04 January 2010
Today, Jennifer and I watched episodes #11 and 12 of the new NBC show Community. We just started getting into it this week, actually. Last fall, I saw some commercials for it, and they looked funny. And I like Chevy Chase. Or, more correctly, I like the Chevy Chase that was. So, when the TV season began and the season premier of the Office concluded, I left the TV on as Community started. But I only watched 10 minutes. Turns out, they make a lot of easy jokes at the expense of community colleges. I’m not sure why this is warranted, but it seemed a bit excessive to me. There were jokes that only middle-agers or high school drop-outs go to community college, and an ongoing joke is that the dean is an incompetent idiot. None of the teachers seem to have any training for their positions, either.
But then I saw some other clips from the show, and I figured it was worth checking out a second time. The thing is, that’s what sitcoms do: they make fun of the easy stuff. It used to be family-based, but now it’s community-based (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Community).

05 January 2010
Speaking of colleges: why do they have to stick their hands into your wallet at every turn? “Do you want to park here?” “Oh, that will be $90…” My bill for last semester even has a $12 fee that they charged me for waiving their health insurance option. I think I’ll start doing that: I’ll call it the friend option. If you want to be my friend, cool. If not, cough up $12, Mr. Enemy!
Anyway, I went to pay my bill on-line, and they tried charging me a $107 convenience fee. Sorry, nothing’s that convenient. I called the college to ask if I could stop by and pay the bill in person in an effort to alleviate the ‘convenience’. “Sure,” they said, “you can stop by, “but we still charge the convenience fee.”

06 January 2010
I spent my lunch break yesterday and today sending queries to literary agents.
When I first completed my book, I began looking into prospective publishers. I obtained this really thick book from a friend that lists every publishing house in North America. The book was, like, 4 inches thick. You’d think with that many options, you’d be bound to find someone.
A few people have said to me: “Did you know that Harry Potter woman got rejected 157 times before someone finally agreed to publish her book?” This has all the ear-marks of an urban legend, but I’m sure that some author, somewhere, did write to an insane number of publishers, only to finally get an acceptance. But my problem has been different: it’s not that I’ve been rejected oodles of times, it’s that I can’t find anyone to write to in the first place.
Take that 4-inch book, for example. Big chunks of the book are only for short stories, poetry, and essays. This left about 300 pages of book publishers, which I carefully paged through. There were probably 2,000 publishers listed. Of those, about 100 said they weren’t accepting any new submissions. Another 1,000 only work with fiction. Another 300 only work through agents – they don’t want to hear from the writers directly. Most of the remaining publishers had very narrow markets: only cook books, only Jewish-interest, only computer-related. This left me about 100 publishers, of whom several had closed up shop, and a few more (who said they were interested in works of a religious nature) turned out, upon closer inspection, to only want faith-affirming manuscripts. This left me with a list of 16 publishers.
At any rate, I expanded my search into the field of agents today. I’ll see how that goes.

So, I’ve had this idea for a while now and, since it’s a new year, I’m gonna go for it this time. I’m gonna write about something from every day this year.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, so let me break it down a little. I’m certainly not gonna write about EVERYTHING (e.g.: Got out of bed, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth…), but I’m gonna try to find something unique, newsworthy or otherwise notable from all 365 days this year. So, for example, I’m not gonna mention that I went to work, or went grocery shopping or mundane things like that, unless that event somehow ties into something interesting. Also, I’m not gonna write everyday. I’d like to, but that would just bring out more unhealthy OCD, and it would lead to frustrating situations wherein I’m speeding home from a party to get online by 11:55 at night so that I can quickly write something. No, instead I’ll just write whenever I feel like it (hopefully at intervals of no more than 4 or 5 days) and, in doing so, cover the most recent days. Kind of like a glorified Facebook mixed with a toned down blog.

Here goes…

01 January 2009
We went to ProEx to get some pictures taken. My mom had these pictures of me (back when I was four) with a certain stuffed animal. I still own that same stuffed animal and so, I thought, I’d be fun to duplicate the pictures with my son. We styled his hair similarly, he wore a similar outfit, had a similar pose while sitting on a similar stool in front of a similar background. In fact, I started to feel like the outfit wasn’t similar enough, and I panicked for most of the rest of the day (and into the next day) worrying that we should retake the pictures. But I think I’ve made my peace with it: there’s no way the pictures can be that exact and, in not obsessing about it, we’ll be more free to take similar – albeit not exact – photos from any future sons (or grandsons!).
Despite his recent behavior when being photographed, Owen was a good sport – a great sport, really. I think it has something to do with the fact that I bribed him with Jimmy John’s if he behaved. After leaving the photographers’, we ventured over to Jimmy John’s…and proceeded to pay the price for the rest of the day. I’m not sure what is in that bread (but it’s in Subway’s, too), but something about it turns my digestive tract into a burning cauldron of, well, I’ll just leave it at that.

02 January 2009
I take it as a point of pride that I can sometimes go an entire day without using a vehicle. Today was such a day. Think of what it means: it means that I’ve got enough funds in the bank and food in the fridge so that I don’t have to go to work or run any errands. It’s not that I don’t get anything done on days like this. Quite the contrary, we gave our home a good cleaning, I finished up a book I was reading, and made some good progress on a couple of filmlets I’ve had been working on.
We watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie this evening. Back in September of 2006, Jennifer and I decided to start getting all the episodes from Netflix and watching them in order. We made the same goal with Quantum Leap and Northern Exposure, too. We finished those two shows last year, but Little House went on a wee bit longer, so we’ve still got over four seasons to go. Jennifer and I both used to watch Little House when we were kids, so it’s fun to relive them now that we’re adults. I bought us the complete set of Little House books as kind of a family Christmas gift, so I hope to read them all this year, too.

03 January 2009
We had company today (thus the thorough cleaning noted above). My sister and her husband Mike came over for a belated Xmas celebration. We’ve done this for three years now, although during the last two holiday seasons we’ve aligned our get-togethers closer to December 25th. They brought some gifts for Owen who promptly played with the packaging the gifts came in instead of the toys themselves. Then we all went out for dinner. Having a fun day like this makes for a downer of an evening – I’ve only been at work for 6 of the past 16 days. Tomorrow it’s back to the old routine: a full five-day week with all my co-workers back from their vacations. I’m not sure why, but I never take any time off during the holidays. (Maybe it’s because we have nowhere to go requiring additional days of travel…?) Most of my co-workers were gone for part or all of the last two weeks. I think, last Monday, my department was operating at 1/3 staff. The down side is, you feel like you’re the only one at work when everyone else is off partying. The up side is, I carried over 6 vacation days and now, with the roll-over to 2010, I have over five weeks of vacation time. So, if I wanted, I could take an entire month off of work. Yay for me.