That was close. Time: 12:00. Word count: 50,007. Stress level: Daaaaaaaaayum. But still: BOOM! I've been writing pretty much solid since 8am this morning. Surprisingly I think most of it is keeper material. Those last thirty minutes were rubbish though. I pasted my 50k-odd manuscript into the word counter, and NaNoWriMo reckoned it as 500 words fewer than Open Office counted, so in the end...

Can't sleep, though I should be exhausted. It's been a long week peddling textbooks to the youth of today, and I feel like someone dropped a bomb on me. But as of this evening, the real real real bad stuff is over I think, and now we get to clean up the pieces. It was a good first week. Which is a little bit of a surprise and a relief, considering what a staggering, monumental clusterfuck the...

I'm getting punchy. I can't remember if I already wrote about these. Whatever. They're so good, they're worth doubling down on. Here, whiskey, help me out. (Okay!) Once every year, give or take, I come across an author I've never read before and who has, to my knowledge, not been seriously investigated by anyone I know, or, better yet, is perfectly unknown to all my friends. I "discover" that...

Saturday I went working out with mordicai . Free pass at the YMCA! It was what under normal circumstances I would consider a moderate workout ... about an hour of machines and free weights, and then a 1.25 mile run (which was all I could manage). I haven't worked out since we moved, which means not since December 2008. I probably should have gone easier. I was barely even sore after the...

Maggie and I hosted D&D game night last night, as our party of adventurers breached the fell Keep in the forest. There weren't really any combat encounters, except when a monk from a clan of bounty hunters tracked Kall Tarmin ( kromelizard ), who blithely led her right to his companions. I thought it was going to be a tougher fight than it turned out to be. A monk and almost...

Jay Lake's Green: A Departure for the Clockwork King — jeffvandermeer with a brief interview of me about Green [  Powell's | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Borders  ] . mordicai comments on Escapement [  Powell's  |  Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Borders  ] 1909 Russia in living color: The photos of Sergey Prokudin-Gorskii — A piece of history most of us don't see...

Biting my tongue about neighbors is difficult but I suppose there are good things to speak of as well. Like...D&D! On Friday David ran a game for mordicai  , skycornerless  , toughlad  , Erica & myself. The game started early afternoon so by the time that Erica & I joined in we'd acquired two hippogryphes which is very exciting, lemme tell you! I only want more & more animals...

Yesterday Maggie had the day off and I had the day off and we spent the afternoon together walking around town. We wandered midtown a bit, used a Starbucks for their bathroom (which Maggie loves to do, and is really the best reason to have a Starbucks on every corner), had cheapo hot dogs and fries and pina colada from Papaya King, then went to Compleat Strategist, where Maggie enjoyed her first...

In studying self-defense, it strikes me... ironic? that out there somewhere are people kneeling at the feet of Mystery, studying the art of seduction - first gain confidence in the shadowy nightclub, then master the art in broad daylight - the supermarket, say, or friendly professional turf. While at the same time, out there somewhere are people kneeling in a dojo, studying the art of self-defense...

NERD ALERT - skip this post if you don't give a crap about RPGs A while back, mordicai and I had a back-and-forth about RPG PDF vs. hard copies. I complained that WOTC ripped people poff by overpricing their PDF's. Looks like they have now completely banned the sale of PDF s, citing piracy as their main reason for doing so. I find this pretty hysterical. I had the 4E books two weeks before...