My how quickly the days fly by! I’m trying to blog once each day but am finding that difficult. Luckily I am finding my goal to write each day a lot easier to accomplish. The Angels game on Sunday was loads of fun, especially with the two friends who were responsible for our adventure.

What a difference, the two ventues…Dodger Stadium versus Angel’s Stadium. Wow.

I think I prefer Angel’s Stadium. Among other things, the food’s much better.

Monday’s log:

No writing. Angel’s game and lots of laughts. And the gym.

Tuesday’s log:

Some writing, lots of plot work, and some birthday for for MK’s day. Gym time again.

Today’s log:

Not a lot of writing, but lots of good plot work accomplished and more good gym time.

Tonight: fancy dinner to celebrate MK’s birthday (sort of like the royal observance). Yum!

Annnd…Another Missed Day…But For Good Reason

So…as I said on Friday, I was going to go to my very first ever Dodger’s baseball game. Well, let me tell you what! For a first game, I sure got a good one. First…some photos:

Yes, these were our seats. Pretty much 18 rows back from home plate! Awesome, awesome seats. Thank you Don!!

Dodger Stadium…kind of a fun pic.

Us at the game. The little guy behind us kept kicking my seat – he was so excited. Too cute! (slightly gritted teeth). <grin>

And lastly…

Me…and a Dodger Dog. At long last, a match made in heaven. Oh, and there was also cotton candy, coke (Zero) and frozen yogurt. Just to make the experience complete!

Really, I had an absolute blast.  A nail-biter of a game that ended in a bases-loaded WALK!! to score the final run to end it in an extra inning. Lots of fun.

So…for the writing.

I didn’t do much yesterday, what with the baby shower (oh…please…no more…) for a niece-by-marriage and then the Dodger Game. Friday, however, I knocked out 13 pages!

Having some plot difficulties on one item, but I’ll get that smoothed over. Also knocked out another fanfic story – keeps the blood flowing.

My day thus far (I am sure to repeat these words in my blog later). Get up, sit in the hot tub to ease my back. Clip the dog (whoa, did he need it! I think I have enough to knit myself a Charlie, Jr.), then wash said dog. That’s always fun.

MK is on the couch happily quilting and watching a really bad German war movie – her idea of a perfect day. Update on the movie: apparently everyone dies. Bummer.

I’m puttering on my laptop and considering doing some writing. All and all…a perfect Sunday.

Tonight: More of the above and hunt up something appropriately red for tomorrow’s Angels game.

Make-up Post

Didn’t post last night, mainly because I was writing! Woohoo!

Now…some of it was for-profit writing and some was for fun. The fun came in the form of fanfic, yet another Stargate story in a series of my own making (Click here to read it).

On the for-profit side I have been diligently working on that long-awaited novel. Having some plot issues to work out, but all in all things are shaping up nicely.

In other news, after tomorrow I shall no longer be a Dodger-dog virgin. Through the gracious efforts of a friend we’ve got fabulous seats for the game tomorrow. And, in a really weird coincidence, another friend gave us fabulous seats to the Angels game on Sunday. From 0 to two So-Cal baseball games in…16 years! Wowsers.

Should be quite the time. Have to fit in a baby shower too, so…hmmm.

Tonight: no writing, just reacquainting myself with my partner at the end of her very long week.

Success!

Ahh, bliss. I wrote today. For a good three hours. Yippee!

Tonight. Reread what I’ve written (which is, yes, fanfiction, but still), and plot the rest of the novel. Woohoo!

Tuesday’s Child is Full of…?

I think I now know why the Great American Novel doesn’t get written. Who the hell can find the time?

I will write this summer, and something more income-generating than fanfic. I will.

Today’s log:

Worked out (yay!) for 45 minutes (9.27 miles) on the bike at the gym while watching SG1 on my iTouch. Awesome little machine, thanks Mr. Jobs and Friends.

Stopped at the store to buy two floor-stander fans – got to move the air in our house! They, alas, had no floorlamps, which is another necessity. I’ll leave that to tomorrow.

Paid some bills.

Spent six and a half hours making changes to the Disney/APTA/Ped’s Section Brochure for the 2010 WDW Marathon. Yeesh.

Pulled all of my “winter,” i.e. long pants and jeans  (this is California, after all) clothes out of the drawers and put them into one of those neat suck-em out bags so it’s now a heavy log of jeans and dress pants. Can’t wait for Fall. Open bag, shake out trousers, and voila! Winter. Such as it is. I did save out a pair of jeans and a pair of cargo pants. Just in case. You know, for the Vancouver trip.

Made dinner (a rerun of last night).

Writing: nil. :::sigh:::

Tomorrow, anon. (I’m sure I’m butchering some Shakespeare there.)

Tonight: PDA reading and some deep thought to which thing it is I am writing. Short story? Revise and resubmit the rejected novel? Polish off the other one? Get that script done? Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

A New Leaf…at Least for the Summer

Okay…because the days of summer slip by so darned fast, I’ve decided to try to keep a daily log of activity. My plan for the summer, my last “free” one before starting the Doctoral program (year-round) in the fall (and the chair assures me that come fall, they “own” me!), is to write. My plan. That’s what it is. Since absolutely nobody is hiring contract illustrators right now that leaves me as the house-bound partner…a house-bound partner with a plan.

I’m gonna write.

I had a novel rejected, so that puts me right on track for a best-seller.

So…today’s log:

Writing – nil.

Finished all of my grading and posted same online. Woohoo! Ran errands, finished the Disney marketing piece I’m working on for the APTA section on pediatrics, made dinner (grilled chicken and ranch pasta salad).

Tonight’s plan: writing. Got a story that’s tugging at me and has to get down on the page.

Happy summer break.

The Importance of Ritual

When my Pop (my birthfather, whom I have over the years grown to know and love) passed on Feb 3rd I was so overwhelmed with the beginning of the semester and the responsibilities of adding two new (to me) additional courses to my already full schedule, that I don’t think it really sank in. I knew it was coming, expected it, was in a way relieved by it. I even went into the U that morning and taught two of my three classes, only canceling the third when my colleagues repeatedly asked, “Why are you here?” I was there because I, knowing and expecting that my Dad would pass any day, had decided to continue on, “business as usual.”

After all, I reasoned, I had said my goodbyes just days before he passed, and my stepmother and I had agreed that we’d do a memorial service during my U’s spring recess, when I could plan on being there to help her for an entire week, as opposed to a quick in-and-out for a funeral (they are in Florida, I live in California). That seemed a good plan until this evening. I have decided that there’s something to be said for the ritual of funerals, especially immediate (or shortly thereafter the event) ones.

I am here in San Francisco for a conference, the “Conference on College Composition and Communication,” or 4-C as I’ve discovered it is called. Just as I checked into my adorable little room at the King George, I received an email letting me know that a good friend and colleague’s father had, as mine had, passed away following a long illness.

I didn’t realize until tonight, when I basically fell apart in my hotel room after getting the email, that I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to grieve for my own loss. I had cried briefly at 2:30am on that February morning when I awoke from a sound sleep and knew instantly that he’d passed. I cried a few tears again with my stepmother on the phone two hours later when she called to give me the news.

But it wasn’t until tonight, triggered by the passing of my friend’s father, that I began to grieve. I have written his eulogy, I have prepared the program for his service, and now…now I am beginning to grieve for the man who was instrumental in giving me live but whom I didn’t know well enough.

I guess I never understood before the importance of that formalized structure to the whole process. With less than a month to go before the memorial service for my Pop, and scarcely a month after his passing, I am left in this limbo of loss.

I really hate limbo.

So…let me end with this. For those who are caregivers to someone in their final stage of life, when that time comes, remember that despite knowing intellectually that your loved one is in a better place, that you expected their passing, the importance of being supportive for your family, and the belief that you are emotionally prepared for final event, don’t forget to give yourself a chance, and the space, to grieve.

Tonight: more tears and little sleep

Oscar…Oscar-Oscar…

Insert Billy Crystal singing to understand above title. Well, another Oscar ceremony is upon us and once again there was no limo at my door waiting to whisk us away to fame and glory.

Ah well. There’s always next year.

Time to write, time to polish up next year’s speech, time to…oh hell, who am I kidding? Time to go grade papers – the writing can come later.

Enjoy the ceremonies.

Activism, Apathy and the Futile Pursuit of Happiness

I know, it’s been far too long since I’ve blogged, and I’m sure the five of you who regularly read this are now onto bigger and better blogs. Oh well.

We have entered into a new Dark Age.

For the first time in my life, I am ashamed to be an American. I would happily move to Canada or any other country that has stepped beyond the new Dark Age and understood and accepted the fact that who my heart chooses to love does not make me a bad, evil or undesireable person.

I was delighted when Barack Obama won. I believed in his message of hope and change, “Yes We Can.” Then he announces that he’s asked Rick Warren to give the invocation to his inauguration. I’m sorry, I’m with TammyLynn on this one. Barack, if you’re going to have Warren up there to be a “voice for open discussion” then, as she says, you damned well better have some of those cowards with the pointy white bedsheets on stage too. They offer other voices and certainly cause discussion. Bastards.

Oh, and let’s talk about Prop 8. I just saw “Milk.” I, like so many of the post-Stonewall generation am woefully ignorant of my own cultural history. I knew of the “Twinkie Defense” and in an abstract way knew that it was related to a murder case. I didn’t know that it was about the murder of Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk. I also didn’t know just how close Prop 6 was  to our own Prop 8. My God, even the wording of the right-wing arguments was the same! “Protect families”. What the hell is wrong with you people?

How are my CIVIL RIGHTS interfering with your family? How the hell is my LEGAL RIGHT to live and love as a citizen of this country (to which I proudly served in the USAF and have faithfully paid my taxes for more than 20 years) fucking with your family? How? Now the people who put Prop 8 on the ballot want to nullify those marriages that were performed between May and Nov. 4th. I have been married to my partner of nine years for a total of 126 days. Have you felt the tremors? Has your family fallen apart? Yeah, I thought not.

Rick Warren considers homosexual behavior the same as he does incest and bestiality. His is the outlook of ignorant and medieval thinkers. I wish upon Rick Warren and his bigoted, thoughtless, mindless, lemming-like followers a gay son. A lesbian daughter. A flaming, flamboyant, sexy-as-hell queen. A solid, athletic, hair slicked back butch.

I am a product of my generation. I am a consumer. I have more than one iPod, I have a Mac laptop, and I spend money at Christmas. I don’t know how to be an activist. I was born in the late 60’s, a child in the 70’s and a teen in the 80’s. I really don’t know how to start a grassroots movement.

But I feel it is time to do as Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein: follow the money. I think we need to take a page from Harvey Milk’s book and hit them where it counts, in the checkbook. Not for a day – that ’s useless. Not for a week – that’s a token. But for good.

Support gay-owned businesses, support gay-friendly (openly…as in, they have a sign that says they proudly welcome gay business). Boycott anyone…anyone…who is not or does not. For good.

Look at business statement. Look at company statistics. Shop your conscience. Get it done. Make your money work for a cause.

Tonight: trying to figure out how to make a difference.

Cast is Off!… For now.

My cast is off after seven long weeks. So I have been writing again – mostly fanfiction. I also just spent two glorious days down in LA at the Screenwriting Expo and will blog about that tomorrow or Monday. We have guests in town so I may not make the big capper for the weekend there, the inestimable Aaron Sorkin will be interviewing the amazing and talented William Goldman! Augh!

Here’s hoping they film it for a DVD.

Tonight: steak and potato, relaxing with a houseful of guests