Maebius Musing

I found the camera cable, and was able to dump a good backlog of images to a more PC-friendly location (ie: my hard drive and subsequently a CD-rom).

So, here are four fun images to keep you occupied until a real Musing-style post hits the site in a day or two….

First, announced briefly over here, was my wife’s grandfather turned a century old earlier this month, and had a wonderful party with all sorts of relatives, friends, and the like. Here’s the man of honor himself, presiding over the cake & candle ritual. One candle per decade, Awesome!

Next, mentioned in this posting on Happy Camping, is a shot of the new bathroom style. The walls are painted “Happy Camper” green, which fits nicely with the general use of the room. *wink*

Thirdly, there was a strange visitor to our house, who took control of the Wii for the day, and played “the TMNT game” for hours upon hours, giggling the whole time. Isn’t he adorable!

Finally, after years of deliberation, and in order to help out a good friend get some practice with his chosen hobby, I have gotten myself re-inked. This design, which is not 100% completed yet and will get some touch-up work and perhaps a bit of colour, has lots of cool symbolism for me, which may be described in a separate post someday. This solar-inspired design is also going on my djembe head, in either henna, or watercolors, because it is just that cool to me. ….it’s still a bit ouchy though today.

Sorry for blurry pic. The camera was out of batteries, so I had to keep snapping it, hoping to grab the image before it turned itself off.

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Sorry it has been quiet around here lately, there is at once little, and yet much to report on in the Land of Maebius. First and foremost, I have officially given up NaNoWriMo for a number of reasons, the least of which is feeling like a quitter so close to the end of the month. (I made it to 13,500 words, rounding it)
I have abandoned the NaNoWriMo challenge for this year in order to save my sanity. Many guides and pep-talk suggestions have indicated that the third week is the most difficult of times, when the plot falters, and the novel-in-progress just seems to fall flat of our initial giddy expectations. This actually happened to me around the second week, starting just before the New Moon posting, where I realized I just had to keep flogging along.

However, the more I flogged myself, the unhappier I became. It was not merely the chore of writing, it was a Chore itself. I wanted to participate in the challenge. I wanted to finish with something to read, and was honest enough to admit I would probably not hit the 50,000 word mark, but I wanted that Something would get written.

But what I realized instead was that for all my love of Roleplaying, and making up Character Biographies, and generally Writing Stuff…this novel challenge was not my cup of tea. I simply came to the understanding I don’t WANT to write a big long novel right now. I actually prefer little snippets of 3-4 pages of story. So dropping the challenge felt like a HUGE weight off my shoulders. Strangely, more fulfilling than actually making it to the 30th probably might have felt. It just started to seem so hollow a reward for what was noticeably causing me INSANE amounts of stress and angst. (Ask my wife, I got VERY bitter and sour, and it was not fair to the family to lose sleep and yell at my kid for petty annoyances all day, over a self-imposed challenge like NaNoWriMo)

I still have an idea that I want to flesh out, but at my OWN pace now, instead of being dictated that my evenings of fun and relaxation were instead to be spent on pulling my hair out and typing disjointed stream-of-conscious crap. It’s more fair to the story I started getting into, and much more fair to the family and friends I was getting pissy with due to lack of sleep and over-stressing. I had started to fall into a trap of staying up until 2am, playing Warcraft for an hour to settle down from the stress and agitation of writing a wall of text and being unable to sleep until I calmed my nerves. Of course then getting up to be at work around 7am….not much time for restful REM there.
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And on an unrelated note, my son requested to have his bed moved into his own room back on the 17th. as it was, he slepy with his bed pushed up against ours, so we essentially co-slept. But, after two more days of mentioning his bed in his own room, we figured it was not a passing request and moved him over….and he slept alone all week!

I got put on night-shift for work, and my son got a nasty head-cold so he moved back into our bed temporarily over the weekend, but last night he went back to his own room without much fuss at all. We were worried about “breaking the habit” of sleeping with us eventually, but are non-mainstream enough to support the Co-sleep idea for as long as he held out, or until it became a necessity.

However, just like his potty training, our fears of a protracted battle were unfounded. We would mention having his bed moved every few weeks, but would not push the issue and his saying no would be welcomed and accepted with a smile and a hug as we all snuggled in our adjoining mattresses. Then, when he was ready (and before my wife was honestly 100% ready to follow through with the action), he asked to move his bed into the other room. So he helped us tear down the frame, carry it across the hall, and used the screwdriver to put it together himself. No fuss, no muss, and he has his own flashlight which he used once or twice to come visit us in the middle of the night to make sure things were alright. But each time, he allowed us to carry him back to his room after asking for a bathroom break or a small sip of water.

It’s adorable really, and amazing how kid’s little minds develop and go »Bing« to the next stage of independence. On one hand I miss getting kicked in the head in the middle of the night. But on the other hand, it’s nice to snuggle with the wife again for a few hours.

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Well, this month will be rather spartan with the Blog posts, but I wanted to post a picture that Summer is officially over here in upstate, NY. Yes, that is snow in our yard, taken this morning, November 8th, 2007.

( click here for full-size)

NaNoWriMo is more of a pain than I envisioned, but in one way is kinda neat. I just need to get the time set aside to actually write things. I have ideas now, it’s just finding a block of time that is NOT after 10pm to sit and type it out. I have penciled a few things at work on tablets, but more sentence fragments and ideas than actual Writing Words. (though I have another 865 words done today so far, not including this blog entry!)
For your viewing enjoyment, here are some random pictures….

Firstly, the roadkill bird we had for lunch on Saturday. Delivered fresh right to our driveay as I was outside cleaning up the porch. This represents Maebius’ first ever attempt to prepare from-whole a wild game animal. It was a rather interesting learning experience in anatomy and such. Tasted pretty good, though a bit dry and tough. Learned afterwards a better way to cook such things…

Lastly, we had friends come up from PA to visit for my birthday (I am 33 now, yay!) which is one BIG reason I’m behind on NaNoWriMo since my computer is in the “spare room” they slept in. Here is a cute pic of my boy and theirs watching TV.
Enjoy!

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Storytime at night has gotten interesting. Our current schedule is to pick out a book (or two or eight) before bed, and once it is read, we are requested to “tell a story” once the lights are off. These stories are held to a very high value, and our caliber as tale-spinners is held quite accountable if we make them too silly or stupid. (The kid’s a critic!).

Of course, this means Mom and Dad are required to flex our creativity, and try to weave in something about transformers, or events of the current day, in order to satisfy the rigors of the evening Adventure-tale.

So the other night, The story was described as follows (paraphrased for content and time, this stories tend to last a good 20 minutes due to “what happened next!?!!?!!” syndrome. Continue Reading »

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We took a short, local family vacation earlier this week. Saturday-thru-Wednesday. It was wonderful!

We decided to go camping in a nearby state park, which combined the two main “vacation strategies” we have each year, Camping, or Beach-swimming. While Delta Lake is not quite the ocean, it’s a big body of water you can swim in and build sand sculptures around. Works for me! Pixsley Falls state park is a tiny little place, somewhat off the beaten track, but within 20 miles of our house. Close enough for a quick jaunt home if storms destroyed out tent (they did not), but far enough away that we felt like we were out on vacation and away from the usual chores and such of everyday life.

As promised, here’s a photo-montage of some highlights. Unfortuantely, later vacation stuff was sans-camera due to forgetting extra batteries…so you, gentle reader, will suffer through text. *grin* Read on after the jump…. Continue Reading »

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