Bryce Moore's Blog, page 138

January 17, 2018

Ask the Internet: Best Place to Search for Lodging in Europe

[image error]Okay folks. My European plans are progressing. I’ve actually gotten tickets now. Flying in and out of Budapest this time, since we have yet to see that one. It’s through Zurich, but we won’t be doing a stopover, choosing to spend our time seeing Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, Prague, Krakow, and Košice, instead. (In addition to Slovakia, of course.) It should be a blast.


But it looks like our travel dates are overlapping with European holidays, so a lot of hotel rooms are already booked. As I’ve been doing searches, I wondered what sites other people use to find lodging, particularly in Europe. Here are some of the sites I’m already aware of:



Hotels.com is a favorite. They have a wide variety of hotels, their prices are decent, and I like their interface. I also appreciate how well integrated they are with tripadvisor, as I rely on reviews heavily when I’m selecting a place to stay. I need to make sure it will be decent for my family. That said, sometimes they omit places, and I’m not sure how exhaustive their results are. I can’t help wondering if I couldn’t get a better deal somewhere else. (That’s where you all come in.)
VRBO is one I’ve used for North American trips, but it seems less robust in Europe. Particularly in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. (Sorry. I just can’t bring myself to call it Czechia.) Also, I sometimes worry about how reliable the places will be. Our stay in Paris was lovely, but it’s an added concern not typically there when I’m just going to check into a chain hotel. (Though the accommodations are so much nicer.)
Airbnb is another site, and it seems more popular in the places I’m specifically checking so far. (Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague) Same issues as VRBO, but definitely easy to use and worth looking into.
Bookings.com is one that was new to me, and I haven’t really liked it yet. I used it a bit, but the prices seem inflated from what I can find on other sites. I wonder if I’m using it wrong, or if I don’t understand the results properly.
Individual hotel sites are also always worth a shot. Marriott sometimes has the best deals directly from their site, for example.

And that’s the extent of what I’ve used. Anyone out there use anything else they’re really fond of? Please share. I’m all about learning new things.


Thanks!


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Published on January 17, 2018 10:47

January 16, 2018

The 100 Pushup Challenge

[image error]Late last year, a friend of mine shared a video with me of what turns out to be a pretty common health fitness kick: The 100 pushup challenge. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Do 100 pushups every day. Not necessarily all at once, but over all, from the time you get up to when you go to bed, complete 100 pushups. He was giving it a shot, and he encouraged me to do the same.


I’ve been doing some strength exercises each day (after I do my 30 minutes of jogging in place, which continues to be my go-to exercise of choice), and I thought I might give this one a whirl. The research I did into it said it was a decent goal for people who can do 15 pushups at a time, and that was the outside range of what I could accomplish, so it seemed like a good fit. (Though they go on to say that for people who can manage 30 pushups at a go, they’ll need to switch things up some to keep it being a challenge, either by increasing the reps or changing the pushup style.)


The biggest hangup for me has been that my left wrist hasn’t been up to the “pushing” motion. I injured it a while ago, and it’s had trouble healing. So instead of doing a regular pushup (where you use open palms on both hands to push against the ground), I’ve switched to doing ones on my fists, basically punching against the ground. I can’t do as many pushups this way, but it doesn’t hurt my wrist, so . . .


I’ve started with 50 pushups each day. It’s all I could really manage for the first week. Now that I have a week under my belt, I’m trying to branch out, doing as many pushups as I can each set, and then doing more after that by switching to knee pushups. I hope I can get to 100 a day with that approach.


So far, I like it. It’s easy for me to do, it lets me keep exercise in mind all day, every day, and I think it will help me get in better shape. Nothing earth shattering, but as usual, big changes can only happen if you overcome inertia and start doing something.


What exercise goals are you setting for yourself this year?


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $6/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 16, 2018 08:43

January 15, 2018

Trump wasn’t Talking about Countries. He was Talking about People.


I didn’t really want to write another Trump post. There have been so many of them, and when he decided to refer to African countries as “shitholes,” I was anything but surprised. He continues to do and say the same things he’s always done and said. Expressing shock or disappointment at this point seems pretty redundant. And this post isn’t really going to be about Trump, believe it or not.


It’s about the rest of us. It’s about how we respond to Trump, and what that says about us.


Because in the days after his shithole comment, there have been a variety of responses. Outrage and disappointment were expected, but what was not expected were the ones where people tried to continue to defend the man. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by that, but I am. And I have seen two main arguments used to try to excuse his remarks. Both leave much to be desired.


First, Trump and some of the Republicans in the meeting are saying he didn’t actually say “shithole.” Instead, this is what each are claiming:



Trump: “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.”
Senators Cotton and Perdue: “We do not recall the President saying these comments specifically”
Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen: “I don’t recall him saying that exact phrase.”

And in each case, the defender then tries to deflect the conversation back to what’s “really important,” which is immigration and how impassioned Trump is about it, and how we have to blah blah blah. And there are other Republicans who just aren’t saying anything, and some who are ignoring the comment altogether, skipping straight to focusing on what’s “really important.”


I go to a lot of meetings. Day in, day out. Meetings. And if I were ever in a meeting where the person running it used the word “shithole” in the middle of the meeting, I would remember. It would be blazed across my mind, because the people I go to meetings with just don’t use that kind of language in formal settings. So to have even the defenders hemming and hawing about it, spouting out about strong language and exact phrases? Even if I believed them, all it adds up to is Trump used some comment other than shithole. Not only that, but he uses such foul language in meetings on a regular basis that “shithole” doesn’t really make a lasting impression on people. I wonder what would.


So this defense pretty much agrees with the fact that he used terrible language to describe some countries. So much of it that “shithole” as a single adjective kind of blended in with the rest, perhaps.


“Tough” language indeed.


But let’s move on to the second defense. I’ve seen multiple people (some of them friends of mine) try to excuse Trump’s remarks by saying he was just crudely stating what many people believe anyway. To them, “shithole” is shorthand for “economically challenged, corrupt, unstable nation with severe infrastructure problems.” And as I look at that definition, it seems to fit “America” more and more with every passing day.


Except what people try to make this mean is that there are some countries we’d rather visit or live than others. That anyone who’d rather go to Norway on vacation is just as “racist” as Trump. Except that’s not how this works. There’s a huge difference between preference and labeling, especially when you’re the leader of a major geopolitical power.


I have traveled a fair bit in my life. I have seen places where people are living in abject poverty. Where they don’t have enough money to provide heat and food for their families. But even in those dire circumstances, the people I’ve met and talked to have always impressed me. They’ve been outgoing, passionate, and generous. Even in the worst of circumstances, I’ve found places to admire and wonder at. History that amazes me. Adventures all over the globe. And the more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve seen that people are people, no matter where you go. There are great people, and terrible people. Motivated people, and lazy people. I don’t care what country you’re from. Your life is what you make it. Your culture might be different, but that just means we’ll have a bit more trouble understanding where we’re both coming from, not that my culture is better than yours.


But even after we take all of that into account, we’re missing the point. Because Trump wasn’t having a conversation about where he wants to go on vacation this year. He was talking about immigration, and who is coming to our country. We must not forget for one moment that Trump wasn’t just referring to the countries when he said “shithole.” He was asking why we want more people from these shithole countries.


It wasn’t about the countries. It was about the people who live in them.


And that’s where the charges of racism stick and no amount of wiping will clear them away. All of Trump’s defenders have been so focused on that one shithole word that they didn’t realize words themselves are fleeting things. It’s what we use those words to say which is far more important. According to reports, Trump wondered why we couldn’t get more people from “good” countries like Norway, as opposed to all these “shithole” countries like African nations. He wasn’t talking about places he’d like to live, or where he’d love to go on vacation. He was saying people from Norway are better than people from Africa. More desirable to have in our country.


If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is.


And yet people continue to defend the man. People I know. And instead of talking about what we should do about Trump–how we might mitigate the damage he’s doing to our country–we end up discussing the words he uses. He continues to do and say terrible things while we waste time being outraged. And we get tired. And we don’t want to talk about it anymore. I know I don’t. I’m so sick of hearing what he’s up to that I just want the next three years to be over and done with. Except ignoring it doesn’t help. It just lets him have an easier time of it.


So don’t be fooled. Don’t let them switch the conversation, or change the meaning of what he said. Remember that it wasn’t about the word (though the word was bad enough as it was). And it wasn’t about the countries (though that too, would have been awful). It was about the dismissive thoughts he had about the *people* in those countries. When  you can dismiss entire countries of people with such ease, how are you anything but a racist? And you’re one step closer to treating people like commodities, not individuals, something which I think Trump already does. The more we focus on the word and not the meaning, the more we allow ourselves to be inundated with his ideology. We begin to normalize it, and it becomes that much easier for racist groups to thrive in  our nation.


Words have consequences. They lead to actions. We need to keep our leaders accountable not just for what they do, but what they say.


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $3/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 15, 2018 07:22

January 12, 2018

How to Decide How Long to Visit a City

[image error]In conjunction with my European travel post yesterday, I was wondering if I might ask the hivemind a question. I’m looking at going to some new cities on this trip, but it’s always a balancing act, trying to decide how much time to spend in one city vs. trying to see multiple cities. What is your general approach?


I think it boils down to two different mindsets. On the one, it’s fun to go see new places, check out the “best of” and then move on to the next. With this route, you don’t get to really *experience* any of the cities. It’s more like you consume them, like when you go to a restaurant buffet and try a little bit of everything. After the meal, someone might ask you what you liked, but you can only give a cursory summary of what you tried, and how they compared. You didn’t commit to a single dish, and so you don’t know any one dish very well. But you know a little bit about all of them.


On the other hand, you can spend multiple days in a city and really get to know it. (Well, as much as just a few days in a city will let you. In my experience, if you really want to get to know a place well, you need to live there at least a year or two. But since we can’t all go around moving to a place for a year or two . . . ) This route, you get to see the city at different times. Eat at several restaurants. Check out different areas. You don’t just see the “best of” sites. You get to hopefully go to lesser-visited places.


I see the advantages of both. If you’re never going to go back to an area again, it sometimes makes sense to rush through as much of that area as you can. But on the other hand, some of my favorite stories come from telling people about places I’ve seen and things I’ve done that most people never will be able to. It’s all fine and good to visit Vienna and see the Hapsburg palaces. But my favorite Hapsburg estate was the one at Svaty Anton. It’s a place hardly anyone has been, and I remember it really well. It’s different than any of the other palaces I’ve been to.


Then again, if you’ve never seen a Hapsburg palace at all, maybe Svaty Anton wouldn’t be as interesting.


Perhaps in the end it depends on what you want to get out of your trip. Do you want to be able to watch movies and remember the time you were at that location? Tell other people about the cool cities you visited? Or would you rather talk about the interesting, novel things you did? Or remember the unique experiences you had that perhaps no one else (or very few) have?


I might be going to Poland or Eastern Slovakia. What do I want to see there? How long do I want to stay? So what would you plan to do if you were going to a country for the first time? What’s your approach been? Please share.


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $3/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 12, 2018 09:37

January 11, 2018

European Planning

[image error]This summer will have been three years since our last trip to Europe, which means it’s high time we get over there again. If you’re new to the blog, Denisa and I try to get to Slovakia once every three years, so she can see her family and friends, and so the kids can be immersed in that side of their heritage. It’s not as often as we’d like, but it’s about as often as we can afford, realistically.


I love the initial planning stages of a trip to Europe. There are just so many possibilities. What if we fly through Madrid and do a stopover there? Or we could see Iceland, or Denmark, or Sweden. What if we do another big road trip, hitting some Eastern European countries this time? It can all get rather overwhelming, of course, as there are so many decisions to make, and so many unknowns to wade through. Will we be taking a car or the train? If we’re staying in new cities, where should we stay? How long? Who do we want to see when we’re over there?


Decisions, decisions.


So what I try to do is start nailing down a few specifics first. Exact travel dates for flying to Europe and coming home. Last time when we had my brother in law fly out to us, his airline (Air Berlin) went insolvent for the return trip, forcing us to buy a new ticket. Having been burned like that once, I’m now becoming more cautious with my flights. This time, I’m going to put them on my Chase Ink Preferred Card, which comes with $5,000 of free travel insurance. If something crazy happens, we can get that money back, so that’s a perk. We’re also looking at Denisa going with the kids earlier, and me following a week or two later. That gives them more time to just enjoy Slovakia without me having to take extra vacation days, which come at a premium.


Getting the specifics in place make other things easier to plan. For example, it’s looking (at the moment) like we’ll fly in and out of Budapest this time. If that’s the case, then I think we might do a road trip of Eastern Europe. We could show the kids Budapest, Vienna, Bratislava, Prague, Krakow, and Kosice, with maybe a quick jaunt up to Dresden, because it’s really hard to convince myself it isn’t worth going back to Germany, even for a day.


Of course, that leads to other questions. Hotels. Rental cars. How many days to give to each city. You’d figure with all those different variables, I’d get overwhelmed. But this is where the advice I give my freshman classes each year comes in handy: when you’re doing research, give yourself plenty of time. If you’re trying to wait until the last minute, it all gets to be too much. I have eight months to plan this thing now. Plane tickets first, since it pays to be on the lookout for them early on. Hotels and rental cars can come later. They aren’t as hard to get. Places to see can be filled in as we go. Passports, cannot. Denisa and I both need new ones, and I’ll be putting in those applications soon. (Really want to avoid the mess that happened three years ago.)


With enough time, any research project can be fun. But then again, I’m a librarian. It’s kind of my thing.


Anyway . . . anyone want to get a tour of Slovakia? August is looking lovely.


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $2/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 11, 2018 09:40

January 5, 2018

Things I’ve Learned about Snow Since Moving to Maine


I’ve always been a fan of snow. Still am, even on days right after I’ve had to snow blow for an hour or so. We get plenty of the white stuff here in Maine, and having dealt with it and homeownership for a decade or so now, I thought it might be interesting to go over some of the things I’ve learned about dealing with snow since I moved up here.


First off, it’s got a life cycle. The best time to deal with snow is right after it’s fallen. It’s still fluffy and beautiful then. Wait for a day or two, and it starts to compact down. The sun melts it, and if you’re in Maine, anything that melts in the winter must freeze in the night. If you don’t do a good job keeping your driveway and steps and the sidewalk absolutely clear of snow, then they’re going to turn into a skating rink. And that skating rink might take a month or more to melt. During that melting process? It’s just going to get more slippery, and you’ll wish you’d gone out to clear off the snow right after it had come down.


Second, there are definitely types of snow. Fluffy snow is the easiest to handle. It’s light and doesn’t protest to being flung around with abandon. Then again, it makes terrible snowmen. For that, you want the temperatures to be warmer when it’s snowing. That gets you the good packing snow you’ll need to create anything you want to hang around for a while. (Waiting for the snow to melt some doesn’t do the same thing. You just wind up with fluffy snow covered by a crusty layer of ice. The colder it is when it snows, the more snow you get. This is because fluffy snow accumulates faster than dense snow. Same amount of precipitation, wildly different snow totals.


Driving in the snow isn’t terribly difficult as long as you take your time and watch out for curves. Give yourself a wide cushion around your vehicle. Remember it’s going to take you a longer time to stop than it would otherwise. Sadly, many other people on the road will forget this, especially if they have four wheel drive. It will also be complicated by the fact that the more snow you get, the higher the snow banks become. The higher they get, the less you can see when leaving your driveway. That’s a bad thing.


“Plowed roads” don’t necessarily mean “bare roads.” In Maine, they get most of the snow off the road, but there’s usually an inch or so left until the sun and the salt have done their job. If I waited for the roads to be completely clear after a storm before I went out, I’d be waiting a few days.


Snow is a great insulator. Ideally, you pile it up against the foundation of your house. It keeps the wind out and the warmth in. I’ve been having issues in my bathroom with the pipes freezing, so today when I was out clearing the driveway, I made sure to pile a bunch of snow next to my bathroom wall. I’ll be surprised if the problem persists. (Until the snow melts, that is.)


Snow is heavy. Get enough of it, and your house can have issues, so you’ll want to think about getting a roof rake. This is basically a scoop with a loooooong handle. You stand on the ground and rake the snow down off your roof so that your roof doesn’t collapse. I usually don’t worry about this until there’s a foot or so on my roof, or if I know it’s going to rain. (Yes, we do get rain in the winter here in Maine. Now and then.) Rain + snow = heaviest snow. Wait for that slush to freeze and you’ve got serious issues on your hand.


Snow also insulates ice, meaning if you’re walking across a snow-covered pond in Maine, the ice might be much thinner than you’d assume. It doesn’t matter if the temperature was 20 below. Give that ice a good coat of snow, and it might still be dangerous. This does not keep people from driving snowmobiles or even trucks out onto the lakes. Then again, not all people are sensible.


To really enjoy snow, you need to have a good plan in place for how to deal with it. The first winter we lived here, we had a bad system. We tried to plow it with our lawn tractor. It makes sense in theory, but you only get one real shot to create snow banks. Push the fluffy stuff into piles, and it turns into bitter hard mounds of ice. Trying to push fluffy snow into bitter piles of ice doesn’t go well for a lawn tractor. It doesn’t have enough oomph behind it to get the job done.


That first winter we got hammered with snow. Life was pretty rough. As soon as we had a snow blower? Life got so much better. That said, there’s a learning curve with a blower as well. Knowing when to do it, how to approach it, and how to keep the blower from going through shear pins. (They’re set up so that the auger cuts through a metal pin that keeps it in moving if it encounters anything that might overwhelm the engine, like big branches or shards of ice. This is good, because it keeps you from ruining your blower. It’s bad, because replacing those pins is mighty tricky and cold at 6am on a winter morning. So you want to avoid it if possible.)


These days, we’ve got it down to a science. I know when to snow blow and how to do it effectively. That lets me look forward to the snow instead of dreading it. It also helps to work for an institution that regularly cancels work because of the snow. I don’t care how many times people in warmer climes brag to me about how they don’t have to deal with the cold. They also don’t get to wake up one morning and stay in bed without having to go to work, just because it snowed. Snow days as an adult are fantastic.


Anyway. That’s not an exhaustive list. I rattled it off the top of my head as I wrote. But it’s certainly much  more than I knew about snow before coming here to Maine. I continue to love it, and I always look forward to big storms on the horizon. That said, I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone. If you’re not properly set up for it, snow can be a really dangerous thing.


On that note, I’m going to head back to a comfy chair and maybe a video game or two. I’ve got a snow day today.


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $1/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 05, 2018 06:58

January 4, 2018

The Best Media of 2017


As I did last year, I tracked the media I consumed over the course of the year, although at the end I stopped tracking television shows individually, choosing instead to rate each season as a whole. (It got really  old having to enter in every single episode. A big enough pain that I just ditched that approach altogether.)


So here I have the best (and worst) movies, TV, and books that I experienced in 2017. I’m not going to include things I’d seen or read before. Only things that were new to me this year. They’re listed in the order I consumed them for each medium. Ready? Onward!


Movies I Gave a 10/10 to:



Spotlight
Moana
The Last Jedi

Movies I Gave a 9/10 to:



Memphis (the recording of the Broadway performance)
The Two and Only (recording of a Broadway performance)
Kubo and the Two Strings
Paddington
Beauty and the Beast (live action)
Little Evil

The Worst Movies I Watched (and their ratings)



Blue Velvet (3/10)
Pete’s Dragon (new version) (3/10)
Ice Age: Collision Course (2/10)
Jason Bourne (3/10)
10 Cloverfield Lane (3/10)
Sicario (4/10)
Batman v. Superman (4/10)
Starcrash (The MST3K version) 3/10

I have no idea why I finished Ice Age, other than my kids wanted to watch it. A terrible film in almost every sense of the word.


Television I Gave a 10/10 to:



Nothing

Television I Gave a 9/10 to:



A Series of Unfortunate Events
Big Little Lies
Game of Thrones 7
Stranger Things 2

The Worst Television I Watched (and its rating)



Nothing. I’m only rating a show if I watched the whole season, and if I didn’t like the first few episodes or so, there’s no way I stuck with it.

Books I Gave a 10/10 to:



Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, by George RR Martin

Books I Gave a 9/10 to:



Extreme Makeover, by Dan Wells
Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage
Bluescreen, by Dan Wells
Ones and Zeroes, by Dan Wells
Three Parts Dead, by Max Gladstone
Two Serpents Rise, by Max Gladstone
Full Fathom Five, by Max Gladstone
The Last Kingdom, by Bernard Cornwell
The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi
Sufficiently Advanced Magic, by Andrew Rowe
Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson

Out of professional courtesy, I don’t reveal the books I really disliked. But I’ll say that I read one book that I gave a 2/10 to, and two I gave a 3/10 to, and one I gave a 4/10 to. Additionally, one book I just stopped reading altogether because I thought it was a waste of my time.


So there you have it. I’d be interested in hearing what the best things you consumed the past year were. Share away!


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $1/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 04, 2018 08:57

January 3, 2018

Requisite Accountability Post: Goals for 2017 (and Updates for 2018)


2017 is over, in case you missed it. Which means it’s time for me to report out on how I did with my goals from last year. (I’ll discuss my goals for the coming year tomorrow.) Here they are, one by one.



Submit another book to editors. Last year I went into the new year with one real hope for a submittable book. UTOPIA. I wasn’t even sure how solid of a book that one was. I’m happy to report that I still got to check off this goal, since I’ve submitted MEMORY THIEF 2 to my editors at Adaptive. (Who have yet to give the final green light, but they’re happy with the book’s progress, and it’s still very much on track.) To make that great situation even greater, I’m in a much better place going into this year. UTOPIA is stronger than I thought it might be, and I have a completed second draft of MURDER CASTLE. It was a good year for writing. For 2018, I want to do this again. UTOPIA or MURDER CASTLE submitted, and ideally one other book written (at least the first draft done).
Get down to 180 pounds. Didn’t quite make this one. I did get down to 180.8 in December, but then fell off the wagon some toward the end of the month. That said, I have a good plan in place at this point, and if all goes well, I’ll be at 177.6 by the end of the month. So we’re very close on this one. My goal for 2018 is to get to 175 and stay there. I think I can do it!
Read a book a week. This was difficult. I had to push myself to stay at this day in and day out, but I’m pleased to report that I managed to finish my 52nd book on December 30th. It’s a goal I’ve really enjoyed, despite how trying it is, and I’m definitely going to stick with it for 2018.
Improve my Slovak. I did well at this one for a while, but then summer happened, followed by fall semester, and . . . it all fell apart. Still a good goal, but I didn’t do too hot on it at all. I’m hesitant to add it back to my list of goals for 2018, but I’m going to keep it in mind and see how it goes.
Continue to declutter my house and life. I do think I’m getting better at not being such a clutterer, but I still have a ways to go with this. The thing is, when I have lots of time, this is a relatively easy thing for me to stay on top of, even with three kids at home. It’s when Denisa and I get swamped with stuff that it all falls apart. So if you ever want a barometer for how our lives are going, just come and count the piles in our kitchen and bedroom. Sigh. Realistically, I’m removing this as an official goal.
Continue reading to DC each evening. I did a good job with this the first half of the year, but a worse job the second. On the plus side, that’s about when DC started blooming as a reader herself. She’s now reading Percy Jackson and loving it, so that’s a huge step forward. I’m counting this as a success, though I’d like to still do more of it. I bought all three illustrated Harry Potters that have come out so far . . . I’d like to read together with her, but I don’t think I need to have it as a goal anymore.

So there you have it. Not too terribly bad, though I could have done better in some areas. How did you do? What goals have you set for yourself in the coming year? Do share!


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Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. I’m looking to get to $10/month to justify the amount of time I spend on this blog. I’m at $1/month so far. Read this post for more information. Or click here to go to Patreon and sign up. It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out.

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Published on January 03, 2018 10:57

January 2, 2018

The Future of the Blog


The holidays have come and gone, and I’m back at work once again. Back on the blog too, if you hadn’t noticed. (Which I assume you already have, seeing as how you’re here. Reading this. Right now.)


I look forward to the last week or two of December the whole year. I take time off work and stay home. Visit with friends and family. Eat treats. Open presents. It’s a real vacation in the best sense of the word.


It’s hard to come back to “real life” in some ways. Easy in others. On the one hand, it’s fun to laze about and not worry about work and reality. On the other, it can get old doing nothing. At least it can for me. I start to get itchy, and there are things that need doing. At some point, I just want to get them done. Then there’s the kids, who have a great time having vacation, but they begin to get on each other’s nerves. (Especially when it’s cold out. It’s been in the negatives most of vacation.)


So I’m back now. Plenty of updates to go through over the next few days. Christmas presents. Goals for last year and this year. Family updates. That sort of thing. But I’ve been thinking over the course of the past few weeks. Looking at my life and seeing what things can be trimmed back. Where I can streamline. And while I’ve been shying away from ever looking too closely at the blog for this, this year, I decided to include it.


I blog each weekday, more or less. I’ve done it for almost a decade now. I enjoy doing it. I love getting thoughts down on virtual paper, and love reading what (most) people have to say about them. But make no mistake about it. It’s work. And it’s work that I’m not really compensated for at all, other than the warm fuzzies I get when I see many people reading a post.


When I started the blog, it was with the thought that it would get my name out there so that when I was a published author, I’d have a platform. And I do have that, but the internet has changed in the meantime. Authors can have platforms that are as simple as Facebook or Twitter. No need to churn out hundreds of words of blog posts each day for that. And so I have to acknowledge that the blog isn’t exactly a necessity for my authorial career either.


So what to do?


After much deliberation, I decided to basically put it out to my readers. I would love to continue to blog daily, but I need to have a reason for it. Some sort of a justification. And I put that “reason” at a pretty low level. $10/month. If there were enough of my readers willing to get together to pay at least $10/month (combined), then I’d take that as a sign there was interest enough to continue blogging daily. But if I couldn’t get that amount of interest, it would be a sign that I can cut back to just blogging when I feel like it. (I have no idea how often that will be. Judging from the past few weeks . . . not very often.)


How do I feel about asking for money for my blog? Well, seeing as how each post is around 750 words on average, and I write about 250 posts a year . . . that’s over 185,000 words, which is the equivalent of two novels. So I don’t think people are getting ripped off by their payment. And since I’m basically just seeing if 10 of you people will pay $1/month, that seems to be a fair price.


The great thing about this is that if I’m valuing my blog too highly, then I’ll find out, and I can stop putting as much effort into the blog. If people actually do value reading it, then I have the kick in the pants and justification I need to keep going.


Anyway. That’s where I am at the moment. For now, I will keep going with daily blog posts. But I’ll be reminding folks at the end of posts about the need to chip in money to keep the blog alive. If I can get to the $10 mark in a few months, then crisis averted. (If I get higher than $10/month, then I might be motivated to do more things, not just tread water.


Oh–and to contribute money to the blog’s survival, go to my Patreon page. You can sign up to give $1 or more per month. So I’m looking for 10 people to do $1/month, or one person to do $10/month, or . . . you get the picture.


Consider it an experiment. We’ll see how it goes. For now, thanks for reading, and have a happy new year!

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Published on January 02, 2018 09:59

December 20, 2017

Book Review: Oathbringer

Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Another Sanderson tome in the record book. This one was a bit of a different experience for me, and I’m not sure why. There’s a chance that I’m changing as a reader. In the past, I’ve loved diving into Brandon’s worlds. I remember with Way of Kings, I loved just hanging out in Roshar, finding out more about the world and its cultures and creatures. Words of Radiance was also a blast.


In a typical Brandon book, there will be a fair amount of set up as he lays the foundation, getting it ready for the huge payoff at the end of the book, where all the dominos fall into place, and Awesome happens. Oathbringer definitely had that cascade of events at the end, and it was most certainly awesome. But the foundation-laying section at the beginning felt like it went on too long for me. Enough so that I would give this 4.5 stars instead of the full 5, if I could. I rated it a 9/10 in my personal records.


But then again, it also took me a long time to finish the book. I started it at a busy time, and it’s long. 1200 pages is a lot of pages. It’s at the end of the year, and I’m trying to meet my goal of reading 52 books this year. So I have to wonder if I didn’t start to get impatient in the first two thirds of the book. There were sections I felt like things were dragging, but was that because I was worried about how long it was taking me to get through them?


And on the other side, if those sections weren’t there, would the payoff at the end suffer? I have to think that it would.


But really, this is a book for Sanderson fans. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to pick it up who hasn’t already read the first two books. And I also can’t help feeling like I would have had a better experience if I’d read the first two books more recently. But I don’t have time to do that, so I had to just read the summaries and try my best to remember. That inevitably makes some of the sections, with more obscure characters and plot arcs, suffer.


Some of this is the nature of epic fantasy. It feels like more and more, big fantasy books are tunneling into online message boards and fan forums, as people devote tons of time to figuring them out. They’re giant puzzles, and authors deliberately hide nuggets in there that will make fans debate events for months, if not years. I don’t think I’m that kind of a fan. I don’t think I ever was. I’m not a person who reads all the histories of Middle Earth. Until Game of Thrones was adapted, I had a hard time telling the myriad characters apart. I loved The Wheel of Time. It had a fair level of hidden things, and plenty of things to debate, but it didn’t feel overwhelming. They were more like sidequests that I could think about if I wanted to.


Epic fantasy these days seems to be swinging further into the side quests, and if you’re going to understand and enjoy them, you’re going to have to reread the books at the least, or dive into fan forums. In some ways, it feels like epic fantasy is going all TS Eliot on me, where “good” fantasy requires big time investment. Time I just don’t have.


This review has gotten a bit too cerebral for me, and I apologize. Let me sum up. Adored the ending. Really enjoyed most of the novel. Felt like some of it went too long or else got too into the weeds for me. If you’ve read the other two, why in the world aren’t you already reading this one?


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Published on December 20, 2017 09:00