I skipped the writing group yesterday because they moved the inducing up a day. I figured I’d have a nice couple of hours to work on chapter 25 and 26 (stuck on the teenage angst of 25). And then, I would still be in the running to finish the book before EDM is born.
Didn’t happen.
It hasn’t really hit me that I’m going to be a father soon. I mean, I know I’m going to be, but I can’t really picture what is going to happen. Of course, I think that is a good thing since I won’t have preconceptions of the next few weeks. A number of my co-workers are alternating between the horror stories and the, I guess, encouraging me. In the end, I know that EDM is going to be his own person and walking into it without any idea is probably better than assuming he’s going to be a devil or angel.
We do have a date though. The doctor is tentatively planning on inducing Fluffy (SMWM if you use initials) on the evening of August 14. That means I have about 1.5 weeks left before that unknown event does or does not change my life.
Naturally, I haven’t quite finished my novel but I have to finish a commission (due on the 13th) and a story writing contest entry (I’m in round 5 and its due on August 12).
We are going to sit down and figure out what we need for the first few weeks of EDM’s emergence. And probably go buy things like, I don’t know, diapers? They’re important, right? Mostly, we’re going to go through our baby registry stuff and pick up the remaining criticals this weekend.
One of the writers over at the Nobel Pen started asking me questions about DocBook 5, mainly because I’m doing so much with the `mfgames-writing-python` toolchain. It was nice being a somewhat knowledgeable source for stuff, but they were doing relatively simple stuff and it didn’t really push the limits of my skills. Still, nice to be considered. Speaking of the toolchain, it is moving around quite nicely. I got it so it will be idempotent while converting between Creole and DocBook formats. I also made it easy to create converters for DocBook and other text-based formats, like Markdown. It also now converts subject terms into DokuWiki tags, something I use fairly heavily.
Beyond the programming and working on a commission, I’ve just been doing “life” thing. Fluffy’s car broke down and we had to return it to get it fixed right. They are keeping it over a few days, so we are down to one car again. *sigh* At least it isn’t anything really critical.
I also got a chance to play the demo for Revenge of the Titans, a RTS tower defense game. I actually liked it; I normally like TD games but I haven’t really warmed up to RTS games. This one… I could enjoy. They have a special right now, 50% off ($13) for pre-ordering and I decided to pick it up. Amazing how many fun games you can get for under $20.
It was an interesting weekend. Fluffy and I went back to Illinois for the second (and last) baby shower. We got back pretty late on Sunday with a car full of pastels, an exhausted dog, and a $100 electric bill.
Last weekend, I went up to the cabin and spent a few days with my dad. Fluffy didn’t go, mainly because she is feeling pregnant, it’s hot, and she didn’t want to listen to me and my dad talking about computers for three solid days.
Haven’t been posting much, but the reasons are pretty much random. Mostly because I’m dealing with the minutia of life right now and I haven’t been giving myself a chance to really sit down and reflect on it.
The baby is still healthy. Fluffy got her ultrasound and managed to actually gain weight this time. As contrast of just about every other visit (well, all but one) where she lost weight. But, the doctor seems happy with it, therefore I’m going to be as happy as I can be.
There are some complexities, but I’m not allowed to talk about them because “that person” might find out something. Not really fond of the secrets and the shadows when it comes to these things, partially why I’ve been so quiet about it. But, there are difficult things going on, but they are manageable and not life-threatening. Related to that, the doctor is currently leaning toward inducing labor a week early so we might have a little one somewhere around August 11 (getting really close to my birthday there…)
We finally got to the baby registry thing. I have come to the conclusion that you should not send two new parents into the store without a clue of what they are doing. Bring a friend, one who’s done it before. Just the simple, “oh yeah, you’ll want three of those…” would have been so much more helpful in managing that amount of things we had to consider. We got a random selection of things we think are right, but only time will tell. And, since every single company insists on having their own registry (okay, stores that work in this field), I feel like I have to give a list of thirty places because Fluffy just saw something adorable. Okay, a major exaggeration, but I want a reasonable content aggregator that doesn’t require an iPhone to use.
Other than that, just chugging forward with life. I’ll have a post about writing, but I want to see if my current high will be ruined by tonights critique of the chapter.
Haven’t done much on the writing front this week. Things are getting interesting at work and I find myself obsessing about the little problems there instead of on the keyboard on my lap. Or on the addictive little programs I use to create PDF and HTML files.
Like many projects, I start with a rough idea then completely tear it down and rewrite it once I figure out what I really wanted. In mfgames-writing, I had a few rough spots in the code and restructuring it really made it run much smoother. And require just hoop jumping.
I finished the first draft of chapter 9 in time for the submission at the Noble Pen. I tried to get chapter 10, but it hasn’t come very nicely. I’ll figure it out but I tried too hard to get it done before tonight. If I did, I would be heading to Illinois on Friday, but since I’m sitting at page 3 with a ton to go, I need to not travel this weekend.
In unrelated events, a week or so ago, I hurt myself working out. Relatively minor, but it hurts to walk too much so I’m trying to keep off said feet until they heal.
Amazingly, with that week of non-activity, I also lost 1 kg which brings me almost down to the lowest weight I’ve been in six months. Now, if I can just keep going in this direction, I’ll be a lot happier. And maybe not hurt myself quite as much.
I also found out my father is retiring in a few months. Not unexpected, but a surprise nonetheless.
Fluffy and I got into talking about what we should be called. She is fond of “mom” or “mommy”, but I prefer “papa” or “Dylan”. This created an interesting discussion of what children should call their parents. I’m in favor of precision: when I heard a child screaming “Dylan”, I know it might actually be me. But, “dad” is kind of generic for me. It will be interesting to see how that wanders out.
Bouncy and Uteck showed up for the weekend, mainly to chat and socialize. I got to talk about gaming (another post) and I actually brought up the entire “dad”, “papa”, or “Dylan” thing. And, as many things happened, one thing to lead to another and I mentioned the names of the characters in my novel.
I named her after Elizabeth Moon’s character from one of my favorite novels and because she was a damaged little warrior. Just a tiny little black cat I picked up in the Iowa City animal shelter. According to the nice lady, she was scheduled to be destroyed in a few weeks. That was in Feburary 1995, when I moved into my first house and decided that Chloe needed a playmate.
Yesterday, I watched as Fluffy held her for the last time, the drugs going through Paks’ system and that final light fading from her eyes. Not a really fitting end for a warrior, but one that needed to happen.
Another lovely weekend. Mostly it involved dealing with the various annoyances of feline and canine compaions and taking care of a rather nausous woman. We recently changed the arrangement of our furniture and closed off some of the cat’s favorite hiding spaces, so it is taking a bit for everyone to adjust. But, I’m pretty proud of what I can do with 2×6′s, 2×4′s, and lag bolts.
I finished the final draft for Victim of Love for the writer’s group on Thursday. And managed to knock off about a thousand words from the length. This will be the first story of mine they have ever seen, so it is a form of first impression. I can only hope that it won’t come out as total crap or something they’ll whisper behind my back on.
I also wrote a pair of small programs that convert my text-based format into something more structured or useful. One called creole2docbook which converts my Creole-based format into DocBook. The only difference is that I have section-level attributes for author’s, keywords, and the like. I also allow sections without titles, which I used for breaks in my documents.
And then a shell script (docbook2pdf) to change that DocBook into XSL:FO and then into PDF. I’d use the nromal docbook2pdf on my computer, but it can’t handle DocBook 5.0 which is much easier for me to work with. And purely XML instead of SGML-based. I need to make this script. While most of the world* seems to prefer Times New Roman, I honestly love the look of Courier. Actually, any monospace, typewriter-like font. So, I write in Courier and create PDF’s in Courier, but the example FO stylesheet I’m using does Times New Roman. One of my changes is to make it output Courier and maybe double-spaced.
* From reading around, it looks like a good number of editors/agents prefer Times, so I need to add that to my reformatting guidelines when I submit stories/novel hooks. Some also commented they just switch to Times when they get RTF documents, but I’m trying to make their jobs easier.
I’m planning on writing a docbook2dokuwiki to convert my stories into something I can use directly in my websites. That way, I can make a script that will format all my public stories (in a file already) and upload them to the site, complete with taxonomy (via the keywords) and categories (via the directory structure).
Beyond that, we had a lovely dinner with a coworker and his wife. I ripped a few more DVD’s for the MythTV system, splurged on a few new DVD’s from Walmart (including all 4 Tremors movies). Worked out; which seriously kicked my ass this time. I am still sore from that. And refinanced my car.
This week, just moving forward on plans for the pregancy. Getting repairs on the Illinois house, moving money around to pay for medical bills. For writing goals, working on the commission and hopefully My Father’s Bike.