I’ve been quiet lately, haven’t I?  Between selling our house and all the sundry events that go along with that (checks written and cashed, final inspection reports read and responded to, etc., etc.), getting ready for National Novel Writing Month (and don’t forget to sponsor me, of course), and a massive upgrade of Moodle at work, I’ve just been a tad busy.  I’ve also taken on a couple of writing projects, including a Sekrit one, so most of my spare time is taken up with those.  I’ve also been re-reading The Return of Deacon Dread from last year in an attempt to get ready for this year.  And heck, I even turned off the auto-post from Twitter, just because I accidentally posted something there that shouldn’t be showing up here.  Oy.

Expect sporadic updates throughout November.

And, of course, it’s Halloween.  The NaNoWriMo kick-off party is tonight in Dixon (contact me if you plan on going and don’t know where it is or why), and the theme is "Come Dressed As Your Villain".  My villain, unfortunately, normally manifests as a giant jellyfish, so I haven’t been sure how to pull that off.  Then I remembered that my villain also manifests as a giant black spider in a vacant field, surrounded by barbed wire.  THAT I can pull off.  Pictures might be posted.

Finally, I present this video for you.  Are you a girl?  Is it Halloween?  Check out this video!  (NSFW language, be warned.)

Have you all seen the movie Mean Girls with Lindsey Lohan and Rachel McAdams?  Generally a pretty forgettable movie, but there’s some fine commentary about the expectations that girls find themselves trying to live up to.  There’s the brilliant Halloween scene where Lohan’s character, having spent most of her life outside of the United States, discovers that Halloween for girls is the time of year when they dress up really sexy, even if they normally do.  "The most extreme girls," she says, "just dress in lingerie with some kind of animal ears."  Lohan’s character dresses up as a zombie bride (it’s a very effective costume and quite spooky), and is mocked for it.  And recently I’ve met more women who find Halloween uncomfortable or annoying because they can’t, for various reasons, pull off the sexy devil/witch/ghost/frog costume that the costume shops seem to think all adult women want to wear.  This video mocks the trend, and I approve.

Anyway.  Have a great Halloween/Samhain.

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Escrow closed.

Escrow freakin’ closed!!!

WE HAVE OFFICIALLY SOLD THE DIXON HOUSE!

Not only that, we actually made money from the sale.  Kind of a rare thing, apparently, in this day and age.

Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.  Jennifer’s looking forward to a new kitchen.  I’m looking forward to my stomach no longer churning whenever I think about money.

Time for some good ol’ fashioned celebratin’.

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Thanks to my friend Katster, I’ve located a WordPress plugin to integrate my blog with Twitter.  Because, you know, that’s what you all want me to do.  The only issue I’m having is a wee problem with the Twitter Tools plugin finding the table in my database where my category names are kept.  For some reason, it just can’t find it, so my daily tweets are put in a category called "1" instead of where they should go.

The tool I’m most interested in trying out right now, though, is Tumblr.  Looks like a place where you can generate all of your various feeds and what not into one single place.  I’ve seen a couple of people who simply use their Tubmlr feed as the source for their main blog.  We’ll see if this works out.

I guess I ought to do some actual work while I’m here in the office, too, oughtn’t I?

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December 31, 2009 is when I turn 42.  That’s a significant age for us second-wave nerds (kids these days… would you believe I encountered recently a kid who called himself a "nerd" but who had no idea what the significant of 42 is?).

<Jigsaw voice>There will be festivities…</Jigsaw voice>

Anyway, I wanted a big blow out for my 40th, but I realized it’s probably too late to master the ballroom dancing I wanted to master, and to get everyone geared up in just 2.5 months.  So consider this your 2.25 year warning.

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I’ve been sitting on this for awhile.  A couple of people have seen it, but most of the world has not.

This is the illustration that will accompany my short story, "A Most Heinous Man", in the December issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.  Today I got permission from the editor and the illustrator to post this artwork to my website before the issue goes to print.  Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture:

The illustrator is the impressive Lewis P. Morley.  Not only did Mr. Morley do much of the concept art for the Matrix films (and no matter how awful you might think the second two films were, you have to admit the art and design were awesome), but I’ve learned that he’s also worked on Superman Returns, and has just signed on to work on Justice League.  I feel very fortunate to have his artwork grace my goofy little story.

Some of you may notice the three extra names in the credits:  Jennifer Crawford, my wife; my friend Keith Phemister who has been a strong influence on my creative and personal life; and the misspelled Kristin Andrews, who just happens to be my mom… because for all my faults, I still love my mom.  I contacted the editor as soon as I noticed the misspelling, but unfortunately there was nothing to be done about it (the editor admits to the fault here — normally I wouldn’t say that, but I wanted to make it clear that I do know how to spell my own mother’s name).

In other news, if all goes well, then escrow on our house in Dixon will close by Thursday this week, and we will have sold that house.  And actually made a profit, which apparently is quite a feat in a day where one out of five houses for sale are actually foreclosures (in our area, at least).

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What if Richard III had access to the Internet?  What would he blog (or vlog) about?

One of the reasons why Shakespeare will always be popular is that his characters are essentially timeless.  Romeo and Juliet succeeds not just because it’s a great story, full of drama and romance and what-not, but also because every teenager in love has thought that they, like Romeo and Juliet, were the very first ones ever to feel as they do.  And Richard III succeeds because he, like a million others, is a freakin’ drama queen, and their type will always be with us, as the portrayal below demonstrates:

As portrayed by my very funny and talented friend Ed Gyles Jr.  Who, by the way, deserves congratulations and accolades for having been selected to be one of the founding members of the ComedySportz improv troupe in Sacramento.

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