60 Comments on “Sunday Sunday Sunday”

1. Chores. And (depending on your point of view) prodding at the spongy wall that is my writer’s block and/or avoiding the work of writing.

2. Reading Elizabeth Moon, at the moment. Then some shopping, replacing the drive belt on my dryer, washing dishes, and praying for rain. Super exciting, I know. Aren’t you jealous?

3. Also avoiding the work of writing. Instead of doing an article outline I ground the rivets off of my busted toolbox latches and replaced them. Is that specific enough?
   But I did go visit Mom and bring her a nice flowering plant.

4. Oh, and I should be invoicing a client for a writing job. I think I’ll play some records instead.

5. Trolling the Internet while manning the reference desk. Slooooowwww day at the library today.

6. relaxing watched/watching Doctor Who, The Nerdist, Orphan Black, Merlin, Big Bang Theory and Star Trek Generations – all the things I recorded during the week and did not get a chance to watch.

7. Surfing the net. Watching “Pyramids of Mars” and loving the classic Who-ness of it all.

8. I had 2 AP tests last week (Calc and English) so I missed a decent amount of class and have a ton of make up work to do. sigh. At least some of the work is interesting! I’m doing some research on the conflict between the Wobblies and religion particularly the Salvation Army.

9. Spent the weekend at a writers retreat. Pushed out some 3000 new words with about 1000 words of deletion and rewrite. Lots of clean up of a crappy first draft and putting other words in their correct order.

10. Reading “Whatever”.

    My Sunday sucks so far…

11. Just long Sunday dinners with friends in Phoenix! Kinda slept through lunch. Long evening at work last night.

12. Omit nothing? I pooed a few times. But the short version is, I woke up in a gymnasium, went to my favourite music venue on land (Viertel, Trogen, Switzerland) and watched them take down the infrastructure for the music festival they’d just had (for which the stage itself was about twice the size of the entire usual venue) ate Alpler macaroni and cervelas, then took the train to Bern to see The Burning Hell (one of the bands at Viertel; you might have heard of them from that time they played in ten countries in 24 hours) in concert again.

    What do you think; too much buzz marketing? How about if I add that between midnight and going to the gym to sleep, I curled up in a cosy corner of Viertel (the top floor of Viertel is actually just five cosy corners and a staircase) and finished reading The Ghost Brigades?

13. I am reviewing the terms under which my aunt’s estate sold her house and land to the Webb Schools, because my dad wants to do something similar after his death with a piece of land he owns near another educational institution. Reading wills, real estate contracts, and easements is not my area of expertise, so it’s taking a ridiculous amount if time and effort to sort it all out, so that I can explain it o him.

14. I’m glad you’re not posting post-humously. Would be very awkward.

15. I am forcing my family to watch The Last Unicorn because REASONS.

16. Älplermagronen? Now you made me hungry, and it’s way past midnight here.

17. Editing/formatting/drafting local government comments for the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest Management Plan Draft Environmental Impact Statement. On a Sunday. On Mother’s Day. When I haven’t yet called my mother.

    But this morning I finished editing the second or seventh or one-hundredth draft of my novel. Not that it’s good to go, yet.

    And speaking of poo, my ancient dog has been leaving poo balls on the floor every night for a week instead of going out the open dog door like he has no problem doing during the day. So even before coffee this morning I had to clean up dog poo. Hmmm. I fed horses this morning before coffee, too. Will feed them again in a couple hours, after a first glass of wine.

18. I’m in the States instead of at home in the UK, and I’m obsessively watching everything I can find on the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. Watched his farewell speech in tears.
    “You know how good you are, you know the jersey you’re wearing, you know what it means to everyone here and don’t ever let yourself down. The expectation is always there.”

19. World domination. Hey, the world operates 24/7… not just 9 to 5. Besides, it’s a lot easier to interview potential henchcreatures outside of normal business hours (if nothing else, it’s easier to part near Wayne Tower).

20. Working on my earthquake generator.

21. Packing my things as I’m moving out of my parents’ place here in Saudi in a few days. I have a few books in my carry-on to read on the flight. One of them is Redshirts. I dunno what to expect as I’ve only ever been a reader of your blog.

22. Reading The Human Division, doing laundry, playing Warzone2100 and kinda watching TV. Petting kitties. 7 kittens a little over 6 weeks old.

23. Would you like to know about the vision, principles, and key competencies of the NZ curriculum, John? I can tell you all about it!

24. Got up at about 6:30 and spent a few hours with our toddler, making sure my wife had a chance to sleep in. When she got up, I made us all pancakes plus a couple of white chocolate mochas for me and my wife. No coffee for our son yet. Then off to a last minute Mothers Day brunch with in-laws. Took a walk around Lake the lake with my son and a friend while our wives sorted baby clothes. Went and got a hanging flower basket for my Mom, and I just have time for an hour on the elliptical machine before dinner at my folks’. Where does the time go?

25. Well, yesterday I went to see the Art Car Parade, and today I went to see the symphony perform a Chopin piano concerto and Beethoven’s third symphony.

26. Be careful what you ask for you just might get it!!
    Thanks for asking and here are my activities this weekend: Friday evening went out to dinner with my husband for my birthday celebration, but did not do much afterwards because my husband had a minor MS attack. On Saturday morning, I participated in the WalkMS event in Frankenmuth, MI. On Saturday Afternoon, I had lunch with my friends at Bavarian Inn to have a family Frankenmuth Chicken Dinner to celebrate my birthday. On Saturday Evening, I posted a blog article, http://wp.me/p3g0ia-2dR , about my WalkMS adventure. On Sunday Morning, my husband and I took his Mom out to breakfast a a local resturant to celebrate Mother’s Day. On Sunday Afternoon, my mother-in-law and I visited my family. We spent a pleasant afternoon having tea and cake with my mother and my younger sister. On Sunday evening, I watched two episodes of Doctor Who from the first season of the 2005 re-boot series.

    So now you know!!

27. Took my mom out to breakfast . . . finished one short book review and wrote another (writing exercise for 2013: 300 publication-quality words on every book I read) . . . booked plane tickets to take my teenage daughter (the epee fencer) to Summer Nationals in July . . . gave the basement a long-overdue cleaning and lived to tell the tale . . . watched an episode of season 3 of The Walking Dead . . . talked to my partner and agreed to start One Last Read-Through of the manuscript for an academic essay collection we’re co-editing, Undead in the West II: They Just Keep Coming, which is due to the publisher on Wednesday. And here I sit, between chapters, taking a brain break.

28. Working, it is Monday here. :)

29. Spending Mother’s Day grey-skinned and staring at two screens at once. Have not even brushed my teeth. Greasy, wearing my old maternity stretch pants and a bamboo t-shirt for the second day in a row. Writing about euthanizing my pet. Shirking all parenting responsibilities for today. Lush!

30. Disturbingly gleeful dream where I was the villainous operator of a wrecking yard taking over a communications satellite so I could set up a propaganda network. Hygiene. Trained. Meditated. Hygiene. Made dinner. Played piano while partner set table. Ate. Played. Now writing. Going to bed in a few hours.

31. Lest anyone think I’m a horrible son, I sent flowers and chocolates and called mom yesterday.

32. Quietly observed my first Mother’s Day without my mother. She passed one week ago today.

33. Church, BBQ, awesome friends (with ridiculous stories that had us all laughing to the point of tears) and Zombie Dice. Then relaxing and finishing The Human Division. My only complaint? It ended. I could read about Wilson and friends forever.

    How could a Sunday be better?

34. I built an elevated planting box and the table to hold it entirely out of repurposed shipping pallets. I am now ready for the zombie apocalypse.

35. And on Sunday evening, I wrote and posted a blog article, http://wp.me/p3g0ia-2ey , on my impressions of the main characters from the first season of the 2005 Doctor Who series. See if you can say this five times fast, I dare you!

36. So sorry to hear that. My thoughts are with you on your loss!

37. I washed the filter from the hood over my cooktop. Best estimate is 30 years worth of cooking grease. Now it’s 30 years worth of grease that has grabbed ahold of all of the soap and will not let it go.

38. I finished Moby-Dick.

    I made a dish from the A Song of Ice and Fire cookbook.

    I went on Whatever.

39. Bruce Diamond: My condolences on your loss.

    We spent the first half of the day with my inlaws, just hanging out. Second half of the day was spent at the Parental Units’ place. The Maternal Unit had picked up a free turkey as some kind of promotional thing after Turkey Day last year, and my parents decided they wanted to clear out the freezer space for other stuff, so they thawed it out and my mother did a turkey dinner with all the trimmings–corn, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, broccoli/cheese/rice casserole. One of the few positive things I can say about the Maternal Unit is that she does cook a mean bird.

40. Well it’s Monday morning already here, so back to the grind.
    Weekend was fun though. Watched the new Star Trek on Saturday (I liked the first one, I loved this one).
    Installed Leviathan Warships, which is insane & awesome & ridiculous.
    Started reading Jack Campbell’s Guardian.
    The days are just packed

41. Made some new jewelry;took pictures of a couple of pieces. Added info to the About page on my Etsy shop. Spent too much time on Facebook and Twitter. Napped a lot. Worked on packing lists for my next two weekends away at the Steampunk World’s Fair and Rites of Spring (Pagan festival). Now watching the season ender for Once Upon a Time.

42. I rode my bicycle on the newly opened Meadowlark Trail, south of Lindsborg, KS. It’s very pretty, wooded, and quite a nice ride. Photos on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glowrocks/sets/72157633482799670/detail/

43. I’ve been reading Zoe’s Tale, and I came across a passage, and I’m going to nerd out a bit. They’d just broken up a fight between two clots of boys, but “There are colonists from ten separate worlds. That’s a hundred different idiotic teenage boy fight situations.” — Zoe

    Of course Zoe is an incredibly bright, but not omniscient teenage girl — but if she’d only studied in her combinatorics class she’d know that with 10 different planets there are 45 different combinations of boy fight scenarios, not one hundred — more generally where there are X things — they can pair up X*(X-1)/2 ways. In this case 10*9/2 = 45 ways.

    And I haven’t done due diligence and searched the archives to find the right place to make this comment, For all I know, it’s been beaten to death over and over again and again.

    But it *is* what I was doing tonight, so I ask for forgiveness.

44. And now that I’ve read the next paragraph, I must chime in that if we exclude the pacifists then the equation becomes 9*8/2 = 36, not 9*9=81.

45. I was at a pool party with a Fox News guy and a bunch of dominatrixes.

    Funny old life, isn’t it though?

46. I was at that pool party too! I was the one in the purple zipper mask making martinis. What a small world.

47. Frank Fujita, perhaps you’re overthinking it, or maybe you’re not that serious…

    But, unfortunately, I can be a bit of a pedant, (and I was asked about the details of what I’m doing) so I feel like I have to tell you that in your analysis, you’ve made some dubious simplifying assumptions and a category error:

    10 different planets can fight in 45 different ways if self-conflict doesn’t happen, and who attacked who doesn’t matter. I’m not sure these assumptions really hold in this scenario (because we all know just how intelligent planets can be when it comes to not attacking themselves, don’t we!)

    And, where idiotic teenage boys are concerned, there are a multitude of groups of boys per planet (how absolutely terrifying!), each participating in all the possible kinds of combinations (our category: kinds of conflicts between groups of teenage boys by planet); not just 10 single planets, all smart enough not to attack themselves…

    Multiple groups of idiotic teenage boys from 10 different planets, does mean 100 different combinations of idiotic attacking group’s planet and idiotic defending group’s planet. And don’t be too quick to discount the pacifists – we’re talking idiotic teenage boys here, after all!

    So, Frank, I hope that puts your mind at rest about Zoë’s intelligence, or John’s intelligence. Both seem quite formidable. (Negotiated an interplanetary peace settlement lately, John?)

    And, John, to answer your original question, I’m doing maths with this guy called Frank on your blog. And being a bit snarky about it. Because otherwise it gets rather dry.

    And really hoping that neither of us will get malleted for trolling…

48. Oh dear, I just realised I forgot the option of an all-in idiotic teenage boy mob brawl!
    (And everything else involving more than 2 planets.)

    So, if anything, Zoë was underestimating the possibilities…

49. After playing a bit of Diablo with the kid and spouse, the spouse and I joined in the guild raid on Lord Inspector (inquisitor? I forget) Seru. Two complete wipes — one before we even engaged LIS — but we brought him down and he dropped a very nice face-item, which I did not get. I’ll have my revenge someday!

    Then we gave IV fluids to the cat and went to bed.

    (Condolences to Bruce Diamond. :( )

50. Plotted to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. No, you’ve got that one wrapped up, I think. Had coffee, actually enjoyed my backyard before it got too cold to sit out, and watched some of Call The Midwife. (British series, enjoying it immensely…laughed out loud in a few places, which is unusual for me). Tried to kill moths–having another invasion, and can’t figure out what they are hibernating in. ARGH.

51. Even though it’s Monday morning, the professors for my Statistics Inference class went out my grade late Sunday night: B+. WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

52. Mother’s Day. Took a walk on the Greenway with my husband, saw a cute little snake but missed getting a picture of it, went out to lunch. The two kids who live out of town both called (and are doing well) and the one who lives in town took us out to dinner.

53. Dude, I’ve had a stomach bug all weekend. Are you sure you me to tell all?

54. I was grading exams. 15 more to go and then I get to record them and calculate grades. And check my email and mailbox at school for late papers, grade them and then hopefully I am done until Summer I starts.

55. Spent most of Sunday avoiding a book I “needed” to finish and write a review for. So, various puttering around on the internet and mindless TV watching, before giving in to the inevitable. Not sure I could remember any of the details though.
    Oh yeah, also bought groceries.

56. Not much. Read the Sunday New York Times, mowed the lawn, went for a walk in Rock Creek Park with Marcia, paid a few bills, had dinner. And so to bed.

57. Another work day here. Sunday was as well. I did make sure to have the house vacuumed, the lawn cut, and the laundry washed and dried (not folded) for my wife, Tracy, yesterday. She went rock climbing with Ben, our son, to celebrate Mothers Day. She had some chocolates and a card waiting for her when she got back, and I had dinner made as well.

    Saturday night was the real Mothers Day celebration, since I work Sundays. We all went to roller derby, one of Tracy’s favorite things. It’s always fun to watch the matches, feel the atmosphere and partake of the variety of people. We had one woman kneel before her girlfriend, a Rat City Roller Girl, and propose to her. In the middle of the rink during halftime. She said, “Yes.” Oh, and both my teams won (Derby Liberation Front and Grave Danger). It was a good night for all.

58. I had Mother’s Day breakfast with the parental units then went back to sleep. Woke up around noon, bought a bunch of the songs from Wednesday’s earworm hell post (thanks everyone!). Lunch with the parental units, library, visited brother in hospital, grocery store, cooked dinner, tv then reading until bed. Not a bad day at all.

59. Hung around, did some shopping. In the late afternoon, I was mostly on Twitter because I was angry about Newtown again and wrote a tweet for each of the kids murdered there last year. Leslie made a lovely dinner for Mother’s Day which included molten chocolate cake. Saw lots of sex (at least one scene that was very unpleasant) and learned about a pregnancy on Game of Thrones.

60. For the mathematically inclined, maybe Zoe’s reference to a hundred doesn’t necessarily mean the integer value 100. Maybe it’s a literary device that should be interpreted as “many.” Sort of like the ancient Greek expression “nine things and a thing” doesn’t mean exactly 10 things.