NaNoWriMo has me in its clutches, but I intend to run and to play guitar every day this month (at least) in addition to the writing. OK, I procrastinated Friday and Saturday, but I did manage to do all three today, and while I haven't produced as much text as I'd like just yet, I have started, and that puts me far ahead of where I was in the game last year. While I've not put too much planning into "The Divorce Is Final," I'm happy with the direction in which it's currently going, and I do have some general ideas and will no doubt develop more as I get deeper into it. I do want it to feel at least as much like fun as it does like work...
Isn't it?
Preeti dozed on the couch behind me this afternoon as Mozart streamed from the Apple TV and I began putting words to paper the cloud. (I'm sure the end of Daylight Saving Time means absolutely nothing to a creature who dozes most of her day away anyway.) Tuesday will mark one year since we brought her home to the apartment, and while our little family is littler than it was then, I think my female feline is pretty happy overall. Granted, she'd prefer to play fetch with her mousey for at least an hour a day longer than I consent to, but we do play. Meguilla the chinchilla gets her playtime, too. And her raisins. Mustn't forget the raisins. While I've mostly played either the Danelectro or the Kona acoustic/electric over the past two years, lately I've been eschewing both left-handed guitars for my old Epiphone knockoff of a right-handed Strat (strung and played "upside-down," of course). I do love the sound of the Danelectro, especially with the light top/heavy bottom strings I mainly use with it, but the Epiphone seems to rock more, and I like to play it slung down lower than my other guitars, which just feels more rock, too. Anyway, I played this evening 'til my fingers were sore, and then I played a little more. I'd planned on recording a new song or two this month, but I'm realizing that I can't really dedicate that much time to it, not if I want to get a 50,000-word novel done before December. That Entwistlian bassline for "I'll Live" that keeps running through my head is just going to have to wait a bit longer... I'll settle for getting a few new songs written, and although I'm not going to run a 5K before springtime, I'm determined to run every day and gradually get my endurance and my speed up to something that'll make a good showing when I do tackle my first race. Should help to keep those winter (and holiday!) pounds at bay, as well, and I'm starting to reintroduce some South Beach phase two recipes into my meals, after a lengthy period of not managing what I eat very well. Also going on this month: a weekend road trip to Boston with a couple of my colleagues, and "The Day of the Doctor." I've been a fan of "Doctor Who" since probably sometime around 1982, and this special looks to be... well, special. I'm going to watch the simulcast at the AMC Loews Village 7 in Manhattan on November 23rd, having snagged a ticket despite Fandango's ineptitude. Anyone else going? Anyone wishing they were? OK, I've written too many words already for something that isn't "The Divorce Is Final." ;-) I'm going to relax with a cup of hot chocolate and a scone. Later!
January's been a busy month, and it's just about over! There's always a lot of cleaning up and catching up to do after the holidays, of course, and work tends to be busy this time of year as well. Laura and I saw my parents last weekend for my mom's birthday, and finally caught up with Laura's mom this past Friday night, too. There are still some Christmas gift exchanges to be made, though...
Why, yes, I have been losing weight; thanks for noticing. Laura and I have both shed some pounds since starting on the South Beach diet at the beginning of the year, and I'm now at 141.6 lbs. as of this morning, which frankly seems to be on the low end of where I should be as a 5'9" 41-year old male. While I'm glad to be able to fit into an old pair of jeans again (woo-hoo!), my goal was never to drop ten or twenty pounds, but to eat and feel healthier. Now that I'm doing that, and planning on mostly sticking to phase three of the diet, I've decided that I want my weight to hover around 145.
Of course, the fact that my beloved Up by Jawbone band finally died on me has put a minor cramp in my style. It was nice to be able to easily monitor how much sleep I was getting (and how deep a sleep it was), how much walking I did, and what I was eating and how it made me feel every day. I'm not alone in having problems with my Up, but I believe in the product enough to have opted for a replacement rather than a credit or refund. Hopefully, Jawbone will get the kinks worked out soon, because I still feel the band has great potential.
In other technology news, I finally got around to upgrading my beast of a MacBook Pro, Athena, to OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) today. I'm also going to start utilizing the Time Capsule I got from Microwize Technology at Christmas to run automated backups wirelessly. I've been better with backups lately than I used to be, but it's nice to have a solution that doesn't require me to plug in an external hard drive before it'll run. I took the opportunity to jailbreak my iPhone 4S as well. Maybe I'm not quite on the bleeding edge of technology these days, but the cutting edge is still shiny.
My andersensilva.com and joyinthenew.com Web sites both got 'blacked out' for the anti-SOPA/PIPA protests on January 18th, and while I'm sure that had much less impact than Wikipedia's and Google's and Reddit's (and others') blackouts, I still felt the need to do it. Both bills have been temporarily thwarted, but neither is dead yet, and ACTA is at least as scary as SOPA and PIPA, and international to boot. People need to be aware and pay attention to more important things than the Kardashians and "Jersey Shore."
Speaking of Web sites... I'm maintaining a new one! Starting this Thursday, Laura and I are publishing our original Web comic, Slime, at slimethecomic.com. There's nothing really going on at the site just yet; I'm waiting for Thursday to put everything up, and then a new strip will be published every Thursday. We've been having a lot of fun putting it together (Laura does the art, we come up with story ideas together which I write, and I'll keep the Web site chugging along) and we hope you'll have just as much fun reading about our friends in the Field! I even put together a short theme song for Slime. I will be promoting the frak out of the Web comic. Just wait and see...
Well, after one week on the South Beach diet (phase one), I've lost 4.8 pounds. My aim isn't really to lose weight, or not any significant weight anyway, but it still feels good to know that my metabolism hasn't slowed down too much. The diet itself hasn't been bad at all, and I'm not craving sugar or bread or chocolate at all. No, really.
The Up band has been very cool (thanks again, honey!), and the only hiccup I've seen with it so far was more than likely caused by me. I've been using it to keep track of my meals and how I feel after them, as well as my sleep and my walking, and I think it's all tying in nicely with the diet and my aim to improve my health and fitness this year. Laura and I intend to start playing tennis in the spring, which will be great for the both of us.
I believe I've finally resolved the ChinCam (http://www.andersensilva.com/chincamp.php) issues, by setting up my old iPhone 3G S as the webcam and by dumping Stickam in favor of USTREAM. Though Meguilla the chinchilla is not going to be active 24/7, the stream will be up more often than it's down. Maybe Meggy would be more interested in entertaining you if there were raisins involved...! Chinny playtime, a nightly occurrence in the Silva/Liston household, will not be televised, for the most part, because it involves Meggy running all over the dining room floor, and often over us as well, and there's just no easy way to keep a cam trained on her. There is also now a YouTube channel for the grumpchilla's finer moments, though! Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/meggychincam
I've started reading one of my Christmas gifts, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid," by Douglas R. Hofstadter, and while it's not light reading at all, it's quite an intriguing book, and it had the unexpected side effect of prompting me to purchase and start listening to some Bach. I've always been a Mozart fan, but I've now discovered that I really enjoy Bach, too. Nothing wrong with switching the KMFDM and Metallica and Regina Spektor and Beatles with some Bach once in a while, eh?
I finally spent some more time with the guitar yesterday afternoon and started coming up with music to a new song, "So Much Happy." I still need to record "Burning in the Sun" and "Let Me," both of which were written last year, and there are older songs which stil haven't been recorded, either, but it feels good to want to write music again.
SOPA sucks. Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other Web giants have purportedly considered a one-day blackout in protest, and to demonstrate against the bill, though this is far from confirmed. I hope they do it. Too few Americans are paying attention to what gets done in their names these days, and suddenly not having access to those sites would certainly make them take notice.
One week down, fifty-one to go... How's the New Year treating you?
