by jetblack | Jul 4, 2010 | WordPress Posts
One of the new years’ resolutions I’m going to try and stick to for one year from the Fourth of July is to blog at least once a day (either publicly or privately). So this means that sometimes you’ll see a post from me and sometimes you won’t. This particular resolution will be judged solely by me. But, I guess I should maybe talk a little bit more about what’s been going on lately:
- I recently celebrated my 34th birthday about two weeks ago on the nineteenth. I was very heartened to have a large number of friends show up for the party and we had a lot of fun, into the wee hours of the night and actually on to the next day.
- Shocking News: I managed to stay employed with the same company for more than a year. In fact, on July 7th, I’ll be celebrating Year Two with this company! I haven’t done that since 2002, when I was with PayPal.
- One of my best friends moved up here from Fresno and is now living right next door in his own place.
- Since my last post, we’ve moved into a house, which is infinitely better than an apartment.
- I staffed Fanime in May, which was one of the things I swore I would never do again, but Rob was rather convincing and since Japan-A-Radio was there, it made sense to bring me on to staff.
- I’m playing and managing my company’s softball team. I’m having a lot of fun with it, even though we’re in second-to-last place in our division.
- I’ve lost some weight, but I don’t know how much.
As with every birthday, I use June 19th to set some resolutions for the new year. I took a break from resolutions for my 33rd year, which was a gift to myself. But now that I’m 34, I’ve decided to make some and see how long before I break them. Here they are, in no particular order:
- I am resolved to write a blog post every day for a year. The blog posts can be public or private.
- I am resolved to lose at least 25 pounds this year.
- I am resolved to restart and maintain my sit-up and push-up program for the next six months.
- I am resolved to do cardio three times a week (DDR, swimming, cycling).
- I am resolved to finish writing two novels and ten short stories this year.
- I am resolved to winning National Novel Writing Month for 2010.
- I am resolved to not bite off more than I can chew. My wife knows what that means.
I’m not asking for people to help me with these. I know I have enough self-discipline to carry this out, and I’ll see it through to the end. With my recent softball experience, I’m noticing that my weight has become a hindrance to my performance on the field, and since we’re all going to continue playing over the summer, I want to be able to do more. Besides, pretty soon I’ll be 40 and that’ll be it for me, even for recreational softball leagues… unless I get back down to a manageable size. My wife will help me where I need it, and that’s really all I can ask for.
On a less serious note, I’d like to go to more Giants games. Especially now that Shon’s here full time. We really need to take him up to church so he can worship with me at the Altar of Bonds. Maybe I’ll convert him to my baseball “cult.”
In site news: I upgraded this thing to WP 3.0 — it’s actually pretty awesome.
How’s your summer going?
by jetblack | Nov 13, 2007 | WordPress Posts
Last week (and the week before that) I mentioned that I was trying to raise money for The Office of Letters and Light. The Office is the wonderful group that runs National Novel Writing Month, which I have participated (and won) the last three years. In the time I have written under NaNoWriMo, The Office has built libraries in impoverished countries, run the Young Writers’ Program, and distributed free laptops and Alphasmarts to poor writers with no other means to write. They are a registered non-profit organization within the state of California, and they run entirely on donations from people kind enough to do so.
I’m trying to earn myself a position at the Write-In this Saturday night, and I need $200 to even qualify. I’m at $50 right now. I know it’s before Christmas and I know it’s crunch time for a lot of you, but if there’s anyway you can visit my blog and look for the NaNo Fundraising graphic and click on it… even $5s and $10s would be most helpful. If you can’t, then please at least pass the word on your LiveJournal and blogs? It’s for a great cause and all donations are 100% tax deductible.
Thanks.
by jetblack | Nov 11, 2007 | WordPress Posts
As I was saying in yesterday’s post, being sick really sucks. I had like two days of being sick that I had to weather through all the aching and pain of coughing your lungs out as the phlegm tries to escape. But, anyway… enough grossness.
Some good news came out of the long weekend. I finished and won NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row. But now I’m working on another story right now that has to do with the afterlife. I’m not sure if I’ll finish it, because I have no idea where in the hell I’m going with the plot, but I have better idea of who the characters are and how they react to one another. I can finally see them in my head, interacting with one another enough to start describing what’s happening. It’s moving pretty quick; I wrote 2.5k in a day. That’s pretty good considering I’m way the hell outside my genre, so it sort of feels like I’m back in to the storm-tossed sea of ideas without any ability to grab onto anything tightly enough to buoy myself.
In other news, Tap‘s at the Arizona Fall League and I’m eager to read her reports on how it’s going down there. I really kind of wanted to go to the AFL games, but you can’t really get time off in the first month of working at a new job. Plus, I don’t think I could afford to be down there for more than maybe a day or two at the most before having to come back up and go back to work. Actually, in thinking on it more, I would really much rather do spring training than the AFL, because I’ve been promising myself a spring training weekend for years, now.
I hope Monday’s busy enough to keep me engaged on working issues. I hate it when it gets so slow I blog like six times in one day…
by jetblack | Nov 6, 2007 | WordPress Posts
Thanks to Josh Benner, who donated $50 toward my fundraising drive for The Office of Letters and Light. If you haven’t donated yet, please consider sending in a $5 or $10 toward my $500 dollar goal. All donations are tax-deductible as The Office of Letters and Light is a registered non-profit organization with the state of California. I need at least $200 to even qualify for the write-a-thon.
Please spread the word, too!
by jetblack | Nov 3, 2007 | LJ Archive
http://www.firstgiving.com/michaelgarcia
I’m doing the write-a-thon on November 17th at the Women’s Building in San Francisco. They’re doing this to raise money for the Office of Letters and Light, whose programs include building libraries in impoverished countries and of course, the Young Writers’ Program (which I wish they had when I was a kid!).
My donation target is $500, so if you can spare $25, that would be awesome.
Oh, and if you could pass the link on to friends, I would greatly appreciate it.
