Jeff’s Journal

In somewhat chronological order:

* Karaoke with dodgeballers. I sang Meat Loaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” and then Rickrolled the bar on a dare. I surprised them because they don’t know that I sing. Much more fun than anticipated. Liz, I thought of you about a dozen times - you must hate people like me.

* The Andy Warhol: Pop Politics exhibit at the Currier Art Museum. The whole art museum was great (it may have actually been the first time I’ve actually been to an art museum), but the Warhol exhibit was maddeningly wonderful. Ann has a very visceral, negative reaction to Warhol which is interesting and fun at the same time. The rest of the museum was great, too, but the Warhol exhibit was what brought us in. Also, free Saturday mornings at Currier? Awesome.

* Dinner with Jackie and Matthieu, followed by a maddening game called Bananagrams, which is like your own personal Scrabble with a race against other people. Strange, but it worked.

* Fried chicken. I really fried chicken. About that whole losing weight thing…

* Being done with my amoxiciillan. And without hives!

* D&D today. First game with our campaign in close to 6 weeks or so, and it was nice to get back in the swing of things. I don’t like trolls anymore, though. Or my dice. Stupid dice.

* Weeds. We’ve watched 5 or 6 episodes over the last four days - surprisingly fun and addictive show.

* The library. Because no matter how hard I try, I always have roughly 17 books out at once. I brought 8 back and thought “finally, I won’t have a ridiculous stack.” Whoops. As we were checking out, I saw a book I wanted across the room and sent Ann after it. The woman behind the desk gave me a look. I can’t blame her.

* Football. Who cares if I was 0-4 in my NHL predictions? The Colts are out in the first round!

I’m not a resolution guy, but I am a goal guy. I like words. So, beyond the stuff I can’t yet discuss publicly:

1) Write more. While the Kroger Babb bio is my priority, that doesn’t mean I can’t do more other stuff:

a) I’ve always talked about writing a novel, I’m a NaNoWriMo failure 6 times over - a 120k word novel requires about 330 words a day. I think I can force myself to write a paragraph or two a day on most days, right? At the very least, just be able to say I’ve done it. The fact that I have zero faith in any of my ideas or ability to execute them can be dealt with later.
b) I need to get moving on this Babb bio. The window of opportunity is closing on a few things, and with the various life changes that are inherent, if I don’t get a lot of legwork done now, it may hamper my ability to get anything done later. At the very least, I need to get more significant research done - locate prints, locate people, maybe locate an agent/publisher where I can get some help? I dunno.
c) Blog more consistently. None of this “life is depressing and so I need to stay away from my keyboard until I want to explode and then get everyone angry.” It’s no good for anyone, and keeping my mind sharp and informed is important to me.

2) Get healthier. I don’t eat great, and I don’t exercise enough. The federal government thinks I’m 5 pounds away from obesity, which is somewhat ridiculous, but the fact remains that I could stand to lose 15-20 pounds. Dodgeball once a week ain’t gonna do the trick, and my diet is unlikely to change because I simply have too many food issues, but I was at 155 in college and that was fine, albeit when I didn’t eat period. If I were at 165, I’d be pretty happy with myself, to be honest. The other roadblock, though, is that writing about it is pretty much the extent of my significantly caring, so if I really want to lose some weight, my level of caring has to increase.

3) See better movies. I’m actually considering a self-governed project where I’ll watch all of the Best Picture winners in order, but then I fear eventually having to watch The Greatest Show on Earth, never mind Titanic or Crash. But, while it’s fun to throw on Harold and Kumar for a diversion, that’s 90 minutes I could put toward, say, Kicking and Screaming instead. I only watched 30-something movies last year, that’s something I’d like to improve upon.

4) More gaming. Hopefully, this will be easy once Mike’s Genius game gets off the ground, but I would like to feel comfortable enough with things to possibly run a one-shot near the of the year. It’s a goal, hey.

5) Be a better husband. I don’t pull my weight enough, and I know it and Ann loves me for it anyway. I need to stay more aware of it, though, and make a better effort.

6) Be more creative. I haven’t recorded a piece of music in 2 years now, for instance. Even if I’m writing 300 words a day, maybe doing some short stories might be fun. Why hold back?

Actually, I think that may have to be my mantra going forward - why hold back? I’ve become too concerned with my own perception of myself and, as much as I hate to admit it, my own perceptions as to how others see me. I know what I’m capable of. I’m going to be 28 this year. Why hold back?

I’ve been looking for an excuse to use this again for about 3 weeks

THINGS I DID:

* Got rolling on my character for Mike’s Genius: The Transgression game. Assuming Mandy’s prediction doesn’t come true, that’s going to be a fun game to play in.
* Continued to fill an mp3 player. I haven’t wanted to spend money on a boombox, and I have a 6gb mp3 player I bought for recording purposes that I’m not using, so I bring that to work. 6gb is a lot of memory. Also, I still don’t know if I like the whole mp3 thing, but this is pretty handy.

THINGS I KIND OF DID:

* Wrote a very important letter. At least a portion of it. In my head. I’m being vague.

THINGS I DIDN’T DO:

* Clean.
* Organize.
* Respond to about 4 e-mails/Facebook messages. I’m so bad at this.
* Read. I’m loving Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks and wanted to try and finish it tonight. That’s not going to happen.

THINGS I FORGOT TO DO:

* In my recap post, note two things:
** Ken and Emily had a baby, and Emilie had a baby! I knew there was at least one other baby in there, and I just found out today that Emilie had her’s a couple weeks ago. So yay for that.
** Meeting Jackie and Matthieu! Our Manchester buddies we met back in January, back at the Jeff Kinney event. It’s been almost a year and we get along with them so well I forget we’ve not known each other a year yet. I’m a dummy.

THINGS I’M LYING TO MYSELF ABOUT:

* Ann is officially allergic to amoxicillian. I caught her strep throat, so I’m on it now, too. I’m now afraid of being allergic, to the point where every itch I have makes me think I’m getting hives, too.
* That I’m not going bald. Because I clearly, CLEARLY am. In the right light, I’m a step away from combover territory, which may sound ridiculous and it may be something only I notice, but whatever.
* That I’m not addicted to Puzzle Quest. Because I clearly, CLEARLY am.

I started this at 10:30pm Friday night, I’ll probably finish in the morning. Who knows. If you want 5 of your own, let me know - these were from Mike:

1. Are you having kids any time soon?

In the clearest possible terms, no. For one, we’re simply not ready in any way shape or form - we don’t have a second bedroom, I don’t have a job in 7 days, and we’re enjoying our life as it is anyway. Beyond that, the adoption process is, bare minimum, a two year process. We’ve put off buying a place until the economic stuff sorts out a bit more, so we’re at least 3 years away at this point, I think.

What’s your thoughts on being a parent? What kind of dad do you picture yourself being?

I’m scared. It’s the single scariest thing on my future horizon. I fear being a poor parent, about not doing right for my kids, for not being able to provide what they deserve, for not bringing them up the way I think they should be. I fear my genetics. I fear my own insecurities.

Ann thinks this might make me a better parent, since I’m so aware of all these things. I’m not convinced yet, but, again, 3 years down the line.

2. You’re a literary nerd. Why aren’t lyrics important to you?

It’s probably because I’m even more of a music nerd. I’m drawn to a song’s structure - whether it be a catchy melody, a great hook, or an interesting arrangement - long before I even hear the words being sung.

Even as a “literary nerd,” there’s very little in literature that sticks with me. I just finished Anathem today, which is probably my favorite book in 12 months, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you the details of a passage that really caught me, even though there were plenty. Maybe I just don’t have that sort of mind, not that I know what sort of mind it is.

3. How in the world do you find the time to read as many books, watch as many movies, listen to as much music, and do as much stuff in a 168 hour week?

Okay. First, a typical “adult” book is 250-400 pages long. A typical “adult” book, as it is, I can read at a clip of 55-70 pages in a 30 minute sitting. I’ve always been a fast reader, so it’s pretty natural for me. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t fit in at least 30 minutes of reading, and it’s usually closer to an hour when it gets to the points in time I can get 10 minutes in here or there. The 30 uninterrupted minutes over lunch alone make up for that easily. Now, that’s close to a book a week on lunch breaks alone. A book like Anathem or A Game of Thrones, both 900 page tomes with a ton of detail, move slower but get more attention than normal. Meanwhile, I’ll read a young adult novel with larger print and smaller book sizes at a clip of maybe 100 pages in a 30 minute time span. I can polish two or three of those off in a week. Or perhaps a graphic novel, which is 100 pages on a good day and can often be finished in one or two sittings. Add them all together, and it’s not so strange to have read 115 books as of this point in time.

As for movies, baseball season and the advent of the DVR has cut back on that tremendously, but if I can find time to watch two episodes of Mad Men in an evening, what’s a 90 minute movie? I could, in theory, probably watch a movie a day if I didn’t give it my full attention. I just enjoy movies too much.

Music? Wicked easy - satellite radio plus having a CD going whenever the TV is off and I’m near a computer.

And why isn’t working on The Most Important Book In The World included more often? Seriously. Get back to work on that thing.

I know, I know. The Drama is nearly over, and the creative juices feel like they’re coming back again, which is a good sign for that. Hopefully the prodigal grandchild will understand…

4. What happened to all the Palin love in your blog as of late? Are you still as enthralled with her?

The love went the way of most other writing as of late. I just haven’t been enthralled with anything, the election included. As it stands, if my excitement in late August was an 11, it’s probably around a 9.75 right now - I’m still a huge fan, and I just don’t know how much to blame that rough Couric patch on her or the inept McCain campaign.

5. Stubbornness: a boon or bane? Explain. (Bonus points for a tie-in to your recent job situation.)

Depends on the context. It’s a boon in some ways because it keeps me grounded - my stubbornness goes a long way when I know I’m not completely off-kilter. I know I’m not insane when it comes to recent troubles, and it keeps me from going completely nuts in my head. It’s a bane in the same way, however, where if I wasn’t so stubborn, I could have saved myself a ton of mental anguish.

The whole library thing isn’t unique to my typical stubbornness. It’s probably the number one cause of my inaction on many areas of my personal life, and probably gets mistaken for apathy in a lot of areas. I need to overcome it.

6. WHY SO SERIOUS?

All that time in the asylum…

I say “weekend” as if I’m not just feverishly trying to recap life in general since I’ve had no desire to write much of anything. But that’s slowly going away, I think. But anyway, less Sox talk and more real life…

1) I went to a children’s library conference on Thursday, and I’m amazingly glad I did:

a) It was held in Bethlehem/Littleton, NH, which is about 2 hours north of Manchester, through the White Mountains. I’m not a “ooh, nature” guy, but holy crap was it gorgeous. It was a pretty crappy day, but as I got to the mountains, you could see the clouds and fog rolling off the hills and mountains, and the foliage was pretty, and I could honestly pick up shop and move up that way for good if things were different in my life right now. Just such a perfect, gorgeous, beautiful area.

b) The conference was enlightening, both personally and professionally. I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation from other librarians with the authors and events I’ve been able to get, apparently, which was a very surprising and nice thing to hear, but each panel was just as interesting as well - one on autism and dealing with autistic kids in the library was great, but my favorite was the Native American materials presentation, which really spoke to my personal vendetta against bad nonfiction in children’s collections. The whole day was really great in that regard.

The whole thing was a very uplifting experience for me.

2) Dodgeball didn’t go so well in week two, but I did nail someone in the babymaker, so that’s worth something.

3) I took Friday off, and went to meet the wonderful, amazing Jon Scieszka on Saturday:

It’s always wonderful when a guy you’ve admired for 20 years ends up being even more awesome than you could have thought. In the picture is fellow librarian friend Jackie, who joined us on the excursion. We got to talk to Scieszka for a good 5 minutes before he spoke, and he signed a couple things for me and posed for a picture. Wicked down to earth, amazingly funny - he has a Norm MacDonald-style delivery which is just hysterical - and really someone I’m happy is cool, and makes me appreciate his work that much more. Really wonderful stuff.

4) Yesterday was D&D, first time in a month. Wow, did I miss it - a really crazy battle with some undead dragon newborns, some crazy challenges, and the afternoon really flew by. Every session becomes more and more fascinating, which is great. Two more weeks? Really?

5) Currently obsessed with the following:

a) 30 Rock. We’re all caught up, finally. Talk about a wickedly funny show. Anything that can make Al Gore fun is fine by me.

b) Anathem by Neal Stephenson. A less talented author wouldn’t be able to make me care about monks who study math and philosophy, but there you have it. Rick has been trying to get me to read Snow Crash essentially since the day I met him, and I may have to bump that up considerably.

c) Mega Man 9. No video game hates you quite the way MM9 does. Yet I can’t stop torturing myself.

d) Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis. The CD isn’t anything special, except that every song feels as if it’s better than the song before it, and you’re disappointed when it’s over. That means something, right?

e) E. L. Fudge cookies. The double stuff variety. Yeah. Cookies shaped like elves are my anti-drug.

This weekend, too my knowledge, we have nothing planned. I’m looking forward to a late-night High School Musical 3 and a lot of sleeping.

…that I have no clue as to whether I can remember everything.

1) So remember that short film I was in? It made its debut at Lumen Eclipse last weekend, and apparently to pretty good acclaim. I have a copy of it, there was one on DailyMotion that doesn’t exist anymore, and when I am able to share it with you all, I will, because I think it’s worth seeing - it’s offbeat, it’s a fun Nancy Drew homage, and if you hate it, well, it’s only 60 seconds out of your time. It’s worth noting that I’m on screen for roughly .75 seconds, which is a new record for any sort of film presentation, and thus makes my role as “The Pianist” of similar substance to Dame Judi Dench’s Oscar-winning turn in Shakespeare in Love. Just sayin’.

2) A couple weeks ago, Rick and Mark came up for a long weekend. It was essentially like old college times all over again, which was exactly what was needed and a good time. We hit the Anna Maria alumni weekend pub night - it’s my 5 year reunion this year, which is scary in so many ways. Saw a lot of people I didn’t expect, a few I did, and I’m honestly glad I went. The rest of the weekend went smoothly except for the amount of money I spent on food and the fact that my 360 hates EA games.

3) Dodgeball started up this week. A solid W for The Ocho, and I didn’t play half bad, either. I forgot how much I missed it, too - good competition is fun, and the team’s a pretty solid good time, too. I wish I could be one of those people who can hit the gym 4 times a week or whatever, but I can’t even blog regularly. But I feel great tonight, even if the tops of my thighs are absolutely on fire from the running around.

4) With my time at the library coming to a close, I’ve been trying to get myself set up better at the Manchester Library, which means navigating through their new system and getting used to the kinks, especially from a patron side as opposed to the librarian side. Instead of getting into the nitty gritty details without knowing the specifics, I’ll say this much - every so often, I’ll tell Ann how sad it makes me that I simply will never get to read all the books I want to. I’ve read over 100 this year alone, so it’s not as if I’m a reading slacker - it’s just that a) I know my list at Manchester is about 60 titles deep right now, b) it could be doubled if I wanted to take an hour and play around with it, and c) that doesn’t even start getting into the books that the library doesn’t have and, scarier, probably can’t get.

My literary holy grail at the moment is Zen in the Art of Slaying Vampires. I’m not paying $44 for a used book on Amazon, and even weirder is that no library shows as having it on WorldCat. I may never even see this book in the, uh, paper flesh in my lifetime, never mind get to read it. It has apparently been optioned as a film (yeah, that’s right - not that anyone’s ever seen the book or anything), which bodes well, but still, this book is essentially the story of my life when it comes to books. Not that I won’t have hundreds of others to read instead, of course, but still.

5) Related to the above, I’ve tried LibraryThing and couldn’t really get into it. I tried the iRead application on Facebook and found it difficult. I did GoodReads and got annoyed. Finally, I’ve found a web-based book program I actually like - Shelfari! I know it doesn’t do much new with certain things as perhaps the others I’ve tried have, but I love the interface and this just feels easier. I don’t know if I’ll keep up with it - after all, I’ve read over 400 books in the last 3 years, and I can’t normally remember what I read last week without keeping it written down somewhere - but if you’re unhappy with your other ones or whatever, friend me over there and check it out.

6) I feel like the only human being in the world who doesn’t understand Twitter.

7) At this point, I think the best move is to NOT talk about the Red Sox in fear that it might, like, bring Mike Timlin into a close game or something.

8) Finally, I can’t decide which one of these videos is more awesome, so enjoy them both:

1) The Manchester City Library held a book sale today. Needless to say, I wish I could have spent a little more time there - fill a paper bag for $5? I wish I could have dug out some eBay fodder. Alas, I still came out with quite a haul:

Among the really good grabs:

* Stranger in a Strange Land hardcover, which replaces the copy I gave away many years ago. I’ve been meaning to reread this as well as have Ann read it.

* My Grandfather’s Son, Clarence Thomas. In a donation pile. At the library. If I didn’t know that the Manchester Library had a copy of this, I’d be pissed.

* Two Barry Goldwater-penned books: Conscience of a Majority and Where I Stand.

* The Story of Scientology, a coffee table book about Scientology. I did it for the lulz, or something.

* French Furniture Under Louis XIV. Because it was there.

A bunch of theatre books and some quirky US history tomes filled out the bag. Total haul was over 20 for $5 - I would have paid $20 for the Clarence Thomas and Robert Heinlein alone. Not too bad.

And Pigeon approves

2) Ann & I are fairly well addicted to the John Adams miniseries on HBO. It’s fun to engage in historical geekery with her - she’s become quite enamored with Ben Franklin.

3) Hung out with Steph, Mandy, and her husband, Bill, for a bit on Saturday. Dinner at the Outback, good times had. I’ve been friendly with Mandy through Steph for a couple years now, and this was the first time we’ve actually hung out in the real world, and she’s quite charming. With the dissolution of my D&D group, it looks like I’ll be joining them (and Mike, I understand?) in June for some Sunday gaming once the Fourth Edition Players Guide comes out. I’m pretty stoked.

4) Flag football started this weekend. I played fairly crappy, all things being equal, but I did have a couple receptions and got outleaped on an out pattern because I’m short. It’s a different feel than dodgeball (obviously) and I’m not sure I love it, but it’s still good to be active and I generally like my teammates, so good stuff.

Back to the Sox game…

Mike tagged me for that “10 random/interesting things about you” meme, specifically because he feels he knows little about me other than my opinions on books, movies, and politics. So let’s see if I can’t throw ten interesting things out there with that in mind.

1) Through most of my grade school time, I was convinced I was going to be a meteorologist. I watched The Weather Channel the way some kids watch Nickelodeon, I owned all sorts of crazy meteorology books, the whole nine yards.

2) I gave up on that dream after freshman year of high school, when I failed Algebra I. To this day, it’s the only class I actually failed (I failed one other class in college, but an appeal turned that around), but not being good at math when you have an interest in science doesn’t work out very well. I also got a 67 in Algebra II. Thank god for the scale.

3) My speaking voice annoys the shit out of me, and I can’t imagine other people actually being able to tolerate it. I know that no one especially likes their speaking voice, but I’m especially thrown by mine.

4) Given how annoying I find my speaking voice, it’s still a mystery to me that I have a good singing voice. I mean, I did get into college as a vocal major, I did make district chorus in high school, so there’s obviously third party confirmation, but I’ve never understood it.

5) I find it incredibly difficult to lie. It doesn’t come easy to me, it’s not something I’m able to do more often than not. I like that aspect of my reputation, but it made working in sales very difficult.

6) While I love my job now, I surprisingly miss working at Tatnuck Booksellers from time to time. Probably because that was a good five years of my life, but even with all the annoyances and complaining I did, it really was a decent gig with a lot of good opportunity. I still can’t say I’ve found anything in the world quite like it.

7) Not surprisingly, given my interest in Kroger Babb and in indie rock, I’m incredibly fascinated by little-known people in history. The New Hampshire Humanities Book Group is reading a book about a Jewish Confederate soldier from the Civil War that I find absolutely fascinating, and may never find time to read - this sort of stuff really gets me.

8) In a lot of ways, my fear of dying is made greater through the knowledge that I’ll never get to read all the books I want to read. What’s worse is that there are definitely thousands of books that I’m completely unaware of that I would probably love. Such is life - but this wasn’t supposed to be about books, so…

9) Few things are more important to me in judging a person’s character - public or personal - than integrity.

10) I have a tendency to carry a lot of regret with me. I’m typically one to replay various scenarios in my head over and over, often involving people who probably don’t even remember being involved in the first place. While I still do that from time to time, the last few years of my life have largely quelled that - between marrying Ann, moving to New Hampshire, taking this job, and everything else that’s come along with it, I feel like I’ve made a lot of really good decisions for my life, and the regret I usually take with me almost ceases to exist after 2003. For someone who’s constantly evaluating his internal state, even with my general ups and downs, that’s a big step for me, feeling comfortable in my own existence.

…of the non-political kind.

1) It’s hard for me not to get excited over things like this, for obvious reasons. Of course, the media isn’t always rock-solid on reporting science issues reasonably, and any wide-scale rollout of this would be too late, but still.

2) Not to say I haven’t been excited about Super Smash Bros. Brawl up to this point, but this reveal about classic demos really gets me excited. Why? I couldn’t tell you, honestly, but I like the concept and it’ll likely get me spending money on the Virtual Console.

3) I don’t hate the Giants (ETA from the comments: Hitler HATES the Giants), and I look forward to a good Super Bowl if the final game of the season was any indication, but does this come across as dickish to anyone else?:

Everyone else on the Giants sideline ignored him, even the team managers, who had been keeping players warm all game. They didn’t bother to drape a jacket over Tynes’ shoulders as he stood alone near midfield, listening to the crowd cheer for his miss and watching the Packers win the coin flip to get the ball first — and perhaps exclusively, had Brett Favre not thrown that interception — in overtime.

Tynes would say later that the lack of communication from his teammates was “no big deal. … I don’t talk to anyone during games anyway.” He would also explain away his decision not to celebrate his winning kick on the field with his teammates. As the ball was tumbling through the uprights, silencing the Lambeau Field crowd and sending his teammates onto the field in a frenzy, Tynes turned and ran 75 yards through the opposite end zone, through the tunnel and into the locker room. He ran alone.

“I was cold,” he said. “I wanted to get inside.”

Maybe it’s just that simple — his teammates were celebrating a trip to the Super Bowl, but he was cold. He’d meet them inside. Who knows? But I will say this: I shadowed Tynes for most of an hour inside the Giants locker room, and Feagles was again the only teammate who said a word to him. Yes, there was a 10-minute period immediately after the game when the media was not allowed inside the locker room, and perhaps the entire organization used that time to kiss Tynes’ feet — but for the next hour, not a single teammate said a word to the guy who kicked the game-winning field goal in the NFC title game. That seems strange.

I don’t feel as if we’d see that on the Pats if it were Gostkowski. Maybe I’m wrong.

4) Speaking of football, one of the Patriot wide recievers, Dante Stallworth, believes he has a Martian alter-ego. But it’s okay - he only comes out during games. And people thought the Red Sox “idiot” culture was weird…

5) I don’t watch these often enough to stay caught up, but Michael Cera fans should enjoy Clark and Michael, a web-video thing. Also, Cera plays a role in the first installment of “Drunk History, which tells the story of the Hamilton/Burr duel through beer goggles. Thanks to Liz for this one, I got a kick out of it.

6) This is fun: Background Music for Your Movies. If I ever get around to making silly short films, I’m liberally using these.

7) Also from WFMU, Adlai Stevenson election spots. A really neat piece of American political history that gets so easily forgotten. It’s incredible the amount of stuff like this that probably exists in people’s attics and basements that may never get to see the light of day.

8) A pimp out for Fantasy Book Critic and Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, two book blogs that have become instant favorites as well as extended my already-too-long-list of books to read beyond anything manageable.

9) I was hoping that the buzz on Rambo would be similar to Rocky Balboa, but it doesn’t appear to be the case. I’m hoping to catch There Will Be Blood this weekend, though.

Tis all for now.

I think I gave up my longshot dream of being a fiction writer about a year ago at this point - my writing tone is too conversational unless I have a point to make, where then I can get crazily academic as I oversource everything.

With that said, The Complete History of My Sexual Failures, a documentary due out this year, essentially mirrors a work of fiction that’s been floating in my brain for a few years now. There are noteworthy differences, but the basic concept is incredibly similar.

Alas…

1) So, yeah. Obviously, we’re seeing a bit of a different thing here - I’m starting to separate from LiveJournal a bit, which is what that top thing references.

My reasons are many. For one, I’m more than a little annoyed with some of the tactics of LJ’s leadership, both old and new. The, uh, “Great Strikethrough” was one thing, but when, for instance, you can’t search for “spice girls” in one’s interests anymore, well, it’s not quite the bastion of free speech that it was when I signed on back in, geez, 2000. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Secondly, a lot of it has to do with my literary endeavors - quite frankly, if my book is good but unfinished, having relevant material to point to and say “hey, look, I DO know what the hell I’m talking about and I can write in a coherent and consistent fashion” will only help me. I’m not ready to launch that blog for real yet - I want it to be based on bad movies, but I can’t figure out a good name let alone necessarily want to run it on my own. If anyone has suggestions on the former, let me know, and some of you may be hearing from me on the latter.

So either way, when I saw Lance with his crossposting recently, I looked into it, and hell, why not get the best of both worlds - my material can post on LJ at the same time it does on my site, and I can have separate blogs for separate things and still centralize them on LJ without having to worry about crappy syndication on LJ’s end. I’ll still have the occasional friends-only post on LJ, but you can always comment where you’re reading it, and yeah.

Yeah, this may seem trivial to a lot of you. That’s fine, but that’s just what I am, I suppose.

2) So, what’s new, right? Well, it’s old news to about a dozen of you, but we got a new TV. Instead of being responsible and paying some bills, I decided to pool together my Christmas money and get a better television for the front room. It’s nice, and gave us a little more leeway in how the room is set up, and yeah:

We went from a 26″ to a 37″, this one has 1080i and HDMI, and was a floor model to boot, so we didn’t pay an arm and a leg. I’m pleased, and, as you see, it fits in rather nicely to the whole room. We had about 16 people packed into the room for the AFC Championship game on Sunday (and thanks to everyone who came out, it really meant a ton to us), and yeah. Good times.

3) I held a massive event at the library this past week, where Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid did a Q & A and a signing. It’s really refreshing to see such a big shot author be so down to earth at the same time - it’s like he doesn’t quite comprehend how much of a rock star he really is. I’ll never forget how disappointed I was in Judy Blume when I met her, and seeing the kids so excited to meet a genuinely good guy was really fun. I should have gotten a picture, but I forgot. No matter, though, we had about 90 people show up and it was pretty much completely awesome. Thanks to Ken for tipping me off, I love when old Scholastic contacts work out.

4) I don’t recall if I mentioned this, but I did buy a Nintendo DS. I like it - i don’t love it yet, but I also only really have one game at the moment, and that’s New Super Mario Bros., which is great but isn’t Team Fortress 2. I’m sure once I land Mario Kart DS and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass it’ll be a different story.

What’s shocking is that my mother ADORES her DS. We bought her one for Christmas, and she absolutely loves it - she has a bunch of puzzle games and keeps “burning the motherfucking food” on Cooking Mama. It’s hilariously unexpected. Talk about a great system overall, really.

5) Since it’s going around Facebook: I apologise for not pimping Kate Nash to everyone sooner, but she’s awesome and you should all listen to her.

6) On Heath Ledger - I was never a huge fan, but found his acting better than average for Hollywood folks his age and thought he made interesting choices when he could have just as easily been a heartthrob/action hero. It’s shocking to see someone less than a year older than you die, quite frankly, and that part is unsettling, but I’m more disappointed that we might not have ever had an opportunity to see what he was truly capable of as an actor.

Now, if we can only get Amy Winehouse to lay off the crack…

I think that’s it for now.

np: Kate Nash - Made of Bricks