Gerald Brandt

I never noticed, but I’ve now gone past the one month mark on this blog.  True, a couple of weeks of that was while I was on holiday, but I’m still counting it.  It hasn’t yet (and maybe it never will) become a habit.  We’ll have to see.

Raising kids is a tough job.  I knew that before I took over this job, but I keep getting reminded of it everyday.  This week, especially, has been tough.  It seems that when ever the boys are at home, they start to bicker and get into trouble.  I can’t seem to keep them busy enough.  I’m glad this week is over and Marnie will be home for the weekend.  I need a break, before I lose it again.

Yes, again.  I pretty much lost it this afternoon with them.  They both got a smack on the bottom and timeouts.  The timeouts were okay, but the violence and raising my voice at them (for a prolonged period) is definately not okay.  I ask them to work on things with me, but I know it’s really my job to keep my self in check… not theirs.  I’m working on it.

I’ve become a REACTIVE instead of a PROACTIVE parent.  I react, usually badly, to the things that happen in my household, that the boys do.  When I started, I was proactive.  I helped create the situations that stimulated the boys, and guided them a bit more.  I’m hoping it’s the stress of summer.  They say that knowing the problem is half the solution.  I hope so.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Writing
I’ve finished going through the outline, and started integrating my story evolution into the outline.  So far, I’ve identified three new scenes, which will probably end up in a prologue of sorts.  Personally, I don’t like prologues, but it certainly starts the story with a kick, without having to mess up the timeline.

I’m starting to get ansty.  Although I’m reading, editing, and writing the outline, I don’t feel like I’m WRITING.  I feel like I should just get in there and write the damn thing.  I’ve felt this way when I starting speccing a piece of software.  At some point in the design, I’ve always felt like I should just be coding it for chrissakes.  Ahh well….

Jonathan Sherwood is posting about the process he used to write his novel.

A slow day around the house. Just the regular stuff, misbehaving kids, yelling, etc. We did drop by the kids old daycare place, where they played for about 4 hours. That was fun. Once we got home though, the bickering started again.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Writing
I’m going through the outline a scene at a time and checking for coherency and buildup of suspence and conflict. So far, not too bad, though I still think I’m going to be 20K words short of a novel. Hmmm.

I have put a temporary title on the project though… The Anshi Legacy.

We had a fairly cloudy/cold day out here today, and I was not looking forward to having the kids in the house all the time again.  So, I did what any sane parent would do: get out of the house.  We spent about 2 1/2 hours at the mall during midday and did some shopping for birthday cards, Marnie’s gift, and school backpacks. 

Tomorrow, I’ll sit down with the boys and figure out a craft they can make for Marnie’s birthday.  I’ll see if I can get them to make her some birthday cards as well.  All I have to do is try to keep it a secret from Marnie (who doesn’t read this blog anyway).  More than likely, one of the boys will start telling her all about it!

I’m actually finding things a bit weird.  When summer holidays started for Jared, I was panicking about how to fill the days so they’ll be happy.  Now that Jared is going to Grade 1 full time, and Ryan is going to pre-school three afternoons a weeks, I’m worried about what to do with all my time.  Just weird.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
   - If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Writing
I outlined scenes 40 and 41, which is pretty much all I have right now.  I should probably add at least 20 more scenes, but without an additional sub-plot, I may not be able to.  I’ll start fleshing out the outlines a bit more tomorrow, and see where it gets me.  Right now, the antagonist basically stays in the background.  He’s a plot motivator, but not a central character.  I think if I can bring him to the forefront a bit more, I’ll get a more solid story, and my extra scenes.I outlined scenes 40 and 41, which is pretty much all I have right now.

Here are a couple of things I found on the net today.  This is a cool speed test for your Internet connection.

Clarkesworld is a new (for me) online magazine that pays about 10 cents a word.

And finally, a piece of advice I found on the Asimov’s board.  There is a thread talking about the best thing any one has said to you, as you were leaving their employ, and this one just stuck with me:
“You must never be above telling a bold faced lie.  Now off with you!”
It was told by a boss to his employee on the employee’s last day.

Man, the boys must be coming down from the high of the camping trip.  Yikes, what a day.  They basically argued or fought all day, and never listened, of course.  Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day, since we’ll be going out and trying to buy a present for Marnie.

I played with VMWare Server alot over the last two days.  I’m running it under AMD64 based Gentoo, and it works quite well.  I seem to have a problem running pre-made Appliances under it though, and I’m not quite sure why.  I’ll figure it out.  I found an appliance that will image a drive over the network, so I’m hoping to create a VMWare Server hosted from an existing system.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

Writing
If you’re interested in how a novel went from first draft to finished and published, this is a good read.

I also stumbled on to this article by James Alan Gardner.

Not too much to say today.  Yesterday was a mix of being rough and easy with the boys.  They managed to find stuff to do most of the day (of course I helped), and didn’t miss the camping too much.  But, no matter how busy I kept them, they still found time to get into a couple of fights/yelling matches.  Fun for all!

I’m still trying to get the house back in order after the camping trip.  Hopefully I can get all of it done before Marnie figures I’m slacking off too much.  And, I may have been.  I worked most of yesterday trying to get VMWare Server running under AMD64 Gentoo.  It’s working now, and should let me bring my number of servers down a bit.  I’m still not sure I want to though.  Hmmm.

Reading
Soul of the Samurai (Thomas Cleary)
- If anyone can point me to an authors web site, I’d appreciate it.

We are back from our holidays, and tomorrow we’ll be back into the regular grind.  The camping trip was a smashing success, even though we got hit by a bit of rain.  We ended up having an absolute blast with the swimming, hiking, and canoeing.

On the day we went canoeing, we stopped on a small island and had lunch.  The water was so clear that all of us basically jumped off a rock and went for a swim.  We brought the boys’ floatation vests, and they took to the water like fish.  Whenever we went swimming locally, they never really left the shallow end.  This week, they easily swam in 15 to 20 feet of water, and loved every minute of it.  Jared even swam with his face in the water, holding his breath.  Wow!

Since this was our first camping trip with the boys (except when they were very young), we weren’t sure what to pack.  As it turned out, we packed too much, and not enough stuff.  Too much food and not enough toys.  Too much cookware and not enough utensils.  Thankfully a couple of other campers lent us a bottle and a can opener.

The hikes we did were quite small, when compared to the 3.2 kilometer one I did with the boys a few weeks back.  Still, they were enjoyable and the boys loved them

Basically the trip was full of great memories, not enough pictures, and fun fun fun.  We can’t wait until we do it again.  Next summer, we’ll head out on more than one trip, and we may even try to squeeze a short one in before school starts in three weeks.

Reading
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King) (one day for the novel)
The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook (Peter Baylies)

Writing
I didn’t manage to squeeze in any more writing, the kid time was too precious.  But, I can honestly say that the novel and short story in progress were never far from my mind.  I think I’ve come up with some interesting stuff, if I can figure out how to squeeze them in.

First off, I’ve made another executive decision concerning this blog… all entries will be time stamped with CST, no matter what time zone I’m in. For example, it’s actually 10:24 PM where I am, but this entry is marked as 9:24 PM.

This was our first full day camping. It rained last night, quite a bit, but the tent stayed dry. I suspended a tarp over it before we went to bed. Right now, I’m sitting in front of a camp fire while Marnie and the boys are in the tent telling each other ghost stories. Jared likes to go on and on; maybe he has the story tellers blood. I would be proud.

The morning was spent in the van, mostly. With the rain and the wet, we decided it would be a good time to visit the local touristy area. We did, it was. The end. By the time we got back to the campsite, the sun was out and the day was beautiful. We had a quick lunch and spent the day at the beach. The boys made instant friends, which means Marnie and I got a chance to talk to other parents. One of the parents we spoke to lived only 5 miles (the next farm), from the child that was kidnapped and sexually molested a few weeks back. Bad juju.

Tomorrow we plan a hike and more beach time. More fun should be had.

Reading
The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook (Peter Baylies)
(although I didn’t read a page today)

Writing
Outlined scenes 36, 37, 38, and 39 in the novel, then I got too tired. It’s wierd, the thoughts just flowed and the words in the outline came easy, but then I hit a brick wall. I need to sleep.