I put in a couple of hours of diligent typing and cranked out the first chapter of my NaNoWriMo/NaNoBlogMo contribution, the novel “15,000 Years” today.
The first chapter comes in at just under 3,000 words, (2,980 to be exact), which is respectable. At a rate of 3,000 words a day, I would complete the requisite 50,000 words in about 16 days, leaving me 14 days to spare.
It seems unlikely that I’ll work at that rate consistently, but it does at least make me hopeful that I can complete the whole thing in 30 days.
Still no real plot for it, but I have at least two characters created for it, and some idea of what their interactions are going to be like.
It’s not much, but hey, at least I’m giving it a shot. I don’t really anticipate that it’ll be the Great American Novel or that some publisher will see it and want to throw all kinds of money at me for it, but at least I’ll have done it, and thereby proven to myself that I can do it.
My weekend was pretty much standard, with nothing especially exciting or interesting happening.
The season finale of Dead Like Me was on last night, and while it was, as an episode, very good, as a season finale it was somewhat disappointing.
Now I have a long wait until it returns (and hopefully it will) for a third season, and am left with nothing to watch at 10 pm on Sundays.
There’s a new series called “Huff” that’s going on in DLM’s slot, but it doesn’t really appeal to me.
I could watch “Boston Legal,” I suppose, since I did watch “The Practice,” which is what it spun off from, but…meh. I initially liked James Spader’s character when he was introduced on "The Practice," but after a while he wore our his welcome for me, and I just don’t feel up to watching another “quirky” David E. Kelley series set at a law firm.
So, with DLM’s absence I’m left with little to look forward to before “Sin City” is released in April.
I am kind of looking forward to the January release of “Wonderfalls” on DVD, though.
“Wonderfalls” was a very short-lived (four episodes) series on Fox from the creator of DLM. It had much of the oddly comic spirit of DLM, though it was a little less dark, and, while it was obviously cut from the same cloth as DLM, it had its own distinctive style.
Despite Fox’s short-sightedness in abruptly ending the series after only four episodes (they had originally scheduled the fifth episode to air, then yanked it in favor of a re-run of “The Swan” at the last minute), thirteen episodes were actually produced.
The DVD will contain all thirteen.
I just checked out a related Web site. “Wonderfalls” will not be released on DVD until February.
In any case, while I do look forward to seeing additional episodes of this wonderful show, I know that ultimately it will make me sad that there are no more episodes to be had, so the purchase of the DVD release will be bittersweet at best.
The one thing of note that happened over the weekend was that I cancelled one of the “Sandman” book orders I had that was still pending. I had been hoping to buy the book in hardcover format, but I hadn’t been able to find it anywhere. The only copies I could find were softcover, and after more than 8 years since I lost my originals, I couldn’t honestly remember if it had ever been released in hardcover.
So I settled for ordering the softcover.
On Saturday, after discovering that employees of my company get a discount through Overstock.com, and I decided, on a whim, to see if they had any of the “Sandman” titles available.
I found the volume in question (“Brief Lives,” for those of you who may be wondering) available in hardcover.
So I cancelled the other order and placed an order with Overstock. While I was at it, I ordered another volume from the series (“World’s End”). At this point, I only need one more ("The Kindly Ones") to bring my collection back to full strength.
Eventually, I hope to replace some of the volumes I already have with hardcover editions, but that’s further down the road.
Apart from writing the first chapter of “15,000 Years,” today was mostly uneventful. I stopped in to pay the rent and requested a copy of my lease, which I had neglected to do when I’d renewed it.
The Property Manager, who is herself a relatively attractive woman, though she’s not exactly my type (too tall and too perky), was somewhat flirtatious with me in an aloof, professional fashion.
While I was waiting for her to make my copies, Kelly, the girl who said told me that I smelled REALLY good, came in.
She paid no attention to my presence, sat at her desk, went to work on something, and basically just persisted in failing to notice that I was there. Being Jon, I was unable to think of a way to interrupt her work and get her to notice that I was there, and since it didn’t take long to make my copies, there wasn’t enough time for me to come up with one, though I’m fairly certain that all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough.
Leaving there, I went out to do a little grocery shopping, came home, put my groceries away, then got in a quick workout.
And now here we are.
I know I’ve mentioned the loss of my “Sandman” collection, which I assembled over the course of a couple years in the form of trade paperbacks, hardcover editions, and individual issues, several times before. Some of you may be wondering just how I went about losing it.
It’s a pretty simple story, actually. Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Boy wants to share his interests with girl, so he lends his favorite books to her. Girl quits job and moves away without giving books back to boy.
It wasn’t anything malicious on her part; in fact, her mercurial nature was one of the things about her that made me fall in love with her.
Throughout the years I occasionally bumped into her, and she would always mention that she still had them and that they were okay, but she never managed to get them back to me.
It’s worth mentioning that while I was very much in love with her, the feeling was nowhere near being mutual, so despite how much I wanted my books back, I never really pursued the issue (or "issues," as the case may be), as seeing her was basically a painful experience.
The last time I saw her she was married and had a kid. She had also put on a considerable amount of weight. That's not especially significant; it's just another detail that I thought I'd mention.
In any case, that’s the abridged story of how I lost my “Sandman” collection, which goes to show just how much love can cost you.
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