E.Jim Shannon

wow
I did a record, 6,020 words on the day. I think that is my most productive word count ever. Et is now 14,330 words/100k. And I’m done for the day. Supper is an hour away. Time to do something else.

e.Jim

I woke up at
10 am and I couldn't fall back to sleep. I figured, may as well get up anyway, fire up this puppy and do some diary work. I was up at around 6am to do the cbi thing. Just having my first coffee as Anne is in there sleeping and I'm left still wondering why Pizza hasn't called? To be fair, we ran out of cell phone minutes last week and Anne only loaded again them up last night.

So, I figure why not get up anyway and after this, get some more work done on Et. Early this morning as Anne was doing laundry around 1:30am, I figured that seeing as how I have this extra energy I may as well see about getting at least 1000 words in on Et. I just closed off on that around 2:30am as she was pulling in the laundry hose. I shut down the computer and went to bed. We listened to a bit of Coast rebroadcastst and I shut her down ad past out until about just after 6 am when the cats were jumping all over me. I think all-in-all, I got 7hrs in. I'm good to go.

Now if I can manage it tomorrow, I'm going to drag myself into the morning shift and if Will is there just explain I'm going to do this for the Oil play-offs and for lodge nights. Also if I want a night off. That way after work tomorrow am I can run up to Pizza find out what's going on and or fill out the application properly. If they hire me there, then I'll work the min shifts possible and still keep my regular job until I can fit in and if I like what I'm doing there at Pizza. Then, I'll phase over to Pizza. Anyway a bit more blogging and I'm goinf back to work on Et.

e.Jim

For some
reason the wip bar isn't displaying. I think I know why though. I'll have to correct that later in the morning. I didn't quite get 3k done today but I'm 8k into the story. I got 2k and a bit. i'm happy too with what I got. The story is less convoluted then before.

Anne made me a great burger and fries for supper while I watched a bit of the hockey game. I talked with Anne about going to work Monday morning so I can watch the Oiler game Monday night It's game 6 after all and I can get my business done with Pizza and go in and fill out a proper application. I can take it with me and go have a coffee at Second cup down there and return it once I'm done. They might hire me on the spot. hard to say.

Anyway there is an intersting (no doubt repete) of Jack Ruby on Biography tonight I want to see.

e.Jim

well, I don’t feel
to bad for somebody that had maybe 2 hrs sleep. I was mostly half awake and resting becsues it was so hot in this apartment. Time to break out the air conditioner. We’re going to have another hot one tonight I think.

Sigh, the Oilers game is on today at 1pm. We’re off at 2pm so I might get home to watch the end of the second or at least the whole of the 3rd period. If they can win in Detroit and split the serries, then they half to win here. In a way, I’d like to see them win both games but I’ve yet to

Also today is supposed to be "Super Saturday" at the Lodge. I want to get hired on at Pizza so I can change my hours and have Thur off for lodge night’s. I originaly said no more of this crap. And I mean it. I’m missing to many hockey games and too many lodge nights. ee them win two games back to back against Detroit, the top team in the league.

Also, I want to watch the Monday night Oiler hockey game. So I’m going to talk to Will about me going in Monday morning so I can watch the game and get my business done while I’m downtown. I can take any nights off I want as long as I work those hours mornings but I’d only work a few off during the week. Only during hocky playoff time.

Yesterday I ended up doing over 2k. 2035. Not to shabby. Today, I’m aiming for 3k. I’m going to get into a bit more before I head off to work.

Also, yesterday, George Norey celebrated his 5th yr as hosting Coast to Coast. good stuff George.

In national news the Canadian dollar hit an all time high at 90 cents US. First time since 1978. That's got good spin and bad spin. More on that latter.

That’s all for now

e.Jim

so far no call
from Pizza. To be fair we have no air time on the phone so they can’t call me back. So I’m going to go in there this afternoon and see what’s going on.

I realy need my own phone and if I get hired on at Pizza I’m leaving my current job. What with Pat blowing up at me yesterday because I wanted the dialer beside him and Dale leaving and the work we’re doing with going over to the front 20 for the first half and then the taps (for those that qualify) for the second half. Also, the AHC fiasco and many other things that if Pizza wants me in for an interview and hires me, I’ll leave my job so fast they wouldn’t know what hit them. If it was up to me, I’d be working Mon at Pizza but I have a few days of training to go through but so far they havn’t hired me on. This not having my own cell phone really sucks.
So, I’m going to leave out of here a bit early, 3:30pm right after Hogan and get down there and see what is happening.

Last night I took a gravel and I past out at 2am and slept until 6am so I got 4 hours there. Then I slept from 6:30-10:30 before laying in bed half awake. So, I had a total of 8 hrs sleep. So, I’m going to be on that train to Pizza and be there at 3:45pm. For all I know they might have called me already. I can’t hear the phone because we have no air time.

If the above is the case with Pizza and they have been trying to reach me in this hot economy of ours I wouldn’t know it. But these are the hours I’d work at: Mon-Wed 5-12 and Thur/Fri 11am-5pm and Friday 11-7pm. That’s 35hrs/week and it will get me my Thur night’s off for lodge.

At the moment I’m working on Et and it’s going well. I’ve squeezed a lot of elements that were spread over the course of 5 chapters in the original draft making into two chapters. It’s all about focus and I’m not having multiple viewpints in one scene like I did before.

e.Jim

well, so far
pizza hasn’t called me yet. Of course I only filled out half of the application and they started their day shift just a few hours ago. They might call me when I’m at Xentel. We have a call display so we can see the number on the cell pbone. I really need my own phone. But pizza could call me yet.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think maybe an hour and most of that was rest. I watched a bit of TV and came in about 5am and did some more work on Et and I went back to bed I don’t know, 6:30am or so. I couldn’t say how many hours I got. I’m not tired though.

We got a bit of rain this morning as well before I went to bed but it was nothing to speak about. I think it lasted for about five minutes. We need a lotof rain here because it’s been so dry lately. there are a lot of grass and bush fires around town. The air was smoky coming home last night.
This morning I started doing more work on Et and I think I got the words I needed this morning.

Well, I did 2,064 words on the day. I figure I might be able to keep that pace. If possible. It’s going well and I like what I got so far,. Already on Chapter 2. If I can do 2k Mon-Fri and 3k Sat and 3k Sun, that's 16k for the week. I should be about done by the end of may early june.

e.Jim

I got up
at 6:45am to do the cbi thing and I went right back to bed and slept from 7am-10:45am. I had a good 7hrs sleep. I wanted to go done to Pizza today but I'll go tomorrow and come back for a nap. There is still time to get down there and back. I should have left when I got up and I will tomorrow. I can go down there and be back by 1pm.

I'm a huge Clash fan and I was doing some keyword search for Joe Strummer. Firstly I was surprised to find that Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros were on the Letterman show 10/03/02. I would love to get a copy of that one. Speaking about Joe Strummer, we share the same birthday. Like him, I was born Aug. 21st 1952. I've known about this for some time now.
Also, there is an orginization here in Alberta called, the Joe Strummer Memorial Society of Calgary. Over the Easter weekend they organized their anual Uprise music festival to raise funds for a proposed Joe Strummer community Hall. Way Cool, and way to go Calgary.


Today marks the 20th aniversary of the Chernobyle disaster. April 26th 1986. I was working at A&N/Cobogo when I heard the news home that afternoon. People are still suffering from it's affects. Pretty amazing.

I began work on Et earlier this morning before bed. I'm keeping theepiloguee portion of the book Also, I was thinking about changing the pov from 3rd person to first person but it might change the distribution of scenes and toss the story out of whack.

I'm going to publish this and see how much I can get done in an hour.

e.Jim

work went by ok
Last night. I rode in alone to work this time and enjoyed the trip in. I’m up early around 7am so I can get out of here and be at Canada place to take a number for taxes right away. Doors open at 8:30am. So, I’ll be leaving out of here about 8:00 am. I can be there at 8am to get the number and wait for either Anne to show up or my number called so I can file both hers and my taxes. Hopefully I can get them all done and home by noon.

We had believe it or not, under 20 people today and 5 tap shooters. I ended up with doing $690. We’re losing staff like flies and I’m afraid Rob will be cutting the evening shift as staff is leaving for other employment elsewhere. But that’s all for now. I want to ge out as well before I get the news that this will be our last shift and I’m forced to do mornings/afternoons.

About 6 hours later: I’m awake and ready to get out of here by 8am like I said so I can be down there at Canada Place when the doors open first thing in the morning, so I can get that latter of assesment and once I have our taxes filed, well. I coverd this last night.

I’m having a coffee before I head out. All dressed and packed up. I have all of our T4’s identification all loaded up and ready to go.

Oh yes, the outline to Et is done.

e.Jim

I got to
bed about 3am after working on the outline for Et. Most of the stuff, if not all of it in the original ms is there. I figure it should be ready to write, May first and I’m goin g to writ it with S/S in mind. Each S/S will be about 2000 words. I’m going to work on this for awhile and go back to bed around 8am.

I got up around 7am and stayed up until 9am when I was really tired and I wanted to wait till Anne got up so I can go into bed because she’ll wake me up when she gets up to get ready to go for her Doctor apointment, which was at 11:30am right across from where she works. I tried to publish the above entry to my Blog but Blogger wasn’t working for me. I went back to bed around 9am and Anne didn’t get out of here until just after 10am. I hope she made it for her appointment.

Anyhow most of the outline for Et is completed. I kept most of what I wanted but I took out the two negro boys. This is supposed to be an adult novel. By adult I don’t mean erotica.

Lots of people that drive cars are complaining around town about the price of gas at the pump being so high. I think here it’s $108/L. That’s because the price of a barrel of crude oil as of Friday was sitting over $75 a barrel. Highest I think it's ever been. It takes 2 barrels of Oil to make a barrel of gas. At the same time drivers don’t seem to realize that the reason why our local economy is so strong here is because of the Oil industry. The higher the price of Oil the stronger our local economy is. That’s why we were able to get that $400 rebate cheque back from Ralph in February. If the price of Oil remains high, then we could get another one before the end of the year.

This is why we will be filing our taxes tomorrow is because Anne is off tomorrow and she had her doctors appointment today. But tomorrow for sure. I might even get money back.

Sorry about the spelling. In a bit of a rush now.

e.Jim

I got to bed
about 3am after working on the outline for Et. Most of the stuff, if not all of it in the original ms is there. I figure it should be ready to write, May first and I’m goin g to writ it with S/S in mind. Each S/S will be about 2000 words. I’m going to work on the Et outline for awhile and go back to bed around 8am. I figure I'll be ready to write the rough draft (again) may 1st and I'll have it done by the end of June. Now that I know what I'm doing.

e.Jim

I got to bed
about 3am after working on the outline for Et. Most of the stuff, if not all of it in the original ms is there. I figure it should be ready to write, May first and I’m goin g to writ it with S/S in mind. Each S/S will be about 2000 words. I’m going to work on the Et outline for awhile and go back to bed around 8am.

e.Jim

yesterday I got off
work and had a slow start to the day no bonuses at all. I ended up posting this in my Blog and the bus driver mishap.

I got out of another br last night because I was really tired and after Knight Rider, I went to bed and fell asleep. Anne came in I don’t know around 3am. I slept until 7am so I had a good 5 hrs sleep and got up to do the cbi thing and I did a bsl reading. 12.8! Yikes. I went back to bed and slept until 10:30am because I wanted to watch the Oiler hockey game, which was on at 11am. 1pm Detroit time. The Oilers scored 2 quick goals near the end of the 2nd period. I was elated. Also, they were playing the trap a bit and ended up keeping the score 3-2 right to the 2 min mark. I thought, uh-oh, here comes Detroit with some preasure but the Oilers played it well and then the 1 min mark. Be still my heart. The Wings pulled the goal tender! The Oilers scored into the open net making it 4-2. Incredible. The serries is split. I still believe the Oilers to win in 7.

Anne made us Eggs Benedict for brunch I watched Daniel Boone. A bit of a foot rub for my wife while she’s having a cat nap. I’m about to go out for awlk latter on. But for now it’s back to work on Et.

e.Jim

I almost got ran over
after work. I saw that #182 Abbotsfield bus on the East side of the East bus terminal at Clairview station. This was about 2:30pm. The bus was ready to pull out of the stall loop around and headed strait for me before leaving out of the terminal and onto the street.. At this point most of the drivers stop and let last minute straglers on before leaving the terminal. The bus was in the station and it wasn't like the bus was out on the street and I was hailing a cab. I had my bus pass out and I was right in front of the bus so I moved out of his way so the driver could stop to let me on. Instead the driver kept right on going and almost side swiped me over. I was really mad. I should have tossed something out at the bus. Of course there are no Transit supervisors out on the road on a Saturday afternoon when you need them. I tried to ask the next bus that came in, a Northgate bus if she could call the supervisor and give that last driver a scolding or something but I woud have to go out of my way to call the complaint line. Chances are the only thing I'd get is a recording. Monday or the next time I see a Transit Supervisor, I'll give them an earfull.

Well, other then that work went slow for me. I think I was lowest on the Totem pole. The only thing about going in was I'll get a .50 cent raise on my hourly rate next week and a full shift of hours. Other then that, I was still po'd. I still AM po'd. I'll get over it. That said, I think I'm going to get a nap and see if I can sleep.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

I’m up a bit earlier
then usual. At the moment it’s overcast out there and it looks like it wants to rain. On my plate today, about 9am I’ll be heading out to work. I’ll pay Dale off that $20 I had to borrow because I ran out of insulin yesterday. I should have picked it up last weekend when Anne got paid but like most Thursdays, we usually get paid but we didn’t until last night. Otherwise I would have been fine. Do the job thing for 4 hours. I should be home around 3pm. If I’m tired I can always have a nap when I get back.

Last night though well about 6hrs ago, after I gave Anne the br, I listened to a bit of Coast. Art was supposed to have a show on tonight but got a cold so they are rebroadcasting one of their EVP shows and then Sunday George is doing an NDE show. Topics that aren’t up my alley. Very boring to me. I’ve got an Oiler hockey game but that’s a morning game around 11 am or something like that. Strange.

Other then that not much going on. I’d rather have played the Oilers play Dallas because of the time factor. Those games out East screw the Oilers and the TV schedual. last night the game went to double overtime. The Oilers got their feet wet and they can beat these guys. Watch for a better result Sunday. I still say Oilers in 7.

Anyway, I’m going to finish this scene I’m doing between Chapter 17-18, have my cereal and take my insulin.

e.Jim

I ended up watching
a bit of Have Gun’ and the Rifleman before going to bed at 4am. Before that I was listening to another excellent Coast show. Now we get open lines tonight. I got back into bed around 4am and slept until 6. I got up to do a fast cbi thing and I was back in bed by 6:30am and I slept until just when Anne got up to take the bottles out around 11:45. Rob was with holding the cheques last night. I had a good 7hrs sleep with out any sleeping aids, wine etc.

Et writing wise, I’m working on a transition scene from Chapter 17-18 and it’s coming along pretty good. Off to do some writing then my blogging before it's off to the job. It's a quick 3.5 hr shift tonight and the Oilers are playing game one of the first rounf od the Stanely Cup play offs.

e.Jim

I decided
to cut that scene because it only convoluted the story. Took away more of the mystery then added to it. I'm reworking another part where MC is extracting a bullet in Chapter 5. This is designed to shore up MC's interest in the secondary character. I like where this one is going. but it was hard to concentrate what with kids playing outside, the wife bugging me all the time. I couldn't get anything done. I think I'm going to miss wrestling because of all these distractions. That's why I think I do my best writing around 4-5am.

More later

e.Jim

I got to bed about 3am.
We had trouble with getting Coast bad reception tonight, but around 3am it finaly came through. The show was health topics, Boring. I thought it was “The fountain of youth.” which I think really means genetics. I just listened to the first part for a bit and thanks to the wine earlier I passed out and went fast asleep. I rememeber getting up to pee about 4:30am but went back to bed almost colliding with Anne in the hallway.

Anyway last night we began talking about how hard an inbound call center could be but then Anne woke me up to some disturbing ralities that they might not have quotas in the way that I think but maybe these quotas could have to do with how fast I get the order done. I don’t know. I’d like to try it and see if I can do it and see how they run a shift. See it in action before I decide to take it on.

Oooops, I did a bsll just before the cbi thing and I’m sitting at 13.6. Very high. I should have gone out for a walk and then take my insulin. Anyway, I want to spend an hour working on Et. More latter.

I don’t know how many hours I got sleep wise earlier. Maybe 6. I stayed up after I did the cbi thing and completed Chapter 16 of Et reading.

e.Jim

So much
for the print shop. They're prices are even more then Staples. looks like I'm back to square one. I'm currently in Chapter 15 of Et and it's looking good. That's all fo rnow.

e. Jim

I got into bed
about 3am listened to a bit of Coast's top stories for the day and passed out. I woke up about 6am and did the cbi thing and back to bed. I got another 4hrs sleep after that and up at about 11 am when I noticed Anne gone. So I came out to the living room watched Paladin and the Rifleman and the news. Anne was across the street at Superstore, Anne and I are going into do our taxes tomorrow am and because last time she did it on her own without me because I was at work on a Saturday and I couldn't take advantage of filing electronically, because I wasn't there to give the ok for my filing but she could for hers. This cuts the process down by a couple of weeks. Then I'm going into Pizza.

After Raw last night I did a bit more work on Et. I'm at Chapter 12 of the 2nd read/edit phase and at the same time, I'm working on the synopsis. Since I took out a lot of the stupid stuff I think the overal story is stronge. There are still a few stupid things in there and I'm identifying these as I go along.

One of the guys at work was mentioning a place called C.C and he said their printing is cheaper then Staples. So I'm going to look for this and see what I come up with. I found their downtown location in the yellow pages and they're just off here on 109th and 102nd st. Just down from Norquest no doubt. I'll give them a call and see what I get when I get into the office. If they can print from a cd then I'll burn off copy onto disk and bring it down. If they can read it. If it's going to cost me $5 bucks, then this might be better then going out and buying a new printer. I could (if they are open Sat) go in and drop it off after work and wait 10 min and leave with a nice hard copy for $5 or $10. Maybe a bit of wishfull thinking here but, we'll see.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

I had some great
sleep this weekend despite working Saturday morning. Most government and school kids get Easter Monday off but my wife and I are off to work later this afternoon.

I did some more reading on Et. The nice thing about having a hard copy is I can take it into work. Since I don't have anymore printers ink, I can't get this accomplished. But I read 100 pages over the weekend and I'll be reading some more and edit as I go along before I get into the 2nd rewrite.

It's another beautiful day out there and I'm only there for 4 hours and when I come home it's wrestling time. I want to call that ink refill place in Londonderry. Island ink or something like that. See if they can refill HP 5L toner kits.

e.Jim

That was quite
an afternoon of work on Et. I read about 85 pages and making changes as I go along. I figure at this rate I'll have the 2nd read done by the end of the month. I'd like to have had a back up copy printed. No such luck I guess until I get toner refill.

e.Jim

Today's
going to be mostly reading Et from the screen and I'll do a rolling edit as I go. I was checking our local Staples store down here and at 5 cents a page from a CD to get a copy of Et at 366 single spaces would come in at a comfortable price. Not a cheap as toner refill but then Staples is more accessible.

More later.

e.Jim

I was in the
middle of my Et document when my printer toner began to run out of ink. I hate it when that happens. I'm not going to spend $100 bucks on a new toner cartridge when I can get a refill for $30. So, tomorrow, I'm going to try and see if there are a few places here in town that might be open on Saturdays. Other wise I might have to wait until Tuesday and maybe a week or two to buy one.

There are a few sf type movies that are on my radar scope for this year. Mission Impossible 3 and the new Superman movie. I also went to the Star Wars official website and there seems to be some momentum growing about Star Wars TV. Also, there's supposed to be a Logan's Run remake.

e.Jim

Not a long
post today. I'm still working through the formatting changes for Earth tones and I've got it the way I want it. More or less. I've got a prologue 36 chapters and an epilogue. Before I go to print the 1st rewrite, I'm going to strip the Chapters back down into individual files for easier printing control. I realize I have already done this but I made a few errros. Now that they are corrected, ahem, I'll be giving the book the once over and printing can begin.. This way broken down into Chapter files I can print one Chapter at a time. That might not be until Sunday at the latest.

e.Jim

After the br
I came back out to the office unable to sleep. So I fired up my computer and went to do some more work on Et. I had mostly formating chores to do and some rewriting of the aftermath. I have a prologue 35 Chapters and an epilogue, although Chapter 3 had to be broken up into two chapters so I'm going back and re-format everything before I print out a hard copy for the second rewrite. I want to make sure everything flows properly and check for pov, characterization, story elements, time and space, pacing etc. And that's even before I check for grammar. The whole book comes in at just over 85k.

Anyhow, it's off to work this afternoon and I'll get my pay cheque. A couple of things I'm watching for, this week. First, I hope and cross my fingers that AHC doesn't begin to take that $44 hit off me. Second: Because I had my scheduled night off, will Rob pay me that $30 bonus? I hope to see that on my cheque as well tonight. Third: Will I even have the full amount on my cheque? So far since we have moved into the new office, everything been accurate. knock on wood.

Also, tonight I'm watching like most Oiler fans the out of town NHL score board. Vancouver and SJ are playing again in SJ. The Oilers are playing the Ducks as well here. If the Oilers win here and the Canucks lose in SJ, or even if the Oiler game goes into OT and the Canucks lose tonight and their last game with the Avs then the Oilers might still be able to hold down the finale 8th playoff spot.

I decided as well, to opt out of the Pizza job and just go for a private bank account. Begining next week, I'm going to put some more hours in, after we file our income tax so I can get that letter of assessment. Next week might be: Monday business as usual. Tues tax time, Wed, Thur and Fri work the afternoon shift. That will get me 32.5hrs in.

more later. Come on Sj!

e.Jim

I did some
housekeeping chores in my Blogger Template just now and I also added some links to my link list. These links are more for my information purposes then anything else. When I visit a blog it's through this site.

e.Jim

hard to believe I
have had my cat Pledges here since 1991. I was 38 yrs old. It was in June of that year. I think June 7th 1991 to be exact. Mary and Tracy got him for me at the Westmount pet mart. It was a Friday night, still light outside. I paid $100 for him and best money I ever spent. That was 15yrs ago and I think I still had my old Atari St hanging around. Matter of fact I wrote Meltdown on that machine. This was even before the Internet. Most importantly I was living at the bachelor apartment on156th st. I loved that place.

That was the year I was chasing after Mary. That summer I was in Vancouver for a weekend. The last year I saw Phil and Joyce.

Anyhow the trip into work was very nice. I felt good going in and I was prepared to do Baseball again and sure enough, we did. But I ended up with a dismal total of $197 I had $63 by break. I didn't care. I think only once person out of 5 of us got over $400.

Anyhow, I cut my losses and was glad to get out of there at 9pm. I was tired and I wanted to head home. And I was thinking about working a second job? If Pizza's hrs are 11am-4am and I can come in at any time, then I can leave out of here a couple of times a week and start at 1pm-4:30pm. But I doubt Pizza is going to give me those hours. Would be nice if they did.

I caught the bus home and walked around the back and the noisy neighbors are still below us. The air was mild and dark clouds above. The moon was shining in between the clouds. Very nice and pleasant to be out there. Wasn't like May 19th 1980 or anything like that.

After the br tonight I'm going to come back out here and work the snake scene a bit more. I also need to work on the aftermath and epilogue. I work a little bit each day.

e.Jim

That was
quite a run. After I got the break notice I decided seeing as how Coast was boring I went and wrote the snake scene. There's a sex scene in there and I think I might remove it or tone it down a little. This is where MC snaps. I ended up with 1537 words and the scene is just about completed. I'll most likely work on it when I come home.

e.Jim

it’s beautiful out there.
I love April. Okay, sleep wise, I didn’t fare very well.I stayed up until 3am and I had maybe 2hrs after that. I decided to stay up and do some writing after the 5:30amish cbi thing. I cleaned up the climax scene and the aftermath scene. I even managed to put the bare bones on the epilouge when I decided at around 7am, it was time to get back to bed.

Sleep after that came hard. I think I dozed off around 8:30am and slept maybe 4.5hrs. But not all at once, what with Anne getting up and me getting up and the cats all over me. I might have got 6hrs sleep. Maybe.

I know I have some broken links. I just haven't had time to repair them yet. Sorry about this. I'll get on it over the weekend. I think what's causing the broken links is my lack of having IE7. I'm pretty sure this is a free upgrade by Microsoft but right now, I just don't have the Ram to run it.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Space Shuttle. April 12th 1981. Wow, hard to believe we’ve been with that old clunker for so long. I even mention the launch event in my old 1981 diary I have around here somewhere that Anne went and burried away in the vault. Was the Shuttle program worth it? Did it pay for itself? I think so. I don’t think Nasa is going to retire the shuttle program just yet. They will in 2010. That’s only 4 years away but Nasas CEV program $104 Billion dollars in 2014 will service the Space station. What a piece of junk that is. But any money spent on the space program is good money spent.

e.Jim

Okay, that
job is done. More or less. I got the story broken down into separate chapter files and even then so many interruptions, I screwed up a bit so I'm going to have to go back and re check this. Chapter 12 has a whopping 22 pages. Yikes.

Anyway, I didn't get much sleep, maybe 6 if I'm lucky. I have one major scene to write and one to cut and rewrite and a scene revision. I figure the first rewrite will be completed by the end of the month. Maybe sooner. Second rewrite by the end of May. I'm going to rewrite a third and finale time and by labor day, I should have a finished product to get a agent quarry letter ready and out the door around Labor Day.

more later.

e.Jim

I got
2200 words done today and I think I have some strong material to replace the Castle scenes I took out from earlier. I like what I got here. Some good stuff.

e.Jim

I ended up doing
+2,016 words on the day. I guess I like what I got. In a way, I’m planting seed for a possible adventure based on characters from this book. I like Jeeves and some of Sh’s crew. Especially Hugo. I don’t have anything on my palte for tomorrow except I hope to complete another 2k if not up to 3k. I’m just about done with Sh and returning Ringo back to the original story line.

Also, I hope to get this done tomorrow and my word count because the Oiler/Blues game is on at 5pm. Great tomorrow. Also, I want to go out for a bit of a walk as well. Other then that, I had a pretty good day.

e.Jim

about 4:30am
I woke to this nagging stomach cramp. I couldn’t sleep so I got up and went to the couch and turned on the weather channel. I think I slept 40 min with my feet up and then I turned off the tv slept until about 6am and went back to bed feeling better. I rested and dozed off for awhile after that and my 7am watch rang and it was tough to fall back to sleep after that. Otherwise I’d still be sleeping and Anne wants me to get her up just before I leave out the door. Belay that order. She came in just now and reset that alarm.

That’s my goal today. I’m going to bring my camera into Future Shop and buy some batteries then home and back to bed, maybe I can snag a couple of hours of refreshing sleep. Then get to Et and work hard on that, then supper break and work out the rest of the night. My goal today is 5000 words. Maybe even 5000 more for Sunday.

just had a shower and half dressed and ready to get out by 8:50am. Stomach is a little unsettling still this morning and I did the cbi thing already. I like where I’m going with Et and I’m glad I took out those silly castle scenes. The story is still far fetched but it is speculative science fiction.
So, after I leave when I’m downtown I’ll buy a coffee at Tims and take that into work and I printed some stuff off for readying in case JT doesn’t show up with a paper.

More later

e.Jim

Anne still isn’t back
from the bank yet but she’s bringing me back my $20 and hopefully I can get some rechargeable batteries for my camera on the way back from worklater thisafternoon. I’m waiting for Anne to come back so I can go to bed. I just know she's going to have to buz me. I don't like her going to the bank so late on a Friday night.

Seems Dan Brown waon the Lawsuit against him from the same authors that published Holy Blood Holy Grail I first read HBGB, I think at the Meyers place in 1980. I don’t know where my original copy went to but it most likely ended up in a used books store some where.

Tomorrow, I’m up early for the job thing at 8am and I will be back around 3:30-4pm after my trip to Future shop for batteries. I called them from work just before 5pm and they said any rechargeable should work. Okay but the kit itself is $60 bucks.

After I have a nap I hope to get a good session of Et writing in for tomorrow night. There is no more hockey until I think Sunday or Monday. But I need a good solid evening of maybe 2-3000 words in and another 3k at least for Sunday.

e.Jim

I had a nice evening
at the lodge last night. We had I think about 18 people there. Very nice. The festive borad ended up with 2 tables. Usually we have 4. I had a nice disscussion with one of the regulars there I can’t recall his name though and he’s also a Coast fan and listens avidly. I had a nice chat with Garry as well. Nice guy. He’s a Dutch fellow. I don’t know if he’s related to John, Also Dutch. We have another emergent meeting in May and our regular meeting in June will be held at Fort Edmonton park as it’s Westren night.

Also Grand Lodge (District?) is going to be considering doing criminal record checks on all new petitions, maybe. Not that I have to worry about this. I know why though I was refused the first atempt to join a lodge back in 1994 was because I didn’t have the $200 fee. It was as simple as that. If GL does decided to do this then the fee will be substantually more. Most Govt employers request a crimminal record check anyway.

I took the garbage out earlier and went for a little walk out around the back here. It was windy and raining a bit. Well, spitting. We haven't had a really nice rainfall in the city in a long time. We usually get light rain here. Nothing like they do in Vancouver.

I also at the lodge had a Miller lite beer because it was the only thing in a bottle. But I’m going to the Super Sat April 29th and apparently we’re going to have a bbq after the 2nd half. So I want some cash for that. I also found a bit more on my digital camera and that at least from what Reg says, my camera only takes rechargeable batteries (rcb’s) because the voltage power is higher then non rcb’s, this is why those cheap batteries wont work even though they are AA's. So I need to get a battery re charger and some rechargeables. This is something I could get at Future shop and check into this maybe on the way home Sat from work.

Also one of the DeMolay fellow, another John, I asked him about is Treo and asked about what it costs to have email etc to the pda and he says it's $25 bucks a month. To rich for my blood.

That's all for now.

e.Jim

very nice.
I had a break tonight and I used the time to write like I said last entry. One hour. I went just a bit over because I was having such a great time discovering an aspect of a story I wanted to badly write. Holly Leslie calles these candy bar scenes. The word count for the day took me to 700+ words and I got some fantastic stuff. Wonderful stuff actually and a new character that could be a franchise character in this Universe and a separate book all by himself: “SH.”

Lets get back and finish the scene

e.Jim

I had a slow
night at work. BBB again and I ended up with $351. After work I went to Shoppers and got my test strips. At least management knows I’m off tonight. Lodge night. So that will be okay. I’m looking forward to getting out with the guys have a beer and a bite to eat maybe. After I have my coffee and watch the news, about 12:30pm, I’m running out to Pizza downtown and drop off that application and to see if RC has my T4’s.

Anyway I want to get an hours worth of writing here before I head off to bed. Coast is decent tonight and I want to listen to that for an hour as well but that’s all for now.

e.Jim

work went well.
Anne and I had a bit of a blow up on the train but I had the idea to go up with her across the street to go over to Pizza. The blow up was short lived as well. I now know where they are, on the 17th floor and they have from the reception, a nice operation. There was no one there to greet me probably due to the changing of the guard. I got the application so that was okay. I don’t like the hours as I was a bit disappointed when the reception mentioned them. Mon-Wed, 4pm-4am and 11am-4am and I forget what she said about the hours on the weekends. I won’t work weekends and that’s probably when they need people the most. If all I can do is the 11-4 shift, then I don’t know. I could use one more day but what about if say I go in say 9-1am on a Fri and take the weekends off? I’d still go in Sat morning at my current job. I’d get 7hrs sleep if I’m up at 8am.

Okay. I may have missed observing the American way it's read but I was aware of the subtle “implications” (if any) of this 01:02:03 04/05/06.The moment was within this half hour. The event has come and gone. The next big moment will be 666. June 6th 6 day,06. The real way,the rest of the world writes it will be May4th not April 5th, so the blissful date is still a bit away for us here in Canada. We here in Canada and most of the world write it as day/month/year.

I made a lot of progress on Et earlier. I hacked and slashed and put a bunch of stuff in. But that’s all for me at the moment. Time for bed. Oh, I made a post in t93. First one for 2006. Lets see if it’s going to go through. All for now.

after his approval I added Robert J. Sawyers link to my list of Blogs. Robert’s Blog is an awesome Blog. Robert does great work helping Canadian talent bridging the gap between writer and author. I highly recommend his Blog and his recent book “Mindscan.” Excellent stuff.

Temperatures should climb today to +14* again. Nice. After a bit more work on the novel I went to bed around 3am listened to the news stories George likes to inform us about and I was asleep by 3:30am and I got up at 6amish did the cbi thing and I was in bed by 6:30amish. I had a good 7 hrs sleep. Anne is still sleeping.

So, I have my first coffee here and all is quiet on the home front. Lets dig into “Earth tones.”

e.Jim

okay, work went
well. Apparently the kids spring break is over. But I had a leisurely walk into work and got to my work station and I was thirsty so I cracked open a can of pop and JT came in. I wanted to see where they go for their smoke break and we went upstairs to the patio/sun deck very nice. The view is right behind the Arlington apartments. I immediately thought of Anne/1980, that Summer. Anyhow work went slow for me. I ended up with $520 on a slow night. Twice in a row now I sucked at CHF.

Man does that campaign suck for me.

Bad as it was I ended up with a not bad total. What impressed me on the way home from the bus, just outside here was the spring air. Very nice. Not as nice as it was that day May 19th 1980. That was a special day in my life and I'm glad I have it written down. Not so much the day but the evening. I just wanted to sit on the bus stop bench and soak it in. The air was perfumed with lilac and as overcast as it was and rain on the horizon, I felt so good inside. So, content and at peace with myself. I wasn't out for very long just a short walk around the block but I could feel my life coming together. I was 28 and in love. God what was I thinking

When I went into work, I wore that old black wind breaker I had picked up from Tip Top tailors. I hadn't worn it in ages and even though I'm a bit bigger in the belly, I felt good wearing it. When I got home from work and Anne wasn't around, I tried on the other one. A purple blue lined wind breaker and that felt good on me as well.

Maybe I ought to do some writing. I feel like I want to do some as I mentioned to Anne, I want bed at 1:30pm and I'll give her another back rub. JT had mentioned he saw TNA Wrestling on Spike TV and I caught that before Raw. They have only a half hour show moving to Thursday nights in a few weeks. Their ring is hexagonal. Very nice to see other wrestlers there.

After I wrote the above I cut out 11 pages of et and I'll be inserting the new scenes in. I hope I can get a good 4 or 5 hours of sleep and wake up to do the cbi thing and gt a few good hours of writing done later this morning. I'm also working on my next novel giving lodge brothers some time off. I've got a good portion of this new novel initialling it as SO. SO's outline is about 50% completed and I hope like I said be able to begin work on this by April 15th.

I hope.

e.Jim

did just over
a 1000 words on et this afternoon and I'm about ready to leave out of here for the job thing. This entry will be brief as I have a few blogs to check.

All for now.

e.Jim

I got down to
do some serious brain storming over my next novel and I like where this is going. I’ve got about 50% of it plotted out. I’ve got 37 Chapters a prolouge and an epilouge. I’ve also got the major characters mol set up as well.

Anyway, I think this novel will be ready to write by the end of the month. If all goes well, I should start this by the Easter Weekend. April 15th. That is if all goes well. It could go over 80k and if it needs to go over, then fine. But for now, it’s 80k. I figure at 10/week that would be done in 8 weeks. Or by the first week in June.

I haven’t done anything on Et just yet. Last night I had another break and and I went to bed around 1am and listened to a bit of Coast. Good show. I remember getting out of bed around 6:30am did the cbi thing. I was exhausted and I went right back to bed. I woke up around 10am when some one from above or below, I couldn’t tell began working on the balcony or beneath us. It was hard to sleep after that but I think I got at least 8 hrs.

We startred brekfast/brunch late around 3pm. I watched Lonestar and got right back to the computer. I feel kind of tired and I’d like a bit of a snooze.

e.Jim

March was a long
month. So this year we’re going to have daylight savings time turn an hour back the 2nd week in Nov. Day light savings time will start mid March next year instead of April like this year. So, this is the last year daylight savings time will start April 1st.
I decided to have a break tonight and do it again Sat night/Sun am instead.

foggy out there this morning. I ended up watching Paladin until 3am and I came to bed and past out. I had a good sleep and I got up at 6 and 7, 7;30 etc clock watching and fell back to sleep that sort of thing. Anyhow, I’m going to go into work at 9am and pack everything up gradually get dressed that type of thing. I’d like to do some writing but other stuff conflicting with that this morning.

After work, I’ve got to head over to Shoppers Drug mart and get a refill for my test strips so I’ll be home a bit latter. Hopefully the pay stub won’t be an issue this weekend. I’m rather
worried about that because I don’t ordinarily take pay stubs from her, I should but this week she all of a sudden needs them?

I had an okay day on the job as I ended up doing $654 and X2 $35 credit cards. Also, on my in I bought a Tim’s coffee and had that listening to some of my tunes and I rolled up the rim and I ended up with winning a free coffee. Nice.

I wanted to go down to shoppers but I was tired and wanted to go home and relax maybe get a nap. But I went and got the Tim’s coffee and the train home. I was a bit stressed out over the pay stub issue but if there’s no smoke there’s no fire. When I got home that’s the first thing I asked Anne about and sure enough she had picked it up off my desk earlier. No problem. I tried having a nap but the extra coffee and the stress of the pay stub and getting up early all took their toll on me denying me out of a possible good snooze. I can't sleep when I'm worried about something.

e.Jim