Postseason baseball started this week. On Tuesday, Yankees beat the Twins for the AL Wild Card slot. On Wednesday, the Diamondbacks beat the Rockies by a narrow margin to take the NL Wild Card. The 8 teams jumping into the playoffs were, in order of expected finish (from first to last in each division):...
Read more →I think it had probably been a week since I last saw my parents, and I was grateful we decided to go to dinner tonight. It was a normal old meal. The Quarters. Dad and his hot links sandwich. Mom and her Jack’s Special sandwich. Raspberry Tea to wash it down. And a necessary...
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Tonight I came home and did my usual exercise of minimalism. I came home and made a sandwich and turned on the TV to watch Arizona play Colorado for the wild card slot in the National League playoffs. I went outside around 6:30 and the sky was luminescent to the west but already dull...
Read more →Tonight was the fourth and final class of my second go in Gish’s “Writing Short Stories” course, and it was most enjoyable because each classmate got to take some time to both talk about why they wrote the story they ended up writing for class, and sharing portions from those stories. And there were...
Read more →After giving up on writing last night, I went to bed at a good time and slept decently well, and I woke up feeling oriented and optimistic about writing the story tonight. I went to work, and felt in decent shape, and had a little notebook with me to jot story thoughts down into...
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This evening I was glad it was game night- a good distraction from my writing frustrations of the weekend. It meant that I would join old game groupers Brian and Ron to play something which would let us escape real life for a few hours together and share a good meal, some good laughs,...
Read more →I spent all day studying and prepping to try and write a short story that is supposed to be finished and in final draft form on Tuesday- and I could not write anything tonight. I felt angry. I felt like giving this writing nonsense up. What’s the point. I can’t write when I need...
Read more →Instead of going out and partying down after work tonight like I usually do on a Friday night, I came home and collapsed in the recliner for a while. Halfway in and out of slumber, I watched the end of Breakfast at Tiffany’s on a local over-the-airwaves movie station- a film which I don’t...
Read more →Tonight I am nursing a mildly sore throat and a runny nose after a day of sneezing here and there. I was fine when I got up, but early on I sneezed once. And then once I got to work, early in the day, I sneezed three times in rapid succession. And not more...
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Tonight it rained, and while she didn’t look a day older, my sister turned a calendar year over, welcoming a new number to the sum symbol of her years, and she still acted the same, strong and confident and concerned and striving, happy and thoughtful and mostly content. The cats yawned when I came...
Read more →After the whirlwind Wisconsin trip this weekend, I enjoyed going to the third class of Gish’s Short Story writing workshop. The more time I spend around him in that class, the more I realize how little I know about so many aspects of writing, and particularly in its technical dimensions. Gish is great at...
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The beginning of the end of this weekend’s quick trip began at 4 AM Milwaukee time this morning, which I think calculates to 2 AM last week Albuquerque time. Scott and I stayed at a hotel by the airport, so I was in the airport by 4:35, but I still cut it close to...
Read more →My brother had warned me: one of his company’s owners was making two tickets to the Cub-Brewers game today available last Wednesday through a drawing. If he won them by chance, we had a decision to make. And on Wednesday, he called me- he had won the tickets. I looked into airfare prices on...
Read more →For the short story class I am in, part of our work obligation is the expectation that each student will write a short story during the month’s class time. We meet together for four weeks and read an acclaimed story each week and talk about it, and we talk about what goes into creating...
Read more →Two weekends ago, the Cubs played their closest challenger to the National League Central division crown, the Milwaukee Brewers, in a weekend series at home in Chicago. The weekend began and ended with no changes in the Cubs’ win column, and at the end of it, Milwaukee was three games closer to taking the...
Read more →When I was younger, I wanted to be a preacher. I think I loved people pretty well back then, for the most part. I didn’t expect a lot from others. I didn’t demand a lot from them. I had a decent policy of “care, don’t compare.” You can’t love well if you spend your...
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