Year in Summary

This year has both been awesome and it has sucked. Some goals were achieved, others not so much.

I was drugged out of my mind for a good chunk of Christmas since Jennifer and I were both sick, but we got better. Jennifer had to go to the doctor a second time because she got a sinus infection though. The current medication she's taking is helping a lot. I got a lot of nice Christmas presents including a small book with photoshopped animals with encouraging phrases, a shirt with a devil burying dinosaur bones that says 'teach the controversy', a book on how to make videos, a mole skin notebook for New York, a mole skin weekly planner, an MP3 player (which will make work MUCH more tolerable), and candy :)

Goal Review.

Physical: Reduce my weight to 225lbs. Losing 30lbs, at an average of 1800 calories a day for diet with 1-2 free days a month, exercising aerobically 4 times a week for 300 calories each session for 22.5 minutes, lifting weights 2 times a week using at least the 30 pound weights. Currently at 180 calories each session with the goal to raise 20 calories a week until I reach 300. The goal is to start with 1 weight lifting session in Jan and then adding another in Feb.

**Status. Fail on the weight. Succeed on the exercise. I've also joined the YMCA and going 2-4 times a week.

Mental: Read 1 Good non fiction book a month + 2 slowly over Wed. I plan to start with Fast Food Nation. The two slow books will be "Search Engine Marketing" and "Philosophy and Super Heroes."

**Status. Success. All books read. Plus many others that were worth reading.

Graduate Grad School with at least a 3.0 average (preferably with honors) in May.

**Status. Success.

Spiritual: Continue scripture study, prayer and other activities.

**Status. Prayer has continued. For now we are reading out of Jennifer's spiritual quote of the day book. Success.

Read at least one major spiritual work belonging to another religion.

**Status. In progress. Reading the Dhampala. Est completion two weeks.

Emotional: Be kinder. Have Less Anger.

**Status. Success.

Social: Get involved with a service project at least once a month starting in April.

**Status. Success. This has largely consisted of helping Mythic Journies and Grandma with her house. Not what I originally had in mind, but it has worked well and been quite fulfilling.

Writing:

Write a status update of all writing (prose) projects once a week.

**Status. Partial. Pretty darn good though.

Begin writing high fantasy in September of 2009, at 1000 words a day for four months to create 120,000 words for the novel so I can still have 100,000 words and cut 20,000 of them.

**Status. Partial. Only 16000 words written so far, but I'm not satisfied at all with it and may start from scratch.

Write 12 short stories, 1 every three weeks until then to flesh out the world. Outline the short stories here but write them off line so I can submit them for publication (Thus forcing me to improve the stories to publishing quality standards.)

**Status. Partial. 4 were written. Never submitted for publication.

I am also considering writing a science fiction story once a month, but I will wait until after Grad School in May 2009 to do this, which would make the goal to submit 7 non novel related short stories for publication in 2009.

**Status. Never started.

The novel short stories (fantasy) must NOT be part of the novel itself or involve its characters. This is designed to flesh out the world and make it more livable.

**Status. Success.

Film: Write two film scripts.

Status: Success. Other People's Musicals + Assist w. Architects of Fear.

Produce two films.

Status: Partial. Just one. Lack of funds + Chaos precluded.

Submit at least one of the two to a film festival this year. The film should be no shorter than 4 minutes and no longer than 10.

Status: Incomplete. Still being edited but it will be kickass when done.

Invention: Buy and read at least two Law School text books on Patent Law.

Status: Fail.

Economic: Maintain my job.

Status: Laid off twice, let go once by telephone. However, employed 8 out of 12 months in the technical writing field in the worst year since the Great Depression. I call that success.

Pay off more of Credit Card.
Status: Success.

Make preparations for child.
Status: N/A

Obtain 5 most important items as determined by Jennifer and I.
Status: 2 out of 5. Video Game Computer. Furniture. Funds have been severely limited.

Make Red Anvil Productions Gaming have its first profitable year.
Status: Success. By about $150.

Family: Improve relations. Be slightly less annoying.
Status: Success. (In my opinion.)

Friends: Have at least 3 non game related social events over the course of the year.
Status: Success.

Children: Have 1. Have all physical preparations made at least 2 months in advance of birth.

Status: N/A

Other:

Create at least one podcast a month (probably short stories already written)
Status: Success.

Create a fourth blog by March involving unknown quantity or subject for fun and/or profit.
Status: Success.

Create a group of new life goals by March.
Status: Partial. It took another 6 months.

Ensure that all selected items in the Christmas Coupon Book I gave Jennifer are delivered/fulfilled.
Status: Success. All but one and that one will be done tomorrow.

Go to Gencon 2009.
Status: Success.

Go to DragonCon 2009.
Status: Success.

Go to Boston for my Graduation.
Status: Success.

Learn to Juggle.
Status: Started to learn and after about 20 hours discovered, 'Why the HELL do I want to do this again?' I stopped. Total success.

Learn to Shoot a Pistol.
Status: Failure.

If Brett is sent to a Spanish Speaking Mission, Refresh and Brush up on my Spanish.
Status: Success.

Christmas Thoughts

Tis midnight, and it is now Christmas. We attended two parties over the last weekend, one with Jay and Dee on Saturday and one with Jennifer's company. I admit that her company party was kind of hard for me, because I miss having a job that takes me seriously. Case in point, this last Sunday afternoon, RBS World Pay, a company who I thought I had a perfect working relationship with, called me up on the phone via my contractor to tell me that I would not need to come in for the last two weeks of my contract. I give them two weeks notice, and still had plenty of work to do, and they decide that I'm not needed.

Apparently turn about is not fair play. The thing is, that I have strong reason to believe that people who I had known for several years and trusted decided that they would let me go in this fashion. Thus is the life of a contractor.

We've also been quite sick this week. Jennifer has had some worrisome coughs, though we went to the doctor on Monday. She's been getting better for the most part, but it still isn't gone for either of us. And yet despite all of the negativity, I feel overwhelmingly positive. Want to know one reason? Because Jennifer Loves me and I love her. We each opened a present and the one I opened from her was this silly little book that had animal faces photoshopped into grins and smiles with all kinds of truly nauseating positive expressions.

And it cheered me up considerably. In the grant scheme of things, I have a lot to be grateful for. Hell, despite being let go early, I still have a job lined up at the beginning of the year that is going to pay me decently, for at least a few months. I have friends, family and a spouse that love me, and I have my health, as imperfect as it may be. :)

Merry Christmas, and God Bless Us, Every One.

Life

Well I have a new job. I start on Jan 4th. It is a three month contract. I will be in my current contract until the end of the month so things are working out rather nicely. :) There are few snags on the wording of the contract which I'm a bit worried about, but they sent me an offer letter and I signed it. We'll see how things go. The weekend before last we saw The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was quite good. This past weekend I ran my shadowrun game (the third installment.) Sunday we watched a lot of TV and had a very relaxing day. Last night Julie, Mom, Jennifer and I went to watch Niel Gaiman read from two of his books and get some autographs. It was awesome. He autographed EVERY single person's book. There were over 600+ people there. We were toward the end of the line and got out at around 1am.

Thanksgiving Etc

Thanksgiving was a nice break. Didn't do much, which was just they way I like it. Jennifer and her mother went shopping most of Friday so I had the whole day to myself. Surfed some on the net, but also finished reading Conversations with God and The Unbehead King trilogy. Saturday we saw 2012. Bleh. I will say this though, Joyce lays down a MEAN Thanksgiving day table. It was delicious. The turkey was the best I have had in years. It was Jennifer, myself, Joyce (my mother in law), Dick (her husband), and two of their friends who lived near by. There was also football watched. I am not a football fan, but I watched with them to be social. Despite some misgivings about A&M, I was still pleased that they performed as well as they did against UT. Right now I consider myself more an alumni of Boston University than any other school (that is, it hasn't kicked me out because I missed a single test or made me so angry I would want to spit nails at faster than the speed of sound)...but I never physically attended...and so far as I know, they have no major sports teams. But the more I find out about them, the more I like them. I attended an alumni networking event recently that was quite cool.

This week has been redonkulously busy. Monday night I played board games at a friend's house. Tuesday night I ran a MUSH event on the internet and last night I went to a Christmas party for the people I did the grant writing for (Mythic Imagination Institute)...but there must have been some kind of miscommunication because no one was there...'s OK really, I brought the chips for the potluck home and Jennifer and I ate them. :) Wednesday, I spent the night with Ken hammering out the last portion of the 4th novel.

The job market is definitely improving. I've had a lot of recruiters contact me recently. I think that might be why my current contract has been extended again to Feb 30th. I guess they (mostly) want to keep me. There are a few other issues I won't disclose on a public blog (yet anyway) but I get along great with my boss and my boss's boss.

Happy Thanksgiving

Things are going fairly well. The trip down to Florida was long due to traffic but otherwise went fairly well. My contract has also been extended until Jan 29th, which is a good thing. The dog seems to be enjoying himself. Joyce cooked a remarkably excellent Thanksgiving dinner. The bird and potatoes were just right. Jennifer seems to be enjoying herself immensely.

Looks to be a nice and relaxing vacation, which will engender no complaints from me. :) Last weekend was also moderately uneventful, though I did go to Augusta with Mom and Grandma to help clear Grandma's house. It will take some time but we made a dent in it.

Update

So its been an interesting two weeks. I think the first thing that bears mentioning is that I was on television yesterday. That is not entirely correct. I was taped for television yesterday and it will appear next week. It was on a local cable access show at Clarke University for a show they have called ‘Reel Cinema’. I was invited by J. Weilin (creator of the Sentinel Chronicles) to answer a few questions as Sr. Writer. It is rather fun. I gave him a ride home and we discussed how to flesh out some of the ideas and back story in his universe. Madeline (who was in my short film “Other People’s Musicals”) and Sophia (who is Madeline’s friend and an actor in the SC) were there as well. If I can find the thing broadcast on the internet, I’ll send the link.

The good news is that my current contract has been extended, though only to December 4th. The better news is that I’m getting calls from recruiters at a time of year when I normally never get calls. Now, I’m not entirely sure if it is because I’m getting better at searching, I’m attracting more attention because I’ve got more credentials, or simply because the environment is better. To be honest, what I think it really is is that most companies saw the hand writing on the wall at the beginning of the year and have been in deep storage (“siege”) mode during 2009, and have thus put off ‘optional’ things like Technical Writing and now the work has piled up. The truth is, about half of the jobs in my career have resulted from people piling up the tech writing in the ‘wait’ category until its coming out their ears. It quite often makes a lot more sense in the long run to simply keep one either on contract (as needed) or on staff full time.

However, I am still trying to get out of tech writing and into project management. The good news is that I’ve had recruiters approach me, but the bad news is that most of the things they’re approaching me for require experience. To get the PMP they want 3 years of experience in a project based environment. Yeah, I have one, while I was at Openspan. The others might have used projects but I wasn’t involved in them. So right now I’m drawing up the blue prints for around five projects helping others that at the same time will help myself. Four of them could theoretically earn money and one of them will be for charity. I’ll include more details as they come up. I’m almost tempted to start writing a Project Management blog on linked in, or to continue that “Pulling Teeth Electronically” blog I had to do for my ecommerce class, but …well…here is my list of current blogs and you tell me if that is a wise idea.

This blog (Weekly)
My live journal (As I feel the need to rant)
My Obama blog. (As I feel the need to rant about the media)
My Dailykos blog (As I feel the need to rant about specific things in a targeted way)
Let Me Tell you about my Character (For roleplaying game summaries and the like, about every two weeks)
Tossing Grenades at Windmills (my writing blog)
Memes of my Father (my strange/quirky things blog or where I put memetic answers)
I have an Opinion About Almost Everything (my review blog)
State of the Anvil (The Red Anvil Productions blog, as needed plus the monthly podcast plus updating the website)

So that is…9. Yeah, as tempting as it is to make an even 10, I think I’ll pass. Plus I should have something to write about in this. I mean, I put links to reviews I write, but I don’t put political stuff, roleplaying stuff, reviews, writing updates, product updates or the like here…then again, most of that would probably bore you to tears anyway so its probably just as well that I do so…

Plus one of the ways I get away with juggling so many different things is fooling myself into thinking its not really that much…breaking it into small chunks which I do here.

We celebrated Grandma’s birthday last night. Mom, Skip, myself, Jennifer, Grandma and Mom’s friend Daniel were there. We watched Up. Did I mention that it is an awesome movie? Jennifer and I gave Grandama a copy of Redwall (which is about a talking Mouse) which I am quite sure she’ll love.

This past weekend, Jennifer and I went out to eat a rather nice Persian restaurant. The food was fairly cheap. It had to be since we’re watching what we spend. Many of our gifts will be hand crafted this year (though not all of them of course). But I’ve discovered that I LIKE Persian Food and Thai food as much as I like Mexican and Italian. To be honest, most far Asian stuff or Mediteraian just doesn’t do it for me. Its not that I dislike it, its just that I have to carefully navigate to find what I like. Not so with Thai or Persian. I have to go out of my way to find something I don’t.

This week

Well it has been quite a week. I think the most shocking thing was the death of my paternal grandmother. Most of Wednesday was a scramble to find a way to pay for a ticket. Unfortunately, I’m currently in a very short term contract which meant that I had to watch the numbers very carefully. Finally, it became apparent that it just wasn’t going to happy. The even greater irony was that my maternal grandmother was willing to pay for the ticket, but I didn’t find out about that until Thursday, which meant that my ability to make up the lost hours during the week was effectively shot. I was willing to have her pay for the ticket given the circumstances (although reluctantly since having helped Grandma with her house situation I know that wasn’t an easy sacrifice for her to make) but I was not going to have her do that AND pay to make up the hours I would lose if I flew in on Friday.

Which meant that we pretty much kept up plans as usual on Saturday. I mean, on the one hand, it was fun going to two Halloween parties. And they were good parties. On the other hand, it was kind of surreal going and celebrating a relatively minor (and certainly not to me Spiritual (though I know it is to others)) holiday and at the same time my extended family is gathered on the other side of the country mourning and celebrating my grandmother’s life. I tried to do the ‘I’m enjoying life to celebrate her death’ thing but that’s kind of hard since, while Grandma certainly enjoyed her life, she was not exactly what I might call a “Carpe Dium” kind of woman, at least not in her later years where I knew her. They certainly traveled a lot, which was fascinating to hear the anecdotes from.

The most interesting thing to come out of the two parties we did attend was seeing the first episode of the Sentinel Chronicles’s second season. Jay is very talented, as are many of the people that work with him, but you can SEE the differences between Season 1 and Season 2. By Jay’s own admission, he spent over 250 hours in post production. Granted, this was mainly from special effects of things like Shell Casings, but the thing is, that ironically they’re mostly things you take for granted or that slip into the background. Case (no pun intended) in point…the shell casings from the guns? CGI. Also, sometimes the scenes flash by so fast that you don’t realize that one of the two sides fighting are CLONES, which means that he had to literally imprint the same actor three times onto the screen. Then again, the best special effects, particularly CGI effects makes the special effects flow into the background so the story itself can be paramount.

The second party, a white wolf international Camarilla event, had an amazing floor show. It also had an extremely celebratory atmosphere and I admit I did enjoy dancing with Jennifer while we were there. I dressed as a Mad Scientist and Jennifer dressed as Nyx, Greek goddess of the night. I still need to get a picture of her costume on here.

Currently Reading : Conversations with God, The Clocks of Iruz

Currently Watching: Supernatural Season 3