Silence is the Death of Blogs

So, it's been a week since my last post, and it wasn't much of a post either. What does that mean? Well, if I've learned anything in my time blogging, it's that silence can kill a blog. Once the decay sets in it takes a lot more energy to regain the ground you've lost than simply posting regularly.

I guess that proves that I can't claim ignorance. The real truth of the matter is that I've been working so much that the blog really does have to take a back burner to everything else. There are few things that I can really make time for. And I suppose I've opted to take strolls out the the garden with my wife in the cool of the evening instead of being cramped in my office, where I spend the rest of my day. When I tell you that I've been working a lot, I really do mean that I've been working A LOT. So far this week I worked 17.5 hours on Monday and 16.5 yesterday. I'm scheduled to work all the way until next Friday. Yes, through the weekend and all next week.

This isn't one of those "I'll be gone for a while" posts. I guess it's part rant, part explanation. But more than that, it's a post to break the silence. I don't really see myself as a successful blogger at this point, but it's been a fun adventure so far. I don't much like the idea of just giving it up. Not yet, anyway. I've met so many interesting people and seen some very interesting blogs.

More than anything, thanks for stopping by. I'll try to post a little more often, even if I feel a bit burnt out and tired.

Creative Writing Prompt:

Keith Thompson - Off the Grid

Check out this YouTube video of Keith Thompson and his journey to off the grid living. This man is an inspiration, and apparently he used the power of the sun to keep his beer cold.

Finding Time to Write

The title of this post is somewhat of a mantra I'm trying to convince myself I need to hold on to. It's been hard though. My job has me keeping the long and hard hours and my mind is near exhaustion most days. I spend my work hours troubleshooting complex problems and ensuring my migrations stay on track, despite the overwhelming tendency for some servers to be nothing more than the spawn of Satan himself. When I'm feeling drained after days like these, I may want to write, but at the same time I don't. I find more solace in stealing away for a breath of fresh air, pulling weeds in the garden, or mowing a section of lawn. I can never spare the time to mow the entire stretch of green before I have to head back in to check on my work. But it's those mundane tasks that take my mind off of everything else so I can finally have a little bit of quiet in my brain.

I usually try to drag my wife outside with me. I love spending time with her and when you have a fifteen and a half hour work day behind a closed office door, that isn't much of an option. Sometimes she protests, she's got a schedule of her own, you see. But I generally get the best of her. Some days the shift is 16 hours or 17, and some days you get lucky and can get by with 12 hours instead. But you never really know, and these days the 12 hour shift is a rare gem.

I still need to have my Science Fiction story done by the end of the month. That means first draft written and polished to at least 2nd draft before the next Speculative Fiction Writing Group meeting. Meanwhile, I have my spare moments dreaming about solar panels and wiring up the shed to be totally off-the-grid. I've also got my mind set to build another strawberry patch so I can transplant some of our current stock. The Mrs. makes some delicious strawberry jam and it would be nice to have enough produced by our garden to make a batch or two without having to buy a flat from the store. It may take a few years, but it's very interesting to see how strawberry plants spread. They send out little runners that take root and spring out again and again. It isn't uncommon to see one runner with three or four new rooting strawberry plants attached. Over the winter those vine-like runners die off and crumble away, leaving a few brand new, fully sufficient strawberry plants that will each repeat the process through the course of the summer.

I do need to take pictures of my garden. I would love to share them with you. Of course, we've got a long way to go, but we've made vast improvements over our horrid results last year. Our tomato plants are thriving, with green tomatoes promising a delicious reward for our efforts. The carrots are coming along just fine, the radishes too. We've got onions and peppers, though some bug seems to like the taste of their leaves. The corn is doing much better than last year, though it isn't as tall or as far along as the commercial fields in the area, though I assume that has a lot to do with the fertilizer they use. We've got squash, cantelope, casaba melon, and a few different varieties of watermelon. Not to mention peas, cucumbers, and some tomatillos for salsa.

Outside the garden we've got two peach trees, a nectarine, a pear, four apples, two grapes, and the two hazelnut bushes I got from the Arbor Day Foundation. Yeah, yeah, I'm a nut. Speaking of... wouldn't it be neat if I could add an almond tree to the mix? ;)

So yeah, it's all about finding time to write, which is something I need to do quite badly. I finished my last story in March, it's now inching closer and closer to August. I'm sure the pressure I'm putting on myself isn't really helping much, so I'll try to ease up without slacking off. Any encouraging words would definitely be more than welcome.

Thanks for stopping by! I'll try to add a picture for the writing prompt tomorrow. I've been shutting down my computer at night to save electricity. Maybe after I get this story written I'll start hunting those phantom loads.

Creative Writing Prompt:

Bear Lake #2

Ah yes, the weekend at Bear Lake, Utah for my wife's family reunion, part two. I actually intended on posting this second part yesterday, but my computer was confounded with some oddity where it thought the arrow key was stuck. I'm sure it was a driver issue somewhere because it persisted even after unplugging the keyboard and mouse. I have since performed a reload and I'm back up and running, for the most part.

(As fate would have it, as soon as I type that my left arrow key goes haywire. After rebooting I did some snooping around on google and it appears to be an issue with my mouse SetPoint software from Logitech and Firefox. What a pain...)

Anyway, back to Bear Lake!

The first night there we were treated to some spaghetti and salad. This was made by my wife's parents. But that's not all, they topped it off with homemade rootbeer! It was delicious! And you have to admit, it looks cool too...


(click pictures in this post for expanded view)


After dinner we all make sure we've got a good spray of misquito repellant and get ready for the camp fire.

Everyone sits in camp chairs around the flame and stories are shared. A lot of them gravitate back to Bear Lake from years before. It's always interesting to sit back and enjoy the fire and the conversations.

Once the wood has burned down to a nice layer of coals, the marshmellows are brought out. Some toast them and eat them plain, some prefer to make smores. This year my wife brought up toasted coconut flavored marshmellows, they were quite a treat.

On the second day, our wee one had her very first birthday. As is tradition in our family, ever since our first wee one, she got her very own smash cake. Since we were camping, it was technically a smash cobbler (with raspberry filling!). She loved it!

To keep track of our two older children, we equipped them with walkie talkies. This allowed them to venture a little further than in previous years, but we always had an idea of where they were. In fact, they loved them so much, they would talk to us on them constantly. Hey, parents need attention too!

All in all, I had a great time. The headache was a bit of a downer, but it was a nice break. My wife did a wonderful job of setting up the tent and preparing our meal while I watched the kids. It was a nice reprieve from my 14-16 hour days of work for the last month or so. She appreciated a bit of a break from the kids as well so it worked out to be a really nice trade-off, even if it did raise a few eyebrows from her extended family.

*Read more Family Fun posts Here.*

Bear Lake #1

This weekend was my wife's family reunion at Bear Lake. I have been to Bear Lake three times now if memory serves me correctly. We missed out when we lived in Alaska because airfare was pricey and the dates always seemed to coincide with the military exercises I couldn't get out of. Tara did take the kids down one year, that was a very lonely week. Remind me sometime and I will tell you my Denali Hitchhiker story, it was pretty interesting, especially looking back on it.

Anyway, I've digressed. Bear Lake has always been a lot of fun, even for me being an in-law, and this year was no different. Of course, as with most family events, there's always something that comes up that seems pretty bothersome at the time, but all things considered... we have enough fun to look forward to what the next year may have in store.

This year we were a bit too early for the Raspberry fields to be full of sweet berries waiting to fall into our hands at the slightest touch, but we did stop in town for shakes and crossed the Idaho border to buy a few stratchers and a couple random Power-ball numbers (Idaho lottery). I also got one of the worst headaches I've ever had. It set in while we were in town and in a matter of about 15 minutes it had developed into one hell of a monster. I've never been one to throw up when I get a headache, but this one had me dry heaving into a white trash bag. Our little one wasn't feeling very well either and was crying in the back. I opened my eyes and reached from the passenger seat and started rubbing her belly, hoping from the core of my being that she would calm down and stop crying. I looked ahead and the view of the road passing before us was enough to set my stomach wretching once again.

When we got back to camp I was able to go to sleep for a while and that helped immensely. I was so shocked, though, when I got up and wandered to the pavilion for our daughter's first birthday smash cake. So many people were genuinely worried about how I was doing. I hadn't expected them to miss me, let alone be concerned with my headache. But Tara had worked her magic while I had slept. She'd been a bit upset earlier in the day about a few things and making cobbler in the dutch ovens helped get her mind off her troubles. She definitely did an outstanding job. We had chocolate with raspberry cobbler, chocolate with blueberry, and spice cake with peach. Each of the cobblers was delicious in it's own right, and she had made all three simultaneously without any help. She's just amazing.

I'll have more to write about Bear Lake in the coming days and I got plenty of pictures. It's been a long day, so I'll leave it here for now. :)

Creative Writing Prompt:
(House on a Hill)

Free Money!

There they are, sitting politely in the junk bin of my email, patiently waiting for me to dump them out. You know what I'm talking about, those stupid emails that want to sucker people into believing that by some miracle of fortune a bank in some foreign country can't track down one of their deceased account holder's relatives, and a savvy manager wants to slip the money over to you on the sly. Of course, he or she will be wanting a share of the cash... and I'm assuming there will be fees upfront to switch the account details, procedure, really.

What a sham. Do people actually fall for these emails? I would imagine that there are at least a few poor bastards out there that forked out some cash, dreaming of the day the millions would be wired over to their accounts.

What if something like that did happen though? What if some random stranger walked up to you and handed you a briefcase with a cool million inside? Would you quit your job? Pay off your house? Start a business? Pay off your debt?

Would you have the first house in your neighborhood that is totally "off the grid"? Or would you buy the biggest gas guzzling truck you could find since you could pay for all the gas you could possibly use? Would you go on a vacation? Donate to charity? How far will a million dollars, pounds, or yen take you? Is it true what they say? ("A million dollars isn't worth what it used to be.")

Creative Writing Prompt: