHD medication as my son, Strattera. I can’t begin to communicate the difference this medicine has made in my life, but those closest to me certainly can see the change. I’m smiling more, I’m anxious less, and I’m generally a nicer person to be around. I only wish someone had suggested it sooner.

The family went skiing for the first time the week of Christmas. Well, Tanya had skied as a teenager, but that was… um, several years ago. We both went into lessons, and after lunch she was on the mountain. The kids picked it up pretty quick, of course, and had a blast. I was lucky not to kill myself and managed a few good turns by the end of the day. It wasn’t until I tried to take off my boots that I realize how badly I had overworked my legs. Yeowch! I had a lot of fun, though.

The kids have taken up Tae Kwon Do. They are both orange belts now (two belts up from white) and loving it. Tanya has taken up Combat Hapkido at the same place and is testing for her orange belt next week. I travel too much to learn effectively, and I worry that I may end up as a practice dummy very soon.

Speaking of work and traveling…

I can now announce this officially. I have accepted an offer for a new position inside EMC. I’m still in technical presales, but I’m on the team that supports presales activities for EMC’s partnership with VMware. I have been working for two years to find a position in this area, and this team was my absolute first choice. I worked hard to prepare, and the stars aligned, and a spot opened up on the team that would allow me to stay in Denver. I just received and accepted the offer letter today. The move is lateral, but I’m very excited to be joining this team. I’m a very happy camper. The only downside is that my current manager has been absolutely fantastic. I will very much miss having her as my boss.

So that’s all the fun and joy that’s been going around lately. I head into 2010 as a new person and a new horizon at work. My hard work has paid off, and now I look forward to enjoying working with my new team and to a great new year.

Losening up

I attended the write-in today at Dazbog. We had a good turnout, with seven people showing up besides me. Mostly we wrote, but there was good conversation and laughs as well. I got 1001 words while I was there and finished up tonight.

I decided to start giving insights into what my antagonists were doing today. As I wrote it, other connections on both sides started to unfold. I am writing a prequel, see, and things have to end up a certain way, and progress more or less a particular way, given an explanation in the WIP that this story is the prequel to. While I had begun to think the framework was going to be too limiting, I found a vast sea of wiggle room in other characters I had not fully considered before. Now I am scheming for the best way to utilize this new, uncharted possibility. Should be fun!

Words yesterday: 1182
Words today: 1722
Words total: 11783

Rough Patch

The story is stumbling as of late. I’m trying to get to some juicy bits but it’s taking more effort than I thought to get the chess pieces in position. They are moving, kinda, but slowly. I’ll need to light some fires, just as soon as I find some firewood. And a match.

Words today: 1679
Words total: 8879

The stage is set

Didn’t make my newly-minted daily goal, but I bested the NaNo daily goal and my total is still ahead of the curve.

I had a rough day so I didn’t get started until late, and I have a pile of laundry next to me that has been assigned to me for folding.

The stage for the plot has been set by some political maneuverings. Not a lot of action since the opening scene, but that will change. The intrigue quotient is about to be ramped up, and things are about to get very interesting indeed.

Words Today: 1883
Words Total: 7200

Pulling something out of… somewhere…

Good things are happening. After re-engineering the plot and starting point of my novel, I’ve been able to dig in for some serious writing. Not only am I exceeding the daily NaNo wordcount goals, the story is starting to take on a life of its own. It’s flowing, much better than I had hoped, and the joy has surfaced. This makes me happy.

Today’s scenes set the tone for the rest of the novel. A major set of events has been put in motion, but it will turn out to be but a stage for the important events to be revealed, a point of entry which will open the can of worms that the story will inevitably focus on. As such, this may prove to be one of the most complicated plots I have ever attempted (not that any of my other plots were particularly complex). This has me excited and apprehensive at the same time.

In other words, I’m looking at another fun and enjoyable NaNo effort!

New goal: 2500 words per day

Words today: 2664
Words total: 5317

Here we go again

Yes indeed, it’s NaNoWriMo time! As I do every year I try to update my blog with my writing status daily.

You can stop laughing now.

This year got off to a rough start. I made it to the Kickoff party, which had a much higher turnout than expected. We didn’t manage to blow a fuse, but  I did walk out with over 1000 words in the first 45 minutes.

On my way home, I discovered I had made a mistake.

You see, I NaNo snuck up on me this year. I didn’t prepare, so I had to scramble for an idea. I was going to use a short-story idea I had, but I scrapped it at the last minute because I want to do that story justice. Instead I decided to do a prequel to a rough draft I wrote back earlier this year.

That particular story has two main characters, and I wanted to give some background context to the story as well as the origins of the two main characters. The idea gelled pretty quickly, and the 1000+ words I wrote comprised an important, complete scene involving one of the main characters. It was the start of my Chapter 1, and I left very happy and enthusiastic about the story.

On the way home, I realized the character was the younger of the two, and therefor was born after the other character. By the time the scene I wrote had occurred, the backstory would have already happened.

I slept on it (a wise move) and spent most of the day working through the rough plot points. Thankfully I hadn’t had time to do this yet, so I didn’t have to adjust much, just use the other set of parents for the focus of some action instead of the other parents. By late afternoon I had enough to restart the process, and after forcibly willing a few supporting characters in to being from the raw firmament, was able to get back in gear and start writing again. I just got done with the new first scene which I very much enjoyed writing.

I know what should happen, roughly, in the next scene. I’m a bit nervous that I don’t know exactly what’s coming, but I didn’t have the whole scene I just wrote in my head either, and it turned out fine. It rolled off the fingers as I went, the creative process working as I think it should. I guess that’s why I enjoyed it so much.

Words today: 2653
Words total: 2653

When it rains…

Several folks have seen my scattered posts on Facebook about contractors and insurance adjusters and such. Let me explain what happened.

A few weeks ago we had the roof inspected for damage. We have some tiles that have lost their adhesion and need to be replaced. We called the insurance company and had an initial inspection done. The roof was too wet to inspect everything, so the adjuster is coming back Wednesday.

The weekend before last we went out of town to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque. We got back Sunday night. Before I went to bed I went to the basement to check on something and noticed the floor was wet.

Turns out we had an early freeze and a part in our sprinkler system broke. Water cascaded into the water well at the nearby basement window and into that room of the basement. The sump pump worked well, but that room, the unfinished room next to it and a good part of the hall got wet.

We’ve had Servicemaster in to dry the subfloor and the walls and to pull out the insulation that couldn’t be dried. Next we have to get the wall repaired and new carpet put in. All while getting the roof taken care of. That’s two claims at once.

And today, it snowed all day.

Someday, when I retire…

Some of you know that I have a motorcycle. I don’t get to ride it much, but I love it when I can. It is a goal to someday own a Honda Goldwing and tour the country with just me and Tanya. In my research, I came across something very interesting, which turned out to be one of the five American Motorcycle Association’s Grand Tours. It is the USA Four Corners Motorcycle Tour run by the Southern California Motorcycling Association.

Here’s how it works: All you have two do is visit four locations, one in each corner of the U.S. It doesn’t matter which order you visit them in, but at each location you have to take a picture of yourself with your motorcycle and a landmark with the city name in it (typically the post office). You must then send the evidence in postmarked from the location. The four locations are:

• San Ysidro, California
• Blaine, Washington
• Madawaska, Maine
• Key West, Florida

Now, here’s the rub: You only have 21 days from the time you post your evidence in the first city until you post the evidence from the last city. That may seem crazy. And it is. But keep in mind, the 21 days does not include the time you spend getting to the first city, or getting home from the last city.

Intrigued, I decide to pull down a demo copy of Microsoft Street and Trips and do some math. After several hours of running the numbers, planning routes and stops, I determined that the trip from my home near Denver, starting with Blaine, WA and working counter-clockwise to Madawaska, Maine and back home, would take 14 days, average 9.5 hours of riding a day, and encompass 10,257 miles of riding.

Wow.

Oddly, my wife isn’t resistant to the idea. Of course we’ll probably stretch the trip to three weeks, see the sights, visit a few folks and enjoy the ride at a more leisurely pace. All I have to do now is save up the money for the motorcycle and the trip and convince the kids’ grandparents to babysit for three weeks…

Roots

I recently took a trip to Southern California to visit a customer in Santa Ana. I arrived early and drove around looking for a place to eat. I found myself in a predominately hispanic part of town and ended up eating in a restaurant that caters to locals. The food was great and the waitstaff friendly. Afterwords I took a stroll through the local grocery store where I had parked my car (to avoid the parking meters) and bought a soda.

Not really interesting stuff, I know. Here’s the rub: I am half Mexican, and I felt very out of place throughout the whole experience.

This bugs me.

As I look back, it seems every step I have taken has taken me further and further away from the Hispanic side of myself. I took French in High School, not Spanish. I eat at taco bell a lot. The friends I have are mostly white. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I wonder why I don’t have more Hispanic friends.

I think a big part of it is that I don’t speak Spanish. I was raised mostly by my mother as my father worked long hours. She knows some Spanish, and my father learned English as a second language, but we always spoke English in the house. At school, my classmates thought I was Italian, not Mexican, so it never really came up.

So I found myself sitting in a restaurant with Mexican music playing occasionally, TV set to a Spanish-speaking channel, and a waitress who addresses me in Spanish first. I really wanted to feel comfortable, and part of me tells me I should, but I didn’t. In the grocery store, I was the weirdo that had to look closer at the writing on some of the products to read the English subtext written under the main, larger Spanish text. There were many, many products there I didn’t even recognize.

I’m feeling an urge to reconnect with my roots.

I’m thinking my first step should be to get some experience with Spanish. I’m considering the Rocket Spanish downloadable course. I would, of course, take any advice anyone cares to share with me about other courses that are effective and affordable.

Other obsessions

Few people know that I have recently been bitten by two obsessions, both which threaten to cause large holes in my pocketbook.

One obsession grew out of a home-based business that I tried to get off the ground last year (just before the meltdown in the market). I discovered Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab through Neil Gaiman, as BPAL has a few scents inspired by his work that have proceeds going to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The scents from BPAL are amazing, and I’m starting to have enough to almost qualify as a collection.

My other new obsession is Fountain Pens. I have one really good pen, a Lamy 2000, which never leaves the house, and a less expensive Lamy Safari (Charcoal) that is my every day pen. Never one to leave enough alone, I’ve gathered several inks, and I picked up some new ones today.

After reading some posts on the BPAL forum, I’m now using the perfume oils to scent the inks. The scents are subtle in the ink, and you can’t add too much or you mess up the ink. Right now I’m using a combination of Aurora Black ink and the Tezcatlipoca scent from BPAL. So far this combination works very well, and the oil has not affected the flow of the ink or the drying time on paper.

I don’t expect the scent to last long on the paper (scenting the paper would be better for that), but writing with it has a time release-like effect with the scent, which transforms writing into an aromatherapy session, in a very subtle way.