Category Archives: Misadventures in Non-Fiction

The age-old question: why do you drive on the Parkway and park in the driveway?

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Or “I had no idea what to name this, but I’m waxing oddly nostalgic about things and couldn’t justify proper story-writing this weekend for some reason.” Or “Here’s a driving/travel post because I’m visiting Carnegie for Easter.”

Once upon a time, a long time ago in my grandmother’s dining room, the title of this post was posed to a much younger me. Mrs. Ott, a friend of my Grandma June, asked me this question, and I had no idea how to answer it. Sure, there are plenty of answers I have for it now, and I’ll get to those. However, I want to address the Parkway itself, first, because I get oddly sentimental over things that probably don’t merit such strong emotional responses. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said that, I’d be significantly more well-to-do than I am now. Continue reading →

A rather sad changing of the guard

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

Or “I have a dozen other things to be doing, but this is a mental health day and I’m making my way through it on my own damn terms.”

Yesterday was not a particularly good day for me, and I’ll spare the details because this is where I write about writing, and sometimes other artsy things that catch my eye. Maybe other odds and ends here and there. I will say that I am woefully behind where I’d like to be with Warpt Factor, and I largely blame the dreary gloom that’s settled in both in terms of weather and my moods. I apologize for that much because it’s been fun to write, and I certainly hope it’s been fun to read so far.

My Dell Studio laptop, named Satellite 5 (because Doctor Who, of course), blue-screened on me a couple times recently. Upon rebooting my nearly four-year-old laptop, it gave a different reason for the fatal errors, but none of them were particularly good or easily fixable. This is all particularly upsetting because Satellite 5 has been my trusty companion through much of my most difficult academic writing, as well as some of the hardest, best work I’ve done on my fiction. It’s what I used to make many–most, in fact–of the posts on Misadventures In Fiction, and it’s the computer from which this site was started. Needless to say, it’s with a heavy heart that I’ve decided it’s time to give Satellite 5 some much-needed rest. It’ll certainly see use, still, but not so much with its nearly useless battery, its replaced charger, and so on. Continue reading →

A Farewell to My First Car

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

I’m prone to oddly sentimental moments sometimes.  Like this post, for instance.

I’m not the kind of guy who named his car, or acted like it was a person.  It didn’t have a gender, but it had as much personality as an inanimate object can.

Now, to completely ignore all of that: my little blue 2010 Hyundai Sonata was a magnificent chariot, and it got me where I needed to be.  The news it was deemed a total loss was some very painful news indeed.  That part is a story I’d prefer not to get into, as I still have nightmares about it.  Nobody was hurt, thankfully, and that’s what matters.  The bruising to my ego caused by killing a car I’d had for less than a year, however, is its own sort of injury.

The Hyundai was my first car.  It was the car I drove between driving lessons, and the car I got my driver’s license (far too many years later than I should have) in.  It was the car that endured how many abrupt stops at stop signs and red lights.  It handled sharp turns and wide turns and many other manners of poorly handled maneuvering.  It was the soundboard for much swearing.  I mean a lot of really creative combinations of expletives, too, because people really like coming to, and remaining at, a full stop at green lights on William Penn Highway.

My first adventures in highway driving were made possible because of this little blue car that could.  Even the very first, pants-shittingly terrifying trip onto Parkway East (the Carnegie on-ramp is less of a driving experience and more of a gauntlet of anxiety and suffering).

I went on all manners of food runs in it, and it got me to a good number of good times.  Despite my still quite-novice driving (read as: relatively bad driving), it always kept on keeping on.

It’s also my understanding the accident should have, by all means, disabled my car.  The engine had been pushed upwards, and various other damages had been incurred I would like to not think about should have left the car stationary.  There’s a part of me, though completely irrational, holding onto the notion my car kept going just as long as I needed it to in this situation.  I couldn’t help feeling guilty driving away from dropping it off in a different Hyundai.

There was something truly painful about picking up the license plate and retrieving my belongings from the Sonata (as a side-note: I am sorry, mom and Tom, but I owe you two umbrellas as I forgot them in the backseat of the car; my bad).  Its neighbors had large pieces hanging off, or missing completely.  Out of all the cars there, it hardly seemed something worth deeming a total loss.  The reality happened to be very different from how things appeared at a glance.  The mechanic told me my Sonata was, in fact, the most badly damaged among all of those cars.  Competition included a very sad looking Mustang that was on its way out to pasture (or, far more likely, one on its way to be shot behind the barn) and a Toyota with a completely exposed engine.  Not exactly an honor I wanted.

It was, in the end, just a car.  It was one of the greatest gifts I’d ever been given, a means to further my life (by taking steps towards becoming a mature, responsible adult and moving out, for instance), and so I’d like to revise State Farm’s assessment of it being a total loss.  It brought good to my life.  I’d like to think it’ll end up being melted down into some badass throne I can use again, once my nefarious schemes for world domination come to fruition.  Meanwhile, this is a sad, oddly sentimental farewell to my very first car, the little blue 2010 Hyundai Sonata.  It was one hell of a car.

The Good, the Bad, and the Additional Misadventures

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

First and foremost, I’d like to take a moment to celebrate how the next four days are my own little mini-vacation.  Mini-cation?  Whatever.  The important take-home point is I don’t have to work the next four days.  Huzzah!  A recap of my recent misadventures, and some more writing-related stuff (which coincides with a lot of boring, non-writing stuff, I’m afraid).

First, we have the Good.  Finally, after much scheduling and rescheduling hijinks on my part, I’ve interviewed Hello, The Future about her album Giant Robot Album, which is kind of a big deal.  The album far more so than the interview.  I’ll be making a post surrounding that, which can be expected by some point on Monday.  That way I can do the post justice.  And still manage to cater to having a house full of guests.  The house full of guests is part of another good thing, however, since it’s a bunch of relatives here for the express purpose of celebrating my not-so-recently married cousin’s wedding (reception).

The Bad…Last week, I worked seventy-eight and a half hours.  Overall, I worked sixteen days straight.  These are things I was not quite prepared for, though I do have serious doubts there is an effective way to prepare for such things.  Some days I worked nine hours.  Some I worked over sixteen.  Mostly, I ended up completely burnt out, which isn’t really productive for someone who is both trying to be creative.  Or pack everything he owns for a move that is rapidly approaching.  I also had to have my dog Missy put to sleep this past Wednesday, which was, and still is, extremely painful.  There’ll be a post to follow this one in which I get a bit emotional and miss my puppy.

Thankfully, things seem to be calming down to the point where I can at least start trying to plan out uses for time other than working and sleeping (today, by the way, was spent finishing an overnight shift, sleeping, and then working again, so that doesn’t count).  I should clarify that I’m very happy to have a decent-paying job with all the benefits it comes with, as I’m aware I am indeed fortunate in that sense.

In any event, at least I didn’t accidentally fall off of the planet or something.  I’m sure I’ll manage that at some point later.

More misadventures in non-fiction, self-reviving, and so on

Posted on by under General Bloggity Stuff, Misadventures in Non-Fiction

I’m two weeks behind, technically, on my Short Story a Week project.  Again.  I say technically because I have the stories, and they’re pretty well fleshed out in terms of their ideas.  I just need to write them.

Worthy of noting at this point: I worked approximately 100 hours between last week and the week prior, and so I’m  still recovering a bit.

As for the misadventures in non-fiction?  This past Thursday, after my 2p.m. to 10p.m. shift, I stopped by my house and packed some things up, stopped by my place of work again to fuel up the car, and then I embarked on my very first major highway trip.  To put this into perspective, I have only driven on the highway twice before.  Once was on Black Friday, in 2012, as a cruel joke played on me by my driving instructor, who prefaced the outing by asking if I was feeling adventurous.  I was not, and did not appreciate where things where going at that point, but I clearly didn’t do too badly in the sense that I didn’t crash.  The second time I drove on the highway was a practice run, with my stepfather, and that went relatively well in the sense that most of the trip involved me driving well.  My initial merging onto the highway, however, was absolute shit and something I’m not particularly proud of.

The actual trip was quite enjoyable.  Traveling from western Pennsylvania to central-ish Pennyslvania involved a fair bit of mountains, and a lot of very nice landscapes.  If I weren’t more concerned with the destination, I may have taken time to stop, appreciate the scenery, and take pictures, but that’s still a possibility.

Driving home today to handle an eight hour shift at work, however, was far less exciting.

Stories will be arriving between Wednesday and Friday, only for the sake of making sure I do them justice, and I should be back on track for this upcoming Sunday.  So that’s a plus.

Some misadventures in non-fiction

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I’m going to just go ahead and say this week’s post will be delayed, because it evolved into something bigger than it should have.

Oh, and I worked twenty-three and a half hours between yesterday and today, and I’m also in the process of celebrating not dying or killing anybody by drinking half a bottle of wine.  Yes, you read that right.  Half a bottle.  No, this isn’t a regular thing.  In my defense, it’s Moscato, which I’m told is Italian for “liquid candy that produces great happiness” and not “wine you should be enjoying in moderation.”  So at least I have that going for me at this point in time.

Speaking of time, and not in the Doctor Who sense (well, maybe a little), tonight marks the fifteenth anniversary of the tornado that hit Mount Washington* (located in scenic Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I have lived all my life in some capacity or another).  To commemorate that, I will share the story of how my grandmother nearly died in the previously mentioned tornado, and how my stepfather and I made the remarkably bad decision to try driving to the site of a major storm to pick up my grandma and great aunt.

My Grandma Betty was very fond of watching storms.  When she lived at her house in Mount Washington, she would sit out on her porch to enjoy them.  Later in life, when she had moved in with my mom, stepdad, sister, and me, she continued this tradition via the two skylights in her bedroom, an entire section of the house we had added on for her.  Today, fifteen years ago, my grandmother sat out on her porch with a paper plate loaded with Lay’s Classic Potato Chips.  And she watched.  Eventually, or so say some of her neighbors who had looked out, the chips started swirling around in a circle on the plate.  The winds were getting worse, and the rain was coming down quite heavily, so my grandmother made her way to the front door.  She pulled the screen door open, only to have it slammed shut by the gale force winds.  She tried a second time, only to be met with the same results.  Finally, I’m told, she braced herself between the screen door and the larger, heavier storm door, got it opened, and made her way inside.

The porch roof dipped, collapsing completely on the one side moments later.  I still get chills thinking about that now.  She retrieved my great aunt Renee and went down to the basement.

Meanwhile, I was kneeling on one of the living room couches, watching the pitch-dark clouds drift lazily across the sky.  I still remember how the streetlights were on and everything seemed so surreal, and that’s when my stepfather asked me if I wanted to go see if Grandma Betty (my mother’s mother; I suppose I could have clarified this point sooner, but I have now so that works as well) and Aunt Renee were okay.  I agreed, more than eager to have a visit with my grandmother.  And, of course, I thought I’d get to see a real tornado, up close and personal.  I was not a very bright child.

As my stepfather drove, the sky grew darker the closer we got to Mount Washington.  That didn’t deter us, though.  We were adventurers, braving the elements to rescue two little old ladies in distress.  What could possibly go wrong?  It took arriving at a police barricade for the right thoughts to click in the right way in our heads.  I remember looking to my stepdad and saying, “Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

My favorite bit to tell, however, is this part.  We had a lovely above-ground swimming pool at my grandmother’s house.  I had a lot of great times in that pool, and also one time I jumped onto a raft that flipped over and nearly drowned my wild and crazy self.  The tornado picked up our entire cinder block garage, moved it about ten or so feet back, and deposited it onto the swimming pool.  Save for the garage door, though; to this day, nobody knows where the hell that ended up.

It’s weird to think back on all of this, especially since it still feels like a painful length of time too long since my grandmother (and great aunt) passed away.  On those nights I’m home and it’s storming, I make it a point to lay down on the floor in the back room.  No lights on.  Just the occasional flashes of lightning to illuminate the room and the sounds of the rain against the skylights mixed with the rumbles of thunder.

*As of when I started writing it, mind you.