Sunday, March 16
Catching up
It's been quiet here on the Edge of Nowhere. Not much writing work getting done, but I've been busy with normal life. And I'm not worrying about the lack of work. I'm in a good place on my current project.
Had a swell lunch with my friend Krell yesterday, after his family stopped by our family's house for some bonding time on Friday night. He's up here from Austin, showing his oldest daughter where she was born, taking the family up snowboarding. It was good to catch up and a have nice lunch conversation about our writing projects. Talking about my book, and hearing him talk about his work and his novel, motivated me to get back on a regular schedule. As Krell said (paraphrasing here), "I'm happier when I work on it." And I agree. It's so true. So back to work.
Also, I finally got my hands on a copy of Jeff's new 100 Year Picnic album, "Tales of a Modern Splash." It's been a long time since I really listened to a whole album, what with iTunes and XM radio, it's really been about the songs. But I've been listening to Jeff's work very closely, and I'm very impressed. It is also very motivating for me. He and I made some deal about two years ago about completing something each month -- for him it was to be a song, for me a short story or chapter -- and here I am two years later pretty much still in the same place with one big exception: I'm listening to a complete album written, performed and recorded by Jeff and his buddy Edwin (and each song is called a chapter -- nice touch.) So, the old competitive juicies are kicking in a bit, as in 'I better catch up.' (You can go hear a couple of tracks on their MySpace page, too [check out "Come On" or "I Don't Know What To Tell You," and my favorite song on the album, "We Were Not The Same."])
Finally, I'm just back from a few days down in Arizona for work, the clear highlight of which was trips to a couple more spring training parks. Last year (or was it two years ago?) I was able to catch games at the Giants park in Scottsdale and the Angels park in Tempe. This year, I got down to Tucson to see our National League Champion Rockies host Seattle, and then over to Mesa (see photo above) to see the Cubs host the Padres (stayed for seven innings before I needed to run to Sky Harbor to catch a flight back home).
Had a swell lunch with my friend Krell yesterday, after his family stopped by our family's house for some bonding time on Friday night. He's up here from Austin, showing his oldest daughter where she was born, taking the family up snowboarding. It was good to catch up and a have nice lunch conversation about our writing projects. Talking about my book, and hearing him talk about his work and his novel, motivated me to get back on a regular schedule. As Krell said (paraphrasing here), "I'm happier when I work on it." And I agree. It's so true. So back to work.
Also, I finally got my hands on a copy of Jeff's new 100 Year Picnic album, "Tales of a Modern Splash." It's been a long time since I really listened to a whole album, what with iTunes and XM radio, it's really been about the songs. But I've been listening to Jeff's work very closely, and I'm very impressed. It is also very motivating for me. He and I made some deal about two years ago about completing something each month -- for him it was to be a song, for me a short story or chapter -- and here I am two years later pretty much still in the same place with one big exception: I'm listening to a complete album written, performed and recorded by Jeff and his buddy Edwin (and each song is called a chapter -- nice touch.) So, the old competitive juicies are kicking in a bit, as in 'I better catch up.' (You can go hear a couple of tracks on their MySpace page, too [check out "Come On" or "I Don't Know What To Tell You," and my favorite song on the album, "We Were Not The Same."])
Finally, I'm just back from a few days down in Arizona for work, the clear highlight of which was trips to a couple more spring training parks. Last year (or was it two years ago?) I was able to catch games at the Giants park in Scottsdale and the Angels park in Tempe. This year, I got down to Tucson to see our National League Champion Rockies host Seattle, and then over to Mesa (see photo above) to see the Cubs host the Padres (stayed for seven innings before I needed to run to Sky Harbor to catch a flight back home).
This coming weekend, we're back on the road for a few days to attend a film festival down in New Mexico, where my son has a couple of films entered in this high school competition.
