One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Seventeen

After three hours of driving, one of which spent entirely on the Parkway, I am happy to report I arrived in Carnegie quite safely. I have a glass of Wigle rye whiskey (distilled in Pittsburgh) at the ready, and I’m prepared for a weekend of relaxation with my family. What more could a guy ask for, right?

Before I forget, and on one hell of a tangent: I really enjoy Coke’s Share a Coke with campaign. I feel like Pepsi is totally missing an ad opportunity, though. How many of you would buy a Pepsi with the tagline “Buy your own Pepsi, (name)”? It’s just the right amount of snarky humor, and it’s a great jab at Coke. Or maybe I’m just being ridiculous.

Now that I’m a bit more relaxed after the chaos of last night, it’s time to get to talking about the exciting stuff. There’s something really intoxicating about talking to people on the topics they’re most passionate about. The way a person’s eyes light up, their speech becomes more animated, and so on. I’ve been told, for instance, I’m a totally different person when I’m talking about writing, and some gaming, because it’s what really gets me going.

So here’s to passion.
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One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Eight

I’m at that point in the summer where I can’t live in the present. Just isn’t happening. My vacation is over a month away, and my focus is fixed on it without possibility of being shifted elsewhere. It’s a real pain in the ass when it comes to being creative, but I’m still finding plenty of energy there. And for work. And for Tweeting. I sure as hell don’t get enough sleep, but I figure that’s an acceptable sacrifice.

My car passed its inspection, and I am tremendously excited and anxious about my impending trip to Chicago. And so this will be one of the (probably many) non-writing posts. Continue reading

This Week in Misadventures

It’s been a mostly-exciting, somewhat headache-inducing week. Let’s just leap into the actual post. I’m entirely too tired for this early, which is embarrassing, but I want to finish this post before I fall asleep on my Surface 2.

Writing

Do tweets count here? They still don’t, do they? Damn. Ignoring that, there’s “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice”, “Another Starstruck Misfit”, the cannibal story I still haven’t officially named…something else. My brain’s gone a bit soft. I need to get back into setting goals for myself in terms of weekly writing, which sounds mildly suicidal since I’m working on my One Hundred Days of Blogging posts as well. “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice” doesn’t count towards the goal of twenty stories posted, by the way, because I’m apparently challenging myself to write and rewarding myself by making it as punishing as possible. On the plus side, I’ve received so many new commenting readers. Mostly spammers writing comments in Russian, but I’m not too picky when it comes to comments.

I’ve got no particular plans for writing in this coming week, but I might just be lying there. We’ll see.

Reading

So many books, so little time. I’m rereading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), and I picked up The Long Mars. You may be saying “Phil, you buy a lot of books and you should probably read them instead of buying even more books,” to which I say I will never stop buying books. I should, however, get working on reading them. I think a great starting point would be to start over on The Long Earth, move on to The Long War, and then get to The Long Mars. I’m impatiently waiting for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new graphic novel, Seconds, which sounds like it’ll be a terrific fun read.

Important Miscellany

Car inspection happens this week, which is important for my planned Chicago adventure at the end of August. I’m anxious that something will go horribly wrong, but when am I not? Don’t answer that, anyone. It’ll be the longest road-trip I’ve ever taken, and I’m going solo so it’ll be something else. We’ll see, once all is said and done, what something else turns out to be (good or bad). I’m considering a travel journal to post on here, as there’s still enough time for me to actually plan it out. Or put off planning it and just haphazardly meandering through it like I do with many other things.

The plans for this week include writing, reading, and a little recovering from last week. I’m more excited, I’ll admit, for the week after this one, as I work three days (thanks to a couple leftover paid holidays). Making a trip home to see my family, and I’ll have plenty of time to work on getting some additional writing done. None of which will be spoiled here, of course.

Here’s to a pleasant, hopefully peaceful week for everyone, and remember to keep the Kaiju population under control by getting your Kaiju spayed or neutered.

PS: I’m sorry, but I refuse to see this post linger just beneath five hundred words. Nope. Had to fix that.

This Week in Misadventures

Or “The post that almost didn’t happen because I have to be up for work at 5:30 tomorrow morning” with a dash of “Oh god, why am I still awake? Because I’d lose sleep if I tried skipping this post”.

It’s well past the 4th of July, which means everyone should be fully recovered from their red, white, and blue hangovers. Pet eagles should have been returned to the wild by now, free to soar high above the freedom and liberty of America until next year, when they return to their rightful owners to drink beer and cook burgers made from the crushed hopes of terrorists. I have no idea where all of that came from, but I’m not even kind of sorry.

This past week had ups and downs galore, but when everything is said and done it was awesome in terms of progress. That’s why I’m glad to make this edition of This Week in Misadventures happen. Continue reading

Revisiting the frozen north, and thesis seminar presentations

Or “I named the MS Word file ‘edinboro_nostalgia’ because I couldn’t think of a better title, as evidenced by the title of this post.”

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I think this bit of writing speaks well enough for itself. Also, it’s been an atrocious day and I’m feeling lazy (so sue me). Unrelated aside: The Bloggess followed me on Twitter today, which makes today the starstruck equivalent of Christmas.

Moving along…

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

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