All done again

This is the last day of Nablopomo, as I said earlier I won't be doing this too often anymore, unless I decide I miss it and pick another month to try Nablopomo. December's theme is zeitgeist, I barely have a grasp of the definition, how am I supposed to write about it 31 times? At any rate, you won't be seeing me complain as frequently as you have this month, right?

There are actually things I have wanted to write about here, but I never got around to it. I have to finish my cat blogs, amongst other subjects that may alienate people. But who knows when they will show up. Anyway, thanks for putting up with my endless ranting about work this month, I'll let you know if I win a prize.

This is not my fault

It's National Blog Posting Month again, and my friend Monica has shamed me into joining again this year. How did she do it? She wrote on my Facebook wall, I provided my own shame. as is my wont. But it will be fun, I'd rather be doing something active on the internets than passive. So he says.

The keyboard just said low battery, so I have to wrap this up. Plus I have to go to bed. So I will end with a quote from one of the trick or treaters last night, it was a boy of around 10 or 11, and really, it's a life lesson in one sentence:

"I have no skin, and I regret nothing!"

You can't get much more succinct than that, right?

NaBloPoMo - Day Last

Hooray! I made it. It ended up being mostly about my job, but a man is defined by his work, right? Unfortunately, as I have detailed, this blog felt a little bit like work. I had some topics that I wanted to write about but never got to. I'm not sure why; perhaps if I spend a lot of time a few days a month, it will be easier than a little bit every day. I am going to try and enjoy this whole month, besides Christmas it is my 40th birthday, and it will be busy at work, but not as busy as last week. In case you're wondering, I have no problem turning 40, life begins at 40 and all that. I embrace it.

So you won't be seeing me for awhile, writing anyway. Maybe I'll be moved enough to write something at some point, but it certainly won't be everyday. If I win a prize I'll let you know. :)

Blog is currently experiencing fail, please stand by.

If you read any of my previous blogs, you may know that I am trying to blog every day in March for NaBloPoMo. Well, it's only the 6th day, and I have already screwed it up. I think I misunderstood the point of the exercise, which I believe is to WRITE everyday, not post a blog every day. I wrote two blog posts on Wednesday, because I had a lot of stuff to do yesterday and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write anything of substance (which begs the question, have I written anything of substance at all?). I saved it as a draft in Blogger to post when I got home on Thursday afternoon. Blogger called my bluff, and posted it on the date and time that I actually wrote it. I didn't notice until I got up this morning that I had two posts for Wednesday and none for Thursday. Since it was only for an hour and a half, I changed the date of the last post to Thursday, since I actually posted it on Thursday. I was thinking about this at work, and I thought that it was dishonest, which is why I'm spilling the beans on myself here. Would anyone else but me have known the difference? Maybe not. At least I think I learned something. I will still be blogging everyday, so don't think you're getting off that easily.

One of the things I did yesterday was go to book club at our county library. We read Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. I thought it was excellent; there are many amazing coincidences throughout the book, but I didn't mind those because the writing was very good and I liked the setting (pastoral England) very much. I usually don't talk much at book club, but I wanted to last night. I did try at the beginning, but I kept getting discouraged, so I shut my mouth.

Sarah and I are going to see Watchmen with our friend Adam tomorrow. I am extremely excited to see it, but I'm not getting my hopes up, as the comic has been called unfilmable by many people who would know about these things. I read the book over 10 years ago and have tried to get Sarah to read it ever since. Don't think it's because she's a girl, she's the one who got me into comics! And for you non-comics fans, this book really transcends the whole comic-geek thing, it really is a good story, it just happens to have a lot of pictures as well. Adam is also very excited to see it, so it should be a good time. We are going to La Tolteca for a late lunch beforehand, which is a really great Mexican restaurant chain.

Tonight Sarah and I are celebrating Frozen Food Day in grand style, we're having chicken parmigiana with mozzarella sticks and buffalo bites, and ice cream for dessert. Celebrate with us, it's tres healthy and very in! Also, Sunday is Be Nasty Day, so I will be ringing that one in by cleaning out the litter boxes. I'll have an extra hour to do those.

I give up.

I said in an earlier Blomo post (Monica's shorthand, and awesome) that I would be clever this month and have all of my titles relate to the Blomo theme this month, which is giving (up). I had planned on using song titles etc., but you know what? I'm not just physically lazy. Plus most of the songs I can think of that have "give" in there somewhere would relate to my post about Sarah, so you see my problem. If I can stick to the theme at all, fine, if not, bleah.

I also see that I use the word eventually too much, and that I do like my adverbs, despite Stephen King's advice. Hopefully I can fix that.

My mother and father-in-law are on a two month vacation, so I am taking care of their cat Mao (the only cat that can say his name!), but just in a scooping capacity. Mao used to belong to us, he was a rescue cat and my in-laws adopted him. Mao is pretty gigantic as far as cats go, but he's not fat, he's big boned (I'm serious). If you looked in his litter box, you'd think that a medium sized dog was pooping in there. This is a lot of setup for the epiphany I'm trying to tell you about.

Since July I have had a protruding disc in my back (it's at L5 if you're keeping score). It doesn't make my back hurt, but it really hurts my right leg, because it's playing with my right leg nerve or something like that. I'm taking meds and was doing exercises for it. I can walk around fine, it's the sitting that really hurts. Plus I have a heel problem in my other legs, so sometimes I'm a waddling fool. It's been much better lately, Dr. Sister PT says that most back injuries heal themselves in 6 or so months (which is also what my neurologist said). Yes, this is more setup, sorry.

We had a lot of snow on Monday, probably the most we've had since we've lived in DE, which is 11 years. I have been going to scoop for Mao every 3 days or so, and I was due yesterday. It occurred to me that I was going to be in trouble when I went over there, because no one would have shoveled the driveway, which is pretty large, and I wasn't able to get out of mine on Monday morning. I was shoveling a bit on Monday while it was still snowing, and it was torturous. I had to come in after 15 minutes and lay on my stomach for 45 minutes just to feel better. I have gained a lot of weight in the past year, so I'm not sure how much of it is that, and how much is my protruding disc (I'm blaming most of it on protruding disc for laziness purposes). So thank God for my brother in law. He's pretty security conscious, so he went over there and shoveled the driveway and the front walk just to make it look like there was someone at home. Yay! Oh right, I mentioned an epiphany. Here it comes.

We don't have any kids, and we are not planning on having any (more on that later). I was finishing the driveway today so Sarah could get her car out, and it was getting a bit easier to do, probably because I have been doing it everyday this week. I realized that I really need to take care of myself, because I don't know if I will ever be able to retire, and I don't know if I will be able to afford to hire people to do what I can't do anymore when I'm older. We won't have any kids to take care of us when we are old. I'm not complaining about that, but I'm not going to make up some kids just for that reason. I basically need to get off my butt and cook better and eat better and also go back to the Y, which I've been to once or twice in the past year, despite paying for it every month. I just hope that it's not too late. I'm 39 now, and they say life begins at 40, and I'm going to try hard to make that happen.

NaBloPoMo Part 2

I'm already falling behind here, I see. Take heart, blog cabin fans! I have signed up for NaBloPoMo (that is a pain to type) for March. The theme for the month is giving (up). That's how they wrote it out on the site. I'm going to try to post something everyday, but I don't think I'll be on topic everyday. I am going to try and put give/giving and all its iterations in the title if I can, probably in the form of song lyrics, and then tie that to the actual post. Because I'm clever! Oh yes. I have some topics already planned, I just need to write them down somewhere so I don't forget what they are.

So you can look forward to this or not, but I'm pretty excited about it. I think it will go well, all I have to do is budget my time a lot better than I have. I think I am finally breaking out of the winter doldrums, so it should be easier. And I would like to try and stop ending my blogs with an emoticon. :P

Oops.

NaBloPoMo

I wrote a blog post yesterday that I thought was pretty good, but when I finished it up, I thought that maybe I shouldn't post it. It had to do with my work, and I link to here from my Facebook page, which has my work info on there, and I have co-workers on Facebook. I was going to keep my work anonymous in future posts, but it's too easy to find connections on the web. Not that I'm laboring under the assumption that my blog has eleventy million readers, of course. But I think I made the right decision, even if it was hard to do.

So instead, I will tell you that I joined the National Blog Posting Month site. I mentioned it before; you sign up, and they have a monthly theme, and you submit your blog at the beginning of the month. You don't have to adhere to the theme, but you HAVE to post everyday. They give out prizes in November, which is the actual National Blog Posting Month. I am going to try to do this in March, so you can expect lots of blatherings from me then. Goody!

What to do?

I was telling my wife Sarah that I had started another blog. Every so often, I will say that I would like to write more, and she always encourages me, but I never do. I believe that I have finally gotten past my way of thinking about blogs, which is that they are not serious writing. I have forgotten something I've seen in many books and articles I've read about getting started in writing, which is write a lot, and write often. What could be more perfect for that than a blog?

I was telling Sarah that I thought that I wouldn't be able to think of things to write about, or to keep it up. She told me that there is plenty of things to write about, and I mulled it over and discovered she was right. There are so many things I would like to share here that I don't know really where to start. I'll figure it out eventually. I will probably have some posts that are off the cuff, like this one, and some that are planned out and profusely edited (I tend to edit as I go, which gets discouraging sometimes, but I don't know any other way). I should learn how to type properly as well.

My friend Monica was telling me about National Blog Posting Month, which she is involved with. They have themes for the entire month, and you could win a prize! The catch is that you have to blog everyday. I am certainly willing to try that, although I probably shouldn't plan for that when we go on vacation or away for the weekend, as we don't have a laptop. We cram enough stuff into our vacations that finding a place to blog would be hard. But not impossible, I suppose they still have those internet cafes where you can pay by the hour.

I have started blogs before, this is probably my 5th one. I hope to keep it up better than I did my previous ones, I think I was just limiting myself too much. We'll see how it goes, and I hope you enjoy it, if anyone continues (or starts) reading this. :)