Another week passes, and what a busy and stressful week it was. There's not much writing content to this entry, but I hope to report more progress in the coming weeks.

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Last weekend we watched The Terminal, starring Tom Hanks. That wasn't bad, if you ignore the schmaltzy and unbelievable storyline. Something makes me think the source material wouldn't have been quite so melodramatic.

I also took the opportunity to order a bunch of guitar stuff online, including a music stand (no more music books closing and falling on the floor!), a metronome, and some music books and instructional DVDs. The Troy Stetina heavy metal books look the most interesting--I'm hoping they help with the motivational aspect in particular. It's tough practicing Greensleeves and Row your Boat day-in, day-out ;) None of my existing guitar books seem that inspiring, although I do have a few years worth of Total Guitar mags with tablature; they'll be more fun once I earn my guitar-playing chops. It's tough realizing that I've forgotten everything I learned before, including that Deep Purple riff from Smoke on the Water that everyone seems to play when they're starting out.

We finally got around to putting up the curtains in the living room. The only problem is they seem to have a distinctly 70s-style to them which was not apparent when we first bought them several weeks ago. Bugger! On the plus side, they do look better than the paper shades we had up since moving in....

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I drove Carrie to the airport on Monday for her uncle's funeral, and picked her up on Tuesday night. The drives weren't too bad, but they ate up a lot of time by the time we got there and back. As usual, the flights were late from 1-2 hours. Heh, I guess the 50% on-time rating was pretty much on the money :)

This weekend we were fairly productive. I got the car serviced on Saturday, and then we got stuck into the box-filled room in the basement. We shifted out the boxes, cleaned the carpet, and finally moved the bed and futon into there. Carrie was busy assembling some cheap furniture for that room, which looks surprisingly good now that it is furnished. The cats have given their seal of approval, too.

After we'd taken care of that room and done lots of other tidying-up around the place, we had a leisurely dinner at a local restaurant in Crystal Lake. Despite having to wait an hour to be seated, we were still impressed with the place and thoroughly enjoyed the food and wine. Normally places like this are few and far between outside of Chicago. The only downside was the steep price!

Today was a mostly lazy day, during which we watched Stripes (I thought it was all a bit silly), and did our usual weight-lifting and running in the basement gym.

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Writing-wise, this week was a bust. Last week I abandoned the story I was working on to focus on another that needs to be completed before a looming anthology deadline. I haven't yet hammered the thing out--I've been spending most of my time doing research and plot-noodling. It'll be a bit of a stretch of my writing abilities, but what fun would writing be if it wasn't ever a challenge?

I've since come up with another angle to the abandoned story, so that'll probably be next on the agenda once this more pressing project is completed. I also had a few ideas on a collaborative piece I'd been working on with my mate in Australia, so I fired off an email to see what he thought of my ramblings. That piece has been languishing on the hard-drive since last year, but hopefully we can kickstart it and make a dash to the finish this time.

Other than all that story pondering, I wrote a critique of a novella for the critique group. Let's hope this week is more productive and I actually get some story words down!

2005 Stats:

2005 Word count:	6,978
Stories written:	1
Total submissions:	4
Total acceptances:	0
Total rejections:	3
Waiting for response:	2
Books read:	3
Fiction Mags/Chapbooks read:	5
Audiobooks:	5

What I'm Reading:
The Troika, Stepan Chapman
What's Rangoon to you is Grafton to me (audio; a bizarre gonzo Aussie road-trip rant!)
Locus 2004 issues: October, November, December (still at it!)