Heat

The heat has arrived in Boston. We've had the AC in for a couple of weeks but haven't turned it on too much. Now, it's on.

Mia's not a big fan of the heat. And neither am I. We both get to a point of being so hot our rational thought processes are turned off. You don't want to see either of us when this happens.

We are also learning that Ethan doesn't much like it either. We went for a walk today, and he immediately wanted to climb in his stroller and just get a ride. But, he's so cute in his little hat and sunglasses.

The walk was to replace my phone. Which we did, I got a new Katana phone. We were looking at the Razr, but the salesguy told us the Katana has a better antenna. Since we know that is a problem in our house, we went for it.
And, because of the way Mia's last phone was handled, she was eligible to get a new phone too. So, we both got Katana's. $20 bucks each (plus tax). Phones are pretty cheap if you aren't buying them without a contract.

They should work out better than our last phones that fell apart just before our 2 year contract was up. We'll be with the same phone company for another 2 years. In case anyone needs to know which one, email me.

More bike woes

I got back on the horse (well, bike) yesterday and rode to work. Then, on the way home I felt that the riding was more difficult than normal. Looking behind me, I could see my back wheel was wobbling and the brakes were shaking back and forth.

Once I finally got home, I tried spinning my back tire. It went about two revolutions and stopped. I think I discovered what made riding home so hard.

I'll be spending some more time this weekend trying to fix the back tire. Looks like I might have to buy 2 new wheels :(

Have I mentioned that I'm frustrated about this crash?

Summer Reading Begins

So, it's summer and I'm going to be trying to read and write more (as I've already mentioned). As pat of that, I'm reading the second book in the Fablehaven series. It's only been a few months since Mia bought the first one, so the story was still pretty fresh.

The second book is called Rise of the Evening Star. It picks up almost a year after the first book. The kids are just finishing their school year and hoping to go back to Fablehaven. Conveniently, they haven't run into trouble until the very last week of school.

Again, I don't want to walk through the plot, so I'll review other things. First, Brandon does a good job writing this book as a second episode.
If you've ever read the Hobbit, and then followed with the Lord of the Rings, you can clearly see how the world of Middle-earth expands in the LotR series. The Hobbit gives you a glimpse into a narrow piece of the world defined by the adventure episode. The trilogy expands on the world, taking the adventure to many new places and giving more depth to the world. Tolkien does this very well, which is why the LotR is still one of the foundations for many fantasy stories.

With that background, let me repeat. Rise of the Evening Star does a good job of being a second episode in the world. Some sequels (or second book of the standard fantasy trilogy) try to make the world too big. They add in too many new elements, making the reader keep track of the setting rather than being able to focus on the story in a now familiar world.
In this book, there are new elements, in fact some pretty significant ones, but by staying close to the Fablehaven preserve Brandon is able to add them without detracting from the flow.

Also, when I feel that his pacing has gotten better. The book started off with a nice action sequence. It moved well, and built up to a climatic scene that segued nicely into the main story. After that, he did slow down and spend quite a bit of time in exposition. Introducing new characters, adding some more depth to the secrets of Fablehaven, and exploring Kendra's changes.

I was talking with Mia about this the other day and what came out of our discussion was that I'm not the target audience. :) What we were talking about was the incredible self-awareness of the characters. They analyzed situations and their own feelings with a self-awareness that I certainly don't remember having as I muddled through middle school and high school.
But, as Mia pointed out, the adolescents that this book is written for probably do feel that they are that aware. And that they can analyze situations that rationally.

One thing I admire is that he includes questions at the end of the book aimed at his audience to help them do some critical thinking about what they've read. One of the questions was about a twist at the end of the book. It asks for some speculation about how this could play out in the next episode. Unfortunately, this twist broke some of my immersion. It felt like it was a plot device more than an organic, natural occurrence in the story. I'm going to reserve judgment until I read the final book (next year) but he's going to have to handle things very carefully to avoid being cliche.

Crash into me

Well, I suppose that it follows that having a bike, I would have a bike accident. Of course, I was hoping for something small. I'm not sure this qualifies.

I was riding home from work today (not something that I normally do on Fridays) and at one point a trail merges from behind a grocery store. Another biker merged on, going pretty slowly. No problem, they were on the right, I was on the left. I moved over a little further just to make sure.

Then, as I'm getting closer they look back. Suddenly, after seeing me, they swerve over to the left side of the trail. I hit my brakes, but it's a dirt trail so I skidded and we collided.

We totally got entangled, flipped, rolled, all that bad stuff in a crash. My leg and shoulder got scraped up and the other person got the wind knocked out of them. Neither of us were badly hurt. So, that was good anyway.

Of course, on the bad side, my front tire was totally bent, in multiple places. I'll have to get a picture. So, I was about 1.5 miles from home and had to put my bike up on its back wheel and walk it the rest of the way home. When I got home, I was sore and tired. And had to talk care of Ethan for the rest of the afternoon.

But, we made it through. We even went to the park.

So, I'll be going out tomorrow to try and get my bike fixed.

Manual Labor

I've already mentioned that I finished writing a story by hand. I've decided not to be shy about my writing, and I also feel a connection with the handwriting on the page.

Since I'm going to be typing it all in and doing my revisions after that, I feel that something is being lost. To avoid that, I'm going to post some scans of the hand-written version on my Web site (yes, the rest of the site does still exist).

They aren't complete, the pages that I'm writing on are too big for my scanner. So it's not a way for you to read the story, but at least get a sense of what it was like before the computer standardized it and took away my personal touch.

Micro blogging

No, I'm not going to start using Twitter but I did have the perfect micro blog moment today.

In fridge: 2 liter coke, root beer, mountain dew; 20oz Dr. Pepper

Competent Writer

Life is what happens at the intersections.

That's my philosophical way of introducing my plan to write this summer. For the details keep reading.

First, with the season finales for most shows happening this week, I've decided to stop watching television. I've felt like I want more time to write, read, and play. And TV has just been keeping me from doing that.

Second, I picked up on a short story that I started writing a year ago, or maybe more. I've known how I wanted it to end, but there was a piece of the story between where I was and the ending that I wasn't sure how to handle. I finally just decided to write it out and finished that this week.
Building on that, the story is completely written by hand. It's been a very interesting experience doing it all by hand. I think that writing by hand will help me develop my own style. When writing on paper, everything that you write stays on the page. You can still revise, but you always know what your first thoughts were.

Third, I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing. Surprisingly, it's an interesting book if a bit sporadic. I'm still only half-way through but I can see that King really does have a passion for writing. And it's been a wake up call for me. Mostly because I've been using television and other things to give me an excuse for not doing the reading and writing I need to get better.
I also like his metaphor for the writing toolbox and very straight-forward definition of the pieces. I've never really been a horror fan but I might go back and read some of his books. In fact, The Shining has always interested me.

Finally, I know that writing is something that I want to do. It's been an uncomfortable dissonance in my life, feeling that I don't have enough time to myself (or rather time to do the things that I want) and so I've been funneling my free time into TV and gaming.

I guess this is like my blogging post. It's got to be an addiction if you really want to pursue it.

(This is the wife - Read the comments to see how much writing John already does. Although he doesn't realize it, he is one prolific guy.)

Lions

Ethan has a very active imagination. We were watching Mulan yesterday and afterwards he wanted to get his pirate sword and fight the bad guys. Later that night, as I was putting him to bed, he talked to me about how he, mom, and I were all going to fight bad guys. And he was a little bit scared, so I told him that bad guys couldn't come into his room because we closed the door.

We have also been pretending to be lions and bears the last few days. It's something that Mia likes because Ethan drops his voice an octave. Rather than screaming a high-pitched scream and running around the house, he growls.

But, I'm not going to be able to explain it as well as this video. Which, for any of you tech-geeks, was uploaded to Google Video instead of YouTube this time.

Rainstorms

Just wanted to do a quick explanation of a new feature on my blog. I'm going to be trying to ride my bike to work as much as I can. And, I'm keeping track of that in the bike section of my sidebar.

Unfortunately, I don't often check the weather online or on the TV. I just look out the window and see if it's raining or not. So, today, I rode to work in the morning but then it started raining around noon. So Mia had to come pick me up.

I locked my bike up in my bosses office, and hopefully I'll get to ride it home one of these days.

And I shall call him...

[09:36] xxxxxxx: You shall now be know as 'Blog-Boy'
[09:36] xxxxxxx: My Big Blogging Brother
[09:38] xxxxxxx: Mr. Bo Bloggitty
[09:38] johan5000: hahahah
[09:38] xxxxxxx: Bling Blang Blog Bladdah Bloo Bloo

Names removed to keep someone from feeling really, really embarrassed. ;)