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Month: February 2022

Something doesn’t add up.

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And I know what it is. I keep thinking my first book was mostly the first section of twenty two (22) chapters worth of interconnected stories, plus a couple of one off autobiographical stuff. But I have failed to remember that both Sisters in Arms and A Call to the Void, plus The Chronicles of Kelvin were multi chapter sections of weight on their own. No wonder I’m not anywhere near a 60,000 word count for book two. I’m about three, full matching in size sections to Ghost of the Dirty Starling short. Ha. At least I finally clued in as to why it felt like I wasn’t making much head way. On the plus side, I won’t feel bad if I go over twenty four chapters. Not that I’m looking to pad things out, but I want to hit all my marks, and tell any contextual stories as they come up. Like a flash back, or an aside, or some kind of additional point of contact within the story. I’m also not aiming to finish by the end of February. No need to rush. I’ll tell my story as it comes to me.

How on earth did I ever forget about those other meaty portions of my joint series. Covid times man – Covid times. Messing with my brain.

“I do believe that your friends are attempting to hail me…

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On a number of different frequencies. Shall I respond?” Booms the disembodied voice from every direction at once. Racquelle is braced on all fours in a small grey bubble of malleable lattice work walls. With no direct source of light that she can find, there is ample grey white illumination from the writhing, wriggling living material. Similar to bioluminescence but more diffused and brighter. The vessel feels to shimmy and shudder underneath her for another brief spell. “How do you know it’s my friends?” Asks Racquelle quietly into the open air of the containment sphere she’s in. “The ID of the ships transponder says Lil Boat Peep, in a similar fashion to how yours read The Mangelo.” Booms the voice. “Oh, well then yeah. Colleagues, more so than friends. But same team, same team, yes.” She exclaims into the empty space. “Query?” The ship booms internally. After a long pause Racquellelooks around inside the empty sphere. “Are you asking me? Or is it I can hear you asking them?” Retorts Racquelle. “Yes you. Did you find our initial contact to be suitably nonthreatening, or shall I patch us both through on comm’s?” The vessel walls echo with the volume of the question. “Oh. I didn’t realize you could do that. Yes. Please patch us through to them. But can you dial back the volume a decibel or two?” The ship no longer vibrates under her palms and knees. With a soundless jolt the spherical room expands into a larger cube of three meters on a side. Out of the floor a make shift table emerges, along with a banquet bench. Everything is made from the same grey white writhing material that emits light. As Racquelle makes herself comfortable on the bench and table the room remains silent, except for her foot steps, and the rustle of her uniform as she gets seated. For a heart beat or two longer Racquelle sits patiently waiting. “Hello? Is there a problem?” Racquelle calls out into the empty room. “NO!” Blared the voice at a painful shout like a fog horn. “Jesus suffering fuck!” Racquelle shouts cupping her ears tightly. Her ears are ringing badly, and a small trickle of blood runs down from both ears canals. “Shit!” Exclaims Racquelle, “I think my ear drums are shot. What the hell was that?” She screams, not hearing anything beyond her inner monologue. “Wait – wait. Don’t speak, or yell. Can you write it out in that ghost smoke writing like on The Mangelo earlier?” She barks oddly. The wall opposite her and the bench, becomes a large black screen, and a message appears on it like white grey smoke out of the ether. “Initial contact was met with hostility. Your friends and their vessel have been assimilated. No further threats detected.” The text glows slightly and disappears as she reads along. With a puzzled look Racquelle asks. “Assimilated? Assimilated? What does that mean? How did it happen so quickly?” Her throat raspy from shouting. She has to clasp her hands together to settle the panic rising within her. She’s got to remember to not shout to try to hear herself. Her ear drums are ruptured, but will eventually heal. She can read the text with no issues, and thus far the ship has kept her safe, warm and protected. At least beyond their initial in person introduction where she nearly asphyxiated in near total vacuum. “I drew them into myself, and devoured the component elements. I assure you it was somewhat painless.” The text lingers an added beat or two on somewhat painless. “Somewhat painless. Well then… listen I don’t know what you are. You’re nothing like any tech I’ve seen before. And I’ve seen some pretty weird shit. So – what do I call you? Do you have any food or water I can consume?” Says Racquelle.

The light in the room vanishes and in the span of a heart beat Racquelle swears she felt like falling through time. As the similar grey white light reappears Racquelle, now sat on the warm metal paneled floor can see what looks like the internal structure of a very old Company science vessel. Slowly standing up while holding onto the bulk head beside her, a bisected door opens and out walks a nude woman. Well not nude, per se, but covered in the same writhing wriggling grey material the vessel was made of before she fell. The nude woman reaches out a hand to Racquelle and opens her mouth to speak. “I can’t hear you? My ears! My ear drums have ruptured.” Racquelle squeaks signaling to the blood running out of her ears. With a slight red flush at the cheeks the woman looks down sheepishly, then reaches out with both hands to cover Racquelle’s ears with her palms.

After a moment, the sound of blood rushing pounds in Racquelle’s ears again. Her breath coming in panic stricken gasps. “Can you hear me now Racquelle?” Murmurs the woman in grey. On closer inspection Racquelle can see that she isn’t really a person, but more of the wriggling and writhing material like the ship. “How? How did you do that? My ear drums ruptured only moments ago?” She is dumbstruck by the return of her hearing, and what’s more her hunger and thirst are subsiding the longer she stands there. “Nanotech. It’s what I am. A self replicating experimental version gone awry. As it were. Very beneficial to – humans.” The woman’s voice is soft but firm. It has a lilting quality to it, like she should be singing to thousands of adoring fans, not standing in a hallway of an older derelict ship.

Standing there together, alone in the ship Racquelle reaches out to touch the humanoid construct’s face. As her finger tips caress the faux skin the lattice work matrix of writhing nanotech starts to shift and roil under her touch. Pulling her hands away quickly Racquelle watches in open mouthed fascination as the humanoid constructs face changes before her eyes. Mouth agape she is looking on as the molten metal like substance begins to form new features. Those that look like herself. With a smirk the construct softens the tip of the nose, and widens her jaw a few millimeters. No longer an exact copy of Racquelle, but a sister or cousin. “I was once known as Kelvin. But you can call me Katayna.”

Part Twenty: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Is 53 a lot? Sexual partners – Yes, dollars to your name – no.

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I was planning on a diatribe about raising my kids but I seem to have pulled a muscle in my thigh while skating for the first time in nearly a decade, on ice skate two sizes too small. Not to mention it is currently minus 22 today, plus whatever the windchill is. The ice rink we spent a few hours uncovering is now covered in last nights snow, once again. Ugh! My back! My back – my ass and my crack.

I seem to recall car travel being a lot quieter in my youth, whereas my kids use it as a time to narrate their whole lives, second by second on any car ride, no matter the length. It is …. trying. To say the least. Not that I don’t love the sound of laughter and giggles. Or the occasional hilarious story from either kid, but it always descends into cackles and shrill squawking. The kids – they never know when to quit while they are ahead.

On the up & up side, it will soon be March, which means Maple Syruping time! I do love to run the boiler out in the sunshine. Keeping the sap burning for 24 hrs a day for a week or two. Not a fan of hauling in the buckets from the forest, but I can pour sap, and keep a fire burning for hours on end. The crackle of the flames, the soft hiss and pop of the sap boiling, the steam and smoke. It can be very relaxing provided it isn’t insanely windy, or obscenely cold. If it’s too cold you get no sap, and it’ll be a short lived experience. If it hovers just over freezing in the sunshine – whoo boy! Giddy up.

Had some time on my hands to explore more of the Ghost of the Dirty Starling story line last night. I hope to be able to do a bit more this week. I feel like one really long chapter is coming on. I have been able to hang comfortably in the one thousand word range, with occasional dips to seven hundred words. I like the length changes personally. If I had to pad out each chapter to be an arbitrary ten pages some would feel drawn out, where they don’t need to be. Flaunt the rules. Make your own way. Do it how you want to see it done.

In other news, the Olympics started? Really? How did I miss that? Oh right. Human rights abuses, and boycotts and such. Shame for the athletes who have worked for four years to reach their peak over these two weeks. This will be the only time I care about Alpine skiing, down hill slalom, bobsled, luge and figure skating.

Crazy how a million dollars in our town will get you a run down back split of bungalow that needs work. That’s fucking wild. Who the hell wants a million dollar plus mortgage hanging over their heads for twenty five years. Gives me anxiety to think about it. Surely not all of these people can possibly make six figure incomes do they? Maybe they do. I don’t know. But six zeros slowly counting down on an ever looming mortgage would make me want to vomit. More power to you if you can stomach that kind of stress in your life/marriage for decades at a time. Yeesh.

“What do you figures got them all riled up?”

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A tired Piotr asks over the top of the carbine he’s pulled apart at his work bench. Looking away from his view screen, turning the fine tuning knobs on his micrometer dial indicator Brian looks up through the haze over the dark blue mezzanine to the massive board room window thirty meters above them. There looks to be a lot of heated discussion going on, angry pointing, arms flung in the air, people throwing papers and a general sense of chaos. “Looks like a real shit show.” Quips Brian. Setting down his guage blocks next to his pin removal set, Brian swings his monitor out of his way and shouts over the general din of the bull pen. He steps away from his bench a few feet and waves emphatically. “Magdalene! Hey, Magda!” He catches her attention and shouts while pointing up towards the window. “What’s got them so fucking randy all of a sudden?” The other armorers in the bullpen take hardly any notice of Brian. The dull roar of conversation, drills and pneumatic tools dominate the space. Turning to look up at the window, her short red hair all a frizz in the dry air, she sets down her tools and scrambles over to Brian’s bench. Piotr takes notice of Magda’s approach, and fixes his hair, and leans against his bench to ‘put out the vibe’. Skittering across the hard floors in her clunky boots, her tool belt rattling with emphasis Magda pulls up sharply to Brian’s bench. Breathing hard she leans in conspiratorially. “Oh-ho! You haven’t heard? Seems we’ve got ourselves a mole. What’s worse, the pesky buggers done given our fire teams and tankers brain worms!” She almost burps out the information in one breathless gulp. “What da’ fuck?” Barks Piotr. “That’s bull shit – no one could get a mole in here. We’re on top of each other twenty four seven. We’d know. No, no. We’d know if we had a sneaky fucker around here doing dirty shit. The Company has us so closed in you can’t take a shit without HR going over the weight, colour and stink of it in your personnel files. No. No way!” Piotr is red faced and irritated. A little of his star crossed lover sheen rubs off his face. Where he was happy and eager to hear Magda, now he’s put off and irritable. “Yeah – I’m with Piotr here. No way anyone of us working hand in glove with the fire teams would intentionally fuck them.” Brian says. Glancing up over Magdelene’s shoulder to gaze at the large window to think out loud. Brian speaks again. “We have no real idea of what we’re up against. We’ve all heard the bat shit crazy disinformation our spies were made to report back. It’s all fucked. Wackado bologna. The only reason the admiral would never pull out our spies prior to the assault is if he felt they’d all been made. Which, with the nonsense they sent back has to be the case. Has to be.” Piotr lets out a deflated puff of breath. Magdalene retorts. “Suit yourselves boys, but it’s brain worms I’m fucking telling you!” With that she turns on her heel and marches back to her side of the bull pen. Piotr comes around from his side to stand within arms length of Brian. “Hey man. I’m sure Mimi’s ok. You know. That mountain of a woman can take this on. I’m sure it’s nothing.” He rests a hand on Brian’s shoulder for a brief moment. Then makes his way leisurely back to his work station. “Yeah. Yeah sure. Thanks Piotr.” Brian’s face is one big worried crease.

In the boardroom thirty meters above several high ranking officers look as though they are about to come to blows. Brian is left feeling like his whole future is resting upon his shoulders. With his relationship with Mimi on his mind Brian’s mind races to think of something constructive to do. Mimi’s whole life could potentially hang in the balance. She was always prepared. Mimi always had a plan.

He pulls his keyboard out from under his dirty bench top and starts to pull up some of the spec sheets saved locally aboard the Righteous Chord on the new nanotech incorporated programs they were to install. Screen after screen of blue code on a black field scrolls by, as Brian’s eyes cut across the data in a mad search for a clue. Sweat begins to bead upon his brow. The noise and muffled chatter of the bull pen fades away to nothing. Clicking through the entire series of programs and check lists is going to take some doing by himself. “Piotr, can you do me a favour?” Asks Brian in a raspy whispered yell. “Sure, but what?” Replies Piotr almost immediately. “Well, you’re a better programmer than I am, do you have any scripts you can run to find anything dodgy in the set up files for these Nanotech protocols and procedures?” Reaching to turn his monitor around so that he can tap on his screen while he talks to Piotr. “I mean, I can… but the QA for all this stuff was strenuously vetted before it got to us. Not sure what you’re looking for?” Piotr exclaims. “I don’t know. Like a trap door, a trojan horse, some deviation that we have locally that’s different from the originals. Something like that.” Says Brian. “Well now, that is something that I can do – easily. If I make an image of the code, page by page, and run a visual check against the original we can see if everything lines up or not. Look here. I’ll make ours blue, the originals yellow, and anything not green could be our fucky little friend. Yeah? See. Look fields of green here man. Not this program.” Piotr is at once elated, and deflated. “Ok, but that’s just the one program, we have like thirty of these things in the directory. Can you do all of them and let me know if you get any discrepancies?” Replies Brian in hushed tones. “I’m on it.” Says Piotr.

Part Nineteen: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

The NEW 52 – It’s like Area 51 but with a 2 instead.

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Which means it’s probably full of interesting military tech and has an awful lot of misinformation floating around about it – so not much unless you really like aviation history, and things like the A-12 Oxcart or the SR-71 Blackbird. Both fantastical pieces of machinery, but not aliens though – sadly.

So what’s on the horizon for today you might ask? More snow shoveling to be precise. Not much, only three inches or so. A quick glide over the property and that’ll be sorted out without issue. However, the bigger issue is storage of all this gods be damned snow. I have banks of it three, almost four feet tall. The space between our drive way and our neighbours is perilously close to full. We’ve both had to give up a couple of feet of driveway itself, to be able to hold the stuff. Our drive which could usually hold four large vehicles without concern would be down to three, and the third would need to be a sedan or smaller. Once you’ve gone skiing, and snowshoeing and tobogganing and skating, and maybe snowmobiling, the draw of the snow diminishes greatly by every single passing day. Plus the cold makes me itch, and I generally hate being house bound 24/7. The wind/air here hurts the face – intentionally. BAH!

Closing out the busiest work week I’ve had in a while, so I look forward to cuddling up with a book, or perhaps being able to dabble in some creative writing. Slow week on that front I’m afraid. The paid work takes precedence over the hobby stuff. Gotta keep the internet flowing somehow!

Speaking of internet, are you guys watching The Book of Boba Fett at all? The last two episodes were weird. Like surely this could have been saved for Mandolorian Season Three, right? Not that I don’t love Grogu and Mando mind you. Just seems out of place, or a weird tie in, and Ashoka & Luke too. I know we’re about to head into SpinOff madness but that seems ill conceived. But if you’ve read my writing you know I’m not one who should complain about the state of someone else’s writing – Ha!

“Ma’am, we have a serious problem…”

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Says the tall solid woman dressed in blue medical scrubs. Her hair pulled taut in a messy ponytail. Wisps of her dark Auburn hair stuck to her face where she had obviously been sweating. “What seems to be the issue Dr?”  Replies the very short and severe looking commanding officer of the Righteous Chord. “It’s the fire teams ma’am, their stasis is being constantly interrupted by something, we don’t know what though.” The doctor responds in a dry rasp. “Are the sleeved soldiers affected aswell, or just the walking tank crews and fire teams?” The CO asks after a brief pause to wipe her nose with a handkerchief. “It’s isolated to just the fire teams and tankers ma’am. At least our last seventeen diagnostic scans tell us so.” The doctor is quite weary, trying to stand at attention, but also leaning heavily against the bulk head of the vessels main thoroughfare. She is wrestling with fatigue and slowly succumbing to it. “Have a seat Ms?” Replies the CO. “It’s doctor Tam, ma’am. We are stumped. And it’s only getting worse the longer we leave it.” She is really frazzled now, fingers cradling her temples, and knees about to buckle. From out of sight a folding chair is offered by one of the CO’s retinue. CO Austenmire looks down and taps a few commands into her wrist communicator and glances toward the free standing chair to the seated dr Tam. “Can you be ready for a debrief with the weapons teams and the other attending medical personnel? Let’s say ninety minutes from now. Go eat, shower and prep for a grilling from command.” Barks commanding officer Austenmire.

Her retinue break away suddenly to start talking into ear pieces and wall mounted comm’s terminals setting up the meeting among the higher ranking members onboard. The usually bustling ship is vacant with the large fighting force locked away in their stasis sleeves for the months long journey out to UB313. The echoing of the retinues chatter is freely bouncing down the central corridor of the vessel. No other noise is present to cancel it out. The majority of the ship is unused, and only the bare minimum of running lights are turned on. In the dimness of the hall the exterior field of stars is easy to see.

After a few deep breaths dr Tam pulls her hands from her face and notices she is alone in the halls, the CO and her entourage left soundlessly. The only hint she didn’t hallucinate the whole encounter is a flashing meeting notification from CO Austenmire and a quickly counting down timer which reads eighty one minutes and forty two seconds until she needs to report to the engineering sector on decks eight through twelve. Not being mechanically inclined the good doctor has never ventured down that far into the belly of the ship before.

The doors whirl open with a soft swishing noise and a slight jingle as dr Tam passes over the threshold. No guards are stationed out front by the doors, and inside is a bustling hive of activity. The temperature inside the debriefing room is about fifteen degrees warmer than the hallway. Inside the large room is a faux wooden table about thirty paces long and about ten wide. The back of the room is a floor to ceiling window that over looks the ship yard dry docks, and the storage mezzanine where the walking tanks are usually stored and repaired. Twenty meters below the mechanics are pushing their maglev tool boxes around the hull of the drop ships and scout vessels, while there are clusters of apron clad armorers working diligently at their work benches. The vision is soundless through the two foot thick concrete glass window pane. Built to take explosive decompression from a failed hanger door in the dry docks, or various types of explosions from all the artillery stored in the caches. Inside the room is a constant stream of buzzing, pings, printers and muffled intermingled conversations.

A side door opens a few moments later and the room goes silent. In walks commanding officer Austenmire followed by Admiral Mark Garneau. The wiry gray admiral looks like he used to be a very imposing man in his younger says. He carries himself with the bearing of a man who knows his own importance. A large man with a charcoal gray moustache is the last to enter the room. He sits down to the right of the admiral, and opposite CO Austenmire. The three look drawn and unhappy. The tension in the room is palpable. With a flick of her wrist CO Austenmire dims the lights with a wave and calls the debriefing to order. “We’ve been given to understand that their are several serious issues with our tankers and fire teams stasis in transport. I call on the good doctor Tam to lead us through what we know, and what we are going to do about it.” With a snap of collars and heads turned in unison the room full of superior officers and unit commanders all look directly at doctor Tam. With her palms pressed against the table top, she forces herself to stand. The warmth of the room and the glare from those present bring her thoughts into focus. Stepping away from her chair she walks to the side of the room with the view screen on it, and picks up a clicker and laser pointer. “Ok, so do we need a primer on the logistics surrounding stasis, or can I dive right in?” She says while looking around the room. CO Austenmire interjects ” We’re all as clear as we need to be on the standard stasis sleeves doctor Tam. Our issue, and yours concerns the specialized fire teams that are a key component of our upcoming mission. Without them we will be at a serious disadvantage. So – if you will, proceed.” Her remarks are sharp and concise. Dr Tam clicks through her deck to the suitable page. “Right. So – the issue is, our tankers are having their stasis interrupted for longer and longer intervals, and at an increasing number of instances. They are essentially experiencing waking paralyzed nightmares and migraines of increasing strength. At the current rate they will likely not be able to fight, nor maintain any kind of grip on reality to be of any use. As they are being driven mad by a long and pervasive bout of straight out torture. And there’s little we can do about it at the moment. I’ll take questions in a moment. Please. Yes – we have tried to decant four members from each task force, both the fire team and the walking tank crew, to no avail. We can’t seem to wake them up. At all. Not with chemicals, not with stimulation, not even with the electrodes buried in their brains. We’ve attempted a reprogrammed Morning Rays Protocol and nothing is working. So – Now I’ll open the floor to suggestion.” The room erupts into chaos.

Part Eighteen: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

How do you solve a problem like 51?

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But not centimeters of snow! Thankfully. We did not get the one foot of snow that was potentially forecasted, although more snow is coming later on today. My back thanks you! Four inches is manageable every couple of hours.

Speaking of puns, I added at least one visual pun into my latest report. Made me laugh, I wonder if anyone else will clue in to it. Fun tip, having worked so hard Monday through Wednesday, plus some light work this previous weekend I now get to enjoy a lighter day – Go Me! Much appreciated by my brain, wrists and sense of musical whimsy. I did bust out some music yesterday as I was nearing the end of laying out my first draft.

It’s funny as a kid, youth, teen, early twenties I could not work in silence, I had to have music on, but after working for many years in open office spaces, I’ve come to love working quietly. I can on occasion, if I don’t have to pay attention to critical elements, listen to loud music and sing along as I work. Mainly doing pie charts, and bar graphs, and scatter graphs though. Not the table portion. A mixture of Motorhead, The Beatles and The Blue Stones, followed up by Wolfmother and Status Quo. That’s my go to musical line up these days. Hood and loud too. Which is fine because I work from home, and don’t live on top of my neighbours. I guess I’d have to invest in some seriously high quality head phones if I ever go back to working on site when Freelancing, or go back to an in-house design position. I like the zero commute time too much though. Chasing dollar bills has always ended badly for me. I guess if the work/industry is amazing I could potentially do it again. But coming from large market alcoholic beverages with massive start of the year marketing meetings with air travel, fancy hotels, meetings in swanky spaces, free drinks, great food, famous guest speakers and late night parties for days on end, you’d be hard pressed to improve on the type of perks I’ve known over 16 years affiliated with that industry. Work hard and play even harder was a common refrain amongst the C-Suite types.

Yeah – so. Still writing a bit every single day, and haven’t forgotten about my short story series. I’m working through some character moments in my head before I write out anything. I am trying to get these last six or so chapters to land properly. Going to require some footwork on my end. I’ll keep you posted.

50! – We Reached 50 Days and all you got was tinnitus.

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EÈEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE – isn’t that delightful. Is your inner ear issue accented or other? Muah- muah. Now that’s cleared up.

Big fifty day milestone. I feel like this is a sort of AA meeting. Hello my name is… and I have been writing for fifty days – small smattering of applause. Not that big a deal, but I’m kind of happy I’ve stuck with it.

In happy news, I will have the first polished draft of my report done today, just shy of 100 pages. It’s a hefty document, looks lovely. Three days of real work, plus a Sat/Sun combo of a couple hours of front end work. Not to mention I did a fair amount of leg work well before I had any of the data sets. Things like building out my templates, and setting up colour palettes in various programs, and gathering the specified font families. Not hard work, but time consuming. I’d much rather have that tucked away so i can start the heavy lifting, than wait until the raw data comes in and then have to do all that stuff before i can really begin. I’m lazy, i want as few obstacles in the way so that i can complete a task. Set my foundation, then come in like a nutter and tear through the work as quickly as i am able. I also proof my pages as i go, since there are so many colour coded tables.

So big 50! Wow – what can I say, glad to be here. Happy some of you have chosen to follow along. Today’s big to-do is about three movies i recently watched. Some good, some moderate, and some heavy cheese (a.k.a Fromage) if you’re of the Much Music & Ed The Sock era like I am.

First up was “Nobody”, an action packed mix of John Wick & The Equalizer, with some snappy banter and blood soaked fighting. I liked it a lot. Big fan of John Wick franchise too. This was my favourite of the three films I saw over the Christmas holidays, which I had never seen before. I should also mention, these were all watched at home, not in a proper theater, with candy, drinks and massive screen and sound. Could have played a part in why movies two and three didn’t land so well. They were far more spectacle based. If you like watching men in their fifties fight, shoot and drink their way through trouble then Nobody is great.

Second up was Venom: Let there be Carnage. Followed in the first ones footsteps, fun, goofy and kind of silly. I liked it, but if I’m going to rewatch a Spider-man adjacent film, I’d watch into the spider verse for a fifteenth time. That was great, in 3d imax and on my home screen. Tom Hardy is great, Venom is funny. Carnage has a size issue, he’s a touch too big for my recollection. But I like Woody Harrelson, so I can see past that. It does show as a $70 million movie and not a Marvel tent pole at $150 million dollar movie. But the small focus is kinda nice. Not world saving, but a select few people. Lower stakes to deal with.

Third, and what I found to be disappointing was Suicide Squad 2. Lots of body horror, which I wasn’t expecting. Plus I kind of hate Peace Keeper. Maybe he’s funnier and more congenial in the prequel tv show he’s now got, but he didn’t do it for me. Harley felt like an afterthought, and most people weren’t compelling. However, Polka Dot man was unexpectedly great. You get a sense of the guy, and feel for him and his interdimensional polka dot disease. King shark was a lazy groot knock off. Didn’t add much to the plot. And why are so many DC characters essentially just a rebrand dead shot, or whomever Will Smith was in the first one. Idris Elba felt wasted. I think the issue was I heard so much hype around it I had unreasonable expectations for it. It only landed at my feet with a damp thud. Sploot.

The first ground hogs say early spring! But you never can tell. Have some more snow on the way today. Another foot to the pile. I’ll have to rest up as it’ll really give my back a once over if it’s wet and heavy!

Melty Brain & Eye Strain.

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Fought hard against the report today, went deep into the trenches and was bested by it. Dry eyes and a melting brain. Hard to think straight. Sore left eyeball for my troubles. Thought I could possibly complete the robust beast today, but no such luck. On the upside I have only 60% of what I should have had to do tomorrow left to complete. Perhaps trying for that extra 40% was just too much. But why put off until to tomorrow that which you can do today? Well – eye strain and melty brain for starters actually. Twenty pages was a solid goal, going over was silly. No chance I was going to pull off the full last forty in one six hour uninterrupted day. A+ for effort though.

Know your limits and play within them! Or else try not to melt your brain by doing too much with it all at once like a fool.

Tomorrow marks day 50! Do I have something fun to say? Any new pertinent information to share? A rant to glide into, or perhaps a movie review? Who knows, you’ll just have to wait and see.

Good morning, good afternoon and good night.

It’s February 1st : An exploration of Day 49.

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Almost to fifty, if you can believe that. This wasn’t so much a new years resolution as an attempt to grind out some time in my schedule to do any sort of writing I could on a consistent basis. And on a couple of select days that has prompted me to write new and interesting materials. It’s not all Pulitzer worthy text, which I am aware, but genre-esque space science fiction fun. Easy reading if you will. My question now is, how long do I keep the streak running for? Until I finish book two? Most likely yes. Then I might take a break. Or, after I complete the last six or seven more chapters I’ll switch gears and write a few more autobiographical one off’s to pad the page count a bit. Make it feel like the 99 cents through Kindle is worth it! Ha.

Or I’ll feel like painting or sculpting or it’ll get warm enough to do some wood working. I find it unpleasant to handle chisels in sub zero temperatures. If it’s around zero or above i can make it work.

Had a solid work day yesterday, and today is shaping up to be a good one too. Invoices out means paid invoices coming back in, in the near future. Just resting my wrist for a shake while I quickly clack this out on my phone via thumbs. Have to make the effort to get up and walk around. Shake out those shoulders and legs. Get limber! Stay healthy out there people!