A quickie post today to crow on my own behalf.

Today is May 16, 2008.

I quit smoking (after 23 years on and off) on June 16, 2006.

23 MONTHS, BAY-BEE!

My 2-year anniversary will occur two days before we leave for Yellowstone.

Three times a week, I take LittleDude to his Tae Kwon Do lesson. The moment we get home, I cook up a frozen Chicken Cordon Bleu, cut it up and put it into a plastic container, and LittleDude eats that for dinner while MiniMe takes her Tae Kwon Do lesson.

Usually, the kids’ Tae Kwon Do master comes over and steals a couple pieces of LittleDude’s dinner. It’s become a running joke. When we’re leaving LittleDude’s class, Master asks him if he’ll be coming back that evening and if he’ll have dinner. Of course, it started out asking if he’ll be bringing food, and evolved into Master asking, “You’ll bring my dinner?”

LittleDude thinks it’s funny, and usually tries to hide the food.

Yesterday was the same as always until LittleDude and I got home from his class. We discovered SoundGuy was home early from work. I made up LittleDude’s chicken, but when it came time to leave, he declared he wanted to stay home with his dad while MiniMe and I went back to the martial arts school.

We walked in the door and Master greeted MiniMe, he greeted me, then he greeted LittleDude. Except LittleDude wasn’t there. After grilling me about LittleDude’s whereabouts, he asked me for our home phone number and then he called LittleDude.

“WHERE MY DINNER?” he yelled into the phone (he’s Korean, so the accent sounds a little funny sometimes).

I’m so disappointed I was only able to hear one side of the conversation — I would love to have heard LittleDude’s initial reaction. I did, however, hear the reactions of everybody in the school. And after that initial outburst, it was hard to hear anything Master said over all the laughing.

Including mine.

If I’m not mistaken, the conversation ended with LittleDude promising Master extra chicken tonight.

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Today’s Saturday Shot is an older one. I was going through my photos, adding keywords, filing, just some general housecleaning, when I came across this shot from a hike a couple years back. November, 2006, to be exact.

I grabbed this shot during the hike up to USFS Anna Ruby Falls, which is located near the Unicoi State Park near Helen, Georgia. The falls themselves are spectacular, but I’ve always enjoyed the scenery along the .8 mile hike up to the falls even more. Small wonder, when I can get shots like this!

I’m still writing! Can you believe it?

Yesterday, I got all the words I’ve written typed into the computer. Sadly, I couldn’t find the original SR file. Found 8-10 other SR files, but not the one I’d been working off of from NaNoWriMo. So instead of just typing in the 6+ pages I’d just written (handwritten pages , mind you), I had to type in all 29 pages of the ms.

I haven’t done that much typing in quite a while. It was nice to discover I still had some typing speed.

Excited when I finally finished all that typing, I went to update my sidebar progress bars with my additional words. I first tried to update the NaNoWriMo progress bar, removing the NaNoWriMo reference and updating the word count.

Hm. Not a good sign. So I tried again. I set up a new progress bar this time.

Of course, I didn’t believe the doom and gloom error messages the first time around, so I tried again. And again. And again.

No change. The evil monkey overlord was still thwarting me, and it would seem I hadn’t just destroyed the internet, I’d downright decimated it. Multiple destructions equals decimation, right?

Since I get my progress bars through a WordPress plugin, I went to the plugin author’s website. I searched around a bit to see if she had any reference to problems. I found nothing there, so I tried the WordPress forums. When I found nothing there either I fell on my last resort. I e-mailed the author.

Success!

Dynamite Deb (the dynamite part is my own embellishment since I think she’s just awesome), the author of the ProgressFly plugin, responded very quickly. With just a hair of research, we determined my problem is that my webhost updated my PHP version.

I offered myself and my PHP as a guinea pig for her, and she has said she’ll try to whip up a new version. That’s why she’s so DYN-O-MITE! She also let me know I could manually update the progress bars, told me where I could do that, and offered to walk me through it if necessary.

As you can see by the new progress bar in my sidebar, I managed to suss out the manual updating method on my own. So there you go. As of this writing, I’ve got a whopping 8% of my story written (in my defense, I have mapped out the whole thing). But hey, that’s at least 3% more than I had last week!

One of the hardest things to do is to write after the muse has left. And I’m not just talking books; blogs count, too. How do you write a daily blog when you can think of nothing to write about?

All week, as I ran through my daily chores and errands, my mind’s been whirling. Could I blog this? Would this be interesting enough to publish online? I’m sure you can deduce the answer to those questions based on the number of posts since last Saturday’s Saturday Shot.

(BIG FAT GOOSE EGG!)

But it seems that over the last couple days, a voice has returned to my head. I can barely hear it; it’s little more than a whisper. But it’s there. And it’s inspired me to pick up my pen and spiral notebook again.

This week, as LittleDude has been learning the ins and outs of Tae Kwon Do, I’ve been writing in the parking lot. With my iPod firmly in my ears, I’ve actually been producing pages!

First it was the additional scene for IH I’ve been talking about. I finished that one the day before yesterday, now I just need to type it into the computer and integrate it into the story. I’m not anticipating a huge problem with that, but you never know.

Then, the night before last, I pulled out my story folders for SR. I perused the research I’d done. Studied my FDi30D worksheets. Read the pages I produced during my short-lived stint with NaNoWriMo. And you know what? A lot of what I found in those pages was actually pretty good, if you overlook the typos, that is.

I mean, really. Who the hell is Jerry Spring and how did he get a show?

I’m also still a little unsure about the dead husband returning as a ghost mentor for Rebecca, but the dialogue from that scene is so good, I decided to leave it for now.

Anyway, after I did all that, I added more to that story, as well.

I’m feeling pretty damn good right now. After what seemed to be an interminable dry spell, I’ve actually written something. And once I finish this post, I’m going to type it up, print it out, and see where I’m at.

(Besides still ending my sentences with prepositions. I guess it’s still that running with scissors thing. )

click on the photo for a larger version

The ramble continues »»

Sometimes it’s the little things that make a huge difference in your day. Other times, it’s the offensive things.

Yesterday, it was a trip to the grocery store that boosted my spirit and made me smile. Why? Because as I pulled into the parking lot, some guy in a delivery truck whistled at me.

The ramble continues »»

I got to talk to my father last weekend. He lives overseas, and we don’t talk as often as we should. Probably has something to do with the fact that we’re cut from the same cloth and both equally stubborn.

Anyway, he called to see how we’re doing in the aftermath of the accident. At some point in the conversation, he became horrified to learn I had never watched Northern Exposure. I had to explain that, heck, I didn’t even start watching Everybody Loves Raymond until the show was syndicated. That didn’t seem to sway him.

Guess what arrived on my doorstep yesterday. The full series DVD set of Northern Exposure. Of course, I had to start watching immediately. What fun! I’m almost through season 1.

The ramble continues »»

I remember the first time I read in the newspaper of the possibility of the gray wolf being removed from the endangered species list. I remember questioning the reasoning — it seemed the wolves had only just barely been reintroduced in Yellowstone, and here we were, about to release them to be decimated from the area again.

The ramble continues »»

With all the doom and gloom I’ve been erratically posting lately, I thought I’d give you kind of a fun story today.

Okay, so the real reason I’m posting this is I finally got the pictures downloaded from my phone. But it’s still fun. Trust me.

The ramble continues »»

It’s been nearly a month since the accident, and we’re still dealing with it. We did get some closure on one front, though. Insurance paid their part of the payoff, we’re waiting for Gap insurance to finish (could be 4-6 weeks). Thankfully, the bank worked with us and lowered our payment — we still have to make payments on Sophie until Gap kicks in and the loan’s paid off. But that lowering did open one door for us.

The ramble continues »»

WARNING: VERY LONG POST
Thanks for your comments and support regarding our accident. The stress this has brought us is beyond believable, and it just keeps coming.

We had the accident on Saturday the 15th. Most of the state was under tornado watches and warnings. We were on our way to the other side of Atlanta, and LittleDude had fallen asleep in his seat. SoundGuy was driving, I was reading the paper, and MiniMe was player her Gameboy. I happened to look up in time to see a white van come flying off the onramp and across traffic. SoundGuy says I said something to him about it — I don’t remember that.

The ramble continues »»

I haven’t been around lately. Been gone so long in fact, I doubt there’s anybody still checking in with me. But just in case there is…

I disappeared because I’d had some upheavals in my life that had me questioning who I was and what I was doing. After floundering a while, I tried to refocus myself, starting with my home and family.

I’m still focused there, but I wanted to share my horrifying afternoon. Despite today’s nearly statewide tornado watches, MiniMe had a soccer game that hadn’t yet been cancelled, so we were obligated to go. Besides, it was a game she’d been looking forward to.

During the trip southward toward the fields, we had an accident. Not our fault — we couldn’t even have avoided it. But thanks to SoundGuy’s quick thinking and defensive driving skills, our worst injuries were seat belt abrasions and bruising resulting from impact with our seat belts.

My truck, however, is totaled. Not officially yet, but I’m sure that’ll be the result. See for yourself:

God truly was on our side, as evidenced by our lack of injuries. I only wish the same could be said for my truck. I already miss my Sophie. But as one friend has already reminded me, the truck can be replaced.

If anybody’s gone through this and has advice on what we need to do, especially with regard to the insurance company of the person who was cited for the accident, please leave a comment. I’d love to pick your brain.

Sophie back in better days. R.I.P.

This weekend is another tournament weekend for us, the last of the season. Two games today, two games tomorrow. And since it’s a soccer weekend for me, I thought I’d give you another soccer shot.

The ramble continues »»

I thought I’d poke my head out of my dark, dank revision cave to have a little fun. Not much, mind you, I don’t have time for that. But I figured a Five for Friday with my type of fun was in order.

The first five concerts I saw — as I remember, anyway. And that’s not so much a Dude, I was so wasted comment as it is a Damn, I’m getting old reference.

The ramble continues »»