No, the title of this blog is not meant to indicate that this blog will be long. Though when I say that I really don't know how long a blog will be until I am done writing it, that's the magic of thinking my thoughts as I write them. Though I am sure I put my foot into my mouth on many occasions using this method.
Speaking of the length of my blog, I wanted to mention that when I compiled every single blog and comment, prior to this blog, into a single word document I found that I had written 209 pages of material (at 10pt Times font, single spaced), which amounted to 103,167 words. I gots a lot tah say yo!
Such an immense effort I feel deserves to be preserved. As such I am going to print a copy of it out and save it in my old chest, and keep it in document form and possibly make it part of another blog.
Now, I've only kind of glanced at parts of the document, showing a little interest in what was going on in my life on particular dates. I discovered two things that astonished me 1) I dont remember ALOT ALOT of stuff, which quadruples the value of my blog 2) I write a lot of crap that just plain doesnt make any sense
Next I want to talk about Podcasts that I listen to. I used to listen to music on my iPod pretty much the entire time I was at work but then I started looking for good Podcasts to listen to instead. Well actually I meant to just listen to some podcasts but still listen to music, but I found a bunch of Podcasts I really like and now I exclusively listen to Podcasts while at work.
I also tend to listen to podcasts while I am cleaning my house, I seem to get a lot more done than I would with music as the more I am engaged by what I am listening to, the less I am likely to get bored out of my mind cleaning.
I listen to some comedy podcasts, some learning podcasts and some nerdy ass podcasts.
First off, Adam Carolla's new podcast is bad ass, Ive loved Adam Carolla ever since his days on Love Line. His radio show was awesome, but I am happy as hell that his station cancelled him because his Podcast is Way better.
Another comedic one I like to Listen to is the Real Time With Bill Maher podcast, its obviously very political as well as humerous, I enjoy listening to the intense debates that get broken up by bouts of ridiculous humor.
The next three podcasts I am going to mention are my favorites out of the whole bunch, Stuff You Should Know, Stuff You Missed In History Class, and I Should Be Writing. I just discovered I Should Be Writing and it is pretty much driving me crazy making me want to sit down and write again, which I will talk about a bit later (damn, this Blog may end up being long after all).
The next group of stuff I like to listen to are the Geeky ones:
The D6 Generation: This one is basically three guys that love all the same games that I love, they do reviews of new games and they sit around and BS about all the gaming stuff they do. This includes Miniatures and Roleplaying games ofcourse, but Im really focusing on the Board Games they play and Ive found lots of good new ones to try with the boys. My favorite segment they do is their "When Wives Attack" segment. Its a cool segment where two of their significant others come on and give advice as to how to get your Girl to like playing games, and what games she might like to play and advice on how to teach them games and to make sure and stick with Party Games from time to time as well.
There are a couple of others, right now I have 107 podcasts sitting in iTunes that I haven't listened to yet and they range from 15 min up to almost 4 hours each.The total amount of all 107 is 5 full days of full audio.
Next I want to talk about The Wheel of Time. This is a series of books that I got into when I was a teenager. I still very much remember when I sat down and read the first book. I had borrowed it and when I returned it I went to a bookstore to look for my own paperback copy of it, that is when I discovered it was a whole series and it had 5 more books out with a 7th on the way.
Well, it is an amazing Fantasy Epic series, but right now there are like 11 books out and the last one I read was book 8 or 9 and its been a good 9 years since I read it. It was going like 2-3 years in between novels by the end of the series so I decided to just hold out and read it when it was completed. Well, the author died while starting work in his supposedly final novel...
It was very sad, he struggled with his illness for quite awhile. He knew he wasnt going to be able to finish his work so he started keeping his notes differently and emmassed a lot of information so that someone could finish it after he passed.
His wife selected Brandon Sanderson to write the final book, he has been hard at work for some time now, and I just recently saw that he has written so much that they are dividing it into three seperate books, one to be released each year for the next three years (starting this november). I suddenly feel like i need to sit down with book one and start from the beginning.
I loved this series of books so much that I bought them all in hardback, which was quite expensive for a high school kid to do! They are all pretty big books, The paperbacks all ranged from 600 to 1100 pages in length, getting longer as the series progressed.
Anyway, so that it excting!
As far as writing goes, this I Should Be Writing podcast Ive been listening to has really made me want to dig back in and write something. I re-read the short story I posted not too long ago and it was so good I nearly made myself cry! Ok Ok, so Im biased . Either way, other than the multiple works of fiction that I have wanted to write for years, I have a few other short story ideas that I need to at least catalogue for later use.
Plus, I am revisiting the idea that I should write a Memior type book that walks people through my experiences in Divorce and the details of my custody battle. I think a lot of good lessons can be learned from my experiences and I think this may be a good place to start. Though, being used to fiction writing (as used to it as I can be since I havent written regularly since 1996) I am not quite sure how to lay out a work of non-fiction like this.
So both my kids got grounded this week. Jadon just got grounded for a day and a half because he lied to me. It was ridiculous too because it was something that there was absolutly no reason to lie about in my opinion, but after coming down on Tristan hard for what I will explain next, I had to crack down on Jadon too. Lying has become more and more of an issue lately, and saying disrespectful things as well.
Now, Im just an anal uptight Dad that needs to loosen up (according to my mom and grandma), so maybe I am overreacting. I find it tremendously disrespectful when I have already had to repeat myself and when they finally acknowledge that Ive instructed them to do something they think its hilarious to refer to me as 'Captain' or something. I've explained the situation to them.
Now on to the big deal, Tristan was grounded this whole week, including Movie Night, which he ended up not appreciating very much.
When my kids get grounded I reduce their already early bedtime of 7:30 to 7. They are not allowed to Watch, Listen or Play with electronics, and there is no candy or desert while you are grounded.
Tristan got grounded for the longest duration thus far, 5 days. He stole an item from a friends house and when discovered he fabricated two lies (one reasonable and one that was completely un-reasonable). The first lie was that he got the object at school from their prize box. Unfortunatly for him it was a small miniature that I had seen before and that I already knew belonged to my friend Russ. And a school is as likely to give this out to students as a church is to give out free D&D books.
The Second lie was that he found it in my car. Yeah right kid. Tristan has become increasingly dishonest, which kind of came out of left field for all of us as he has built up a very solid and trustworthy demeanor. He has used that to his advantage well of late. In addition to the grounding, because of how serious I consider theft to be I also took his allowance for the month, spoke with all of his teachers about the situation, and the last and most important step, he is returning the item and apologizing.
Now, this is all a philosophy. In the end, this is an item that Russ and Yvonne would probably not have even noticed they were missing. Because it is such a nothing item, I called Yvonne to prep her for the apology, I know she wasnt going to be upset, but I just wanted to make sure she didnt say 'dont worry about it' or 'you can keep it' or something like that. Its not the item that matters, he could have stolen a toy from a store and it still wouldnt matter to me what the item was or where he got it, what is important is that he learns that it is wrong, that I focus on guiding him to become a trustworthy individual with a strong moral character.
Like MySelf
An update on my grandma. She is doing the same, they do need to do another surgery for certain, but she is too weak for the surgery to be performed at the moment.
They have moved her to an assisted living facility or something so that she can recover, they expect her to be there for 6 weeks to 3 months. Once they do the surgery it looks like things may take a turn for the worse even if they fix the problem. As I already stated, she already has to have the colonoscopy bag or whatever, but things may turn out that she won't be able to eat again either, meaning she would need to be put into permenant care.
This information is still sinking in. My grandma will never be the same again.
I am hanging out with Yvonne and her boys again tomorrow, we will probably have dinner and play some more games. I am also meeting up with Heather for a Coffee date at 2pm tomorrow, Im really excited to finally get to go out with her again.
I really dont think that things can work out with Heather and I. We literally can never talk outside of our dates. She is busy pretty much every sunday, we work opposite shifts and that just leaves saturdays. One day a week. Well, I spend some, if not most, saturdays with my kids. That will change in the summertime, but also she is busy some saturdays too, which pretty much leaves only one or two saturdays per month that we can even go out.
I really like her, she is really cool and I am really excited about going out with her again, but right now I really dont see any potential. We get along great, so I wish we had schedules that blended together better, but as long as she is working nights I dont think it can go anywhere beyond where it is now.
Oh right, I completely forgot why I titled my blog that way. Its because my kids have been reading like crazy this last week, they started this Pig Out On Books thing at school and since then Jadon esspecially has shown a ton more interest and dedication, and because of that he has shown a lot of improvement and fast! Im really really happy.
Anyway, there are a couple more things I want to clean before I go to bed. I forgot to talk about easter and the only reason I remembered just now is because I was going to say 'I hope everyone had a good easter', but I will save that for a later blog.
-Jas
No comments:
Post a Comment