Tuesday, February 28, 2006

wow have we
ever got a snow storm going on out there now. It started just as we began to leave for work before 4pm and lasted all night. It could go on probsbly until about after midnight.

I had a slow evening doing $500 and I got a couple of credit cards, which was pretty good. I’m not complaining about that at all. Anyway, the blizzard is our first one for the season and it feels rather nice out there eventhough it's a tad on the cold side.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

I did just over
500 words on Lb. Work on it goes slow but at least I have an idea how to plan a novel and that will get me on to good things as I write this story.

Has anyone else noticed how slow Blogger is today or is it just me?

e.Jim

Monday, February 27, 2006

Well,
I got a few good ideas for Lb and I think I can make a story out of this thing yet. I was reading an interview by Ben Bova last night saying how he seldom creates villains, but rather characters in conflict. I kind of like this approach because not only can conflict exist on a character level, but it can also be created man aganist man, man against himself, man against nature etc. Lots of room to use to create conflict and that's what creating fiction, at least in my opinon, is all about.

e.Jim

Sunday, February 26, 2006

The WIP bars
aren't responding properly this morning. I'll go back and try again later on. I type in 14000 and I get 6k in the short bar. Strange. Well, I'm at 13780 on Lb> to 14k.

Okay, it shows up on the bar in the sidebar well enough. I see.

e.Jim

after the
back rub I think I got 3.5 hrs of sleep. Im just going to finnish my cereal and blog and modify my WIP bar for Lb and go to bed. Anne gave me a graval just before Simon & Simon and I was almost ready to pass out after that.

Anyway, I’m going to finnish off the scene I started yesterday and after I wake up about noon and then work on that scene before brunch. After brunch I hope to get that 3k on Lb.

e.Jim

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Well, I got
2000 words today but not on Lb. I rewrote a scene in Underworld, I thought was too far fetched even for me. But I got 2013 words on the day, which isn’t bad. I just didn’t get them on Lb as I’d have liked.

e.Jim

I had just about
4hrs sleep and I recall getting up to pee once and I fell asleep right away. Other then I could use another 3-4 hrs of sleep, I feel petty good. I’m a bit blurry eye’d as I’m munching away on my cereal. I haven’t had my first coffee of the day but I’m about to go to the ketle here right now. I just checked the weather and it’s -15c out there now. Cold.

I was watching a bit of Attack of the show ATOS last night and the host was at the New York toy and game expo. Some cool toys. I think the most popular toy when I was 10 years old in 1962 was the TV action adventure toys. There weren’t many choices for kids in the 1960’s. I think the biggest toy for me in 1962 was “Jungle-Jim” and marbles. Marbles were big in the 50’s and 60’s. By the mid 60’s I was a teenager and into comic books and science fiction. But mostly into the music scene. Dad was on strike a lot and we couldn’t afford much. By the time I was 12 I was mostly chasing after girls. My teenage years were from 1965-1971 and a good chunk of that was recovering from my back operation. In 1965 I was into comics, rock n’ roll like the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Monkeys, Paul Reveer and the Raiders, etc. I dabled into comic books like Dr. Strange. By 1967 my mother noticed my back and I was out with my back operation from 1968-1969. I was in a body cast in 1969 going to school. But after the body cast still in 1969, Talk about a real freak. I discovered Avalon Hill board games in 1969 at Dave Galloway’s house. And in 1970 I was 17 and I got my first job at Burger Chef. In 1971, I was 18 and I got a chance to go to my first Rock n’ roll show with Alice Cooper. In 1972, I was 19 and I was chasing after Patty Renick and I discovered Strategy and Tactics magazine. Or S&T and even got a subscription. That’s about when I got the inclination to get into writing.

So basicly that’s a brief history of my teenage years. Here’s a rundown. 1965: Star Trek, music, comic books. 1966: same as 1966. 1967: Centenial celebrations. 1968: Back operation. 1969: Recovering from back operation. Science fiction, music, comic books. 1970: Patty Renick, young peoples group, burger Chef, wargames. 1971: Alice Cooper show, still after PR etc. And the beat goes on.

Anyhow, it's off to do the Saturday shift. I don't feel to bad. The wife is up vacuming. Pardon the typos. blogger specll check has some bugs in it.

e.Jim

anyway. I’m up
at 8am, I hope and I’ll be at work at 10am and I’ll probably be PO’d enough to just maybe go into Pizza Monday afternoon before work and put my name in.
I had an OK night on the job doing $525 and a $10 credit card so I was happy about that. I didn’t any writing done on Lb yesterday. I wanted to do 2000 words but today, I’m going to try and do 5k. So that’s 2 for yesterday and 3k for today. Anyway, that’s all for me. More later today

e.Jim

Friday, February 24, 2006

an end of an
era coming up soon. Edmonton’s Sidetrack café, is moving from it’s rail town location since Feb 15th 1981. Over 25 years to make room for some friggin condos. I think I was there once but still things are changing all around the city. The train bridge across Jasper Ave before 109th street was removed in 1992. The Rat Hole as we used to call it gone. The rat hole was a crude tunnel built around 1927 or so and was disbanded in 1995. Now the Sidetrack cafe. I recall I was with Theresa when the place opened up. I would have been 29.

Anyhow, I got my cheque last night and I ended up with an extra 2 hrs, which is okay. I had a great total as well, $743, which is way above line hour. Also, one of the kids at work on the train came up to me with ipod in his ear and asked me how much I wrote this evening. I had a nice chat. I had my player out as well and I asked him about his Ipod geadphones and he said he had bought them at Shoppers Drug mart for $10 bucks. I asked if I could unsert them in my player and what a diffrence. So tonight I’m going to ask the brand name and see if they have any left. If they do for $10 bucks, then I’ll go in after work. If not then I’ll pick up some test strips so it won’t be a total loss.

I ended up with 816 words on the day. I probably could have done more At least to 1000 but I did as much as I could. Right now, I’m sitting at 13,183. I’m going to shoot for a Sat midnight closing rate of 15k and a bit. Things are going good. I’m getting some good things although they are slightly disjointed, I can tie them all together when the book us done. No back rub tonight so I’m going to work for an hour and go to bed.

I couldn’t sleep from 2am til about 3am so I got up watched some TV and about 4:30 after I fed the cats and took my insulin I went to bed and except for getting up once, I feel pretty good.
I even got me a few good ideas for Lb and even though thses are mostly disjointed scenes and rough ideas, I can sort them all out later when I revise the story. So, this is all for now. Today it’s just going to be writing maybe anser some of my email and surf for awhile before I start around 1pm. Then off to work at 4pm and then I’m off early and home. I’m going to go for 2000 words today, and 3,000 words tomorrow.

e.Jim

Thursday, February 23, 2006

4:13am Yeesh.
Now I'm wide awake, can't sleep worth a damn. I hate nights like this and if this is going to be a Sat, it's going to wipe me out for the whole weekend.

I took a bsl reading and I'm sitting at 7.6, which is comfortable. Well, a couple of nice things about putting in a full work week are, 1.) I get to work towards getting on the Company medical and that means, I can get my insulin and other diabetic supplies at a reduced rate. Also, I can maybe this time next year get all my uppers pulled and get dentures as well as get a pair of glasses. Now this is a pretty good idea. 2.) I can qualify for more bonuses and anytime I pull in aroud $2500-3000 I get about $24-30/week. I haven't seen the bank report this week, but I think Pat has and it looks like I banked $1700 and chaEssentiallyually it means I qill get a higher hourly rate. $10 hr sounds about right but I'll need to put an afternoon in as well. Or 27.5hrs.

Now 27.5hrsX $10/hr is $275. Add 3% onto that. So that's $283.25. Now if say I get a $20 bonus on top of that, that's $303.25. Of course after taxes $263. That's if I get a bank bonus. Assuming my base rate of pay is $263, that's like just over $1000 month and that isn't too tough to take. Even then Anne gets the first $130, that gives me $130. I'd give her $160 and I'll keep $100/week (uss) or $400/month.

12:54pm well, maybe I got 5hrs of sleep and I don't know how this Sat business is going to work out. I did get a refrence from Mike last night and I need one from JT and another one possibly from Greg. But I want home phone numbers and that;s why I'm going in on this Sat. No doubt though Pizza will pay me $8 but it's a fresh start, and in-bound call center and they are not going away anytime soon, and In the interview, I will stress no Sat. I will put in 7hr shifts, Tues-Fri. That's 28hrs and possibly a few more. And based upon my experience I will no doubt get at least $8-$9hr and every weekened will be a 3 day weekend. I'll probably lose my stat pay, but we'll see.

So there could very well be a change coming up this next little while where I'll be working. And as much as i've been where I am for the last several years, I'm tired of carrying the night crew with my totals. The trouble is most of the night crew except the new people and even some of them, work all 3 shifts and they're wiped out by 8pm. Pat and I are the only 2 that are fresh but Pat quite often leaves about 8pm and Don not far ahead of him.

Anyway, I got some writing I want to do right now as I have wrestling tonight. Sorry for any typo's today. I'm wiped out myself.

e.Jim

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

uggh, I just
got up half an hour ago. I couldn’t sleep due to what went down at the meeting yesterday afternoon in Robs office so I figure if I’m going to go over to Pizza I better try and get some sleep. An hour later, that sleep didn’t come and it was 4am.

So I fired up the computer and got into some writing. I think I got 535 words. To be exact. And I’ll get back to what I can from 1-2pm because I want to get out of here and fill out the application at Pizza this afternoon.

Anyway, I got into bed shortly after 5am and I got up every now and then to do a bathroom break, I remember getting up at about 10am and I slept from there until 12:30pm so I had ar least 7.5hrs sleep.

I probably won’t get down to Pizza today now because I need a couple of refrences from work. Mike and JT. Then I can go in tomorrow and get it all done. I might even go at 9am and get it all done and come back before Anne even wakes up and notices I'm gone.

Basically when Rob said, “I don’t bring much to this operation.” That’s like saying he doesn’t appreciate me there. Rob is an okay guy and I don’t mind working a few Saturdays and the big meeting was all about me missing Saturdays. I felt expendable. Well, everyone is expendable at work, even Bart. Bart is the General manager and Rob is the assistant manager that basically runs the whole show at the emplyee end. Bart does the back end business to charities etc and there is a lot of charities that go through this company that have 26 offices in the US and Canada and there is a hiarchy of which cities get the best charities. For example we did Cancer recover foundation last year for the first time and raised a ton of cash. Did we get the taps? Who got them? Head office in Calgary did.

The only thing I didn’t like about going in on Saturdays before at the old office was not just getting up and going into work in the morning since I became diabetic June 2004 but "that connecting bus" at Corona station to take me the half a mile or so to the office and that usually meant waiting outside. Now I could easily walk the distance but at 9:30am I'm barely half awake. There are no places to duck into while waiting for that bus in the winter if it's like -20 as it often gets during winter months. That was a bit of a pain. I’d have to wait there for like ten minutes and if the weather was cold it makes for a long wait. Also, I don’t like catching that stupid 1 horse lrt train on a Saturday morning. Half the time it’s full when I gte on at Clairview. It’s no better then a street trolly on the weekends but the #2 bus doesn’t leave until about 9:15am and doesn’t get to 106th and Jasper until about 9:55am. Saturdays are the only bad days but usually Saturdays are good days for me on the job wise. Also, if I work Sat and all my shifts, Rob will increase my pay and I’ll qualify for the bonuses I've been missing lately. If I get them. But all that could change overnight if I get hired on this week at Pizza: It’s an in-bound call center I can pick my own hours. It’s just a fresh start for me is all. My wife says though and I agree that I need at least 2 days off back to back.

Anyway, I don’t know how much LB I’m going to do this afternoon. I’m still currently working on Chapter 9 of Underworld. So I’ll post this and do some Bloging and see what happens.

e.Jim

Well I
ended up doing my 2,000 words today. Well a bit over at 2,011 and a bit after midnight. It's not going to bad. More then later.

e. Jim

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

I got
1,529 so far on the day and when I come back, I hope to get the other 500 or so I need. The work is going well now but I got to get ready for the job thing. The three S's, shit, shower and shave. Then dress and eat and get my stuff loaded up for the night and out the door to catch that bus and out to work. That's a typical 4 hr shift and the train home. I should be back at 9:30ish. Sorry for any typos. I'm slightly rushed.

All for now.

e.Jim

the cats
were bugging me about 5:45am and we were in bed and asleep by 2am easy aftr listening to Coast. Anne wanted to stay up to listen to Ghost stories but I don’t like that crap. I elected to go out and watch Adam-12 but she convinced me to shut it off and I did and went right to sleep. I think I got up to pee once around 4am but back to sleep and slept good until the cats came in to wake me, like I said 5:45 or so. I think I got 3 hrs. If that.

About 11:20pm I returned back to Lb and did a bit more work on that. I got 583 words and I’m into Chapter 4. When I get up in a few hours, I’ll begin again. My goal today is 2,000 words and they are not going to all come at once. I’ll get some done when I get up at noon and work until 2pm. Then I’ll break for a bit get ready for work and when I come home I can work on the rest. Every Saturday, I’ll be adjusting the WIP bar for all my work.

So I’m going to save and post this and head back to bed.

e.Jim

Monday, February 20, 2006

I don't mean to
be critical but what the heck is wrong with Holly Leslie's Blog? It really sucks. Not the content but the way it looks. I mean it looks gawed awful. I can appreciate she might have gripes with Blogger but if Blogger works for Robert Sawyer, and me. Why not switch back? At least Blogger is consistent. More or less but all these CMS have bugs in them to some degree. Also, with Blogger I don't need to be a programmer or learn ftp or even html or css. It's there if I want it of course. I have my own Geeklog site under development and I'm slowly getting comfortable using ftp.

Anyway, I'm happy I have my 3000 words on for the day. Yippee!

e.Jim

Is it working
now?

Lets test this out.

e.Jim

Having a bit of trouble
with Blogger right now folks. It only shows just the last 2 recent posts. I put a message out there to the forum so hopefully I'll have this thing fixed up soon.

e.Jim

Anyway, I did
my 3000 words today and a bit, 3,051 on the day to be exact. I'm at 9,205 in Lb so I had a rocking good writing day and some pretty good stuff. I'm pleased with what I got today.

e.Jim

I think I’ve got
some good stuff to play with for Lb and I worked on it for the past hour and I’m going to go hard on it after I get some sleep but Anne and I are going to get this back rub done and out of the way first. I know I must sound like I'm repeating myself here.

So, tomorrow, I’m going to be watching wrestling and I’ve got a bag of nacho chips for the deal. After of course I do my writing. I want to get at least 3k in for today and that’s a big job. Mainly though I want to try and get some xtra hours in this week as well so when I want a night off, I can go to Rob and say, “I have lodge night such and such a night. I already made up for it.”

I want to go to Neil’s other lodge and maybe even join and it and go once a week to lodge. That’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to go say work Thursday afternoon, even to get my check and off for that evening. I’d like to keep my mother lodge going and hold a membership in Royal Arch and in Canadian rite. So that way I more or less get to go to lodge,once a week.Or at leawst have the option to go once a week. It'd be an ice night out for me.

Rob: “Well James you already put 21hrs in and you’ll be putting in Fri afternoon and evenings, which is 27.5hrs. That’s ok.” And still gives me weekends off and I get my paycheck every Thursday afternoon and go to lodge every Thursday night. Something like that would be ideal situation for me.

How does this affect my writing? Well, I usually get up early anyway around 6am. Write an hour and then when I get home, I can write from 9:30pm-11pm. That’s 3.5hrs and even after lunch at 11:30pm I stay up from about 11:30pm to 1am. That’s another 1.5hrs. Or five hours of writing. I like to do my blogging and rewriting from 1pm -2:30pm. Something like that. I figure even at the above hours, I can still go to lodge and have plenty of time left to write, rewrite and go to lodge and have a bit of coin left over. That’s all for now.


e.Jim


























































































































































eyhe

Sunday, February 19, 2006

I completed
Chapter 8 of Underworld just now. I had maybe 8 pages left of rewrites making a total of 15.5 pages of rewrites and I'm ready to start on Chapter 9. I began Chapter 8 on the 14th as I'm keeping a log book of rewrites and notes. It's all done in hand. Soon when I get better at writing novels, I'll be able to do one draft and a rewrite. However, I'm going to keep things as simple as possible. I don't want to go on a goose chase here.

Onto Capter9

e.Jim

I had about 7hrs
sleep overnight. I think I listened maybe 10 min of Coast before passing out at around 2am. I woke up again around 7am and back to bed. I got up just around noon and went to the couch to watch the weather channel and I dozed off here and there and I woke up around 1pm when I heard Anne puttering around getting brunch ready. She made a breakfast skillet and I'm not to fond of skillits.

While waiting for brunch I worked a bit more on Underworld and during brunch watched Seinfeld and settled in to watch the rest of this movie Destination Burma. I also read a pretty good article from Tamablog (see sidebar) about conflict. I'd even go so far as to suggest conflict can even be external and not about characters at all. But not all the time. For example, a river eroding earth. That's conflict. Maybe a poor example.

Well, this morning I ended up doing some more work on Lb. I don't know how much I'll get done today. I also wanted to go over to Future shop and see if they can give me some advice on my camera. I think it's just as simple as installing new batteries. I'm going to take some new batteries with me and bring them and my bill and explain to the clerk what's going on. And if he sees in the view window, "Change batteries:" Then I'll take the old ones out and pop the new ones in. Watch it will still say change batteries. In which case then the clerk will suggest that I buy the more expensive Canon batteries. The trouble with those batteries is that I get very little power from them. I can take maybe a doz pitures. This is why I'll probably need a battery recharger. Though I've never used one, Anne say's she's always had bad luck with them.

Anyway, today is going to be a laid back day. I'll probably work on Lb in a bit and or even do some work on Underworld. More later.

e.Jim

Another day.
I don’t know how many words I accomplished getting done yesterday. I’d say at least 2000 words on the day.
Just for fun:
If I can do 3k today and 3k Monday what with the hours I’d like to work and all, I’ll probably get roughly 4k done between Tuesday and Friday. That’s still 1k of words/day. I can get away with 500 and work the rest in on Sat. That means I’ll have to work extra on Sat and I’m okay with this but I want to work with markus on my website as well. Hopefully I might even accomplish 12k by the 25th. I think on the weekends 3k/day isn’t that unreasonable. So this means 13k for the week. And 13k/week/90k is 7 weeks. Even if I can do 1500k/day. Lets see what that’s like, 15k/week. But I don’t want to push my self. I don’t mind 1500k/day is fine. Even 2k is fine as well. So (uss) I can say do, 2500 words Sun, 2000Mon, 2000Tues, 2000Wed, 2000Thur, 2000Fri, 2500Sat. That’s 15.000k/week/90,000 words = 6 weeks.
Theoretically at that pace I should be able to do one novel in 6 weeks. At this rate I should be able to do 9 novels/year. However, I think lets see. 6 weeks =1 draft. 1month =1rewrite. 1 month = one edit, polish and a going over. More accurately: 6 weeks=first draft. One month/2weeks. 1st rewrite=1month. Type-ins=2weeks. So, one novel every four months. I need the extra month to proof read and edit. I might be able to write 9/novles in a year but I’d only get done 3 novels/year. Still if I can get to live until I’m 80 and still be able to wrote, then that’s another 25years. Now if I can write 9 novels in a year multiply by 25= 225 novles.Wow! Even at 3 novels/year, that’s still 60 novels. Or 60/165. Not including short stories and non fiction books I want to publish.

Also, that’s just at the current mode. What about if I can retire? What if I get published and get that break out novel or win the lottery, or what ever. If I won the lottery this week, I’d retire and write full time. I’d do 4k/day. That’s 28k/week. That’s 1, 456, 000 words/year. Over 25 years that’d be 36,400,000 words. That’d be something like 405 books at 90k each. LOL!!


e.Jim

Yes I
ended up with 6000+ words on the day. Not to shaby. Tomorrow I will attempt to put in 3k worth of words and because this weekend is a long weekend I hope to add another 3k on Monday as well but I will try and keep my 1000 word goal/day after the long weekend.

This week my work goal is to work Tues, Wed, Thur, 7hrs each day=21hrs and Fri 1-8:30pm =
6.5hrs for a total of 27.5. This will get me $75 bucks as I want to put some aside to save up for Margarete Fisks WIP bar program and I also would like to get some saved towards some tech toys etc. More importantly I'd like to save up for a Mac mini. I like their I life software. I also want to get one of those lcd monitors as well and another hard drive so I can back up all my data. Even more importantly I'd like to get into a work out routine but I should go see my doctor first.

Today after brunch I plan on going over to Future Shop to see what's wrong with my digital camera. Everytime I power it up it says change batteries but like I said about this before, those are new batteries.

e.Jim

Saturday, February 18, 2006

I had a
great afternoon and did a lot of work on Lb. My word coun is 5,028. I don’t think I’m going to get to 6k tonight but 6-8k tomorrow is doable. I should try for 6k tonight.

Lets get at er.

e.Jim

I had to make a few
adjustments to Lb. I realized that nonlocality could be to obscure for some people. So I took that out of there and added spirituality. I might just even do religion. I don't know yet. But I have 4k so far and a bit. I was writing earlier but I've grown a bit tired. In about 10 min I'll be feeding the cats take the insulin and climb into bed. Hopefully today I can do 6k. I've written that much in one day before. It's tough but when I'm on a roll, I'm writing 1000 words/hour. That's all for now.

e.Jim

Friday, February 17, 2006

I went to
lodge last night and we had 16 guys there and Dan was on his way. However ther were no candidates that showed up. We were supposed to have 3 guys there, so when we were ready to tyle at 7:30pm we had no degrees to confer. Unlike Super Sat, Jan 21at we had 12 guys come through. So we eneded up going through some floor work. Masonic education. It was a very interesting evening. We were out of there by 8:30 or so and then the festive board and I had a beer and a sandwhich and I bought Neil a beer. We had put two tables together and had a great evening. The only down side to all of this was that, the secretary wasn’t there so I couldn’t pay my lodge dues.

I got home about 10:30ish, took off my suit and settled in to what was left of wrestling. Anne came in about 1050pm and made me a nice lunch and I managed a bit on Lb but got stuck. I’m now on the right track and I know how to go with the story so I’ll be doing more of that as the day wears on before and after I go into work and when I return. The 2 brothers names in Lb are Aleister and Nick. Aleister is the bad guy in the story. They are orbiting a planet called Sahara but I think I will probably rename this to Tropica. I hope to be at least 8k by Sat night. Then I start 10k/week begining Monday.

Anyway, I listened to a bit of Coast and I think I past out listening to what was there. I had a break tonight with my wife and I was too exhausted and I fell asleep around 1:45am. I remember waking up to go pee and the front living room light was on but I think Anne left it on and I think this was 3:45am but I climbed back into bed and slept until 6:30am. So I had a good 5hrs of sleep. I want to go back in for a few more hrs.

e.Jim

Thursday, February 16, 2006

after Anne’s time,
about 1:30am we lay in bed. I had Coast on listening to “Underground bases.” Good program but by 2am I shut it off and went out to watch Adam-12 and back to bed but Anne’s hamsters were in the bedroom chewing on some cord or something. I couldn’t sleep so I got up and did my Internet stuff and most importantly, more work on Lb. I put my 1k worth of Lb work in for today as I changed the WIP bar and I plan on updating that by the end of each week. Most likely Sunday nights.

So, I finally managed to take my insulin and I went to bed just before 5am. I would have slept longer then 5am if it wasn’t for Anne’s alarm clock going off at 10:45am. So I locked the bedroom door when she left but there wee cats left behind inside scratching and clawing at things. I got one out when I heard the other one in the bedroom. Just as I tried to get that one out, the fire alarm went off. It’s those friggin kids down the end of the building in one of the corner suites. That was being set off over the last hour. They’re probably home because of the cold snap were under and their deadbeat parents are probably drinking, having no control over their children. I got the headbangers downstairs and the fire kids down the hall. There they go again. They play this dash and grab thing. I think the caretakers are on to it.

Anyway, I’m off today and hopefully Neil will be heading into the lodge tonight as I think we have a FC night tonight. So, I’d like to be there. I’m also going to wear my coat in as well. I mainky want to go in, so I can pay my lodge dues and do the part in the lodge. That’s what I wanted to do when I signed on.

Also, this afternoon while Anne is off and out paying bills and such, I want to do more work on Chapter 8 of Underworld. I don’t know about changing the WIP bar too much on that one because this is still the 1st rewrite.

The big story of the week besides this being Valintines week, here at lest is the weather. On the way home last night with the windchill it was -33* Without a windchill its -25* at the moment. So we’ve had 2 says of daytime -20+ this winter season. That’s from the first day of winter to the last day. “Officially” the first day of winter is Dec 21st and the last day of winter is March 20th. But we’re here in Alberta and to me the first day of real winter is November 1st. Technically we stay have 33 days of winter and anything can happen here in Alberta.
Okay, Anne just came in and when she went to the Superstore just before closing around 9:45pm there were a few emergency vehicles out there in the parking lot. When she came in just now she said there was a man checking the alarms in the hallway. Sorry friggin kids but you can only cry wolf for just so often.

Anyway, all is quiet on the Clairview front. Now I can tackle that rewrit of Underworld and on the weekend I’ll be fooling around with more website stuff as well. The beat goes on.

e.Jim

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

lets do a bit more on Lb.
5:48am I seem to be off line right now. Anywhow, I did some more work on Lb and I did another 1,075 words today. That’s min btw. I could do even more this afternoon if I’m not online.

Anne is (?) going in to Canada Place to get her taxes done and I’m going in tomorrow to get mine done on my day off. I still have to go over the FC charge a bit and I’m not even sure I’m scheduled to do it so I have to call George tonight to see if he’s got someone planed for this. If not, I’m okay with the part now. 12:13pm I went back to bed shortly before 6am and I woke up around 9am because I had the runs and I climbed back into bed. Anne was still asleep but I heard her get up a bit later getting ready to leave. I past out again and woke up at noon. She said “don’t wake me up until 1pm.


So, I went to check on the news had some trouble with the tv remote selector and couldn’t get anycable. I knew my internet connection was down earlier. So I fred this pupy up and after the usual ten minute waite or so until everything was ready, I noticed the little Yellow triangle over a couple of monitors and the ! Sign. Indicating no connection. Wait now, no tv signal no internet conection, Feb 15th. Anne forgot to pay the cable bill. Now I can’t do anything until 1pm.
It’s not that I have anything to do, but I’d like to at least check on the weather.

The headbangers below have their stero cranked up. Good god I hopewe don’t have to put up with them for much longer. Maybe if we’re lucky wont have to worry about them and they’ll move out of here around the end of March. I don’t want to be putting up with that crap all summer.

Okay, I checked my browser and no connection. Anne forgot to pay the bill. So much for my lodge dues then. I can still pay for them March 1st. Anne might have to go over there and drop them off a check again.

Let’s see now, I already did my 1000 words today, and then some and no internet connection for this afternoon so that means I’ll be up and ready to get some Underworld rewriting done. So, that’s all for now.

2:33pm well, I got 5 pages of Underworld rewrites in and I did my 1000 words today. Not too shabby for a days work.

So Anne realizes what’s going on here with the cable. Bunch of scumbags over there at Shaw waiting for a $100 deposit from over a couple of years now. We already paid the bill or this month but until they get that deposit from us, we’re going to keep be playing this cut us off by the 15th of every month.

Also, the free income tax booth isn’t even set up yet and won’t be until March 6th. And Alberta Health Care has up until March 31st until the subsidy runs out. Then they can start deducting the $44 bucks off my check. Not even Revenu Canada is set up yet to dispense T4 records from their end so we’re bettre off waiting until friggin Xentel can send in my T4’s. Bastards and they have up until the end of Feb. There’s no way between March 6th and March 31st Revenue Canada Winnepeg will have my income tax processed in time and a letter of assesment for subsidy by March 31st. So, regardless AHC will still take their cut.

10:06pm I’ve been off line all day and I went to work feeling pretty good. No fall our from yesterday but we ended up doing a beat up OTH and the first half I barely had $115 but at least I was getting somewhere. Anyway, I ended up with $480 on this thing. I think I was one of the top 3. Not saying much because we had 7 tap shooters. We started out with 10 but bud and pat left early and Mike moved over to the front 20.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I’ll post what I’ve written since my first entery. That's all for Wednesday.

e.Jim

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

well, I rode into
work alone for my 2nd day now as Anne took another night off. Anyway, Rob was all playing the heavy tonight. Target line hours, threats etc. We even had a shortened break and the atmoshphere was boiler room fundraising. Rob sort of softened because we had nothing but small taps near the end. I ended up with $595 but I had a couple of credit cards totaling $45, so I covered my ass. And it wasn’t for the lack of effort on my part and I did a lot better then of of the others. If I don’t have my wage reduced or moved over to the cheap seats and I’m still there on the job at the same station, then Rob’s more of an idiot then I take him for. The reason why he’s playing the heavy today is because Bart is on his ass. Our Genreal manager.

JT was in good spirits though as he was the night manager even before Rob and we were joking around laughing at the whole thing. Rob’s a good guy though. Well, the big news for me tonight beside that nonsense, or today, was I began work on Lodge brothers Lb, tonight. I ended up with 1,075. Not too shabby. My goal is to get to 1,000 words/day. I hope to have the novel done at 10k/week, beginning Moday Feb 13th and ending April 15th. The book will be 90k in length.

Anyway, that was my night so far this evening.

e.Jim

I had to get
up as I had the runs (from last night yet) about 9am this morning and I tried going back to sleep but all I could get out of this for an hour and a half was to just lie there and vegitate. I think I had a strange dream but I couldn’t sleep so I got up about ten minutes ago to put the kettle on for coffee and to do a rare 10:30am bsl reading at 8.2. Relatively high, but right within range of the safe zone.

Right now I’m having my coffee and I feel pretty good. I’m not tired at all. I had 2.5hrs sleep from this morning and I slept from just before 6am to 9am so there’s 5.5 and a bit. So I feel pretty good. I could use a few more hours but right now, all I’m just going to do is lie there in bed. My left eye was watering up a bit and the cats were jumping all over the bed so I got up anyway.


I think I had a bit of last night in there as well, what with Rob not giving me my bank bonus (bb) for showing up Sat. I thik this is a real cheap shot because that’s based on performance not dependednt on weather I showed up on a Saturday or not. He’s playing games again. Anyway, I’m going to post this and do some other blogging. Maybe work on Underground a bit more while I have the extra hour.

e.Jim

I got woken
up to the cats playing on the bed and I looked at the time. If it wasn't for that I would have still slept until much later then the 2.5hrs I got. But at least I have that much.

Anyway, I got Chapter7 completed and it's an important chapter. Today, I move onto Chapter8. If I'm lucky, I hope to have that done this week and Chapter9, at least completed by the weekend. Maybe. The big job with this work willl be the type-ins. But like I said, I wasted 2-3 weeks going over the initial edit, when that should be the 1st rewrite, so I'm about 3 weeks behind I reckon. I also have a hankering for working on Lodge brothers. I'm also understanding a bit more on conflict and how it can work on other levels.

Last night tried Anne to get out of here for me to work on my digital camera by taking it over to Future shop but when I got home to begin to deliver the bad news as she was on the computer about work, it was still there where I left it.


Just before close last night Will, the night manager takes me aside as I was closing on a sale, and says Rob pulled my bonuses because I wasn't there Sat. That sort of surprised me in a way but I kind of knew inside to expect a stunt like this. He's trying to get everyone there for Sat and I won't work sat and Anne doesn't want me to work Sat anyway. I mean unless theres say $30-50 bucks in it for me then I will but after that's in my hands, then if there's no bank bonus, forget it, I saty home Saturdays. But Anne. Is saying she doesn't want me to work Sat because quite often, and those of you that have been reading this for any length of time will observe, I don't often get a full sleep during the week. So Rob can shove his bonuses up his candy ass, sideways.

So after that I watched wrestling and worked on the last 4 pages of Chapter7, Underworld and met Anne in bed at 1:30am listned to a bit of Coast, good show last night. I past out about 2:30pm and woke up shortly about 5am. Sorry for any typos this morning.

e.Jim

Monday, February 13, 2006

Yikes:
What the heck is happening with Holly Leslie's blog? It's changing all the time. Today there was nothing on my screen but the sidebar and comments. Yeash.

Anyway, I managed I think about 4 pages of rewrites this afternoon. Not bad. I think I might bring this into work with me and take the train into the University and on the way back try and do a bit more and of course on my break and on the way home. maybe I can get another page done. I've got 5 more to do on Chapter 7. If with any luck at all, I can complete Chapter 7 tonight if the rewrites are light. Then onto Chapter 8. Chapter 8 is itself (original draft) 29 pages in length and that's before I split it up and single space yet. If I'm lucky I might be able to have Chapter 8 done before the weekend and I can do 9-10 on the weekend.

Well, I've got to do the spell check on this check out a few more blogs before I take my shower and have my supper/lunch and get ready to leave for about 3:45 out the door.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

I listened to a little
bit of Coast with Anne but she got into one of those "I can still hear the radio I got to be up early bla, bla, bla" moods, so I went to the old Walkman and replaced the batteries. I used the ones my digital camera that said replace batteries and put those in. They were new anyway and I listened until 3 am and had trouble falling back to sleep. So I must have got an hour and a half of sleep.

I’d love an off the shelf Mp3 player sd memory card with local AM radio. Oh sure there are lots of FM solutions but I seldom ever listen to FM. Before MP3 players came out, in the 1990’s all we had was the walkman and variations. They had am and fm of course but were tape driven.

My "dream machine" would be an all in one model, which would include am radio. Actually, it would include the recent satelite am/fm radio. It would also have TV, voice etc, (no pda) cell phone with a screen the size of a psp. My complete portable, gaming,radio solution. It’d especially be handy if I could have it wi fi capable with a mini keyboard built in and 5 pixel (min) digital camera. Kind of like the shape of a psp and the same size as a psp where I can play Everquest anywhere, play movies with different file formats kind of like my memory card reader.

Man am I dreaming.

sorry for the re edits.

e.Jim

Sunday, February 12, 2006

yikes, what a day.
I got up on the late side today at 12:45pm and worked on some of Chapter 7. I had 33 pages to work on and I ended up doing a bit before the hockey game. The Oilers lost in the shootout but got a point out of the game and Ryan Smyth scoref his 27th goal. Two goals today. The game was over about 4:30pm. I took out the garbage and went for a walk and took my bsl reading. I was at 6.8 but that was at 5:10pm. So I worked on Underworld some more. Anne mae a great pot roast dinner but skimped on the gravy. She also made some Yorkshire pudding as well and roasted potatoes. That was a great dinner. I took another bsl reading at 9:35pm and I was at 9.6. I’ll do one more just before I retire to watch “Smith & Smith” and “Knight Rider.” all in all, I had a productive day.

I took 11 pages of rewrites and from 25 single spaced pages, and I have 9 remaining for Chapter7. Chapter 7 was a huge chapter with something like 8,596 words. That’s a lot of rewriting. I’m now at 650 points. Lots of fun. I hope to get Chapter 7 done in the next couple of days and maybe Chaptre 8 as well. I have 15 unmodified chapters in the initial draft but in the new draft I went and expanded the book to 20 chapters. Once the intial rewrite is completed and the first type-ins done, the 2nd and last rewrite will be a lot easier. I don’t think a simple ½ inch binder is going to work for me. This is good for short stories but I’ll need a large 2” binder for a novel.

Anyway, at the pace I’m going now, the first rewrite will be completed by the weekend of March 10th. The type-ns will take me the balance of March itself. What slowed me down was doing the intial edit. That took three weeks to do. I hope the 2nd rewrite and type-ins will take me the month of April. Then I’m going to use May for polishing and a finle edit and get the cover letter ready for June 1st.

I hope.

e.Jim

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Whew!
I finaly came to an end of the first rewrite of Chapter 6 and I’ve got a heck of a job doing the type-ins when it comes down to doing them. That’s going to be “‘fun.” but I’ve got some pretty good stuff in the rewrite to add thaat ties up lose ends near the end of the story. Tomorrow I wll do Chapter 7 or at least make some good headway on it. There’s the Oiler game on at 2pm and I want to go out and get some of that nice mild air for February that we’ve never had in all the 28 years I’ve been here. I had just turned 27 when I decided to stay here in Edmonton.

I figure I can get Chaptre 7 done Sunday and this weekend. Chapter 8-9 possibly this week/end. But that’s a big maybe. I got high hopes there. I’m lucky if I can do 1 Chapter/week. Including the weekends. But these initial chapters are huge chapters. Chapter 7 itself is 33 pages. Way to long. I went and cut them down and now I have 20 chapters. That’s after the type ins. I figure if I can do one chapter/week including Chapter 7 I should have this thing done in 8 weeks. That could mean the first week in April. I can do all the type ins, in April. Then comes the 2nd drft. The second draft I can do in May probably including type- ins. I figure I’ll have a complete finished product by the end of June. Maybe. And this includes 2nd rewrite,edit,polish and cover letter to go out to agents.

Of course I’m not going to just sit on my laurels either. I’m going to be writing. I’ve got “Lodge brothers” and “The art of life.” I’m going to do this year as well and short stories to get out the door. Tomorrow I’m going to try and get “Crosshairs” out to “Tales Realm.” I also want to work on other stories as well that I have here and get them straitened up.

I haven’t heard anything yet from Antimuse as “Lift-off”
went out the door to them in Nov. If I don’t hear from them I’m going to withdraw my submission and get it out to someone else.

Because I lost all of those emails I had stories and diaries I’m going to have to set up my old W98 system and try and get those again into my system here to print off for later. But tht’s all for now.

e.Jim

I got up just before 1pm.
I remember hearing Anne say something about going to Wallmart and she closed the door and she’s out there someplace. When I got up I noticed a bag of some stuff she had picked up, so she was out and come and gone but no batteries or paper but she’s probably out doing that now.

Man did I ever sleep good. I recall getting up really tired around 6am to feed the cats take a bsl reading, insulin and oatmeal. I went right back to bed but I had trouble falling asleep. I was tossing and turning all over the place trying to get comfortable. Finally I passed out. I think I had 3 hrs of good sleep and 5.5 hrs after that. But I’m ready to tackle the rest of Chapter 6 and I want to do that today and maybe go out for a walk this afternoon for half an hour but that’s just going to bring my bsl right down. Right now, it’s sitting at 6.9. I prefer it to be 5.5-8. Anything in there but last night after supper it was at 12.1! And when I took my bsl reading again at 6am I was only at 11.6. I needed to get some exercise when my bsl is extremely high like right after dinner so I can bring it down.

We’re supposed to have a couple of nice days this wekend and according to the weather channel, right now it’s +7 but it doesn’t feel like it because the jet streem is west of the city following the path of the mountains. Or the Province elbow and tomorrow we’re supposed to get up to +11!! Somethings going to give. The long range forcast is mentioning something like a -20 in there but that’s next weekend. But that changes as well.

Anyway, I replied to Markus’s email from this morning so hopefully he will answer back. Now, I want to do some blogging and then off to Chapter 6

e.Jim

Friday, February 10, 2006

I had a slow
night. Actually so did everyone else in the tap section. We might have had 8 people tonight and doing worn out Easter seals. I ended up in the middle of the pack with $425 and 2 credit cards for $45 bucks, which make my credit card tally, $235 this week alone. I more then cover my wages and then some. Anyhow, the calls came in slow and the “entertainment” value slim to none. I was glad to get out of there and a brief wait for the lrt. An uneventfull ride home but the train was extended because of the Oilers game. They lost to the Wild, 5-3 so someone said on the train. I got home to an empty house meaning to say Anne had gone out, hopefuly to go get my batteries and some extra paper. I’d like to go out and take a few pictures around town this weekend and work on Underworld.

That’s all for now.

e.Jim

I was in bed
by 7am and passed out immediately so I slept until Anne woke me up at 10:30amish to go get her table at liquidation world. She put a note in the laundry room and on the door outside coming into the building just before lunch a knock on the door and a guy and his lady companion said he’d accept the $20 offer to help her ppick up the table and chair set from lw and I was sleeping and woke up just around noon and Anne had the table all set up. She was about to take the old set out to the garbage when the guy down the hall that offered to help yesterday decided to take the table and chair set off her hands. So that worled out well for everyone.

Anyway it’s -3* and this weekend it’s supposed to go to +5 and +10 something. Very nice. Hardly winter at all but most people feel, we’re not out of the woods yet with any of this. Something big is going to hit us between now and the end of Feb or early March. The weather has been the big story of the year so far her in Edmonton/Alberta.

I’ve got just over an hour on the net here befoe I head out off to the job for my 3.5hr shift. I worked all a full 20 hour work week and for me for over the last year, that’s pretty good. Well more like 19.5hrs. I would have gone in at noon but I didn’t know when Anne would have been finished with Lw. Lets see, $190 bucks in credit cards, $2,400.00 banked, a $24 bonus for next week and 19.5hrs in on the job, I had a pretty good week.

Not much is planed for the weekend but if Anne gets me those batteries I wouldn’t mind getting out and take some outdoor shots around this end of town here. I ran out of batteries earlier this week, which is why I haven’t been able to post any photo’s yet. Also, Sunday there is the last Oiler hockey game before the Olympic break and that’s on Sunday at 2pm.

I might even imput the Underworld type-ins but since I broke up a lot of the chapters, I have no idea where I am in the story, which will be difficult tp imput the type-ins. Hey, it gives me something to do. But that’s all for now.

e.Jim

I slept until
just about an hour ago and I’m about ready for bed. Still fooling around with my GL website and I’ll be working on the editing changes of Underworld this weekend.
So I think I got almost 3 hrs sleep and I’m tired enough to go back to sleep for another 4-5. More later.

e.Jim

anyway, I took the
#2 bus into work. Bye 4:20pm I was at Stadium and by 4:35pm I was at Annes place of work and I got off the buson Jasper and 106th st and crossed 2 intersections and into work at 4:35pm. Not to shabby. Also, the bank report was posted on the board and I qualified for a $24 bonus on my check next week. I’ll take it. The rest of the night was slow going because we were doing Easter Seals small taps. I think I got a couple of $50’s and a $50 credit card which was nice ending out the night with respectable $575 and I got my paycheck with no errors.

Earlier today I was fooling around with Underworld and I split up some rather large chapters and now I have 20 Chapters. I also figured out how to use blocks and this looks pretty good. No response yet from Markus beyond the Topics thing and I hope to really get into more aspects of my website over the weekend and continue to work on Underworld. I decided to leave what was Chapter 10 & 11 alone. The main thing was the first chapter anyway and I like what I have so far. Cutis shows up in Chapter 12 and the whole medieval scene is Chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. And I’m going to work with the type-ins I have so far although I’m not sure how I’m going to work this.

e.Jim

Thursday, February 09, 2006

I had a great evening
on the job pulling in $965 and $70 bucks worth in credit cards. Am I covering my a$$ or what? The lrt ride was as usual and I got in just about 9:30pm and on the internet until Anne came home shortly before 11pm. Also tonight I figured out how this Geeklog works. 1.)Create Topic. 2.)Create story. A)Publishing options and use drop down menu to place story into Topic. Easy. Now I’d like to use the static page editor because it has some cool features. I emailed Markus about this a couple of hours ago, so I hope to find ansers or something about this in my email in the morning/early afternoon.

Also, for today I’m going to try and do more work on Chapter 10. I’m adding some more stuff into Chapter 11 (was Ch10) and Chapter 12 and hopefuly I’ll be able to complete Chapter 11 by the weekend and have some good parts to carry me over to Chapter 12. Then I can begin the rest of the rewrite and begin rewrite #2.

At least now I’m beginning to realize how GL works. I just wish that Drupal was this easy but I like GL better and I’m getting more help. I can’t say enough about the work Markus is doing for me. He’s got me a customer for life.

Well, that’s about all for now as I’m going to go to bed and grab a couple of hours of sleep after I blog this. If I’m up at 5 and feeling up to it, I’ll maybe put a couple of hours into writing Chapter 11. Maybe even finish it off before the weekend and finish off Chapter 12 as well. Wouldn’t that be great? Maybe I’ll even be on pace to do the first rewrite pass before the end of this month and do the type-ins for the first half of March. The the 2nd rewrite later half of March and the type-ins 1st part of April. 2nd Half of April I can do a finale edit and polish and get an agent cover letter out. If all goes well, then the first agent query will go out May 1st.


e.Jim

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

I pased out
just around 3am listening to George and missed his opening monolouge there on Coast at the 3am hr. Mostly talking about politics and stuff. Lots of brewhaha lately over this cartoon of the Prophet Mohamed. I’m not trying to sound politically correct here and I’m all for freedom of speech but one has to draw the line between freedom of speech and insulting somebody’s faith on an International level. This all came about of course due to a Dutch newspaper that placed a cartoon image of Mohamed, the Muslim God. I hope I used the term properly an not out of context. Anyway, it’s not okay to insult Islam anymore then it is okay to insult anyhone elses religion. However I can’t help but believe there was an ulterior motive for bringing up the cartoons what with Iran in the news and it’s nuclear program. The UN is about to vote to impose political and economic sanctions on Iran and I think the rioting and mass demonstrations are based upon that. I just hope calmer heads prevail.

I passed out at about 3am and slept until 5am and I got out of bed to feed the cats and took my insulin and I was back in bed by 5:30am. I was reading a bit from my digital camera manual and discovered a few features about the camera like the zoom and the flash on and off menu but, I ran out of battery. I also cleaned up a bit of Underworld and I’m about to watch a bit of the noon news hour before I go back to the computer. So I guess I had 2hrs +7hrs=9hrs but it didn’t feel like 9hrs.


e.Jim

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

wow, I had
an excellent evening at work pulling in I think top total at $1,235. Of course I think we had only 10 tap shooters. I was scoring $35 pledges left right and center. Coming home was nice. I met Anne at Clairview station as I was approaching the bus and she said how she’s going to go get us KFC. I like their chicken sandwiches. So, Anne came in about 10:30pm and I had that as my lunch for ronight. The Oilers lost tonight, their 2nd game back to back. They were pretty tired but it wasn;t like Hockey Night in Canada was making excuses for them on national TV type thing. Local TV was to a degree but that’s different.

Also, I worked on Underworld earlier for a bit. I haven’t decided the direction I want Chapter 10-11 to go yet. I’ve also been working on my website some more and toywing around with ideas with Markus back and fourth.

That’s all from here.

e.Jim

Well I got a rejection
from The 5th Di yesterday. Oh well, lets send it off to Keith at Astounding Tales and see if he can use it. So that may be the bad news for the day. I expect I'm going to get a lot more rejection slips before I get published.

Anyway at work, I had a rockin' evening. I ended up with $1,040 and 3 credit cards and I brought my camera down to take a couple of pics in the office. Some people have been saying that this Canon camera has slow shutter speeds and I've been finding this out the hard way. I may have to take it back for another model.

Also, the Oilers won tonight in a shootout against The Ducks. So despite the camera woes and the rejection letter, I had a great night. I'll be sending "Crosshairs" out to Astounding later today and also, I'll try and bring back the camera to Future shop as well.

e.Jim

Monday, February 06, 2006

Working with
Markus on my website. Doing some ftp stuff and all so this will be a week entry this afternoon what with heading into work in a few hours. I also want to check on some of my Blogs I read daily, in the side bar.

I also printed off the alternate opening to Chapter1 of Underworld. I have 14 pages instead of 11 and I deleted a lot of crap that wasn't a good fit for the story that never even made an appearance later on in the rest of the story. It goes slow, but I think I'm on pace.

More later

e.Jim

What is it with cats and boxes?
I could never understand this. I mean is there some strange fascination with cats and boxes? Anne brought this home just after we came in from supper.
The white guy is Sporty and the stripe guy is
Sparky. Sparky is a real pistol. He goes after all the other cats, especially Silky and Pledges. We call them the babies as they are a year old but will be turning 2 this April.

Anyway, I did just under 500 words on Underworld but I finished the alternative opening to Chapter 1. Mostly all this weekend I've been writing and taking photo's with my new camera. I still got to write Chapter 10 and 11 yet to tighten it up a bit more. I watched 2 movies though and an Oiler hockey game Sat night. The Oilers won 3-1 over Vancouver and managed to break their 5 game at home losing streak. Then I watched "Ball of Fire" and this evening after supper a movie with Garry Cooper, "Lady and the cowboy. It was cute.

I'm up a bit early, or late depending on what to call it so, I'll have my insulin and oatmeal in about an hour or less and then go to bed. I'll be heading into work this afternoon at our usual time, but this week I need to go in early to make up for the Thursday I'm going to miss because Anne and I are going in to get our taxes done. Or at least try to.

Also, wrestling is on tonight. I never miss Monday night wrestling and hopefully I can get Chapter 10-11 done by the end of this week. Earlier tonight though, Anne and I went out to Buffet world, and well, it was over priced Anne thought the food was maybe a cut above hospital food but not by much. Also the place was drab and crowded and the men's bathroom terrible. Needles to say we wont be in that dump again. But at least I was able to take 2 outdoor shots. The camera has only 4 mega pixles but it's good enough for what I want it to do.

e. Jim
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Sunday, February 05, 2006

well I got up just after 7am going to sleep right after 3am. I was watching a movie called “Ball of Fire” 1941. It had some great shots of life in 1941 NY City and some slang I took down I can use in Underworld. I ended up pampering Anne a bit with her feet but everywhere I touched was painful for her. That ended up in bad feelings because I was rude to her. I took a bsl reading and I was 1t 11.7. Yeesh no wonder I was rude. We passed out on about 3am and I woke up just after 7. I’m still tired and grumpy but I’ll be heading back to bed soon.

Anyhow, I got myself a new digital camera and I post my first image to my blog from Picasa yesterday. Very interesting. Works great but the media card that comes with the camera can only hold about 6-8 pictures. I never did get to that writing but I managed to put something decent in there. I was able to successfully remove the images off the camera and I was happy
about that. I like this Powershot A520. Nice little camera. It can do video and voice over. I haven’t taken any outdoor dhots with it yet but I hope to do that today. I even took a few images of myself.

e.Jim

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Just trying out my new camera what you see here is my work space.I call it organized chaos. Still this camera works great ,I'm still learning how to work the softwear properly but it interfaces well with Picasa.

Well, I never did get any writing done today and I don't know how much I'll get done tomorrow except I'm almost done with Chapter 1 of Underworld and then I need to rewrite Chapter 10 and 11 and then rewrite it again. Then one more pass and a finale edit and polish. If I get this done by the end of June, I'll be happy.

Tomorrow, I'm going to go out onlocation and take some outdoor shots when Anne and I go out for our dinner.

Anyway, I might get a bit of writing done but not much. Maybe 500 words. Maybe.

Thats all for now, Sorry for any typos tonight.

e.Jim
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I had a slow
start to the evening. By break I was sitting at $40 bucks. After the break, I pulled ahead and ended up getting a $100 sale ending the night off with $215 and that’s about what Will (our “new” manager) wanted from everyone.

Yesterday I closed out with 1,308 words on the day. Not to bad. I’m exhausted and I’m ready for bed. Yesterday I signed up for the Amazon affiliate program so I can insert book covers into my Blog. I got the “aproval” and some book cover html code but I get all this other stuff. All I want is just the cover. I wrote to the Blogger forum a post requesting help on how to get rid of the excess baggage.

Maybe, there will be some answer latter today. But today on my plate, I’m going to shop for the digital camera and play around with that if I can find a decent 5 mega pixle dc for around $200. Seing as how I have the day off. I also want to try and stick with my quota and write my 1,500 words/day.

More later.

e.Jim

Friday, February 03, 2006

half awake a I write this
I managed to pass out around 2:45am and I slept right up until 5:57amish.

I hope to have Chapter1 and possibly Chapter 10 done by the weekend. I'm taking Underworld in a slightly different direction. Still dealing with the original premise of course. I've changed my daily target word count goal too. 1500 words/day but still 2,250/Sat-Sun. This will then take me 10 12,000/week. In theory that is. That's 624,000 words/year. More or less.

Okay, I still haven't spent any of that $390. Most likely I'll get the digital camera and I'll have $190 left over. $100 to play around with, to buy office supplies, books, whatever and my lodge dues.

Speaking of which, I forgot to call Neil last night but I hope to give George (Wm) a call this weekend let him know I'm still up for the Charge for the emergent meeting on the 16th of this month.

Anyhow, I'm going to do a quick spell check and post this to blog.

All for now.

e.Jim

well, I had a
pretty good night. We all moved into one section doing cancer recovery foundation. I had a slow start but ended up doing $320. Not too shabby. I got my check and out just before 9pm and a brief wait for my train. I walked home again from the bus/train station and that was enjoyable. I got home and opened up the computer and email. I got a email from Markus asking me to take a look at my new site. He was able to get the logo up for me and. Very nice. I replied right back. He’ll probably get this in the morning since he’s about 8hrs difference, but I got a new password. Looks very nice. The site is still under construction. Drop by take a look and let me know what you think.

Also, I did a bit more work on the opening of Chapter1 of Underworld. I ended up with 1,250 words, doing a bit more. I’m aiming for 1000 for today. I want at least 8 pages for Chapter1.

More latter.

e.Jim

Thursday, February 02, 2006

There I
Completed my writing goal for the day, which is 1000 words. I did a bit over to 1.063. I will try to get in at least 1000 words min as my target daily goal and at least 2000 on the weekends, so that's 9k. I'll try and round it off to 10k/week. So that's 520k/year. Not to shabby.

Tonight I've got to call Neil and send my regrets to the lodge tonight that I won't be able to attend but, I will be there for the 16th for the emergent meeting and to do the charge. I'm looking forward to that.

So, the groundhog saw his shadow today, which meant another 6 weeks of winter. It's a rather silly bit of Folklore not that it means anything for us with the whether we've been getting up here lately. Another 6 weeks of winter and it's sunny and +3 out there. This has been the warmest winter according to the whether girl last night here in the City since the last 45 years. Since 1961.

Also, our yearly amusement park/activity has got a new name. Instead of Klondike days, it's now called Capital X. I like K-Days better. But it's the exhibition, which most people call it the ex anyway. The City is also changing things around stepping it up a couple of notches.

So, tonight it's off to the job and I'll get my check. I still haven't spent any of my $400 prosperity check yet. I want to wait until Saturday, or maybe tomorrow. We'll see. anyhow, that's it for me for today, although I could pop back in here later. It's wrestling tonight.

e.Jim

I went back to bed
just before 8am but it was 8:30am and I couldn’t sleep so I got up to the computer to do some more writing on Underworld and I stayed up until 10:am before I decided to go back to bed. Sleep came just as hard. I decided to rewrite Chapter1 as well earlier since the original chapter doesn’t fit into the original ms. I did another 840 words and changed it around completely. I like what I have and I will probably get back to completing the other words to 1000/day.

More later.

e.Jim

wow. I slept
right up until about 6:30am. I was in bed from 2:30 and fell asleep from just after 3am until 6:30am. So that’s a good 3.5hrs and I’m ready to go back to bed. I don’t know if I’m going out today for the camera. Most likely I will on Saturday. If all goes well and I might just get the camera and a new book. Audrey’s is good by where I work and all but the bigger sellection is at Chapters and I might just take a look around there at West Edmonotn Mall. It’s a long trip out there but not much else is going on that Saturday. I want to go out with Anne for a dinner and a movie so I think I’ll just spend $200 on the camera and get a couple of books and the office supplies, that I mentioned earlier and treat my wife out to dinner and a movie. We want to go to that Buffet World on Fort Road we pass by every day. Dave Sullivan at work says it’s pretty good and go to the dollar theater. There’s even an Oiler hockey game on Sat night so if we can go right after I get the camera say go for the supper hour and see the movie we could be in time for the hockey game, which usually starts about 8am.

e.Jim

I added a
"what's my blog worth" applet. It's worth $564.54. Hehehe. Holly Leslie's is worth something like $55k! Kind of a cute little tool.

Anyway I got a lot of work ahead of me with Chapter 10 & 11 to cut. I'm not sure what direction I want to go here.

Also at work they are implementing the bank bonus structure again and the results will be posted every Wednesday. For example if it was implemented this week and I would be here for all my shifts, then I would have made something like $42 buck bank bonus on the week. My bank is comfortably high. But, I've got to let Rob know, that I'll be taking at least 2 Thur off a month but I'll make up for the missing time during the week I take off. This way when I join the Royal Arch later this year, I'll be either at my mother lodge or in an emergent meeting or at the RA lodge, or both.

Also, this week or next I'm going to dig up Margarette Fisk's address and let her know I'll be sending her a western Union m/o for the WIP program. It's only $10 bucks. I also know, tomorrow I want to get the digital camera. But do I want to get the scanner and camera or the camera and Works suite 8? Works suite 8 has MS Word 2002 for how many times I'm going to use a scanner. I just might spend $200 on the camera and use the rest to buy something else. I need office supplies.

e.Jim

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

well Anne and I went into work okay.
I had a slow first half doing only $75 but I ended up with $300 in the 2nd half and a few credit cards. A MC and Visa, total $85 all in all. Not to shabby. Also at work I came to a decision of sorts to take out a large section of Underworld. I wasn't quite comfortable with it anyway. This is a huge section. I need to remove Chapter 10 and 11.Practicablyy the whole middle part. I think the scanner and the camera would be excellent and especially the scanner. I had to manually copy the text in Works and paste it into another document. But I'mwafflingg on the scanner. There are 16,500 words but there are also some critical parts to the story as well and this takes out 68 pages. I need to also have to replace it with something equally exciting. I'll come up with something.

e.Jim

I didn't get the digital camera yet.
Still waiting to pay my lodge dues. I'll go on Saturday and shop for the camera then.

I'm still hard at work working on Underworld. I took a different turn here and that means even more changes then before. but I feel these new changes add a different dimension to the story then before.

Anyway. That's about it for now.

e.Jim

Well, it seems
I hadn't Bloged at all yesterday or even wrote in my diary. Busy online with Markus designing the new website. My bad. I did not even write in my diary yesterday. Also, I was working at Underworld so I think that might account for some of the missing time.

Anne and I went into work yesterday like we always do. Rob was a bit Po'd about me missing Monday. This means I'm not attending the lodge meeting this week but I will attend the FC at the emergent meeting. Most likely on the 16th. I almost got fired. But I'm here.

After work I went and caught a bus to Shoppers Drug mart and I got an order of test strips. Interesting because over the last 3 orders, the number to program into the glucometer has been 17. Three times in a row. I missed the last Abbotsfield bus so I had a nice workout walk home through the Superstore parking lot.

I still haven't spent any of the $400 from my resource check yet. I want to get a digital camera and that's still in the cards and I want to still save some to pay for my lodge dues at the emergent meeting. I'll probably shop for the camera this morning. We'll see.

Underworld goes well. I'm finding there are some major rewrites I need to do and I've been doing them as much as I need to Time wise that is.
So that's about all for this morning.

e.Jim