Vid postponed. Windows done.

 

I think all these pics go together so there you have them.

Video postponed til next week, so I sorta get the weekend off.

Window guys finished on Tuesday. The windows look nice. Gotta wait for some colder temps, which we got tonight. I think we can definitely already feel the difference inside. The old windows were so bad that when it got cold you could literally feel the breeze in the room even though the windows were all closed.

The heater seems to come on less also, so hopefully we'll start saving some money in those bills.

---

Got some unexpected good news during the week. First off, my pal Malf who was gonna do the intro for my H'ween antho because he didn't have a story, sent me a text that he was working on a story for me. He was writing it out on his notepad--that's literally. He texted me a picture of a yellow notepad with scribbles all over it.

Guess that means I gotta get someone else for an intro but the story's definitely better.

THEN I get an open submission from one of the authors I'd thought about inviting. I can't explain why, but I sort of feel like this guy is a "fellow" writer. Like, I remember seeing this guy's name in a lot of the magazines I was submitting to back in the day. And I read the story--it's very good. Not exactly what I was looking for, but fuck it--another name to put in the book with a good story.

I even went ahead and upped his rate to what I've offered some of the invited authors. So I'm gonna announce both of them this Monday. I usually announce one at a time but fuck it.

I continue to read more stories. Was getting super bombed last week but it's petering out a bit. I think I'm near 300 total stories submitted at this point. Most aren't good but I think I have five in the Strong Consider category, and like 25 in consider. Prolly only gonna accept maybe 5-8 in the end, depending on length of the stories that get turned in by the invited authors.

At this point I have three stories from them turned in.

--

In bad news, our female puppy has gone into her first heat. It's bad, cuz now her brother wants to hump her. We've kept her in a cloth diaper outfit, but we have to take it off to let her go the bathroom outside. We're having to keep them separated, which they're not used to, so they bark a lot.

After this we'll get her fixed so it shouldn't be a problem. We're debating about getting him fixed or not though, as he's SUCH a good dog that it would be nice to maybe breed him after a few years and keep one of the pups.

They say you should definitely neuter the boy dogs if they're overly aggressive or prone to jump fences to impregnate other dogs, but he DEFINITELY not aggressive and I don't think he can jump the fence. 

We'll see.

 

FML, Part Infinity

 

Wow, so here it is, my day off, but I'm downstairs at 9:30am...wide awake...

The window guys really get bothersome sometimes. Cuz they told me someone would call last Thursday to tell me what was up, and nobody ever did. So basically until around noon that day, we had no idea whether they were coming. After noon, we assumed they weren't coming.

Well, on Friday they texted me that they'd be out today, but someone would call when they were on their way.

Now, they've never gotten here earlier than 10:30am before. I went to bed with my phone near me this time, figuring I'd get the text and could wake up, run the dogs over to the in-laws house, take a shower and be ready when the windows guys get here. (they've texted they were on the way before and it usually was a 60 minute drive.

Well, I get up at 9:15 cuz my dogs are barking. I let them out to go pee, and I see the windows guys are outside in their truck. Great.

I grab my dogs and run them to the other house and come back. Now I'm trapped downstairs so I guess I'm going to try to do some work today, make up some of the PTO I took on Friday.

So my four-day weekend became a three-day weekend. It all went too fast, and then this coming weekend gets ruined because I have a video to shoot. I haven't sent an invoice to them the past couple of months--there haven't been THAT many jobs--but I figure I'm just gonna hold off on asking until April. 

I think I'm gonna owe some taxes, so might as well have that paycheck in the background to pay for it.

 

What a Fucking Week

 

So the window lady on the phone told me it would take two days to finish the windows. The guy who came out originally had said they could do 2-3 windows per day, which translated to 4-5 days.

Since our dogs can't be here while they're working, the wife took off work Monday and Tuesday. She'd take them to her mom's house and spend the day there. I'd stay home, doing my normal remote work while the guys worked upstairs.

Monday went okay. They only got two windows done. Now I know we got a problem.

Tuesday they came out and got nearly three windows done, but one of the window wasn't fully done. Also, when I looked close it was like they were leaving some gaps and bad wood in, and one of the stipulations was that they were to replace any bad wood on the frame.

I text the guy in charge and send him a video of my concerns. Don't hear back from him until the next morning. We clear it up and the guy says he'll talk to his guys and make it right. They do, at least on that window, which takes time.

Bottom line: By the time they were done Wednesday evening, they had done six windows. Five more to go. Now we're in trouble though, as my wife has to work the next day. How we going to do that?

Turns out the weather sabotages us on Thursday and Friday, so it's put off until Monday. I'm off then, so I can take the dogs to the other house when they get too antsy downstairs.The kid is over there, so he can watch them and I'll come back to the house.

Then the wife is off again Tuesday when they should hopefully finish up. It's been a lot of stress. It's hard to concentrate on working tests when there's banging and electric sawing upstairs that's loud as shit.

--

Turns out it's another cheat weekend. Went to Zig's for Friday fun and he made the broccoli cheese soup I love. I ate two bowls, and he gave me more to take home. So I guess it's cheat weekend again, then back at it. I haven't weighed myself in like 8 days so not sure what the weight is doing right now. 

But fuck it, I've got til the end of March to get where I wanna be so I'm not sweating it yet.

---

Am starting to get slammed with the submissions for the H'ween antho. Am trying to figure out if I've got enough invited authors at this point. Really hard to know until they turn in their stories and I see how many words they add up to.

Trying to nail down the title. It's hard -- so many titles have already been used...

Eating Is Cheating

 

It's SB weekend. You know, the big game. I don't give much of a shit about it, but there's always a little get together with friends and FOOD.

So I decided to cheat this whole weekend starting Friday night--because JB has a Valentine's special that night--I always get a slurpee on those nights. Watched the first part of it--was fun but didn't love the movie.

Then Saturday, had pizza for the first time in over a month. Plus another slurpee.

Then Sunday, crab dip, cheese, more cheese, and other stuff. Polished off with a slurpee.

Back to diet tomorrow...

But also, they're coming to put in our new windows tomorrow so it's gonna be hectic. My wife has to take the dogs away so they don't go apeshit, and I'll be here working so hopefully nobody's upstairs stealing shit. I mean, I can always take my laptop upstairs if these guys seem shifty.

They better do a good job, cuz it's costing me over 10K for 11 windows...Fuuuuuuck.

 

Looking Back

 

I don't go back and look at this blog at all unless I'm searching for dates or information I might have put about something I can't remember.

Until NOW.

You see, we're coming up on the 19th anniversary of me starting this blog. I know, right? This blog is as old as my kid, and I've stayed fairly regular most years, though my output slowed at times.

So I thought...I should go back and read from the beginning, see if there's things I forgot about, see what I had written down.

First, wow, I'd get canceled over SO MANY posts it's nuts, if I was anybody worth canceling. Luckily I'm not.

Second, I'd forgotten--after the last however many years of hardly anybody posting a response--that at one time there were multiple people commenting on the blog. We had cheeky discussions and fun. Now, I have no idea who still reads this. I see the numbers but with the exception of maybe three people, I'm not sure who the rest are.

It is a very weird trek through my life to see my thoughts and expectations about what was going on. And so much stuff that I had forgotten...I read through the first three years--takes some time, but it's kind of addictive to me.

---

The H'ween antho continues to take up a lot of my time. Reading all these stories. I am a very harsh critic, so not a lot of stories are making it into the consider pile. It's funny, I read a lot of anthos and I keep thinking, "This wouldn't have made it into my book..."

But it all boils down to preference. Apparently those editors connected with the stories I didn't. (I'm not speaking of the known-author stories in these, as we're kind of stuck with those--we invited them, so the story is going in even if we don't particularly like it)

I'm still a little confused on why some of these authors aren't even replying to me. Like, a simple "too busy" or "not interested" would be enough, but it's radio silence.

However, got another yes, so I may be nearing my end point on that. I really won't know until I get the stories and find how how many words it all comes to. If everybody turns in super-short stories, I'll need a few more.

--

Man, the picture below makes my heart hurt. I loved that time period, buying those Infocom games brand new and taking them home to discover worlds I could live in for a while.

 

 

Thursday Night Fun

 

Went over to the Malf's to go over details of this Xmas movie we're planning to make. I printed out my pages and he printed out his, and we read each other's to get an idea of what we're doing and if we have any advice on them

But first we went out to dinner. I haven't eaten a real meal more than once in the month of January--we hit a bar, I had a burger and it was glorious. I'm not even sure it was any good, but at this point it tasted amazing to me.

We also got roped into trivia--so we ate some dinner and drank beers while the trivia went on. We got 24 out of 32 which didn't win, but the teams we were playing against had like 8 people on them AND I'm pretty sure some of them were cheating. 

Then back to his house. Too cold for a fire pit, so we hung out downstairs. I like what he's doin but we definitely have to embrace the camp for his. He also was sort of stuck where he was, and it was pretty apparent to me what it was, so I told him and he agreed. He's gonna explore what I mentioned to him and go from there.

He had some advice on mine, but his advice is always a bit of massive rebuilding. I have to decide what I want to use from his suggestions. A lot of times there are things he wants to change because that's how HE'D write it. Thing is, those choices don't work for me a lot of the time because I'm not him.

But he had a couple of good ideas I'm thinking about how to implement a few things without jettisoning some stuff. 

Malf also told me some backstory on how he learned to play keyboard. It's a pretty funny story, and one part seemed so far fetched I thought he was either exaggerating or lying. Well, he's like, "I have it on tape", and he digs out a VCR. I have to hook it up for him(what cables go where? What input do you use?"), but we watch it.

It's crazy. He definitely wasn't lying or exaggerating. It's him playing a concert at the high school we both went to. He really doesn't even look like himself--if you'd shown me the video and asked, "Who's that?" I would have had no idea, because it didn't sound that much like his voice now either.

Anyway, fun night. I went in late to work the next day, but no big deal. I busted my ass Friday through Tuesday because they suddenly dropped like 20 tickets into my lane at one time. It was insane.

All that and I'm dealing with my trainees still.

Work also continues on the H'ween antho. Still reading submissions. We've gotten somewhere around 140 so far. I've got like 15 considers, but only two of them do I really like.

Got another writer to commit--someone Malf recommended I ask. I've never heard of her, but he loved her book of short stories, and she's hot and will be at the convention we're going to in April, so now I'm suddenly thinking he prolly recommended her to me because he wants to get it in.

Fuckin' Malf, LOL.