NanoWriMo Starts - Here's my playlist.

Late tonight/early tomorrow I'm starting NanoWriMo-National Novel Writing Month.
Here's my Spotify playlist if you want to listen along. I'm going to finally try to get
Frank's Bad Day finished for good.

Coconut Pear Oatmeal

1 cup water
1/2 cup milk (not skim)
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 medium pear-diced
2 teaspoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon molasses
1 packet splenda
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons shredded coconut (I used unsweetened)
salt to taste
cinnamon to taste
pinch of ginger
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cloves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Add water, salt and spices to pan and begin to boil. Once boiling add oatmeal and stir. Wait several minutes and add pears and coconut and stir. Turn heat to low simmer. Add butter, maple syrup, molasses, and Splenda and milk. Cover and let cook for about 5 to 10 minutes-stirring occasionally. Once it gets to the consistency you desire add the vanilla, stir and serve.

Lily by Geoffrey Gevalt

Awesome story about a very deep 2.5 year old.

100 Miles

In April I started keeping track of my distance swimming. I soon decided I would swim 100 miles by the end of 2013. A mile is 36 laps down and back at the YMCA pool. I started out doing 1/4  to 1/2 of a mile each day. Then I would shoot for 27 laps, which is 3/4 of a mile. Several times after that I came in early and swam extra and got to 1 mile. It took about 1 hour and 20 minutes the first time I did it and I was spent afterwards. Finally, around the end of summer I was doing a mile several times a week. Now I can do it every day.

Today was the big day, I reached the goal early finished my 100 miles.

Lily Myers "Shrinking Women"

Here's an incredible piece of poetry about the nature of women. Powerful stuff.

Today I have swam a total of 99 miles this year. Tomorrow will be the big day I have been working for all year: 100 miles.

Quote from Robert Coles

Today I downloaded my weekly podcasts from The Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keilor and found this little gem:

"We should look inward and think about the meaning of our life and its purposes lest we do it in 20 or 30 years and its too late."-Robert Coles

Skidamarink a Dink a Dink: The Dramatic Reading

My cousin Melissa and her son Nate worked together on a dramatic reading for her daughter Jessica's reading. We were shooting for kind of a beatnik poem read by Bill Shatner effect. I'm pretty happy with it. If you have the bandwidth-click the HD button on the video player, it's much better.

1 Hour

Yesterday was awful. 

I was overwhelmed by work, swimming in emails. I made the effort to go the extra mile to help out a customer and I ended up staying way too late, and in the end I'm not sure it was value added work. Making a sacrifice for something you think is worth it can feel good, but when you come to the realization it may not have been as important as you were led to believe that's just disappointing. 

I came home in a snit. I missed out on exercising, catching up on chores and being with my wife. When I finally got to bed, it was later than I wanted and I drifted into a fitful sleep. 

About 2 am I started to slowly wake up and realized I was rested. I normally drag myself out of bed at 4 am to go swimming and it takes an hour of coffee and breakfast to come to a consciousness approaching that of Cro-Magnon man after a bad weekend. 

I lay there enjoying that type of lounging sleep that I normally reserve for Saturday morning around 8 am until I was done. I actually got up from bed an hour early and I wasn't despairing of life.  

I considered waking my red-headed compadre next to me, but I wasn't interested in seeing a bonafide, USDA inspected, Grade A snit, and it would be justified for waking her up at 3 am with no good reason other than I was rested and ready to face the day and wanted company. 

Instead I dressed and headed for the coffee maker. I got out the cat toy on a string as the coffee maker made the happy burbling noises and proceeded to make the other attractive female in my life happy. That would be Lucy the calico cat. She has deep green eyes and two permanent dirty spots on her nose. She is incredibly charming and always makes me feel like the popular girl at school wants to be my friend. After playing catch-the-cat-toy-on-the-string for about 10 minutes, I picked her up and scratched her ears and she leaned her cheek against mine and purred. 

I was ready to begin the day-ahead of the game. Today would be different and things would be good.  It was a moment of an everyday type of magic, an unexpected moment of God's grace after a very bad day, and it needed to be savored and shared. 

Zen Pencils Animation of Marc Maron's "Social Media Generation"

Just a warning, this is kind of vulgar, but it is so to make a point, not just for vulgar's sake. It makes a very strong statement about our use and abuse of social media. This is based on a comic on the site Zen Pencils with the animation developed by Jess the Dragoon .



 

Dear White Choc. Macademia #Clifbar, thanks for being there after swimming. Hypoglycemia was no match for your awesomeness.