Friday June 19th

There has been progress and today should be the wrap up of Space Mine’s first draft. I just did a page count check and it comes in at 319 pages, 96K words. So far in four days this week we are just over 10K words. 26.5 K for the month so way ahead of goal.

Space Mine finishes the first draft at 97,915. Finished 1800+ today. Uploaded videos to YouTube for Time Commanders Have written 12K for the week, 28K for the month

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Tuesday June 16th

Opened the mail and the first Unemployment check is in. Yahoo!

Went to the mall yesterday, it was quite, to get my watches repaired, I have 3 that needed batteries, and my eye pad in my glasses fixed. Very successful. Got to eat a nice healthy salad then fried up (in olive oil) some Tilapia for dinner.

Worked some more the last few days on the Time Commanders site. And have been writing in Space Mine. So where am I… The Last chapter which has six scenes. Finished scenes 1 and 2 already today. (4 more to go)

As of today, the numbers, 90K plus for the book, last week 16295, Monday, 2184 and Tuesday so far 2138. So ahead of my daily 1500 word goal, over halfway for the month (2/3rds) already and the month has lots more days in it.

Digitizing photos for the parents…

Just wished mom had me in better clothes, but I guess the sixties were like this for everyone.

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Wednesday June 10th

I did write yesterday and job hunted and all sorts of things. I even started reading the first Ruth Downie book, Medicus
In writing, on monday i did over 2500 words in Space Mine and the same amount yesterday. I am faced with some of the political maneuvering. Our hero is focused on getting the job done. Our nemesis who is his boss, wants to be sure that once the job is done, he the boss gets credit, and gets the next bigger job.

The back drop of invitations to the balls at the inauguration of a second term president is a good way of showing this. And that is where I am right now.

I did work on my Time Commanders site, battles five and six are almost complete as is downloading all videos so I have a record of the first series. In the first three days of the week, I have sent out about 50 resumes looking for work. Had my interview with the EDD about money and today will do shopping for food. Also waiting for the handyman to help with the rat issue.

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Monday the 8th??

Watching the feeds live on the Apple WWDC, then gave up. I like Leo Laporte. Even more now that my cousin is the president of Twit. (Go Dane!) But it was talking heads. Even on another feed that promised live coverage it was talking heads.

So back to MacWorld where the coverage is typed in, you have to refresh the screen, but it is good. The talking heads will be doing this for days after the event on what they hear today. Apple could solve this problem by just publishing the live video feed, but that is too much to ask.

This weekend we had another meeting of the Brea Borders group and I read the beginning to chapter 12 of Space Mine, where the President arrives for an impromptu visit. It is one thing to think about how hard space will be, when we actually really start to work in it. But I put it in perspective a bit. The president of course wants the project finished so he looks good. But as he interacts in the environment he will see just how hard it is to say that the project only needs three months. What about eating breakfast. We are trained to lift that glass of juice. Use our hand to spread the butter with the knife in just such a way. On the moon, that goes out the window because the gravity is less. What about cooking those eggs. Cracking an egg will need to be retrained.

We had a new member join us and hope she comes back. Adding a whole new dimension to our group.

In any event for today I have already done 1600 words, this month the goal for weekday writing is 1500 words. Finished the editing of Chapter 2 of Graces and now have to type them into the computer. Finally got all caught up on the backlog of Forbes.

I spent some of my weekend time on Time Commanders and my new website. I now have 4 of the first 16 battles up on line. That is there are 25 battles total to be placed online, and the first 4 of the first season have their pages all done. There are several pages that go with each battle, and a lot of video, including support video from other sources, not just Time Commanders

I also spent a great deal of time, digitizing for my parents.

Here I am during my one season as a Jock. We played TBall, and I was on the pilots. I sucked…

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Sunday the 31st of May, Monday the 1st of June

I actually did write on Sunday and Monday. Just over 1500 words on monday, and over 1300 on Sunday. The three day total from the weekend thru monday was over 4000. In looking at the big picture of Space Mine, things may be a little out of sequence, and I am going to have to go and document my scenes I guess so I can double check that. I also got the edits in for the first chapter of Graces over that period.

Sunday and Monday I did a lot of work on the website for Time Commanders, pretty much have the layout for each episode planned, color choices and type choices picked. But then started working with Rome Total War and tried to get the game to work and to take screen shots. No luck there.

Was able to crop a couple pictures on the Mac side of things. Still working on the other.

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Saturday May 30th, The Curious Collectors of Baker Street

I Started in the AM writing a couple hundred words for Space Mine, trying to obscure the last enemy that has to last the next 30,000 words, to the end of the book. That trail has to be tougher, has to be the thing that ends the book on.

In the middle of the day it was duty for the Curious Collectors of Baker Street, our local Los Angeles Sherlock Holmes Scion. Which means a group of people who started out loving the works of Conan Doyle and now socialize with Sherlockian themes. I came to them because they started to throw dances. I like dancing. Over the years they have all become great friends.

That really wore me out, I served and cleared and coordinated between the kitchen and the master of ceremonies. My feet are still sore.

Then coming home I wrote some more bringing yesterday to nearly 1200 words for a saturday.

In addition I worked on the first page of the Time Commanders site and recorded video for the Eighth Wonder of the World Park

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May 29th Friday

My goal for today and the week was met by finishing the additional chapter for Space Mine, and bulking up all the short chapters with scenes that round out the book. At this point, with 10 chapters, Space Mine is just shy of 57K words. Over 190 pages.

I was able to nearly 3300 pages today, and over 11.5K for the week so far. Over 64K in this four week period. I think for the next period after the writing group meets will be to step up to 1250 words a day average. Since each month I add 250 words a day goal.

I got a nice encouraging letter from my writer friend Emma Bull. Her Liavek books were a lot of fun. After finishing watching the first season of Time Commanders, I think a web site for that series is in order. There does not seem to be one on the internet, so I have begun to work on one.

In addition, Cheryl has urged that I do what I have done for our family, making videos and slideshows, as a business. Especially since we are just looking for work. So that is what I am going to do. Besides reply to job postings all day long.

In any event it has been a long day and time to go to sleep.

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May the 28th

Space Mine got my attention some more today. I got through three scenes in chapter eight. About two more to go. Word count accomplished today of 2761. That was the most writing this week, and brings the week to 8254. I plan to finish the chapter tomorrow. Already this month we have exceeded the writing done last month. So this has been quite productive.

Other accomplishments today was editing all of chapter 1 in Graces. I went to the Coffee Bean to catch up with my friend Tom who likes to hang out there before going home. Took the manuscript down and finished the edit. Now I need to type the changes up.

Saw the Wonder Boys today. It was too contrived. Too much here is what an adult show should be about. Man having a lousy life, everything going wrong… All of a sudden it all becomes predictable. Way too predictable. The only good thing was the cast of so many notable actors.

Finished my audit of the first series of Time Commanders. I really like this in spite of some things that have gotten worse as the series progressed. The lead historian who teaches at Sandhurst has not got nice things to say about the teams when the win or lose. He is arrogant in the extreme as he has studied strategy and all the contestants are amateurs. Now on to series two. It is a shame as Creative Assembly has later period games, the producers were not able to carry the series on to use those games and restage more battles.

On the Rollercoaster Tycoon front, I posted my latest park online at the site

Now it is wait and see if there are people out there who want to enter the competition.

Gratitude Log

1. Cold Iced Coffee Drinks
2. Coffee Houses that are not Starbucks
3. Blue Azure Ink (So much more colorful then just regular blue)
4. Online Banking
5. Gilbert & Sullivan (How can you not be thankful for these guys)

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Tuesday the 26th, May

Was able to get the chapter 5 expansion done in Space Mine. I may be giving up all the enemies too early and have to revisit that. In all did more than 2000 words for that. Watched some more Time Commanders, worked on the website videos of Scotland. More slides for my folks. Got a lot of little things done and cleared my desk pretty well.

I was also able to edit a little in Graces, read some in the two books on editing and writing, but to bed another couple Forbes (Only four behind now.)

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Sunday May 24th, Memorial Day Weekend

Had a few goals today. The first was to get to 45,000 words in Space Mine, which I did. That brings the writing for the weekend to nearly 5800 words. Or 23K+ for the week, 52K so far this month. More importantly I finished the 9th chapter this week in Space Mine, fleshed out chapters 2 and 3 that needed them, decided there is another chapter after chapter 7.

For this week I intend to finish the fleshing out of the short chapters, 4, 5 and 8 which need about 4200 words between them, and doing chapter 7a for the 5000 or so words it needs. That would take us to the place that the story should be, and if I do that by the end of this coming week it will be good.

In other goals for the day, I had two. One was to digitize another tray of slides for my parents. Apparently they were in Switzerland, France and England in 1964 when I was almost 2. I didn’t get to go. So I got those from slides into digital pictures. Then I wanted to make some headway on the pile of Forbes magazines. Getting through one so far. And also finally getting the last of the information on my library that I have in Bookpedia into Library Thing.

Finished in time to watch a Time Commanders, where the contestants did horribly. But it is still fun to watch and I am glad YouTube has all these. Then after Cheryl returned from Pet Sitting, we made it over to a friends graduation party. She had just picked up her MBA, (her second masters degree) and so there was a party to celebrate.

Gratitude Log

1. Higher Education
2. Pets
3. Carrot Cake
4. Chocolate Cake
5. Chocolate Cream Pie

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