I haven’t written in a long time, probably because I have been tired and lethargic for the past month or so. I haven’t really done much of anything exciting. I’ve mostly been filling in the time with watching TV more than usual, staying up late, downloading stuff from the Internet. I’m not feeling very creative or even productive lately. Oh, here’s one thing I did do: Michelle and I went to Shane Company to get new wedding rings. My old ring is nice, but I can’t really wear it much because it’s a bit too small and the style of it makes my finger irritated after a bit. So we both got new ones, in preparation for our 10th anniversary (coming up next June). Mine is a white gold band with some diamonds channel-set, and Michelle’s is a mix of diamonds and rubies with a ruby center stone. Nice!

Yes, these are very silly. I’m A Cow: http://www.pacland.cc/imacow.swf Weeeeee! http://www.threebrain.com/weeeeee.html Enjoy!

Posting this mostly for myself… contains some personal info. (If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re a close friend and I trust you to respect my privacy and Michelle’s) Kethry2 (11:10:11 PM): What else you been doing lately? Nekodojo (11:12:58 PM): Had an argument with miche about how I would like her to clean up after herself more and not leave trash lying around Kethry2 (11:13:16 PM): Oh? How did it go? Nekodojo (11:13:17 PM): There is more to it than that, but that’s the short version Kethry2 (11:13:39 PM): Yeah, Did you feel good, getting it out like that? Nekodojo (11:14:14 PM): Eh, she was pissed off at me because I was a bit patronizing, but I think she will be more aware of it (and that it annoys me) after this… Kethry2 (11:14:58 PM): Think it will help? Nekodojo (11:17:45 PM): We had another argument a week or two ago (right before we came to visit you) that was related a bit… I said that I feel like our chores are divided into “things Greg does” and “things we both do together”… I said that I feel like her asking me to help with something she said she would do makes me feel like she doesn’t recognize and understand the things that I do on my own every day without prompting. Kethry2 (11:19:00 PM): Maybe you could make a list? Greg Chores, Miche chores Together chores? ...

I have too many instant messenger services and not enough contacts to talk to. If you know me (or even if you don’t, I guess) and you use any of these services, send me a message so I know who you are. AOL/Netscape messenger: Nekodojo MSN Messenger: gconnor@nekodojo.org ICQ: 18362803 I will probably ditch one or more of these services, because right now I only have two contacts in each. It looks like MSN Messenger is the best for voice, but they’re all about the same for text messaging. Your comments welcome…

For now I’m skipping Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which I will write more about later. Short version reads, “The con was cool, we read a lot and watched TV,” but this doesn’t quite do justice to the full version. Sorry about this skipping around a bit, but I will try to come back to the missing days later. We packed our bags in the morning, including the extra bag we bought at Fry’s near our hotel, and packed the art items in padded envelopes and cardboard with tape. We considered packing the glass thing, but thought it would be safer to carry it with us, and the matted print was too big to go in the suitcase. But the suitcase held the jewelry box and the wood block for the glass thing rather well. During this time I also called voicemail at work and changed my message, and forwarded my cell phone business line back to my desk for that true “on vacation” feeling (though the personal line still works - as always LJ friends can still reach me by alpha pager here.) ...

Looks like I haven’t written much of anything since the 10th. Shame on me! I have decided not to write a novel this month, due to that it’s only five days from deadline, and I only have 234 words out of 50,000 done (that’s 0.6%) and I would need to erase those words to make the work compatible with the outline. Defeat. Oh well, I will continue writing when the mood strikes me. ...

Writing on Wednesday Nov 28, but this actually happened over the weekend on Sunday Nov 25. I don’t think we went to any of the sessions on Sunday. We got down to the con area about 11-ish and walked through the art show area. We found 3 things we wanted to buy: an engraved-glass art piece, a jewelry box, and a print; total damage was about $110, not bad compared to what we would have done going to the actual auction and bidding on things in live mode. We hustled our treasures back to the rented lair. ...

Writing on Tuesday Nov 27, but this actually happened over the weekend on Saturday Nov 24. I went and hunted down breakfast in the restaurant again. We arrived a little late for the first session, but not by much. The first session was Writing for Smart Kids and the panel was Gilden, Wrede, A. Turtledove and Smith. A. Turtledove turned out to be Harry Turtledove’s teenage daughter, who served as the “typical young adult reader”. The general consensus seemed to be that an author shouldn’t talk down to a young audience, or try to dumb down the material… kids are smart. I can’t actually think of anything they said you should do differently for a Young Adult audience… hmmm. Pat Wrede was asked “What inspired you to write X?” where X was some book she had written that I didn’t recognize, and Pat then gave her Rant about how Inspiration is overrated, and that a writer’s life is 90% Perspiration and 10% (or less) Inspiration. Another writer, Mel Gilden, took a moderate stance and said that all the little ideas that you string together to make a single work also count as inspiration. ...

Writing on Tuesday Nov 27, but this actually happened last week on Friday Nov 23. We got up around 9 am and I went down to the hotel restaurant and got breakfast to go, and brought it back up to the room. We finally got ready to go, and went down and presented ourselves for registration. Once equipped with name badges, we wandered the dealers room and the art show. I bought the ceremonial Jewelry for Miche (this one in the shape of five spiderwebs chained together to form a necklace, which should look good with the Corset bearing spiderweb patterns. ...

Writing on Monday Nov 26, but this actually happened last week on Thursday Nov 22. I got up at the usual time and I let Miche sleep in. I paid all the bills. Then I wanted to get some better headphones for the trip, so I went to Fry’s, but found it closed. (We had never heard of an electronics store that was closed on Thanksgiving before, so with tears in our eyes, we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to get headphones… we didn’t find one… *) ...