3 years ago . . .

Tomorrow it will be three years since I said goodbye to my big, silly dog, Atari.


I still dream about you, Atari. I still think about you all the time. If I believed in such things I'd say your spirit still haunts the backyard at my dad's house, running and sniffing around and barking at the cows and staring in hypnotized fascination at the horses. Watching Sheba--my brother's chocolate lab who has also left us--chase after a tennis ball and wondering what the hell was the fun in that?


Your ashes still reside in their box atop my dresser, along with your collar. One day I'm hoping they'll be mingled with mine and we'll both be buried in some peaceful, scenic spot where we can mix with the earth. Maybe the flora and fauna in that area will be able to find a use for what's left of us. I sincerely hope so.


The pain and grief I feel over losing you is still too much for me to bear. I can only allow myself to feel it a little at the time or it will overwhelm me. Just typing these words is causing my hands to start trembling again and my eyes to fill with tears.


I love you. I always will.





Pleasant Sunday afternoon randomocity

For once it's not freezing, snowing, icing, lightning, flooding, earthquaking, or whatever other issues we've been having, weather-wise, for a while. It's a pleasant fifty degrees with a slight breeze and sunny skies, which is as nice as it has been for a while now.




So, I just got in from a little walk out in this pleasant weather, and really enjoyed it. Also, I've been thinking about other projects to get started on. I'm thinking something prose-based, maybe a novel, while I wait for the notes from my collaborator on the screenplay thing.




I also did some playing around with colored pencils this morning and created these two pieces. I'm pleased with both of them--not bad for a dilettante if I do say so myself.

Anyway, that's been my Sunday so far. I'm going to chill (pardon the pun), relax, maybe make some more art, and maybe write a little. We'll see.



Milestones, ice days, and randomocity

I finally got this screenplay thing knocked into decent enough shape to send off to my collaborator. I sent it to her an hour or so ago. I haven't heard any explosions yet so either she's happy with what she's seen so far or she hasn't read it yet.


This is a big step in this process, for me, showing the work to others. It always makes me nervous. Sure, I like it, but it's difficult to remain objective about your own work. Especially so, for me.


You could say I've gotten lucky a couple of times on this project, too--the weather helped me out, giving me a total of four extra days to work on it, with two snow days a couple weeks ago and two ice storm days this week. I wasn't expecting to be at this point until this weekend.


As I mentioned, it's an ice storm day, for me, as was yesterday. If you didn't know already, a huge storm system moved through this area and dumped snow, sleet, and freezing rain all over everything. The office where I work was closed yesterday and again today because the roads were a total mess--fortunately, the power didn't go off here. I took advantage of this opportunity to get some serious work done on the rewrite.


I just took a look around the property, after being cooped up in my apartment all day--the ice is now melting. It's supposed to get below freezing again tonight so any ice that had only partially melted will refreeze, but hopefully there won't be all that much. My poor old truck was covered with a sheath of ice and snow--hopefully, that will be gone tomorrow morning, too.


What's the plan for the rest of the day? Hmmm . . . I can't work on the screenplay until I hear back from my collaborator, so that has to sit. Maybe I'll make some art, if I can come up with something that interests me. I may start putting together some notes for another project I can work on in the mean time.


Or maybe I'll just not do much of anything the rest of the day. I have gotten a lot of stuff done the last couple of days, and tomorrow at work is going to be insane I think.


That plan sort of resonates with me. I think I'll go with that one!

Beware! Here be metaphors . . .

I managed to finish the first draft of the screenplay I've been writing.


Actually, I finished it a few days ago. I've given myself a mini-vacation from it for a few days before beginning the rewrite. It's something I have to do at this point--I've been submerged in this world for a while now so I need to stick my head above water and catch my breath for a time before diving back in.


The first draft, for me, is the most difficult part. Once I get the words down it's much easier to work with them, to make it into something. If I can get through the first draft I'm pretty much golden.


To use another metaphor--it's like I'm creating a sculpture. At this point it's a hunk of marble that, when I'm done, will look like a lion. I've  meticulously selected that hunk of marble. Now, I'm going to start carving away all the stuff that doesn't look like a lion, and shaping what remains into as attractive and as interesting a lion as possible.


And I think what wound up on the page is pretty good. Hopefully, my collaborator will agree, and hopefully this is the movie she wanted to make. Or, at least a start on it.


So, that's my plan for the weekend--making a couple of passes through this thing, knocking it into shape. Hopefully in a week or so I'll have it in good enough shape to send off to my producer/co-writer, and see if she either a:) loves it, or b:) hops on a plane, flies down here, and kills me with her bare hands. I'm hoping for a:), needless to say.


Then the real work will begin, when she gives me her notes on it and I have to rewrite it again.


If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. This is the fun part, for me. The first draft is the part that I have the most trouble with, and that is now behind me. The fun part is making that first draft into a movie that you will plop down your money to see in the theater.


To use yet another metaphor--the first draft is the pregnancy. Now the baby is home.


Remember--great stories aren't written, they're rewritten.

Random randomocity--things you may not know about yours truly

Here are some things about me that are probably blindingly apparent to the one or two of you who bother to read this thing:

• I don't read much fiction these days. I'll read a ton of non-fiction--mostly history or biography--but don't usually read any fiction longer than the occasional novella or short story. I just lost interest in it a long time ago.
• I have no "guilty" pleasures. I love flowers. I love paintings of flowers. I like floral comforters. If I went to a concert put on by one of my favorite bands, I'd probably be the oldest person there. I'd probably also be one of the few males in attendance. If I love something, I love it, and I no longer worry about what other people may think.
• I'm really careful about whose opinions matter. I value constructive criticism from anybody--anything that makes me produce better art, or work, or live my life a little happier, is welcome, but there are only a few people in the world who can hurt me with their words if they so desire. Not that any of them would, deliberately, because they aren't like that, which is one reason they mean so much to me in the first place.
• I really have no interest in what most people do with their genitalia. Really. If you think this is a weird bullet point, look over your Facebook feed, at all the arguments against marriage equivalency. Apparently, we have a significant portion of our population who obsesses over this for some reason. No, I don't understand it, but I felt like I needed to say it.
• I'm not a big "movie" person. Really. There are an awful lot of movies out there that everyone else in the world has seen--like Pretty Woman, or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or any of the Back to the Future movies, or just about every Tom Cruise movie--that I haven't seen. The reason is simple--I have zero interest in them. I know this may shock some people, since I write screenplays, but it's true. If I like a movie I'll obsess over it, want to know all the details, listen to the commentary tracks on the DVDs, study the script, all that. But for the most part I'm not one of those people who feels like he's going to die if he doesn't catch the latest Hollywood blockbuster or film that Everybody is Seeing.
• I'm not the most sociable person in the world.. I hope you were sitting down when you read that one. I'll take a few days off from work and not have any face-to-face interaction with another human being unless I go to the store or something until I go back to work. And I'm perfectly happy--I won't even realize it, usually, until after the fact.
• But I'm not shy. I get accused of this sometimes, but it's not true. I guess I'm an introvert. I have no problems getting up and speaking to a bunch of people--I've given presentations to a couple hundred people before, at work, and I will sing karaoke in a crowded bar and be stone, cold sober--but interacting with all those people afterwards is a big drain to me. But I don't consider myself broken--I'm happy this way.
• I love The Big Bang Theory. The TV show, that is, though I'm partial to the cosmological theory, as well.  I discovered it when TBS started showing the reruns. When I had to have my dog, Atari, put to sleep, I bought all of the available seasons on DVD and watched them over and over again. It was a big help with the chasm of grief that opened inside of me. Without that show, and the long-distance support of my best friend (who lives in California) I'm not sure I would have made it.
• I hate to travel. I know, people don't understand this one, but the idea of packing a suitcase, spending a few hundred bucks on a plane ticket, and going somewhere just so I can say I've been there, strikes me as a totally unnecessary and overly expensive pain-in-the-ass. I don't mind going somewhere for a particular reason--to visit a friend, or for work, for example--but I'm not going to Paris, say, just to say I've been there. The impulse people feel to do that is just so weird to me.

Okay, that's enough about me. Your turn.