The Demonweasel Speaks

Today felt like it took forever. Not a whole giant ton of things going on, but enough to make me feel like I was running around all day. Got some good store news, which is always nice. Things are cruising along okay, although we are beginning to see a bit of a drop as winter sets in. Thankfully, we’ve prepared for such eventualities.

We drove Allie back home yesterday, although “back home” was real Indianapolis, where we met with her mom and stepdad at a Friday’s in a hotel. While we were there, I realized all the TVs were tuned to ESPN and football, and I didn’t want to see the score of the Giants/Vikings game, as I was DVRing it at home. Of course, Kenzie saw and taunted me with her knowledge. At one point, she said “Maybe you don’t want to watch the game.” It turns out I did not, as the Giants embarrassed themselves in a 34-17 loss. At least, I think that’s the score. I turned it off in disgust after Eli threw the third interception and it was returned for a touchdown. You sir, are not your brother.

It was a lot of fun having Allie with us this past week. I miss her terribly already, but I know that she’s doing so much better in school there, and she still loves me and Kenzie. It’s hard, but I’m happy she’s happy.

Probably the most exciting thing was this morning, when the building next to our caught on fire. Not a whole lot, mind you, but there was still a lot of excitement over it. Apparently, one of the apartments had a kitchen fire, and the whole building was evacuated as it filled with smoke and the like. A shit-ton of fire trucks and ambulances showed up and managed to keep it just to a stream of smoke coming out of the windows, but they still turned off the power to both buildings, right as I was about to get ready for work. The whole ordeal made me about fifteen minutes late, but I guess that’s the great thing about owning your own business.

I have set a ridiculous goal for myself for the end of the year, and we’ll see if it plays out. I dunno, it’s possible, but I think I’m just trying to push myself hard because I feel like I haven’t done enough writing shit this year. I had a good meeting with Lee (the guy who’s drawing Gifted for me) and we started to set up a time-line as to when we’re really going to go into production. He’s still working out a style and doing character models and trying to hone his craft, but he’s got it. Not just the drawing talent, but the desire to work on the project, as well as really liking the idea and being passionate about it. That means a lot to me. I’m going to try to get more comic projects started to a point where I can start showing stuff to potential artists. Lee knows I’ve got other stuff on the burner, and I’ve been clear with him from the beginning that I’m going to try to be multi tasking with all the projects I want to work on.

We’ll see how well that goes.

I’ve begun a slow appreciation for Metalocalypse, and maybe even Dragonforce. We have all the Dragonforce CDs in the player at work (thanks, Tony), as well as the Dethklock CD (I don’t even know if I’m spelling that right, so I must not be a real fan), and they’ve worked their way into my brain.

Allie is here visiting for Thanksgiving, and it’s nice to have her around and remember what it’s like to have a kid. Missing her goes from just sitting around going “Huh…I miss her.” to random hurting and sadness. She’s doing well in school, much better than she was at Mills Lawn, and everyone has realized that they just didn’t know what to do with her and just were moving her along and having her spend 90% of her time in the special ed room playing computer games that weren’t really teaching her anything. Now, she’s writing in cursive, reading much better and getting A’s on tests, as well as spending at least 50-60% of her day in the regular classroom.

I’ve sent out a new wave of queries, so we’ll see if this nets anything. I still haven’t heard from that first agent, so I guess at this point I’m trying to just learn patience. At least I haven’t bugged them or sent them emails all the time. Of course, I’m trying to get more writing done, so that when that shining moment does come I have more than just the one-trick pony to sell.

I’m a seven to eight trick pony, at least…

So instead of writing last night, I screwed around with the site here and finally put my money where my mouth is. But that’s gross because money is very unsanitary, and I stopped. Then, I put up a page for my writing on the site here, and you can access it by clicking on where it says “Writing” all the way at the top there.

It’s all vanity, but isn’t everything. I just felt like it was time to start putting some stuff out there. I know nothing will truly come of it, but it kind of makes me feel good as I keep writing stuff like the Corner and the comic script Lee and I are working on. Sometimes you have to do silly shit to motivate yourself.

Oh, and Feedburner is broken again. I don’t know why, but it seems to break every time I change the theme on here, which doesn’t really seem to make much sense. I’m going to poke around some more, but maybe I can fix it. I just had an idea while I was typing, but ultimately, I’m kind of getting sick of it. It manages the e-mail subscriptions, but I think there’s only one person signed up via email; it runs the animated headline thing that I put on my MySpace, but I don’t think anyone pays any attention to it; and it shows how many bookmarks and RSS feed subscriptions I get, which is not many. So who knows.

Today sucked.

Not because anything bad happened, because it didn’t, and not because I feel bad, because I don’t, not really. I just…ugh, I had one of those gray days. Days where I want to do absolutely nothing. Not a single goddamn thing, even the things I want to do, I don’t want to do. I want to have already done them, and I hate that feeling. That’s a me in my 20s feeling. I spent my entire twenties feeling like I just wanted shit to happen for me and not really doing anything to make shit happen for me. It blows and I hate that feeling.

Thankfully now I have a job where, if I’m having a day like that, I can just be at work and read Fark and look at photoshop contests and funny mugshots and read articles about comic shit, or even just read shit when it’s slow. And yeah, it was slow. I re-read “The Corner,” trying to get back into the headspace to write it, and I think I’m there again. Of course, I’d be more there if I wanted to actually put in some work. But I don’t. I want to look at stupid people that got arrested.

The cats have been insane lately. Fleas have returned in a big way, and Hollywood especially has been hit very hard. We gave him a flea bath Sunday night that did not go especially well, but we think we got most of them. Somehow I lost the flea comb, but when we were combing him out, pretty much every night, we were getting at least two dozen live fleas. He’s going mental, jumping everywhere, scratching like mad. We need to just carve out some time to take him to the vet, but time is the one thing they aren’t making any more of.

Regardless, I’m not trying to force anything, but I’d really like this to be my last night of inactivity. I’d been doing so well, and maybe I just needed a break, but I’m done with that. Let’s move on to something more pro-active, shall we?

So I changed the layout, which I’m 83% happy with (the title bar image still bugs me, but the last one took me about three days to make and I don’t have that much time anymore), but Feedburner is down, which means this probably won’t email at all, which I’m 0% happy with.

I was Two-Face for Halloween, which was a lot of fun, although not a lot of people showed up at the store for our costume contest and party and the like. I bought suits off of eBay and then sewed them together, once Kenzie taught me how to sew. Turns out I sew pretty okay. Last Sunday I sewed and watched football, which was a nice, relaxing break. I’d post pictures (of my costume, not of me sewing, because that’s 100% boring), but for some reason my phone says it can’t find the network right now. Maybe next time.

After work Tony and I went a couple doors down to the bar and played Brick, based on her ratings was on HBO. We watched it and, hot damn, both she and Netflix know how to pick ‘em. It’s like a high school suburban noir story, with all the tropes of a down on his luck detective, a missing girl, shady criminals, the Man, and all that…but set in a high school. Really, really good.

Ryan came into the store yesterday and asked how NaNoWriMo was going for me, and I just chuckled. No, not doing it this year. I just finished the first issue of the comic project that Lee and I are working on, and he’s still going over character designs and the like, so I’ve got some time before we need to script out the next issue, so I may pick up “The Corner,” what I started last year for NaNoWriMo. I liked it, Kenzie loved it, and hey, I think it deserves to live. So we’ll see. The only “hobby” I’m consistently making time for is writing, and so far, that’s worked out okay.