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Adrift, on an ocean of ennui…
Last week and through the weekend, I didn’t feel like doing shit. Didn’t want to work. Didn’t want to play. No reading. No writing. Dozing off at lunchtime, then waking up at 4am. Definitely the blahs.
Seem to be a bit perkier today. Managed to trade a few good-natured insults with the office smartass. Before long, complete sentences. But for now – Hulk smash!
(An Alternate Theory: If I’m really a bear, like my wife says, I may be getting ready to hibernate.)
Cowboys Update: The Cowboys suck.
Mavericks Update: Ever since Don Nelson hung up his whistle last spring, making Avery Johnson the Mavs’ new coach, I’ve been really high on this team. Everybody on this team can score, and they’re learning to play better on the defensive end. This year they’ve already blown out the Spurs and the Pistons, and beat the Suns twice (without Stoudamire, who murdered them last year). As the Cowboys start making their vacation plans, I’ll keep you updated on the good team in town.
Incidentally, I said the Cowboys were “too inconsistent” months ago. You can look it up.
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Oh, By The Way
12.12.05 | Permalink | 4 CommentsHappy Birthday to me. I’m 37. Also born today: Frank Sinatra, Jennifer Connollly, Blossom, and “Casey Cleavage”.
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200 Words
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is running a writing contest: send in a 200-word opening of a Western novel (with certain requirements), and if you are selected, you get to write one of 12 chapters in a serial novel a la The Floating Admiral or Naked Came The Manatee. The other authors include a bunch of people I’ve never read, plus the great Elmer Kelton, who was a guest of honor at the Bouchercon I attended, at Austin in 2002. Why they didn’t grab this guy I don’t know.
Now I’ve only written one story that could qualify as a Western – the title is “West, Texas” after all – but that’s more of a crime story. But there’s a lot of crossover between crime and westerns, with guys like Bill Pronzini, Loren Estleman, Robert J. Randisi, and Ed Gorman moving freely back and forth. And Scott Phillips, best known for The Ice Harvest, recently published Cottonwood, which is nothing if not a Western. So why not me?
What can you say in 200 words? My first attempt uses up all 200, and tries to
A) Set the scene – Texas by name, Hill Country by implication;
B) Name the main character, and give a hint of his background; and
C) Set up some conflict as he runs across a wounded man.So – five paragraphs, 14 sentences, 200 words. Shorter than this rambling post, in fact. Wish me luck.
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The Best Vacation EVAR
12.11.05 | Permalink | 2 CommentsNo, not really. I had some vacation left over that I had to take by the end of the year or it would be gone forever, and the good days at the end of the month were already booked by my worthless coworkers, so I took ‘em last week. Here is my story:
Wednesday: Crown Me. When I was in high school an old chum of mine popped me in the mouth, resulting in a dead tooth and a root canal, which required two or three lengthy and unpleasant trips to the dentist. But this fiend’s plan to bankrupt me with medical bills wasn’t done – I’ve been losing enamel off that tooth for a couple of years now, and it got to the point where I had to do something about it. So Wednesday morning I went a got crowned.
What fun. First they stick you about 40 times to numb your entire body from the chest up, then they grind your teeth down to little nubs, then they glue on some plastic caps that are supposed to last 3 weeks until the ceramic ones come back from the lab. Then the worst part: the bill.
The upside: as of January 3rd, I will closely resemble Tom Cruise.
Thursday: The Weather Outside Is Frightful. I was planning on driving to Houston for Duane Swizzlestick’s signing at Murder By The Book, but the first winter storm of the year put the kibosh on that. If it’s too dangerous to drive half a mile to our kids’ school (closed for the day), it’s too dangerous to drive 250 miles to Houston. So I went to Half Price Books instead, and picked up a couple of Ross Thomas books and one Joseph Hansen.
I also took The Wife along, and damn if she can’t figure out how to spend too much in any kind of store.
So, taking the day off on a day when I would have gotten the day off anyway was “great”, but even better was…
Friday: Perfect Attndance. As far as I can recall, I haven’t missed a day because of illness in five years or so. Oh, I’ve been sick, I’ve just managed to do it on weekends and holidays. And on Friday, I kept that streak alive.
School was open, and since my wife got a substitute teaching gig, I was looking forward to a little time alone. Even before I crawled out of bed, though, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I was lying there, thinking about breakfast, when my stomach turned and I knew that something just wasn’t right.
I still felt okay, so the wife and kids headed to school, and the youngest headed to the totally misnamed Mother’s Day Out. I headed for the computer and, for once, got to crank the speakers until the house was filled with the joyful noise of explosions and gunfire.
Then, at 10:30, my stomach turned again, and bold glowing letters a foot high appeared in front of my eyes, reading YOU’D BETTER GO LIE DOWN.
So I did, until I had to go fetch the youngest at noon. It felt like someone had switched off my muscles. But, slumping around like I had Chris Farley’s rotting corpse lashed to my back, I managed to get there and back again with incident. As I was taking off my jacket, I felt a pressing need to announce, “Daddy has to go to the bathroom for a minute,” and I began, to use Dean’s picturesque phrase, yodeling down the porceline microphone.
It was the baby’s nap time, and he somehow managed to sleep through a later concerto, by which time I had remembered that bundling up is bad for a fever. So I kicked off the covers and shivered, but at least the puking stopped.
At least I didn’t have to miss work.
And that’s what I did for my Christmas vacation.
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How To Piss Off A Marine*
“Marines? That’s like the Navy’s Army, right?”
*Please only try this on a Marine with a functioning sense of humor. Possible side effects include headache, nasea, and having a mud-hole stomped in your ass.
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