Standing On Boxes

Just added a page for Fan Fiction Recommendations. For now it is just short fics. 1-3 parts. Less than 4,000 words.

Haven’t quite decided where it will “go” on my blog, link-wise.

Just spent the week visiting family. And working on my fic “Summoned” in my free time. I’ve split it into smaller chunks to make it more manageable… and the 2nd part is now 4 parts (Only 2 of which I have done so far… – I’m still sort of stuck on the ‘meeting’ between the two groups. I HAVE decided that Sam is going to take a dislike towards/of Willow. It’s that whole angel thing he has in common with Buffy… )

It’s not a fic that gets a lot of feedback…

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I’m stalled at the point where Buffy and WIllow meet Diana/Sam/etc. Do I keep the references to Buffy on tv? Not sure yet.

Knoxville to New Paltz, NY – 770 miles in 12 hours. About average.

1. I40E (Knoxville) to I81N to I84E (Scranton, PA)
2. I84E to I87 (Newburgh, NY) to New Paltz exit.

Sunday, April 17th

New Paltz, NY to Concord, NH (5 hours) to Fowler, NY – 6.5 hours (plus a 3 hour break in Concord) – typical travel time for the roads and miles (- 592 miles )

1. I87 (New Platz) to I90 to I495 to I93 (Concord, NH)
2. I89 from Concord, NH to Burlington, VT
3. Lake Champlain Ferry to NY Rt 374 to NY Rt 192 to Rt 11/11B to Gouverneur, NY to Rt 58 to Fowler, NY.

Saturday, April 23rd

Fowler, NY to Tilton, NH (6hrs) to New Paltz, NY (5 hours) (plus a 1.5 hour lunch/errand break in Tilton) – Rained almost the whole way…

1. Fowler,NY to Gouverneur, NY to Platsburgh, NY to Lake Champlain Ferry, I89 from Burlington, VT to I89 (NH Exit 17) to NH Rt 4 to NH Rt 118 to NH Rt 25 to I93 to TIlton. (More or less)
2. I93 (Tilton, NH) to I495 to I90 (MassPike) to I87 (to New Platz)

Sunday, April 24th

New Paltz, NY to Knoxville , TN – 770 miles in 11 hours, 45 minutes. Not bad. Got home at 8:30PM.

1. I87S (New Paltz, NY) to I84W (Newburgh, NY)
2. I84W (Newburgh) to I81S (Scranton, PA)
3. I81S (Scranton, PA) to I40W (Knoxville) (I81 merges into I40 approx. 25 miles east of Knoxville)

No internet access for a while…

Don’t expect any new/updated fics to show up for a few weeks. Sorry.

My cable internet has been basically worthless most of this week… Comcast apparently changed their DNS servers around here last week (or so I heard) and things have been screwy since. They seem to run out of steam around 8pm, until midnight…

I wonder if they’ll give me a refund… yeah, right!

Hmmm… not too bad tonight…

“Hot and Spicy Pork Skins/Rinds”

Not sure why I bought them… and I’ll probably regret it… but I was buying road-trip snacks for next week’s marathon trek north and it jumped in my shopping cart…

“Not a significant source of…” pretty much anything healthy.

Something addictive about them… maybe it’s because they have the faint smoky flavor of over-cooked bacon?

Got my taxes in the mail today… 2 days early… first time in 5 years that I didn’t have anything to itemize and it fit on a single form. So it all fit in a single business envelope.

And… of course, now the worrying starts…

• Did the form print correctly from TurboTax?
• Did I fill it out correctly…
• Is the IRS going to be happy with a folded form/W2?
• Will it get lost in the mail?
• Will I get audited?
• How long will it take to get my refund?

The usual…

I just took the first half (43K words) of my fic, “The Two” and stuffed it into an eBook format, the one used by Palm PDA’s and a few other things. The curious can download it from here in zip format (My blog site doesn’t support the .pdb files used byPalm.). Unzip it and read with eReader.

Oh? How do you get eReader? Download it, of course. Mac, PC, Pocket PC, Palm OS versions. Not sure what you do if you have Linux or something else. Hope you find someone’s Linux eReader converter?

FYI! The free version of eReader starts out in demo mode – It’s eReader Pro for the first 15 days you have it installed – but after the demo period is over it STILL works as a basic eReader. This seems to confuse people. Of course, since they hide the free versions on the Palm One/eReader website it can be even more confusing. (The menu option for the free version tends to take you to the pro version order page…)

There isn’t a big difference between them (Pro has some kind of dictionary feature and allows some interface customization – there’s probably more but it isn’t too important.)

April is looking bad for getting any writing done…

Haven’t gotten my taxes done yet… no deductions this year… I’ll be lucky if I don’t owe…

I’m not going to have internet access next week…

Need to go check to see if my rent is going up (I wouldn’t be surprised) to see if I should find some place cheaper (I hate moving)

Looks like I’m not going to get any fics worked on until the last week in April… if at all… I just can’t get enthusiastic about any of the unfinished ones I have…

Must be a free night/weekend of Starz on Comcast Cable.

The Returner, a Japanese sci-fi flic. Sort of a Japanese “Terminator” mixed with “Independence Day” and “ET” – not androids but Aliens.

The dubbed dialogue is a bit weird… hopefully it made more sense in the original…

Several Japanese BMW’s – the “good guys” had an X5 – the bad guys had an E30 – a 320i (that was blown up)

The time travel science at the end is a bit iffy. If the main character stops the “war” with the aliens from happening, 82 years before she left… then she wouldn’t have a future to go back to… so she wouldn’t exist – as the same character, at least, to return from the future later to change things a second time. If that made sense…

I’ve started working on “The Apprentice” again. I want to have thru Chapter 7 done before taxes are due.

And “Summoned” and maybe something else. Approximately 10K-15K words to write in the next 9 days.

And do my taxes next weekend, of course

Gas on the corner? It went up 6 cents/gallon over-night. 10 cents total for the week. The cheap stuff is now $2.13/gal – the stuff my car insists on? $2.33/gal. We are now higher than any time last summer (It was $2.26/gal on the corner last summer – at it’s highest.)

Might be a good idea to fill up the tank today… wish I’d done it yesterday.

If it keeps going up… I won’t be able to afford to go to NY in August. I’m expecting it to average $40/tank on my trip to NY in a few weeks. (And it takes 10 tanks for the round trip in the red car…). That’s $80 more for gas than I paid last November.

I’m still suspicious about the timing of all of this… I’m sure if this was an election year gas would be MUCH cheaper.

And it isn’t like most of us have access to public transportation… that would be “un-American”

Okay… YES, I know gas can cost 30-50 cents more a gallon in the Northeast. But this is TN. There are good reasons for the price difference.