Category: Things I Write For Work

• The brain is on the hamster wheel this morning.
• We have this sign in our house, says, “Hold on, let me overthink this” or something close.
• The Wife bought it for the entry hallway, and the Teenager stole it and stashed it in her room.
• Overthinking: It’s what all the cool Anxiety people do.
• So what have I been overthinking about lately?
• I’m glad you asked.
• Been doing some replays of meetings.
• A ton of parenting moments.
• Will she be able to X?
• Can she Y?
• Stuff from five years ago.
• How to start today’s list.
• My brain, sometimes, is like The Torment-nator. It will not stop.
• I don’t mind, most the time. Fodder for writing.
• I resent it at night, though I’ve mostly slayed the insomnia dragon.
• It’ll flare up from time to time, but …
• All my sleep problems these days are related to making myself go to bed.
• It’s not that I dislike sleep.
• In fact, the older I get, the healthier my relationship with it.
• But sometimes, the only … time … I get for myself is at the very end of the day. Like 11 p.m.
• I usually fill that time with reading.
• (I should be filling it with writing, but mental exhaustion is a real thing. And I do love self-imposed guilt.)
• Right now, I’m re-reading Cold Days by Jim Butcher, which is basically an urban fantasy action flick in book form.
• And that last quarter, there’s not really a good place to stop.
• So I was still reading at 12:58 a.m. last night before my brain went, “Editor, dude, what in the world are you doing? You are not 25. This isn’t even a warning. You’re already past the point of suffering. ENJOY YOUR BOOK HANGOVER.”
• Narrator: He did not enjoy his book hangover.
• I did not leave the jumpstarting of my brain solely to caffeine, I’ll have you know.
• I exercised a bit this morning. Push-ups and squats. Exercises that hit multiple muscle groups.
• They say exercise is vital to creativity.
• Or something.
• I read too much, probably. But like, junk food reading.
• Like … you’ve heard that “it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something” thing, right?
• Was talking to the boss about it yesterday, as a matter of fact.
• And then this story popped up in my email.
• The 10,000 hour thing actually has some research behind it.
• What I’m saying is social media is creepy.
• And I wish it didn’t exist.
• Or at least I wish it were somehow different and not an amplifier for our worst behavior.
• Also, I’m going to make this soon.
• Looks delicious.
• Maybe not in the biscuit realm of deliciousness, but …
• Hamster wheel.

• Day 6: Still no biscuits.
• We did, however, drive by Hatch in Jenks. Excited for that place to open.
• (No, I’m not going to write about biscuits again. If you want to read about biscuits, visit one of last week’s lists.)
• (I could, but I won’t.)
• I wrote about 250 words of ranting that I’ve just cut.
• There was a bit about the new war, which frightens me some.
• And then I complained about the birthday singing at Texas Roadhouse.
• No one wants that kind of negativity on a Monday.
• You’ve already got Monday to deal with, after all.
• The weekend kind of felt anticlimactic.
• We didn’t do a whole lot.
• Well, not true.
• We took the Teenager shoe shopping, which she hates. Weird, right?
• And we did it at Woodland Hills Mall, which was a thing.
• I’m still not super comfortable around crowds.
• Not sure I ever really was, but definitely not now after the pandemic.
• So many people, no one in masks.
• And I get that the CDC relaxed mask guidelines.
• But … it’ll take time to readjust, for me at least.
• Now for the important stuff. What is up with you ladies and the murder and disaster shows?
• Remember a few weeks back when I talked about Everest?
• Friday, the Wife wanted to watch The Impossible, which is about a family that survived the tsunami in Thailand that hit on Christmas Day (2004).
• So, you know, we watched it.
• Another uplifting piece of entertainment.
• (That was sarcasm.)
• Some sort of natural disaster that separates me from my family is pretty much my worst nightmare.
• Good movie. Very intense.
• There’s a scene where the dad sends two of his small children inland with strangers so he can stay and look for his wife and older son.
• No way I could do that.
• Also, holy cow, 14-year-old Tom Holland could already act.
• Yeah, I give up. I can’t avoid that Monday flavor.
• It’s because I didn’t get biscuits.
• I almost drove through KFC last night.
• We’d gone to the Re-Store in Jenks, rolled down Main St. on our way back home, and there it was.
• “I could get a biscuit,” I said.
• “I thought we were having steak.”
• …
• Sigh.
• No, I really did sigh, both then and now.
• Cue the “Yee Haws.”
• A Texas Roadhouse roll is good, but … a biscuit is better.
• You ever heard of the Rule of Three?
• “Sometimes called trebling, the Rule of Three is a pattern used in stories and jokes, where part of the story is told three times, with minor variations. The first two instances build tension, and the third releases it by incorporating a twist.”
• In this case, I didn’t do it properly, because today would be the fourth biscuit conversation. But the twist, maybe.
• I just thought you should know no biscuits were harmed in the making of these lists.
• More’s the pity.
• I promise not to write about biscuits on Wednesday.
• You have a Monday.

• It’s early a.m., Feb. 25.
• The neighborhood kids have their sleds out and are using the cul-de-sac as a luge track.
• The current record is 10.7 seconds held by the little blonde girl with the fluffy pink stocking cap.
• She has excellent launch technique, and a clear desire to beat the boys.
• All I can think about is how hard landing on those sleds in these temperatures would be.
• I’m getting too old for this … stuff.
• I hiked out to look at the main road yesterday, careful to stay on the “grass.”
• Kinda sorta looked like the main was cleared-ish.
• I stepped out on the street and though it bore the look of snow, it was hard, packed ice.
• Guy could break a hip messing around on that, so of course I did some running slides, arms flailing about.
• Life’s too short to not have a good time.
• Speaking of good times, and because I know you know you’re dying to know, I made biscuits from scratch Wednesday night.
• Did they turn out well?
• No.
• Did they scratch the itch?
• Also no.
• Couple things. I think I worked the dough too much. It stuck to the waxed paper and I had to fold it again to get it loose.
• I had to use two-percent milk instead of whole, which allegedly leads to fluffier biscuits.
• Also, I don’t have a rolling pin.
• I mentioned that to a friend and they Googled “alternatives to rolling pins” for me, and said I could use a pint glass or a wine bottle.
• Opened a bottle of wine to empty to try that.
• Drank some wine.
• (I’m not really a wine person.)
• Looked at the bottle and decided I didn’t want to go to the trouble to get the labels off.
• And then realized I probably should’ve not opened the wine.
• I’d use a glass instead.
• Only after mixing the dough and dropping it onto the lightly floured wax paper, I totally forgot about the glass and used my hands to sort of mash it into a rectangle.
• …
• First time, man.
• (I only had the one glass of wine, thank you very much.)
• They didn’t rise all that much.
• Let’s say I can see why the British call cookies biscuits because my biscuits look like cookies. Kinda. Not all of them.
• And were kinda bland, like not enough salt.
• Room for improvement.
• I’m officially on the biscuit vision quest.
• Today, well, I need to get out of here. I must get out of this place.
• If only to get food cooked by someone else.
• In addition to the biscuits on Wednesday, I also made a pot of soup (lunch), and baked some fish (dinner).
• Last night, baked Parmesan chicken and sautéed veggies.
• And then we made Nestle Tollhouse recipe chocolate chip cookies, with milk chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet.
• Which I had for breakfast this morning with my coffee.
• Glorious.
• Life’s too short not to eat the cookies.

• For once, the winter weather arrived on schedule.
• The pellets are pelting.
• And not hardly melting.
• As I sit here and wait.
• For the coffee to percolate.
• …
• I’m stopping.
• I rewrote the end of The Raven to give one of my buddies a hard time last night.
• Was kinda funny.
• Also a little bit trying too hard.
• I’m not a poet.
• I appreciate them, the poets, a great deal, but it’s not one of my gifts.
• I took poetry, a whole year of it, in college as part of my minor, but never really developed any sort of affinity for it.
• I won’t even claim I understand it.
• So.
• Yesterday’s list.
• Wasn’t supposed to be one. It just kind of … happened.
• Here’s the follow-up: Did not have a biscuit for lunch yesterday, nor one for dinner last night, nor one for breakfast this morning.
• And probably not one for lunch.
• So the yearning keeps on burning.
• And he gets the biscuit nevermore.
• Sigh.
• I’ll figure something out.
• Find a biscuit recipe with no eggs.
• (No, I’m not writing about bread again today. Probably.)
• What I did appreciate about poetry was the lyrical aspect of writing, how adding things like tempo and rhyme to normal prose can change how the reader reacts to your story.
• I don’t do enough of it in my fiction.
• There’s a fantasy author, Patrick Rothfuss, who slips into rhyme and verse so smoothly you scarely know he’s doing it.
• Now, if he’d just finish his bloody trilogy.
• Been more than 10 years since his last book, book two. Ten years we’ve been waiting for the climax of that particular tale.
• I have no hope he’ll ever actually finish it.
• Guy has crippling anxiety.
• I assume it’s a similar situation with George R. R. Martin.
• That dude is never going to finish Game of Thrones.
• I mean, why would he? He has silly money.
• Some writers are fueled by discomfort.
• They write to salve the wounds of life and to conquer the beast of boredom.
• Dan Simmons, in Hyperion, has a poet for a character, and there’s a line he says about the best place for a writer is prison.
• He’s probably not wrong.
• The most consistently productive I’ve ever been (writing fiction) was during a five-month stay in a foreign country where I couldn’t really speak the language.
• In real life, you have to figure out a way to fit it in amongst all your responsibilities.
• One of my buddies (not the one the revised Raven) always throws up that quote, and I can’t remember what it’s from, but it goes: “Sometimes, I do what I want. Most of the time, I do what I have to.”
• That’s getting a little grim.
• While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
• As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
• “T’was the sleet,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door – only this and nothing more”
• Stay warm. Someone make some biscuits.

• I know I’ve talked about my love of Bread before, but it’s been awhile.
• And I’m craving biscuits.
• We went to BBD2 Sunday for breakfast after picking up the Teenager from a sleepover.
• And I had the bread dilemma: pancakes or biscuits.
• Went with pancakes, and instantly regretted it.
• I mean, they were fine, but …
• Why not both, you ask?
• That’s a lot of calories.
• Why am I talking about biscuits?
• Because I saw a picture of them this morning, and it jump-started the craving.
• I imagine it will remain there, in my brains, until I’ve been biscuit sated.
• Sigh.
• I mean, I don’t know when that’ll be.
• I don’t want no stinkin’ QT biscuit.
• Has to be a good one, with those buttery, crispy edges, and flaky and soft like a cloud on the inside.
• I think I may be doing myself harm right now.
• Self-inflicted emotional torment.
• Maybe I’ll just make some this weekend.
• Or maybe during Winter IV: The Coldening.
• I’ll pick up my ingredients while I’m getting all the bread and milk that’ll fit in my cart.
• It’s the sweet vs. savory battle of breakfast, right?
• I almost always, no matter how good the pancakes are, go with savory.
• I’d rather have the breakfast proteins and biscuits or toast, or literally anything Southwestern-themed.
• At Blue Moon, it’s either the Blue Plate special, the Notorious B-n-G, or one of their weekend specials.
• (Pro tip: Always get one of the weekend specials. Always.)
• The biscuits at Blue Moon Café are amazing.
• COVID curtailed my Blue Moon trips, unfortunately.
• I feel like I’m in that episode of Survivor when they talk about all the food they’re missing from home.
• But I’m going to keep rolling with it.
• Tulsa has an amazing list of locally owned breakfast eateries, between the diners and the slightly more upscale faire, there’s no reason, other than time economy, to not have good breakfast.
• I see that Tally’s sign saying “Voted Tulsa’s Best Breakfast,” and I think, man, people are missing out if that’s the winner.
• Apparently unpopular opinion: I wouldn’t go to Tally’s unless someone made me.
• Blue Moon Café, Wildflower Café, The Bramble, Hatch Good Mood Food (when it finally gets open in Jenks) … And then there’s a ton of places I haven’t gotten to try yet.
• Oh, The Savoy!
• And we’re leaving out all the good diners that are all better than Tally’s.
• One of my cycling buddies and I sometimes do a “diner ride” on Sunday mornings, and go to Ollie’s Station on the west side. Hard to beat its breakfast buffet (and still better than Tally’s).
• The ride back home is awful, of course. Overeating breakfast food then immediately riding 15 miles is not smart.
• I gotta stop. I want to just run out of here and go eat breakfast.
• Hit me with your favorite breakfast spots in the comments.

• You ever have one of those days …
• After receiving a bid to fix something in our house that made me weep on the inside, we opted to fix it ourselves.
• Involves a wall. Well, walls now. And drywall.
• It did not involve drywall when we started, obviously.
• I mean home projects never, in my experience, go the path of least resistance.
• My dad used to build houses, so I had him over as project manager.
• He is not the most patient of teachers, and as he’s in his 70s his assistance is only instructional.
• Now our TV room looks like the pic above.
• But I’m learning things, so yay.
• Sorry. “Yay!”
• And I got a cool new oscillating saw thing.
• Next weekend: Hanging drywall!
• Also, the room was trimmed out in paneling you apparently can’t get anymore, so I need to figure out something with the walls to make them not look super weird.
• I’ll get the Teenager to watch some Chip and Joanna I guess.
• Or Property Brothers.
• When she was smaller and would visit Grandma’s house, they would invariably end up watching HGTV.
• So the Teenager has long-held strong opinions about interior design.
• One of the solutions will not involve redoing the entire rest of the room.
• On the next episode of This Old House …
• What’s funny is we’ve been talking about doing that furniture flipping thing.
• With the new house, we have some empty rooms and we’ve been … well, the Wife has been furniture shopping, literally everywhere.
• Like everything else in this inflated new world, furniture is ridiculously expensive.
• For instance, a nice set of patio furniture can run you north of $2,000.
• Well, will, not can.
• We need a dining room table. Those are more expensive than patio furniture.
• Like, they cost as much as the Teenager’s first car would’ve cost a couple years ago.
• DUDE.
• I’m going to have to go to my dad’s workshop of many tools and learn how to build a bloody table I guess.
• (I say that like it’s as easy as “oh, I’m just gonna go table me up a table.”)
• Could be a cool adventure.
• Making things.
• Have to be careful saying things like this. The romanticism of hope never quite comes across the same in the real world.
• There’s a little bit of cynicism in this morning’s list.
• Chock it up to Monday. I’ve had coffee, so let’s change our vector.
• Finished my Blind Date with a Book over the weekend.
• For those playing the home game, it was The Library at Mount Char.
• And it was a very Neil Gaiman-esque sort of experience. Maybe mix in some Tim Powers.
• It’s difficult to sum up in a couple of bullets, so let’s just say it involves a crazy pantheon of librarian gods and their shenanigans.
• Was good stuff. Thank you, whichever of you Librarian folk sent it my way.
• We found ourselves with a Teenager-free evening Saturday, so we went to the movies and saw The King’s Man because a) we liked the first two, and b) the Teenager didn’t want us to see Uncharted without her.
• At least the popcorn was good.
• Have yourself some good popcorn this week.
• Seriously, just go to the theatre, buy some, and leave.
• … Yeah, I’ll stop.
• Have a Monday.

• Parent/Teacher conferences in the time of Covid are kind of awesome.
• Every one we’ve had for the Teenager this year (yes, the school she’s at still does parent/teacher conferences for eighth graders) has been via Zoom with all her teachers in one meeting.
• No running around in the car. No arranging schedules. Just pop on Zoom, talk the kiddo, and go about my day.
• Which is what we just did.
• Probably we think of our children’s teachers in the abstract most the time.
• Mr. So-and-so. Ms. Lastname.
• And you know, when you don’t know someone well, it makes it easier to perhaps not think or treat them with the respect they deserve.
• It’s super cool to see how much they care about our children.
• How flexible they are in not just trying to accommodate our children’s academic needs, but also their emotional and social needs.
• Teachers are subject matter experts, counselors, and surrogate parents for 20-30 students at a shot, and sometimes 120 over the course of a day.
• What a huge, monumentally important role they have in our society.
• And despite all the obstacles society throws at them, to be able to still care about our children …
• I have no words, really.
• After a great night’s sleep (hallelujah) and a great parent/teacher conference this morning, I’m feeling kinda, I dunno, grateful?
• And in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.
• Also, on my second cup of coffee.
• Wednesday, after the Smashmouth stunt, one of my coworkers sent me a friendly “I hate you” message.
• Which made me actually laugh.
• Mwahahaha.
• What’s a little sonic torment amongst friends?
• Somebody once told me …
• To be fair, it was stuck in my head, too, for a good 12 hours.
• I just didn’t want to suffer alone.
• Is a song that so easily becomes an earworm good?
• There’s some part of it that resonates. Is that not a barometer for quality?
• Behold the power of magnetic melody!
• Blind Date with a Book Report: I’m somewhere in the middle and it has shifted from pretty good to fantastic.
• Stayed up too late reading it the night before last, in fact.
• Which is the universal Reader’s Stamp of Approval.
• Squirrel.
• You know, the worst part of coffee/caffeine addition is the aftermouth it leaves you with.
• I really need to go brush my teeth again.
• Have the Coffee Teeth Sweaters.
• Which are the worst.
• (Sorry, man, I used all my seriousness up at the top of the list with the teacher stuff.)
• Keep your teeth clean and your soul light this weekend.
• Also, one of my “friends” just hit me with “Careless Whisper,” so rest assured I’m getting Karmic payback from the universe.
• Would you rather: Be stuck with Smashmouth’s “All Star,” or Wham’s “Careless Whisper?”
• The former all the way.
• Have an all-star weekend, kids.

​

• The other day, I remembered how when I was a little kid, if I didn’t know how something worked or what it was, I’d just make up my own explanation.
• Like, clearly, the Space Center there off the BA & I-44 had something to do with NASA.
• How could it not?
• As a grown up, I think I’ve come to believe that other grown-ups still do that, and I find that horrifying.
• Like you become so sure of the conclusion you’ve drawn you forget you made it up.
• I assume all children do that.
• Which is another made-up answer, really.
• I mean, do they?
• Was that just me?
• Wasn’t just me, right guys?
• …
• …
• I asked the girls about this last night.
• Apparently, it’s just me.
• You know what I have stuck in my head this morning?
• “Soooooomebody once told me, the world was gonna roll me …”
• It’s there because, despite knowing better, I looked at my phone this morning, which was on Instagram from last night.
• And there was a video of a girl on a skateboard.
• As soon as I heard those opening notes, I knew what was coming,
• She hit the curb, landed on her head in perfect time.
• Sat up rubbing her noggin, looking a bit disoriented.
• I laughed.
• There’s probably a special place in purgatory for people who laugh at other people’s videos of misfortune.
• I’m going to have to actually play that song to clear the feed, otherwise I’m going to hear “Soooooomebody once told me” over and over again all morning.
• The other early morning thing that happened was one of my friends in Seattle sent me a reaction video of this baby headbanging and three giant looking bearded dudes joining in.
• It made me laugh.
• Don’t tell anyone I laughed. It’ll ruin my rep.
• Because of the project I’m working on, I’ve been reading more about writing lately than at any other point in my life.
• Partly, that’s because of self-doubt. Like some part of me doesn’t think I can do it without all the expert help I can get.
• Which is not true, but our heads are not always our friends.
• However, I have found some really cool books by really good writers on the craft.
• Right now, I’m reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, which is brilliant.
• Writing is hard for her also, so I relate a lot to what she says.
• I found this book because the universe sent it to me twice, probably because I didn’t get it the first time.
• The first time, Bird by Bird was dropped by Coach Lasso to Coach Beard, though if you didn’t know it was a book, you’d have missed it. I only later found out when I read an article about all the book references in the show.
• The second time, it came up in this article called “Write Your D@$* Novel.”
• I don’t believe in fate, but when something starts thematically recurring in your life, maybe you should check it out. Due diligence and all that.
• Glad I did. Great book so far.
• Unfortunately, that means I’m reading … four books at the same time.
• Into Thin Air is sliding to the bottom.
• Read The Library at Mount Char during my lunch hour yesterday, Bird by Bird for a bit after dinner while the Teenager was doing homework, and then The Atlas Six to put myself to sleep.
• Reading is life.
• Which brings me to this thing I’ve been thinking about.
• In another book, about a student at a university (describing plots poorly for $500), one of his instructors opens class each time by asking the students to tell him something interesting. The most interesting fact gets some sort of reward.
• What’s up, Wednesday. What do you have interesting for us today?

• I’m afraid to look at my Garmin to see how well (or in this case, poorly) I slept.
• It’s going to look like an EKG.
• All I know is that it’s early, I’m drinking my coffee, and as of yet, I cannot brain.
• My eyelids felt slow to respond for at least the first hour I was awake.
• I wonder if there’s some adrenal stimulus you could do first thing on Mondays.
• Like, some sort of being-chased-by-an-apex-predator kind of experience that’s not actually getting chased.
• I don’t mean instantly.
• Give yourself 10 minutes or so.
• We don’t want anyone having a heart attack, after all.
• Braaaaaaains.
• Someone told me when you stretch out a word like that, you do it on the vowel, so we’re trying that out today.
• Sounds right.
• Anyone watch the sportsball action last night?
• We turned it on at halftime to relive the rap of our misspent youth.
• I liked the part where Eminem stopped singing and you could still hear his voice.
• You know Prince didn’t stand for that nonsense when he did the Superbowl.
• For that matter, how in the world has Metallica not been invited to play?
• What in the holy …
• And speaking of that, I saw an ad for … foot masks … in my Facebook feed over the weekend.
• They are apparently to reduce dry skin and calluses.
• Foot. Masks.
• Just marinate on that for awhile.
• Also, I’m Gen X, man. I don’t think I’m the demo for … foot masks.
• I just get a file from the garage and …
• Stream of consciousness writing is what we do when we have writer’s block or it’s a Monday morning and there’s a list to write.
• You just start typing whatever pops into your head, and edit it later.
• (I’m not going to edit out the foot masks bit.)
• (I’m also probably not going to have any deep thoughts by the end. The coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. It’s like when your fuel pump on your car is going out, and when you turn the key the starter just kicks over and over without the engine firing up.)
• The book juggling is going fine, since you asked.
• Reading both my Blind Date book and The Atlas Six at the same time.
• Very different writing styles and experiences, but I’m enjoying them both a lot.
• Which is nice.
• Been sort of floundering in readingland lately.
• And I’m not sure why that is.
• I wonder (and I’ll Google it in a minute) if there’ve been any studies as to why sometimes you can’t settle down and read when that’s your norm?
• We apparently missed the Dr. Strange trailer last night.
• The Teenager sent me an email this morning:
• “I watched the Multiverse of Madness trailer without you because Ruby asked me if I’d seen it and I felt very ashamed that I forgot about it.”
• Enjoy your multiverse of madness Monday, kids.
• These days won’t last, or something.

*The photo above is the first paragraph from my Blind Date with a Book, The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins.

• Let’s talk about my Blind Date with a Book book.
• Our librarians gave me a book about … Librarians.
• I mean, of course they did, right?
• I’m giving them a hard time right now, in case it’s subtle.
• I mean, the characters are called “librarians,” but it is very much a Gaiman-esque sort of story so far, and I’ve never heard of the author or the book.
• The first paragraph was spectacular.
• I’ll tell you what it is later, after I’ve read it.
• I want to know who picked this out, and how they found it.
• It’s like six years old!
• But that’s the thing about a good book, right?
• It’s not like an old TV show that gets dated (Helllo, Friends).
• A good book is a good book forever, whereas the tv show just isn’t there for you in the same way when you revisit.
• You can never go back to TV, but you can go back to a book.
• If you didn’t do Blind Date with a Book, you’re missing out.
• And I’m rubbing it in.
• ‘Cause you could’ve signed up.
• And there were fancy chocolates involved.
• That I already ate.
• Nyah.
• Anyway, thanks librarians. (Sincerely. No hard time intended.)
• I came across this last week, and thought it was funny, if you haven’t seen it already.
• “1:30 p.m. Find list of the most offensive books in print and order them all with your tax dollars.” Hahahaha.
• (And that is as close to political as I will ever be in this place.)
• If you’re still sleeping on McSweeney’s, you’re missing out.
• (Some of it is NSFW, mind you, so read it on your phone on your lunch hour. Or after work with vino. Not the article I linked, obvs.)
• I need to make better use of libraries.
• Once I could afford to buy books, I started doing that. Because when I find one I love, I need to have it accessible whenever the want arises. I needs it, the precious.
• And then I got a Kindle.
• I still buy paper books, hardbacks, of my favorite authors.
• I have a whole hardback run of The Dresden Files, for instance.
• (I’ve said as much at least a dozen times in these lists since we started.)
• But mostly I read on my Kindle.
• Counting samples, there are 961 books on there.
• I don’t know how many of those I’ve read.
• Not 961, obviously.
• I may have a problem.
• Next up, after my Blind Date with a Book, I’m reading The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake.
• Well, I mean, I’m starting it.
• If I don’t like it, I’ll bail.
• Life’s too short to read books that don’t hook you.
• I wonder how many times the author rewrote the opening paragraph to my Blind Date Book.
• I just reread the first paragraph to my book, and thought, “Man. I have to rewrite that.”
• So I just did. Real quick, knowing full well I’ll have to do it again later anyway.
• “Second stood across the street from the House she planned to break into, and glared at it. Her sister, First, had gone into the House yesterday, and hadn’t returned. Yet. Second looked at her watch, checked the time, forgot what time she’d just seen, and turned her attention back to the House. Capital H.”
• That’s it. That’s the newly rewritten first paragraph to my book.
• Maybe someday, it’ll be someone’s Blind Date book.
• How cool would that be?
• You guys have a weekend.