Sorry about that last post.  My nephew came in to talk to me and I don't want to worry anyone.  The problems I have are serious, but not serious enough to worry a little kid. 

Anyway, I've been keeping busy with research and writing.  The research, of course, isn't wholly relevant to the writing itself, but I find ideas in the weirdest of places.  I'm still technically doing some catchup from the internet thing from last month as well.  It's a process that will technically never be finished, but the pile should shrink over time.  I hope.

Anyway, I've got to go.

- Jim

I took a big break from everything for a couple days.  Suddenly, my health became a big issue.  I don't know the whole story, but that's sometimes the way things are.  Honestly, I have no particular fear of death, but I have no wish to begin dying.  Too often, the process is protracted and painful.

Will write more soon,

- Jim

Yeah, I know I haven't written in a couple days.  I seem to have picked up one of the bugs that have floating around lately.  However, as far as being sick goes, this is pretty good.  A headache that comes and goes and body aches.  My stomach isn't right either, but could be worse.  So, I guess I'm lucky.

I finished watching my Transformers:  Complete Series DVD collection.  Yeah, I know.  It's been three years.  But it was bugging me, so I've been working on it lately.  The fact that my nephew has been staying at the house helped too.

Aside from that, there isn't much to talk about. 

- Jim

So I'm back, more or less.  As I said before, I was never really as away as I could have been, though I was never really online as much as I usually am or needed to be.  There's a period of catching up to do and I'm doing it as best I can.

It'll take time.  I'm interested in all sorts of things and there never really is any end to it.  "Catching up" is technically impossible, but being current probably is a bit more realistic.

- Jim

Truth be told, I was never really away.  Due to circumstances mostly out of my control, my internet presence became unreliable.  In my opinion, it became easier to just assume I couldn't post than to post during the random occasions when I could.  The internet was both more and less reliable than I'd planned, but neither was enough to change my plans for what I could do. 

But that's over.  I'm back and everything is working normally, or as normally as such things work in my world. 

While I was gone, work continued.  I'd like to think that I did more work in the last two months than I did for the previous twelve, but it's hard to tell.  Like writing, you can write a hundred pages and then save only two.  I played less games than I usually did and actually did things I'd been planning to do for years.  That's pretty good for me.

Anyway, I look forward to posting more.

- Jim

I'm a little late in posting this, but I've had it done for several days now.  My internet connection just isn't good enough to post something like this.

A couple notes first.  The list has been slightly edited for public use.  There are, for example, specific bills that need to get paid on the list that have been truncated to "Bills".  As far as the books go, I'm at the point where the next step is to finish them off and send them to the publisher.  I would like to see them published, of course, but at the point I send them off, they're out of my hands.

The rest are more in the line of my usual yearly To-Do lists.  I've tried to concentrate on the important stuff instead of just adding stuff at the bottom.  Still, it's likely that I won't finish everything on the list.  Writing, for example, has taken far longer than I have ever thought it would.  Still, I want to make an honest effort here.


2013 To-Do List

1) Bills
2) Bills
3) Send book to publisher
4) Send book to publisher
5)  R. A Game of Thrones
6)  R. A Clash of Kings
7)  R. A Storm of Swords
8)  R. A Feast of Crows
9)  R. A Dance of Dragons
10)  R. Tolkien and the Great War.
11)  R. Popul Vuh
12)  R. Flowers for Algernon
13)  Lose weight
14)  Beat StarCraft
15)  Beat Twisted Metal:  Black
16)  Beat Final Fantasy 7
17)  W. ThunderCats (80's Cartoon Series)
18)  W. Star Trek:  DS9 series
19)  W. Star Trek:  Voyager series
20)  R. Legacy of Ashes
21)  R. Eagle and the Sun
22)  R. The Stand (Revised and Uncut)
23)  Catch up on current periodicals
24)  R. Don't eat this book
25)  Buy Discovery Magazine Archive DVD
26)  R. Gamemaster Law (Rolemaster)
27)  R. Arcane Companion
28)  W. Fraggle Rock DVD collection   (Finished 1/5/2013)
29)  W. Heat DVD set
30)  W. Back to the Future DVD set 
31)  W. The Stand DVD
32)  W. Transformers DVD Set


One final note, as my Sister's kids are still staying at the house, it becomes easier to watch things like Fraggle Rock and Transformers.  I got the Fraggle Rock DVDs done already because they were on Christmas break.  When they come home from school, I tend to work on the Transformers stuff.

- Jim

I'm a news kind of guy.  During my early post-college years, I had subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and Discover magazine.  As the internet destroys such things, my collection keeps dwindling.  I just cancelled my Newsweek subscription today.

Funny thing, they seemed to have anticipated this when they announced the switch to digital.  Their phone lines were swamped, their email addresses were closed, and their website changed so that you couldn't cancel online.  Convenient, huh?

Well, hopefully I thwarted them.  It may only have been a few dollars at this point in my subscription, but at least they're not getting them.

Now I just have to finish reading the ones sitting around here.

- Jim

First of all, Merry Christmas Eve!  I don't know if I'll be able to post again before then, so just in case I miss it, Merry Christmas as well. 

Way back... several months ago, I decided I was too far behind to get everything done by the time I wanted it.  That's not really all that surprising.  I don't schedule for patience, and as I've said many times before, I'm interested in everything.  On my work table sits a pile of index cards with sixty or so books I want to check out of the library.  I have twenty or so books sitting around my desk that I want to read.  Then there's the book list I have online of those I want to buy.  Add in the books I've collected and downloaded in digital form and I could stay busy even if I lived for a thousand years.  Well, maybe not.  It might only be like six hundred. 

Well, I've done what I could with the annoying distractions I suffer.  I'm also working harder than ever during the last days of the year.  It's always been like that.  Nothing new there.  I bite off more than I can chew, and then I spend the rest of time in a futile rush to catch up.

That being said, it's time to start working on the Master Yearly To-Do List, formerly known as my New Year's Resolutions.  I've got a preliminary rough draft and am working on adding things to it. It'll look familiar; there's a lot of stuff from last year.  And the year before.  And the year before.  And so on. 

A couple things I want to mention though.  Unlike previous years where the beginning is meant to catch up on all the stuff I didn't do last year, I'm going to work on new stuff.  Well, it's not new.  I've always meant to write, but that task will no longer be subordinate to anything else.  If it's on the list and it's not writing, then it's secondary, meant to either fill the cracks when I can't write or meant to be after I finish writing.  I will send a book to a publisher this year.  I'm close enough, I think, to make that promise.

There will actually be a couple days when I won't write, in the beginning of the year.  I'm going to wait until my Sister's kids all go back to school after their Christmas break.  I'm motivated, but I'm not crazy.   It's hard enough to just read or watch movies with them around.  As a side note, if I ever win the lottery or come into insane amounts of money, the first think I'm going to do is build a cork study. 

- Jim

Lots has happened, though little in the way of blog-material.  My Sister and her family moved back in with us after having money problems.  It makes finding time to work more challenging, but it's nice to have the kids around during the Christmas season.

I'm finishing up what I can for the end of the year and continuing to work on other things.  I've found new reason to write and new motivation to finish.  I'd like to believe that's enough, but I'll be honest in admitting that I'm mostly talk in this regard.

In any case, I'm still alive, still mostly... more or less, away from the internet.

- Jim

It's been nearly a week since I wrote last.  Nothing major has happened really.  My computer chair finally died.  Not too surprising, since I spend so much time in it while I'm doing the things I do that I try to call "work" with a straight face.  It'll be a week before the new one gets here.  In the meantime, I have a chair that is hard on my knee, which is why I don't otherwise use it. 

That's not too bad though.  As I mentioned in my last post, this is the time of year I rush to finish all the stuff I can.  Well, this year I'm rushing to try and finish stuff that has been lingering on various to-do lists for multiple years.  Mostly reading and DVDs really.  There's no way to finish everything I'd like to finish, but I'm trying. 

Anyway, it's still going and it's going pretty steadily overall. 

- Jim

I'm sure no one was losing sleep over this, but I figured I'd let people know.  If you've been keeping track at all of the Seti@home numbers on the right of this blog, you'd have seen that my progress has essentially stopped and my recent credit has plummeted.  Being off the internet will do that.  I'm sorta on the internet now, in a very limited way, so the numbers should improve eventually.  Unfortunately, there was some kind of technical glitch at the Seti@home headquarters, and they've temporarily shut down. 

Yeah, even I wasn't real worried about it, but I haven't posted in a few days and I figured I needed more posts that weren't simply saying that I was still alive.

Just for the record, I am.  Still alive, I mean.

Anyway, I've been keeping busy.  The end of the year usually means me pulling out my New Year's Resolution List/To-Do List and trying desperately to catch up and finish anything and everything I can.  And so I have.  In that way, the internet thing has been a bit of a boon.

Anyway, hope to have better news soon.

 - Jim

Just a short note, I'm not dead.  I'm mostly offline for the immediate forseeable future.  That may change eventually, but probably not for a while.  In the meantime, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, regardless of whether I'm online to wish it again.

Take care,
Jim

At the risk of sounding bitter, it's not like I don't try.  I'm not all that far away from making things right, but there you go.  Five hundred dollars would fix the immediate.  So close, yet so not close.

Ah well.  Nothing I can do about it now.

- Jim

So, I was walking in to the use the computer and I hit my toe on a large plastic file box.  I have 10 toes, and the only one I seem to hit is the injured one.  Well, it's damaged again, though not as badly as it originally was, I think.  Anyway, it's been twenty-two hours or something, so it is a real injury though.  Dammit.

Circumstances have become more imminent, so I will be taking a break from the internet for a while.  No worries, unless you read my name in the paper, I suppose.  I imagine I'll kill myself eventually, even if I do it one toe injury at a time.  But really, I don't feel any signs of approaching mortality, so I think I'm good.

Take care,

- Jim

I had a headache yesterday and while I wanted to let people know what was going on, I wonder if I did it right.  Rereading my last post, it seems to be suggesting something I didn't mean to suggest.

My Aunt is doing better.  She's not 100% yet.  At her age, recovery will take a while.  Still, she will recover.  It's just a process that needs to take place. 

As far as me leaving the internet, well, it's not a decision I've made, but rather circumstances beyond my control.  That's not entirely accurate, but it's accurate enough.  Consequences of a choice I made really.  To be honest, it wasn't much of a choice, but there's a price to be paid nonetheless. 

Now that I've had time to think about it, I probably won't ever abandon this blog.  Well, not completely anyway.  I've limited its goals and restrained its growth, but it still does serve a purpose.  It'll be around as long as Google allows blogs I guess.  I don't imagine I'll ever spend the time to move it though.  So, don't worry.  It's not anything dramatic like that.

Anyway, until next time,

- Jim

Not much has been happening in my life.  Working on stuff when I can and that's about it.  I didn't want anyone to think I died or anything.  Oh, the enforced absence from the internet is still imminent, but I have no ideas about when or how long.  It will be what it will be, I guess.

My Aunt is doing better though.  The road to recovery is still a process, but it seems this race is pretty much run.

- Jim      

Nothing major, but I finished the Harry Potter series.  I've given the last book away to my Sister's family.  Technically, I own the fifth one still, because I owned two copies of that book.

As I said, it was nothing major.  I'm still working on what I called the "Phase IV" goals that will finish up the year.  Basically, I picked a handful of stuff from the other goal lists and combined them with catch-up stuff.  It's slower going than I thought, but as always I hope I'll be able to improve my pace.

- Jim

The last I heard, they were releasing my Aunt from the hospital.  I don't know any more details than that really.  She'll be tired though and she's got people looking in on her, so not hearing anything is probably good news.

- Jim

The family dog, Ruby passed away this morning.  Dying is often a horrible process and I'm not going to describe it here, but her passing was easier than it could have been but harder than we wished it to be.  That is partially my fault.  I convinced them not to put her to sleep nearly a month ago.

As may be expected, the family is pretty sad.  This dog, along with another who had passed away a couple years ago, got my Sister through some tough times with cancer and the deaths of my Brother and my Mother.

- Jim

My Aunt went back in the hospital.  It's not that her condition is much worse, but that it's not getting any better.  As I said before, she probably shouldn't have left so soon before, but that's what she wanted.

The dog is almost certainly dying now.  The hope that existed before is fading.  Sigh.

And... I will likely be taking an enforced break from the internet shortly.  Life consequences and all that. 

- Jim