09 January 2010
We took down our Christmas tree today. It’s funny how the tree begins to lose it’s appeal once the new year commences. Last year we took the tree down right after the new year (on the 2nd or 3rd, I think), but this year, I purposely wanted to keep it up through last weekend, as my sister and her husband were coming over for one last holiday get-together. So, this time, the tree lasted until January 9th. Also unlike last year, we sawed all the branches off and dropped them off at the compost heap all in one day. Last year, I simply carried the tree down to the garage, where it sat until, like May. Then I cut off the branches and put them in bags, which sat in the garage until August, I think.
You might wonder: why not just dispose of the whole tree. Good question. The answer is this: we use the trunk of the tree to make other things. Aren’t we green?

10 January 2010
Today we went to Jennifer’s parent’s house. Jennifer’s brother and sister were there, too, along with their families. This is great, because it gives Owen a chance to play with both of his cousins, but it also can be a bit overstimulating for him. In the three hours I was there, I saw Owen get worse – he seems unable to communicate effectively and he gets cranky and whiny. The TV was on in the background, too, and I’m not sure why people like to have that white noise cluttering up the conversation; it just makes things more noisy a chaotic.
Anyway, I hope Owen’s having a better time now. He stayed their to spend the night, and I’m sure things quieted down after most of the people left.
Jennifer and I, meanwhile, drove to the theater and viewed the film Precious. In it, a distractingly obese teenage girl tries to better her life while being pushed down by her mother and being pregnant (for the second time) by her father. It was a decent film, nothing special. I’m not sure when this shift in style took place, but at some point in the last three years, film-makers became enamored with showing really gross stuff. I mean, I expect this sort of thing in horror films, but not in more mainstream films. In particular: vomiting. It used to be, if a character in a movie was supposed to vomit, you’d see them run off into a bathroom stall, or you’d just see them raising their head from the toilet bowl. Now, it seems, the director forgot to yell “cut”. I’m not sure what it adds to a film to see a character’s vomit. It certainly doesn’t add to the story, since I already know they are about to vomit. It certainly doesn’t make for a beautiful scene, such as, say, fawning over some lush landscapes (which is equally unnecessary, but at least pretty). The main character, named “Precious”, realizes she sick to her stomach, jumps up, heads over to a garbage can, and we are privileged to about 20 seconds of retching stomach contents emitting from her mouth into the garbage can. Mercifully, I can’t recall exactly which other movies have featured this lovely new cliche’ recently, but rest assured there have been some. And I must say: that’s enough.

07 January 2010
I hosted Atheists Talk again. It was my 11th time hosting, though my first time since August. The taping consists of two half hour shows; usually they’re related in some way, but tonight they were not. For the first show, I interviewed Mike Davis regarding his new book The Atheists Bible Companion to the New Testament. I received a copy of his book nearly two months ago, with the idea that I was supposed to read it and write a review of it. While reading it one night, I flipped to the “about the author” section and discovered he lived right here in the Twin Cities. So I looked him up online and emailed him to see if he’d like to be interviewed on the show.
I finally met him tonight, and I think he had as good of a time as I did, despite the fact that there were technical difficulties with the microphones, and we ended up sitting on stage chatting for about a half hour while we waited. There was so much interesting information to cover, I was scrambling to wrap it up in a half hour. I like when that happens.

08 January 2010
Today I noticed a bunch of women on Facebook were updating their status by simply stating a color. After reading enough comments, I figured out that this was the color of the bra they were wearing. After further research, I learned that this was to raise breast cancer awareness. I think showing support for causes is all well and good, but in this particular case, I fail to see how a statement so vague as “red” or “white” could serve any purpose other than baffling one’s Facebook friends. I think a more productive method would be to post a fact about cancer or cancer prevention, or perhaps supply a link to a site where people can learn more or donate.
Today also happens to be my Dad and Stepmom’s 10 year anniversary. I hope they had a good day.

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.

So here are my favorite television shows from the 2000s. Since TV shows, unlike albums, books, and movies, don’t have a single “release date,” it’s not always easy to say which decade a show belongs to. So I’m instituting this arbitrary definition: the show must have premiered in the 2000s for it to be counted from this decade. That means that two of my favorites, The Simpsons and Star Trek: Voyager, don’t get to appear here even though they both aired new episodes in this decade. Sorry, guys.

10. Rome
Okay, I just started watching this via Netflix, but I like it. I’m even tempted to place it higher (or is that lower?) on the list, but I haven’t really seen enough episodes to give it a fair assessment.

9. Survivor
Just a guilty pleasure, I guess. Completely forgettable (I’d be hard-pressed to name more than two or three winners, much less all the other contestants), but fun.

8. The Rerun Show
Wish this would’ve lasted longer than the seven episodes that it did. Still, I laughed at these comedies of comedies far more than I’ve laughed at pretty much any other comedy.

7. The Office
Started off good, but now…not so good. It seems to have lost it’s direction, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s jumped the shark. Still, there were a few good seasons at the start.

6. Wonderfalls
A unique, weird, clever show. Cancelled too soon…

5. The Amazing Race
Hey, look! Another guilty pleasure. God, I guess I love these extended game shows.

4. Pushing Daisies
Dark humor mixed with great cinematography. Too many loose ends were (not quite) tied up at the end when it was prematurely cancelled, but I don’t think it’d be fair to hold that against them.

3. Battlestar Galactica
This is how every good drama should be: tight script, with an actual plan so that all the stories can be fully carried out and resolved perfectly. I think this show had the best series finale of any show I’ve ever watched.

2. Arrested Development
…And this is how every comedy should be. Another show cancelled too soon…

1. Firefly
…Speaking of cancelled too soon: I think this show is pretty much the poster child. I actually think this show was better than Battlestar ; unlike that show, this one had no clunker episodes and it had a few really awesome characters.

Here’s looking forward to another decade of prematurely-cancelled shows.