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Good News and Hurricanes

I am worried about the current Hurricane for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it may head towards New Orleans and Houston.

Jennifer was able to finish the costume. Tonight we are making final plans for DragonCon. I am not a camera person, but if you've never been, getting a taste of how fun it is is worth spreading so I may attempt to actually use the camera on my cell phone for the second time ever on my own. The first was to send Jennifer pictures of Shamu/Seaworld. We'll see if I can join the 21rst century and figure out how to get them off of my phone and onto my blog.

Skip has challenged me to write a 100,000 words in two months. He's volunteered to edit this. To put this in perspective, I wrote the first novel in 5 years. The second has taken 3, and is looking like it may be 3 1/2 to 4 before I try to get it published. This combined with the other novel I'm writing with a friend (albiet at a slower pace) is going to keep me quite busy. To anyone who is interested in watching me (probably) crash and burn in my two month challenge, you might want to check out the Tossing Grenades at Windmills blog I also maintain on this site. I'll not be putting actual writing there, but I will put some notes.

I got an A in my last class. That is 8 of 12. 2/3rds of the way done. I graduate in May.

Jennifer has completed everything but her final written project and her oral defense. She looks to graduate some time in January.

She will slowly work off her meds after Dragoncon after which it looks like we will begin trying to have our first.

For Dragoncon, we're putting the dog in this kennel like place that has a web cam. Might include the link for those obsessed with bizarre things like watching other people's pets frollic and play. :)

Red Anvil Productions now has a website. http://www.redanvilproductions.com.

I have now officially had my job for a year and it seems (knock heavily on wood) to be going well.

Life

Well, "The Fate" has sold more than any item I've sold since my first, so it seems to be doing well. Still far from what I'd call profitable in any sense whatsoever, but it was fun to do.

Picked the costumes up from the Dry Cleaner today. Golddame55 will be doing the alterations this weekend. She also recently got a "Bolwick" which is apparently a glorified sword holder and a pretty cool sword. She got a pistol for herself so the costumes should look keen when done.

Played board games last night with a friend of ours; Cranium. Still, even with the expansions if you play it enough times some of the answers become rather easy to guess. Still it is an awesome game because it lets people socialize in all of the different categories they're good at. It does suck though when someone rolls two or three purples in a row and is suddenly half a game ahead of you. I think they've changed it in later cranium games, but to be honest, I hate all of them but the original Cranium game. Not sure why, they just seem lame by comparison.

It is Finished

I always wanted to do a large roleplaying game supplement with professionally done art and of a decent size. I've had a lot of people help me over the years, both with this and other projects for which I appreciate the help. This is a 'life goal' just like writing the first novel was. In fact, I've done a good chunk of them now so I'm going to have to make up a few more. Raise the bar as it were. :)

Here is the link (http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=57234&src=FrontPage") to the cover page if it interests you. If you're a family member and interested in a copy, ping me.

Golddame55 is finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with her masters. She turned in the results of her course report Monday. It was 50 PAGES! At this point she only has to revise an essay and all she has left are the final thesis of her masters and oral defense. The final thesis uses parts of her other major projects so it shouldn't be so bad, but the oral defense (mid September) will be a bit challenging potentially. Probably not 50 pages challenging though.

Enjoyed visiting with Christy, Jenny, Julie, Mom, Grandma, Skip and the wonder twins on Sunday. We talked a lot and had good food.

We've signed up for this monthly 'organic food' program which is locally grown. Its good food though we've gotten an AWFUL lot of blue berries each week. Fortunately golddame55 loves blue berries.

Dragon con is coming up in two weeks which is like, the biggest convention in the south east. Upwards of 30,000 people go to it each year and it utterly fills up about a dozen hotels (4 of which have the programs events etc). We're greatly looking forward to it. Saturday night we'll be wearing the Irish Pirate costumes golddame55 made last year for the masquerade.

Frustration at the workstation

So the neat news is that I get a new lap top at work.

The bad news is that the image is @#$@#$@ up and I get to spend almost all day (and still not done so far) trying to get it to work at basic functionality because our IT department (one guy) is rather stretched at the moment.

Jennifer has done a lot on her Master's program. Thank you very much to Skip, Julie, Joyce and Rachelle for their help. It was very helpful and she was able to get the data she needs, she just has to finish putting it together at this point. We will both be very happy to see it done and out the door at this point.

I'm currently on book four of the "Wild Cards" series and enjoying it quite a bit. Had to order a few of the more obscure books online used since they're rather old (about 20 years). Not family fare.

What is family material that is pretty good is "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 3D. I'm not recommending it, because there are so many OTHER good movies at this point, including family movies that I can't see justifying it, and even on Netflix I could name 100 movies you probably haven't seen that are better; but since we've seen a good chunk of the movies worth seeing in the last few weeks, it was a good mindless waste of time. We nearly got a DVD from blockbuster, but apparently my card has expired, and their contract mandates that any problems you have with them go to Binding Arbitration. Yeah, not a big fan of binding arbitration, so we saw the movie instead. Sometimes you have to do it, but not to get movies from Blockbuster. I was over their poor service and loan shark letters enough to give them another try (after like...5-6 years) but not enough to give them my credit card and sign up for Binding Arbitration.

Not a fan, sorry. Not to say I'll never sign an agreement like that, but not with Blockbuster.