This is week 110 of The Life of Riley, a weekly post detailing my activities since I ended a thirteen year career as a corporate drone. These posts are usually long, personal, and geared more for my own memory than the reader’s entertainment.

Sunday (Day 763): Fireworks I Couldn’t See

I woke up thinking about all the minor chores that I should be taking care of, but quickly found that a bit of nice weather sapped any motivation that I had for doing them. I couldn’t simply pretend that the list didn’t exist, so I couldn’t bring myself to sit on the beach. As I sat on the stoop eating a PBJ, I felt like running errands would be a fair compromise between work and play. I’d be driving in the sunshine most of the time, yet accomplishing a couple of things on the way. By the time I finished my sandwich, I realized that it was way too nice of a day to waste running errands.

#1GF! wanted to go to the beach, so we went for a walk along the shore. The nice weather had dragged out the locals and tourists, packing the beach with people. We didn’t walk very far, and took a couple of breaks so that #1GF! could rest.

When we got home, I roasted some eggplant, peppers, onions and garlic, and the threw them into some pasta. Although it felt thrown together, #1GF! fell in love with that meal.

I wanted to relax and watch a movie at 8PM (because it had been such a stressful day of walking and sitting), so I put on The Kingdom. Four minutes in, and #1GF! was on the phone for 45 minutes. I tried not to get aggravated because it was just a movie, after all. By the time #1GF! got off the phone, it was 9PM, and there was no way we were going to start a two hour movie.

#1GF! suggested I take the stroller out of the box and check it out. I got as far as opening the box and looking at the pieces. I decided that 9PM was no time to be putting things together, so I closed the box and said I’d work on it later. We went back to the den and sat on the couch.

We thought that we heard fireworks from the next town over, but I looked outside and couldn’t see them. I told #1GF! we could drive to find them if she wanted to. She walked out into the yard, and pointed out the clear view of the fireworks that I hadn’t noticed because I didn’t walk six feet away from the door. We stood watching them until I was doing the bug brush boogie, and then went inside to watch them from the den. We watched the whole show from the comfort of the couch.

I went and cleaned up dinner and left #1GF! on the couch to relax. She protested, but she really needed to sit. Pregnancy is swelling up her fingers and toes to the point where I want to throw them in a frying pan and smother them with onions and peppers. Once everything was cleaned up, we watched about a half hour of the movie before going to bed.

Monday (Day 764): LOR, Despite The Sun

I wrote LOR 109 until 5PM, and then made #1GF! dinner. It was one of the best days we’ve had in a while, and you had to work. I could’ve gone out into the sun to poke fun at you, but didn’t. I wasted a sunny day working, just like you did.

Tuesday (Day 765): PC Research And Cardboard Dogs

I did the food shopping, and dropped in to a local home megastore to look at dollies to move a dresser that we were getting for the baby. The cheap dollies didn’t look like they’d last a week, and I couldn’t see buying one of the expensive ones just for one move, so I left without buying anything. I wanted to get over to the library to pick up another baby book, but didn’t. In the afternoon, it started raining like a monsoon once again, making this the most depressing summer on record.

When I got home, I looked up PC’s all day. I built a couple from scratch, compared a few pre-builts, and generally reacquainted myself with chipsets, processors, and proper PC part price points. After a full day of research, I figured out that you can build a machine that a geek can get excited about for about $700 bucks these days. I have a lot of PC knowledge at the moment, which should expire in about fifteen to thirty days, if anyone needs it.

#1GF! came home from work with the baby’s dresser in her car. I brought it in the house by rolling it end over end, at #1GF!’s suggestion. No dolly was required.

We had some leftovers for dinner, unpacked the dresser, and put together the stroller. At some point, I held up a piece of cardboard that looked to me like a dog’s head and started talking to #1GF! with it in a voice that I thought sounded like a cardboard dog would. She laughed and said that I was going to make a great father. I stayed in character and asked her what she meant, which made her laugh more.

I noticed a bunch of other pieces of cardboard that reminded me of Transformers, but I passed on pointing it out because Transformers are a lot more popular than they should be right now. I transformed them into flat cardboard and packed them into the recycle bin with my cardboard dog.

I cleaned up the thousand pounds of Styrofoam, and folded up the half ton of cardboard and took it down to the basement. The robot kept taking pieces and piling them on himself until I made him put them back. He also asked if he could have the cardboard dog for a pet, but I told him that he wasn’t old enough to have a pet yet. He was not happy about that and went off to sulk in the corner by his window.

At 9:30PM, I popped online for a second, and someone asked me about video cards. I forwarded over some of the reviews that I had come across during the day, and felt like I had gotten twice as much use out of my research than I should’ve. PC parts research is very time sensitive data, so I sent it over, even though it had probably expired when I was putting together the dresser.

Wednesday (Day 766): Bossless Guilt

#1GF! mentioned that she thought the baby had dropped when we were standing in the bathroom, which is a sign that the baby is prepping to check out of her womb at the Hotel #1GF! and join us here in the real world. I didn’t think that #1GF! looked any different, but I threw on the tub and held out a bath towel. #1GF! looked at me. “Hot water and towels are prepped. Fire when ready.” She was not amused.

Once #1GF! was off to work, I finished up the last few pages of Polaris, by Jack McDevitt. The book really felt like I was reading a piece of classic sci-fi twenty years too early. McDevitt’s ideas on the increased role of artificial intelligence as a general user interface, and the level of detail that he provides for his scenes make his version of a few thousand years in the future seem almost plausible.

I wanted to pick up another book, so I looked up book suggestions with Reader2 and the old Dyers.org recommended reading list. Once I had a good list going, I went to the library.

Now, people who have to work might not know this, but apparently Wednesday at 11AM at the library is more popular with old people than two for one highball night at the VFW. I had to circle the library twice to get a parking spot, and even then, I parked ROCKET CAR! somewhere that wasn’t officially a spot.

Lately, I’ve been trying to steer toward writers in my own style (humor / oddball), so I didn’t pick up another one of McDevitt’s books. I’ve read a couple of his books recently, and I don’t want to inadvertently start assimilating his style into my own.

I picked up Lamb by Christopher Moore, and The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland. I wasn’t sure that either was going to be what I was looking for, but I figured that Moore is always a good bet for an entertaining read. I felt like a bit of a book hog for taking out two books instead of one, but with the library getting so popular, I thought that I had better start hoarding books or be left with nothing to read. Yes, at the pace I read, I consider taking out two library books to be hoarding.

I meant to pick up some sort of baby book for fathers who don’t know much more than “don’t shake or drop the baby”, but was so happy to find Lamb (and so distracted by the frowning and fist shaking of the old people) that I completely forgot it.

Once I got back outside, the sun was shining in the sky. After all the rain we’ve had, I was reminded of “All Summer In A Day” by Ray Bradbury, where the sun is only visibly for one hour every seven years. I was going to go read my book somewhere and enjoy the nice weather, but I couldn’t think of a place I really wanted to go. As I went through different locations in my head, I started thinking that going somewhere just to read a book was a waste of time. Un/Self-employment guilt set in, so I went home and looked up changing tables. It was not the best way to spend a sunny day, but we’re within range where that baby could drop out of there at any time, and I’d like to have as much done as possible before it gets here.

At night, I went through a lot of RSS feeds, only to find one or two interesting things. Sometimes, I’m not sure why I bother with RSS feeds anymore. They’re very efficient in getting the information, but they’re as pointless as watching television most of the time.

Thursday (Day 767): Manuscript Editing

I edited my manuscript all day, and only added another thousand words. I say “only added”, but I was honestly surprised to have added that many. I was simply going through to make corrections that #1GF! noticed when reading through the first time, and happened to find some additional errors and inconsistencies on my own.

Friday (Day 768): My Cloak And Beret

It was an absolutely beautiful day, and I spent it indoors editing my manuscript. With all the rain and cold temperatures this year, you’d think that on one of the few nice days we’ve had, I’d have been out enjoying the weather. Unfortunately, as a Yankee, there is too much drive to work and not enough drive to relax.

I also have this sense that once the baby gets here, I’m either going to be too tired to edit, or too absorbed with new parental hobbies like staring at the baby. Even if I was a fan of lounging around in nice weather, I feel like I’m under a time crunch to get this book done. This book feels long overdue for me, and I’m dying to get it done and into someone else’s hands.

That’s not to say that I don’t have my doubts about getting it published. If you read online, you can find a ton of sites that tell you how many people write books, and how few of those people get books published. And of those who do get published, very few can make a living from their published works. It sounded very familiar. Sort of like blogging.

How do you increase readership in a blog? You post and promote, and wait for luck to take over. If you’re not particularly lucky, you post 1600 times to give luck a better chance to find you. Do this every day for years and someone, somewhere will find your page on beards and make you an internet star for a short time.

With a book, it sounds like the same thing. Write something and get it in front of as many people as you can. Then, write something else, and something else, until something resonates and catches on. It’s the same with anything, I suppose. To be successful takes getting the right people to see what you see in your work. That takes a little skill, a lot of persistence, and a ton of pure luck. That’s how it looks from the bottom anyway.

In my editing, I made it through the first half of the book and added another thousand words. There is less and less to be added, but I don’t know when I’ll feel like the story will be the best that it is going to be. I feel that given enough time, I could revise forever. I suppose that the only way that I will know that the book is done will be when I can’t stand to look at it anymore. To quote da Vinci, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.”

Oh look, I’m quoting da Vinci now. Hold on, let me put on my fucking beret and scholarly cloak. There. Oh, yes. Where is my sash? Mmm. Yes. Mmm. That’s much better. Now, where was I. Comparing myself to da Vinci, I think. Now, if you’d turn to page 75 in your texts…

I think that if I ever do become a published author, there is a good chance that I may become intolerable. Well, I’ll act intolerable here. Alright, so I probably won’t end up any more intolerable than I already am, but around the robot, I shall be both high and mighty, ruling the basement without a hint of noblesse oblige.

Soon, I’ll have to learn how to put together query letters to see if any agents are interested in a novel that not only revolves around mullets and metal, but has an IROC as a main character. We all hope to be unique little snowflakes, admired and preserved in glass for all eternity, but most of the time, our fate is to simply fall to the ground and melt unnoticed.

I edited right up until #1GF! got home, ate some leftovers standing over the sink, and went out looking for changing tables. By the time we got to the stores, they were within an hour of closing. It didn’t matter because none of them had anything that wasn’t either four billion dollars or wobbly.

In one store, a guy walked by #1GF! and said , “Good luck,” and then added, fu’real.” There was a tired quality to his voice that indicated that he meant it. He then asked if #1GF! was getting an epidural. She said she wasn’t sure. He made a fist. “ssRight. Stay strawng.”

We got home at 9:30PM, and I sat down to edit my manuscript again. The minute that I got the PC going, I ran out of editing power. Instead of shutting down, I managed to goof off for 90 minutes before settling in to the business of reading about writing. Yea.

The more I read, the more parallels I found between “how to blog” blogs and “how to publish a book” blogs. Neither topic requires particularly in-depth information to quickly gather a substantial following. I’m not writing off the entire category as useless because there are a few good ones out there, but a good portion that I’ve read is a complete waste of time.

Most of these types of sites that I’ve read can be described like this: Imagine I set up “I know how to build a deck dot com”. In one post, I tell you that you need wood, and maybe I list the top ten most common types of wood for decks. On another post I talk about how it’s easier to build a deck when it’s not 95 degrees out. My next series of posts deal with inspiring you to find the perfect deck design with by drawing sketches or using the deck design software from my affiliate advertiser. Know how to build a deck yet? No? Do any of the two thousand people following? Sort of? No? Well, then why are they reading the site?

Because most sites of this type are less about information than about being a place for giving people the feeling that reading general information about a subject is the same as learning how to do something specific. That keeps them reading longer and sells more advertising.

After a while, the reader realizes that they are no closer to building a deck, blogging, or writing a book, than when they started because even though the information is packaged in easy to swallow bites and designed to leave them feeling full, it never actually provides them with enough information to help them get to where they want to go. Unless you’ve never written or blogged before, most of the information is useless. But, for a lot of people, maybe that’s the point: It’s better to feel like you might know what you’re doing than to actually dive in and make a mess of things.

Saturday (Day 769): A Wolf T-Shirt And Cotton Sweatpants

#1GF! wanted to go to the beach, so that’s what we did. I packed up a couple of sandwiches and some snacks, and we walked down to the beach around 11AM. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, and we sat and talked the entire time. I talked to three people on the phone, left about seven phone messages, and had zero people call me back. The tall ships were in town, and most of them were probably too busy getting their fill of seamen down at the wharf. Har har.

We were being slowly pursued up the beach by the tide, and so we had to move once to avoid getting soaked. We moved into a more crowded area that was still below the high tide line, and got off the beach before high tide. I would’ve stayed longer, but I couldn’t get the umbrella into the sand in our new spot. I put three holes in, and hit rocks every time. Without the umbrella, my tolerance for sitting in the heat declines sharply after a couple of hours.

We walked home through the full lots of broiling cars, feeling pretty smug that we didn’t have to plan, drive and park just to go to the beach. The beach was absolutely packed by the time we left, and everyone was being compressed into a smaller and smaller space as the tide came up. It was good that we left when we did.

We went to the library to pick up a baby book, and then went to a home megastore to see what they had for patio furniture. Everything that they had was pretty expensive, so we decided to try somewhere else. On the way out, we saw some flowers that looked like yellow daisies, but stunk so badly that the both of us let out an “Ugh!” when we got within three feet of them. The flowers smelled like cat urine, from a cat that had been force fed limes for a month.

We hit a few pool places looking for patio furniture, and realized that even cheap patio furniture isn’t cheap. It’s priced like regular furniture, which makes sense, but I somehow thought it would be a lot cheaper than it was.

We gave up on the outdoor furniture and went to Walmart looking for a changing table. As we walked in the door, I turned to #1GF! and said, “Oh great. Now, I’m one of those guys who walks around Walmart with his pregnant girlfriend. It won’t be long before I’m wearing T-shirts with either dragons or professional wrestlers on the them.”

#1GF! just looked at me and shook her head as she tends to do in those situations.

“And in a couple of years, I’ll be toting the kid around here. I’m really starting to doubt whether I’ll be wearing anything but grey cotton sweatpants by then. Can you wear suspenders with sweatpants? Because I don’t want those things falling off unexpectedly when I grow some sort of massive middle aged belly.”

#1GF! shook her head as if she smelled something foul. I don’t think she liked the fat, future, wolf T-shirt and cotton sweatpants wearing me that would be toting her kid around.

We walked through the people yelling at each other over the aisles and around the people who can’t seem to avoid stopping in the middle of the aisles to stare at the ceiling. The further we went into the store, the more convinced I became that someone with cotton sweatpants and a wolf T-shirt could be king of these people. Hell, robot could be their king. I’d just roll him in there and tell him that he could keep whoever he could subjugate before closing. He isn’t the brightest, but I think he might do okay.

I took over the driving after Walmart so that #1GF! could put one of her swollen feet up on the dash. She wasn’t doing so hot. We stopped into a local restaurant for dinner, and the service was slow and food wasn’t very good. Welcome to tourist season in a beach town.

By the end of the day, not one person had returned a message that I had left them. I guess that’s pretty normal though. These days, we’re so wired and accessible that phone avoidance is common. A ringing phone has become a question, not a command. Either that or everyone is avoiding me because they’re afraid that they’ll get blogged or turned into a character in a book. At least, I hope that’s it…

What I Learned

• Roasted eggplant, peppers, onions, garlic go great when dumped into pasta.
• I refreshed my knowledge on the latest PC component prices.
• You don’t need a dolly if you roll furniture end over end.
• Wednesday at 11AM is a hot time at the library for senior citizens.
• “How to get published” blogs are extremely similar to “how to blog” blogs.

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