JUN 16

2026

Tuesday: spent some time last night reading "The Body Keeps the Score" before bed. Did I mention that we took back the library books yesterday? We took back the library books yesterday.

I was up early enough this morning to start my first draft, which I wanted to be sure to begin by today, as this marks one year since this particular story idea occurred to me. So, 365 days later, how am I doing?

For the first ten months, the work gestated only in my head. At the end of April, I committed to developing this properly, and I spent May and the first half of June building out my outline. Outlines, plural, actually: what started as a plan for one book has expanded to a series with built-in stopping points after the second, fourth, or eighth novel, depending on how satisfying I'm finding the process of writing these books. I have detailed character breakdowns and arcs for the two main characters, two main antagonists, nine major ensemble cast characters, and another eight supplementary characters. The books look like mystery stories, but they'll function more like pulp adventure in a contemporary magical realist setting aiming for a YA audience. The outline for the first book contains 72 plot points to be contained in roughly 24 chapters, and the in-progress first draft is just fleshing out what the scenes look like for each of those 72 plot points and building out the connective tissue; the goal is to make it bad and make it fast so that I can then go through a rewrite for draft number two.

Didn't get as far as I would have liked due to the need to clock in for work. We're having a lot of password reset issues right now, so I ended up logging in at the last possible moment to avoid being late, thanks to my new credentials. I spent the entire day researching the 100% cancellations for a single terminated group. At this rate, I'm going to have to log extra hours again to ensure I'm caught up for next week. On my breaks, I bounced around youtube for a bit watched the Grinding Gears guys finish their Metal Gear Solid 2 playthrough. I forgot how much of the second half of the game sort of blends together; in my head, you cross to Shell 2 for the first time right before the game ends, but there's still a fair bit of back and forth before you reach the game's third setting.

After work, Julie wasn't sure if she was going to be in the mood to go to Quizzo; she wasn't feeling very good, and since this week was themed around the World Cup, we were sure to perform poorly. I think she knew how much I still wanted to go, because she soon changed her mind, and said we could go on one condition: that we'd play with the team name "Two Worlds, One Cup." It's not a name I would select if I were playing by myself, but I was more than happy to go along with her plan. I'd shaved on my last break, and after changing into my new green shirt, I was pretty happy with how I look; I like the shape of my face more now than I have in a few years. Once we were both dressed, we rode the subway up to Santucci's.

At the bar, we were able to get our usual table. I discovered that if I put any weight on it, the entire thing would tilt toward me due to some sort of breakage in its construction. We ordered our usual pizza and drinks, which I quite enjoyed. We did better than we expected on our first two rounds, but we still hovered around fifth place for the entire game, and as we struggled through the fourth round, Julie got a little impatient to leave. I forgot how much she dislikes it when we aren't one of the teams in contention for a top spot.

Back home, I got the trash out to the curb, then treated the cats. We're on our third night of exclusively Fancy Feast for the nightly feeding. John will turn his nose up at it when I give him his plate in the kitchen, but if I then bring it out to him in the living room, he'll chow down without hesitation. I guess he just doesn't anybody bothering him while he eats. I played a little more HearthStone to keep up with my quests, then wrote this update. I'll continue the book from last night before bed, I think.

2025

Monday: had a very busy day at work, in part because I've be unable to attend on several weekdays this week. I managed to go through more than 30 groups, in addition to spending more than two hours going through voyage recon. I had to clock out eventually, though, and I took another quick shower before we left for Stogie Joe's. We were seated toward the middle of the main room, but we struggled wiht the Father's Day questions, and we didn't end up placing. While I had been craving a stromboli, it ended up feeling like too much food with too much grease. A bit of a disappointing evening, all around. I had a lot of trouble falling asleep, but I did feel the strike of inspiration in the night, and I hope to talk about this more in the months to come.

2024

Sunday: forgot to report this yesterday, but my shift bid was accepted, meaning the weekly work schedule I've had will continue through the end of the year. Unofficial work day ranking as it stands in the summer of 2024:

1. Sunday (no calls; most time to dedicate to project work)
2. Saturday (no calls; catching up from weekend)
3. Wednesday (usually 100% project time)
4. Tuesday (usually half calls, half project time)
5. Monday (busiest day and non-stop calls)

It was a very productive day, but I couldn't finish everything. (As long as I get my workload time this week, I should be able to prepare my email for the project I worked on this week.) Julie made eggs and hash for brunch which I had on my first break, so I wound up napping in the bedroom through most of lunch, followed by a snack of some handfuls of this cranberry cashew almond trail mix.

Once my shift ended, Julie had been preparing a sort of chickpea curry over rice for dinner, and watched more Poirot through dinner: "Murder on the Orient Express" and "The Clocks". I always forget what a weird outlier the former one is compared to the usual Poirot mystery. As for "The Clocks", we really enjoyed how exasperated the local inspector became. Good episodes. Unfortunately, I'd been dealing with a slight headache through most of the evening, while Julie also started to feel rough after the episodes. After bringing Mim back to the bedroom, I called Dad for Father's Day, then posted this update.

2023

Friday: glorious gaps populated my call log today, giving me plenty of time to catch up and file some low-urgency IT tickets I hadn't gotten around to yet. My wrists weren't happy, though, so I wound up wearing my braces for a portion of the workday. After my dealing with the soiled hall runner last night, Julie took care of the dishes and vacuuming before my shift ended. Still working on the goulash for dinner, but Julie's had more soup than she can handle, so we're gonna swap next time. We finished watching Jury Duty, listened to the upstairs neighbors for a while, and then I put together this update after she went to bed. Might play a bit more Zelda before I call it a night.