Days 21-26: Well, that was quite a week

Restarting the day job is always a tough moment in the year. The months of setting my own schedule quickly fall away to the knowledge that I have to get to work in the morning and that's all I'm going to be doing for the balance of the day. Then there is the rush to get home and do the other work that needs to be done before collapsing in a heap, ready for bed and to do it all again.

So, there's not much to report on the whole entertainment/hobby/personal life front from the past week. I zoned out to some tennis (Australia is warm this time of year and that's nice to see when the temp doesn't get above zero), a couple of TV shows and not much else. I believe I read about 20 pages total in Knife of Dreams over the week, about half of that in the minutes before the opening curtain last night at Johnny Baseball.

And the weekend? A bunch of appointments, an opera (oooh!) and plenty of writing to get done to be ready for next week. I know that after a couple of weeks, I'll have made my adjustment to the work schedule. The start of "scoring" helps as well, as it's a job I've done for years and know very well the kind of mental energy it takes to complete. Answering phones? Not my bag at all.

In other words, nothing to report, except that it's cold and busy and I just want to sleep for a long, long time...

Day 20: Anniversary

The homestead. Just add some more trees and gardens to the front (and snow right now).

Four years ago today, I spent a couple of hours signing my name on a massive pile of documents, finished arrangements for a down payment and got the keys for my house.

I drove over that evening to bring the first of many carloads of stuff over. The water hadn't been turned on. The garage door didn't work and the lock on the front door wasn't particularly secure (I put full paint cans next to it to keep it somewhat secure until my brother was able to fix the lock). There were no appliances, no furniture and it needed plenty of work, but it was mine.

Four years later, the spaces have become as familiar as the back of my hand. The living room is almost overstuffed with furniture, while the debris of my everyday life threaten to spill over into every nook and cranny. We've survived a burglary and a tornado and a cat intent on making every space his own. There is still painting to be done and the garage needs to be cleaned out and there are a thousand other things that should, but it's a little more mine every month.

So happy anniversary house. May we have good times together long into the future.

Day 19: Fringe goodbye

Saturday after a long week. A few things of note from today.

I watched the series finale of Fringe this morning, as my evening at the Guthrie Friday stretched too long to catch yesterday evening. It was a fitting end for the series, full of the oddball science and outsized familial emotions that have marked the show through its five-year run. This season felt like an odd coda, as the creators wrapped up the major storyline at the end of last season (a smart choice, as a fifth season for the low-rated show was a nice surprise, not a foregone conclusion).

There were some twists along the way and plenty of references back to earlier episodes, including a raid on a bad-guy facility that included nods to the very first episode. It ended with another time-bending reset - essentially where we left the characters at the end of season four - but one that indicates that happiness may finally be in the cards for our heroes.

After flailing around with book ten of the Wheel of Time, Crossroads of Twilight, throughout the week, I decided to take some drastic action and skimmed a huge chunk of the middle of the book (about 400 pages in all), not restarting to fully read until the central character, Rand, made his first appearance. That it happened around page 650 (!!!) says about everything you need to know about the book. Knife of Dreams, the last one Robert Jordan wrote before his death, is proving to have a stronger spark in the early going, so hopefully something more than chess-piece moving is going to happen here.

And after reading an interesting article on the Van Halen song "Running with the Devil" on the AV Club, I ended up listening through the David Lee Roth albums. The band was big through middle and high school back in the early and mid 1980s, with 1984 absolutely dominating the hallways of my high school during freshman year. I had moved on a bit musically by then, so I didn't indulge in a copy. I do remember one of the girls in my class (one of those who usually sat in the back of the room and likely spent the time before school in the smoking area in the parking lot; ah the '80s were a lot different) saying that the rest of the album wasn't going to be as wimpy as opening single "Jump."

Other thoughts? There's a lot of filler on these records, which usually don't last much longer than half an hour. Diver Down is the worst. There are only four fully fledged Van Halen songs here, the rest being covers or little instrumentals. 1982 wasn't a good year for sleazy hard rock (see also Aerosmith's drugged-out tragedy Rock in a Hard Place.)

Day 18: Here comes the cat

Nothing much to add to anything today, as it's basically been a long day at work, followed by Long Day's Journey into Night. After three hours of watching men drink bottles of whiskey down, I definitely need a drink.


For you, here's a cat discovering snow for the first time. Enjoy.

Day 17: "Hi, this is Ed, how can I help... oh what have I done?"

Back at the day job, though it's not exactly the same day job. During part of the year, I work for a test scoring firm in the Twin Cities, working on projects for different states and different types of assessments. NDAs mean I have to be pretty vague about all of this, but it's not the worst work, the people are interesting to work with, and it helps to pay the bills.

I'm not doing a project like that this time.

Instead, I'm assisting a pilot project. And not the actual administration of said project, but in lining up schools from across the country to participate. The vibe is very different. The quiet, library-like atmosphere of scoring has been replaced by constant chatter and ringing telephones. It's like being back in a newsroom (except, ahem, it pays better than I ever made at a newspaper).

After one day - and the promise of oodles of overtime - I'm pretty sure that most of my plans for the next few weeks are headed out the window. The real challenge will be keeping to my eating and exercising plans.

I'm not going to have much idle time for entertainment or other distractions. That likely will make it easier to not spend, especially as it's going to take quite a bit longer to finish anything. Sorry Final Battle in The Wheel of Time, you're going to have to wait your turn. I've got some calls to return.

Day 16: Did I forget to do something... oh crap

It's a bit after 11 p.m. Wednesday and I didn't forget to post - not completely at least. It's been a busy day, with copy to write in the morning, a pair of interviews in the afternoon and a show for the evening. Oh, and I've been called in to the Day Job for something that 1) doesn't sound like a lot of fun but 2) will pay at a time I could use the extra scratch.

I'd actually spent part of the day yesterday organizing the notes and bits of writing I have done on my long-in-gestation novel and thought, "Hey, if I write a couple of thousand words a day I could get this done by the start of the next project in early February.

A few minutes later, the employer called with a short (two week) project to do. It isn't for the work I normally do - it's a little vague at this point, honestly - but I'll be there tomorrow morning for training.

Fiction will be off the plate for a bit while I reorganize. Hopefully, I can stay on my eating and exercising targets. We'll see how it goes.

Right. It's late. I'm tired and I actually have to get up in the morning. Gah. no fun at all.

Day 15: Here comes the hard sell

I finished Winter's Heart Sunday night and turned to the 10th book of the Wheel of Time, Crossroads of Twilight. This is the book that, a decade ago, I read part way through and then decided I would wait until the series was finished before I read them again.

You see, there was real movement at the end of Winter's Heart. Main character Rand had finally cleaned the male half of the world's magic from the "taint" that had driven men mad for millennia. That opened the way for the serious business of preparing for the final battle against the Dark One.

Except it didn't. Instead, Crossroads of Twilight opens with a 100 (!!) page prologue, followed by a bunch of characters slowly moving around the world. Even the biggest Jordan supporter in the world could see that the series have finally come off the rails. I think the author (Jim Rigney) felt that as well, because he started to tie up loose ends and preparing for the finale with the next book. As I've noted before, he didn't get there, but the series has been completed.

All of this doesn't make the current volume all that enticing to read. It even opens with favorite character Mat on the run with the women who he knows will become his wife, even if she is 1) a prisoner and 2) a princess of an invading empire. Even that couldn't hold my interest yesterday.

I'm hoping that the energy left over from Winter's Heart, the fact that the final volumes are in sight and a desire to read something that isn't part of a 10,000-page-plus novel will get me through this. I'm still on schedule to finish the series by the end of January. I will do it. I will! I will!