Wood Stove

For those of you who don't know, my new house comes complete with a woodstove. Now, it's not the kind that has the cool glass window to look at the fire--it's much more utilitarian than that. Big. Square. Metal. We've fired it up, and it does a darn good job at heating our house. Of course, the first few days it smoked a lot, since it had just been refinished before we bought the house. But that's all out of its system now, and it's working like a charm. We just had another 2 cord of wood delivered yesterday, so we're in business for the winter. (Just have to stack that two cord . . .)  I actually like the woodstove a lot, though I think I'd like of like a version with a window, just so I could see the fire and add some ambiance to the kitchen. Of course, maybe that would make it less safe . . . Any of you out there woodstove experts?

In other news, I'm sick. Just a cold (I think), but it has me feeling droopy and drowsy and other dr- words that I can't think of right now. Too bad, since it's Halloween and all. But I'll still suck it up and head out with Tomas this evening to go to a Halloween party and do some trick or treating. He's very excited--he's going to be a cat. I'm going to be a librarian. Or a father. Or Eeyore. Depending on how I feel.

Writing's going well. Ichabod isn't nearly as bad as I feared it might be. The first Act was a beast to revise, but I flew through Act 2, and I'm well into Act 3 now. I know the climax has issues, but I think I might get this book done sometime in November. Then I'll be needing some new readers to give me a final verdict before I put the finishing touches on and send it off to the agent. I'll likely see if there are any victims--I mean, volunteers--here at my library, but are any of you interested? Just give me a holler.

Busy busy busy

Fairly on the busy side at work today. Lots of stuff to keep me busy, from web page design to treasure map making--who knew my job would require such a wide range of skills? I'm enjoying it, though. Of course, today's it's gorgeous outside, but tomorrow it's supposed to rain--the one day when I have a chance to go exploring some more here in Maine. Such is life.

And in Mouse Wars:

Things looked good on the home front for the past few days. D-Con and glue traps had wrecked havoc on the rodent horde, decimating their numbers and demoralizing them into submission. But just before I could dress up in a flight suit and stroll across the porch with a big "Mission Accomplished" sign hanging behind me, the mice launched a counter-offensive last night, holding what can only be described as a "Mouse Orgy" in the ceiling above my bedroom. There were scrabblings and scratchings going left and right at 3 in the morning. Of course, this only invoked the wrath of Denisa, a wrath no mammal wants to incur. Even as we speak, she's preparing for a new attack.

Many mouse families will be crying tonight, and I shall feed on their tears, for they shall be sweet.

Wikipedia Wonder

When I'm not killing mice or working on websites, I'm checking out other things on the internet. Today, I found out that you can search Wikipedia for any day of the year and find out what happened on that day over history. In other words, you can search for "September 21" (my birthday--presents gladly accepted, even if they're late) and find out who was born then, who died, what battles happened, etc. Granted, since it's all user-generated, some of it (or even a lot of it) might be wrong, it's still interesting to browse and look into further if anything catches your eye. Highlights of my birthdate:

Bill Murray, Stephen King, H.G. Wells, Chuck Jones, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ethan Coen all share my birthday, which made me start wondering if we aren't predisposed to liking the work of people who share our birthday. Then I saw that Nicole Richie has the same birthday, too. So much for that hypothesis.

Sir Walter Scott died on my birthday.

In honor of my birth, countries around the world celebrate. It's the International Day of Peace, International Day Against Alzheimer's, International Banana Festival, and Independence Day in Malta, Belize and Armenia. So perhaps millions of people celebrate my birth each year. I'll never feel lonely at a birthday party again, because I'll know that somewhere, some people in Belize are blowing stuff up (or doing whatever they do to celebrate).

Events of note to happen on my birthday:
The angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith
The Hobbit was published
The "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" article was published in the New York Sun

So. What cool things happened on YOUR birthday?

Reasons to Rejoice

1. Eggnog is back in the grocery stores.

2. We have killed 9 mice so far. We are winning the battles, and we will win the war. Like Russia beating back Napoleon, sooner or later, the weather will be on our side. Winter shall severely hamper the mice supply lines, whereas human reinforcements can continue unabated, thanks to the help of local hardware stores and Walmart.

3. It's in the seventies outside today, with a pure blue sky, and the air is full of autumn.

Mouse Wars

Three of the vermin have perished so far in this fall's epic battle. My thirst is not yet slated, though. I can still hear some in the walls, and last night they launched a massive offensive, sending squadrons throughout the kitchen and office, waking up my wife with their merciless scratchings. Of course, I fell back on superior technology to combat the onslaught. My earplugs completely negated their efforts. Still, I'm calling in a D-Con strike today, and there shall be mouse tears tomorrow.

Work

For all you faithful readers out there who have been wondering what in the world I've been up to at my job these days, you need wonder no more. I just finished up designing a website for a new "branch" of the university library here in Maine. This entailed crafting a site that would work well with the template the university wants all its websites to have. I did the coding, graphics and layout--pretty much everything on the site, except for most of the copy, which was given to me. It's been a fun project, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I've certainly raised Photoshop skills over the past week or so. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Click here to be taken to library goodness.

In other news, I've re-started my rewrite of Ichabod, since it wasn't quite working for me. I'm happy to say that the restart is going nicely, and I'm much more pleased with the project. Life has been busy, and I don't get to work on my writing as much as I'd like, but I still get to work on it every day, and I'm making progress, slowly but surely.

Raving

I think fantasy writers have done the world a great disservice. Books and movies alike, it’s all the same. Mice are presented as cute and cuddly little things that sing and dance and have a blast doing mousy things. Think about it. In film we have things like Mickey Mouse, An American Tail, Cinderella, The Great Mouse Detective, The Rats of N.I.M.H., Ratatouille, Flushed Away. Literature has Stuart Little, the Redwall series, David Farland’s Of Mice and Magic. All full of mice singing and dancing and carousing. Anything in film or literature that might put the little critters in danger is shown as being inherently evil. Evil nasty cats, mean rats, exterminators, wicked scientists. Well you know what?

Mice suck.

Mice don’t sing or dance. They get into your basement and eat your potatoes. They carry disease and pestilence. They make scratchy noises in your walls and ceilings.

Whoever is writing about mice in pop culture clearly has never lived in a house full of them before. (Of course, there is Terry Pratchett’s wonderful The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, which does do a fairly accurate job of portraying how irritating rats can be. But it’s rats there—not mice.)

For those of you out there who have read Cavern of Babel, you’re probably thinking I’m hypocritical right now. I mean, even my LiveJournal avatar is based on Ozymandias, the prophet mouse in my book. But see, Ozzy isn’t a cute and cuddly mouse. No singing OR dancing. He’d never hesitate to irritate people however he could. And he’d also never get caught. It’s a fact of life that sometimes things that irritate you can also amuse you. Ozzy is proof of this.

Now, I’m not a mean person by nature. I’m fine with mice, as long as they stay where they belong. Field mice are called field mice, not house mice. But there are stupid field mice in my house, scrabbling around in the walls and ceiling and eating my potatoes.

These mice must die.

I am hereby declaring my war against mice. (This isn’t my first war on mice. There was an earlier round back when I was a missionary. The score then? Bryce 4, Mice 0. Take that as a lesson, mice!) I will trap them, poison them, shoot them—I don’t care how they die, just as long as they stop coming back into my house. If they all leave of their own volition, so much the better. But I’ll even buy a cat if I need to—and I have an extreme dislike of cats. Still, cats seem to be the “a-bomb” in the war on mice, and I don’t think that’s an option that should be removed from the table prematurely. Sometimes you have to make a deal with Stalin so you can take out Hitler. I’ve killed one mouse so far, and my wife is headed to the store today for reinforcements before we begin the main offensive. Before this war is over, there will be blood. Or exploded mouse stomachs, whichever is faster.

So fantasy writers out there—whether it’s books or screenplays or whatever—I hereby challenge you to stop writing a lie. Portray mice as they really are, in all their hellish horror. M-i-c . . . k-e-*snap!* No more cute and cuddly.

We have seen the enemy, and it is mouse.

Ravings

You know, I've had my subtitle of this blog from the very beginning: "Ravings of a Semi-Coherent Mind." But you know what? I've posted practically no raving at all. I mean, if you don't count my usual discussion about my life, which might qualify as "rambling" from time to time, but not raving. That's not because I don't have things to rave about, but rather because I've been too lazy to consistently post my opinion up here. I've decided I want to do something about that. In the immortal words of Frank Costanza (father of George) in the Seinfeld Festivus episode, "I got a lot of problems with you people! And now, you're gonna hear about it." Except my problems aren't limited to people. I've got problems with lots of different things, and I don't just mean personal problems like "I can't tie my shoes." So I plan to write about some of those things.

Just not today.

Because I have wood to stack.

Consider yourself warned.

Columbus Day

History might have a lot of conflicting views about Christopher Columbus. I mean, did he really "find" America? Was he way too harsh on the people he found there? I suppose I could write a whole post on Columbus, if I really wanted to.

But I don't.

All I have to say about Columbus is, love him or hate him, he managed to get a holiday named after him, and that holiday is a day I get off from work. Today, I'm getting paid to organize my house and make rolls and cookies.

Thank you, Christopher Columbus.

Budgets

Budgets are no fun. But I've decided they are necessary, unless one of you readers wants to give me $10,000 a year. In return, I shall dedicate every book I publish to you. It'll be kind of like the patron system from way back when, and we all know how well that worked.


In other news, someone recommended this video to me, and I in turn am recommending it to you. It answers the age old question, "Where do the short pencils in libraries come from?"

Drivers License

You know, I lived fairly close to Mexico for the past decade or so. (Close is a relative term), and there were even a few times I was just a few miles away from the border. But until this past week, I can honestly say I never went to Mexico.

I can say that no more.

You see, I needed a driver's license. And to get that driver's license, I had to go to Mexico. I've heard a lot about the place over the years, and I have to say it was nothing like what I expected. For one thing, I always thought it was a country, not a city. And I thought it was south of the US. Nope. It's west of Farmington, Maine. And as for the food there, there was only one place that stood out--and that was called The Chicken Coop. No Mexican restaurants at all to speak of.

Still, the DMV in Mexico is very nice, and it wasn't long before I was finished. (Gotta love living in a place with few enough people that a trip to the DMV isn't a horrendous experience.)

Seriously, this part of the Maine has some wacky place names. Just check out this set of road signs.



See what I mean? Maybe next time I should keep going when I get to Mexico. It looks like China's only another 48 miles.