The last post didn’t really count as an update, just more of a rant, so here’s a better post.

Christmas was nice. We split time between both sets of grandparents, and then we went up north. Great-Grandma got to hold Luke, so we took pictures and videos of that. Who knows how long she’ll be around, so I wanted to make sure he’d have that to remember her. It makes me want to find some of the old photos of me with some Great-Grandparents that I never knew that well. On the way home we took a two-hour detour towards the San Jose area to visit Stacie’s Aunt and Uncle. It made the trip a little longer, but it was fun to see them.

So what am I doing with the rest of my vacation? My main goal is to finish my final edits on my book. I’ve got both manuscripts sitting on the table side by side, I’ve got my laptop, and I have a notebook where I’m listing any major changes to the plot and characters. Right now I’m 20% done, so I’m hoping it can be done before I go back to work. After that I need to format it for printing, order a proof copy, and then I’m letting Stacie read it first. Assuming she doesn’t find any major typos, then it will be all ready to go! The way it will work is it should be available to buy on Amazon, and I can also buy copies myself to sell for cheaper.

I’ll have to make some more posts about writing once it’s all done, because it really is an interesting process. It’s much like a painting that can be constantly updated. Maybe you start painting a scene, and then later on decide you’d like to change part of it. All you have to do is get some new paint and paint over it. A book is the same thing. The words you put down in the beginning don’t say set in stone, because the story is constantly evolving. What was written in the first few pages may not match the way the story has evolved after 300 pages, so you have to go back and make the story consistent throughout. It’s not really fun to edit, but if you don’t you’re doing your story a major disservice.

Right now the computer is in disarray and the second bedroom is covered with drop cloths. I am posting from the laptop and using the next door neighbors unsecured wireless.

Yesterday my father-in-law helped me move the computer desk into our bedroom, and with that we were ready to start painting the baby’s room. I spent the whole day today painting, and I’m only about half done. If it weren’t for stupid paint we would be all done. We tried to do green/brown to match the baby bedding, but the “brown” didn’t look brown at all. It looked peach….or sometimes white…on rare occasion tan, but never brown. We went back to All-American and bought a smaller can of another brown color to try, but when I got home it looked even worse. I’ve decide to do 2 or 3 walls green, and the remaining will go back to Swiss Coffee. Moral of the story is that coordinating paint colors via paint swatches is a pain in the butt. Everything in our house is basically a color and “white.” If I ever want to do two colors in one room, I’ll stick to some of the pre-made color combos they have. None of this “do these two go together?” nonsense.

Tomorrow I plan to paint more and finish what I started, and we’re also getting a 3D baby ultrasound thing done where you can see the alien baby in all it’s glory. More on that later.

Summer is off to a nice start. The dog is laying in the backyard sunbathing right now. She’s a weirdo.

Played a game of baseball online this morning. Went down early 2-0 against the Devil Rays of all teams, but had a couple nice innings and won 4-2, raising my record online to 10-4. Last night Angelo helped me fine tune my network setup and change my dsl router to a “bridge,” which should simplify things. But that’s nerdy mumbo jumbo you don’t care about.

We’re going camping this weekend at San Onofre which should be fun. I haven’t been to the beach in forever, and it will be nice to go “away,” even if it’s only for a short time.

Andrew and Sarah are well on their way of making Denise and Paul’s condo into their own. They’ve done some painting and moved in furniture. It’s great to see them start their new life together. I have a much greater appreciation than I used to for weddings and marriage, now that I’m married. You know what the people are getting themselves into and what a special time that is in their life.

We started to watch the season of ER that finished a month or so ago. We didn’t watch it all during the year, but instead saved it for summer viewing. It’s a well done show, but the liberal nonsense is unbelievably annoying. Here are the recurring liberal story lines:

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

Sorry for that diversion from my summer, I apologize.

I’m off to start Act 2 of the book. Act 1 clocked in at around 20k words, or somewhere around 45-50 pages in a real book. It’s sitting on Stacie’s desk waiting for a read through. It’s amazing how much time it takes to get a story going and established. I’m looking forward to what comes next. It should get exciting.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Kevin has the first chapter of his new story up at his site. Give him a visit, it’s quite amusing.

I think my dendrites were firing a little more effectively for this chapter. You can be the judge.

   “No, it’s fine,” Monica assured him. “Besides, I know where you live.” She winked playfully.
    Mike smiled. He exhaled for what seemed like the first time all night.
continue reading…

We got back last night from our short trip up the coast. We spent our first two nights in San Luis Obispo at the San Luis Creek Lodge. It’s a fairly new place that feels fresh and up-to-date. In San Luis Obispo we spent time walking around the downtown area, went to the farmers market and had a turkey leg, and drove to Morro Bay. A recurring theme on our trip was the wildlife we kept seeing, and this guy below was hanging out in Morro Bay. He even jumped up near a dock to let us take some good pictures.

I love these "smokestacks" in Morro Bay because they always look like a painting. They don’t look real for some reason, like they’re computer generated and my eyes are playing tricks on me.

After San Luis Obispo we headed up the coast and stopped in Cayucos on our way to Cambria, where we stayed at Moonstone Landing. I had never been to Cambria, but it reminded me very much of Poipu Beach on Kauai where we went on our honeymoon (but much closer and cheaper). While it’s not a Hawaii replacement (you can only spend a day or two in Cambria until you’re bored), it’s a very similar setup where a small street is the only thing between your hotel and a beautiful beach.

Cambria is just south of Hearst Castle, and even though we didn’t go there, we enjoyed the view of the coast and a nice drive. Something totally unexpected we found was a place along the beach that was literally crawling with Elephant Seals. Apparently male Elephant Seals have been coming to this specific spot since the early 1990′s to molt (get rid of their gross old skin). In a stretch of about 200 yards I would say there were at least 100 seals (there were two other spots similar to this one below).

It was great because they were barking and play fighting the whole time. There was also a really small pup that was getting chased by some big fat dude. That was hilarious. Another interesting site in Cambria was something called Nit Wit Ridge. It’s like Hearst Castle, but not really. Some guy did lots of funny/odd stuff to his house, and here is the result. Much like the hundreds of antique shops in these small towns, I’m not sure if it is art or crap.

Overall it was a very nice and relaxing few days. On a side note, I thoroughly enjoyed the Nikon d50 on the trip. It was great being able to snap pictures at will and have a lot of control over the pictures I was taking. My brother got me a nifty case to put it in that makes it much easier to carry around.

We leave Wednesday morning at 5 am for a Boston/NY trip with my parents and Denise/Paul. I’ll be sure to take a lot of pictures, but The Blarg will be update free for a week and a half. In the meantime, head on over to the Milkinator’s new site for some blogger goodness.

The November election is still five months away, but the commercials have already started. Prop 82 would create a universal preschool program. I’m too tired to get in depth and weigh the pros and cons, but it’s a total crock and a perfect example of what is wrong with our political system.

We’re supposed to believe that a universal preschool system would be the catalyst needed to get children off on the right foot. While I’m sure preschool doesn’t hurt a child’s development, but it’s crap to believe that all the screwed up students in our K-12 system would be "fixed" if they’d gone to preschool. It would cost $2.4 billion, coming from taxes on evil wealthy people. According to a commercial I saw it calls for "qualified" teachers (whatever that means). Since when does it take a rocket scientist to teach finger painting?

The even larger problem I have with this proposition is the inherent nature that government has to get bigger. Idiots like Rob Reiner are bored and start campaigning for preschool and a huge new government bureaucracy. The government never shrinks, it’s always just growing and bloating. We should see propositions like "Stop all government handouts to lazy people."

This post will either tell you one of two things.

A) Society has become so dependent on technology that our day-to-day lives revolve around computers, and it is hard to live without them.

or

B) I’m a geek.

Now that all the painting at the townhouse is done, and we have a bed, the only reason I haven’t started living there is simple: my computer hasn’t moved. Well tonight I started the process of moving it. I’m removing all the junk off my desk (which is a lot) and I’ve got a couple boxes to move. Oh yay!

My mom is sad though, she’s cute.

In 5 weeks something fairly significant occurs: I’m getting married. Oh wow yikes and yowsers! There’s still a bunch to do, but I think at this point we just want to have the wedding and get to the honeymoon.

The townhouse is shaping up nicely. All the major painting is done, and I replaced all our door knobs today. They were bright shiny gold before, ick. It still confuses me that something as simple as changing door knobs can be so fun when it’s your own place. It’s fun just turning the handle and seeing if it works, haha. I’ll put up some new pictures soon.

Andrew helped me lift the behemoth of an entertainment box onto its stand the other day. DVDs look gorgeous, but Gamecube is a little underwhelming. It looks better on the lower-res and slightly more blurry TV in my room, so I’ll probably use that instead.

Stacie had her last wedding shower on Saturday, and from what I’ve heard it was a great success. There were no small packages, but I have very high expectations from the girls at her bachelorette party! Big thank you to my Mom, Andrew, Sarah, Denise, and everyone else that helped make it happen.

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