Blog about nothing

You'd think I'd have some good reason for blogging, but it's mostly just a mood thing for me, and tonight is one of those odd, nothing going on, too late to start anything new but too early to get ready for bed so maybe I should blog kind of nights.

I'm finally ready to release my latest book, Scrolls: Nekros, which is the sequel to my 2011 release Scrolls Season One.  It's easily the best thing I've ever written, and it's my personal favorite as well, so I can't wait for it to be available.  The proof copy is in the mail right now, but I have every reason to believe it'll be perfect and fantastic, which means the book should be available in paperback and e-book form in about a week.  So yeah, that's exciting.

I have my daily workout routine up to 30 minutes now.  I know that's not superhuman or anything, but it's a huge deal for me.  Whatever it is that humans do to look after their health and be in shape, I've pretty much done the opposite of that for about fifteen years straight.  When we first set up our exercise room a few months ago, if I could string together 5 minutes straight of exercise it was a miracle.  But I've stuck with it, done what I could, increased when it felt like my body was ready, eaten MUCH SMARTER AND BETTER (which pretty much is accomplished by swearing off fast food, which has been the best decision I ever made), and now my workouts are 30 minutes long.  I do 18 minutes on the treadmill, and then 12 minutes on the exercise bike.  I've still got a long way to go.  It took me fifteen years to get myself into poor shape, so I know it's not going to be an easy task to undo all of that and get into shape.  But I already feel a thousand times better than I did, and I can already tell an amazing difference in how I feel when I'm out and just my general physical fitness and health and such, so that's all really good.  I tend not to oversell it, because I know there's a REALLY REALLY REALLY long way to go, but getting the workout up to 30 minutes was my biggest starting goal, and so I'm pretty excited to be at that point now.  Just gotta stick with it, and good stuff will keep happening.

My hair is at its absolute worst.  I look like a member of the Beatles or something, back in their matching suit era.  Of course, I haven't combed my hair in like eleven days, so it's probably fine if I comb it.  But uncombed, it's terrible.  I wore a hat in the house today just so I didn't have to see my hair in the mirror.  Pretty dumb, huh?

I read an article about murderers today.  It was truly disturbing.  Like just getting this small glimpse into the thought process of true psycopaths, it's awful.  It's so scary to think about people like that being out there in the world.  I like to think the best of people, to believe that deep down everyone has good in them, but more and more my inclination is to just lock the door, avoid eye contact, and stick to the small pocket of people I'm familiar with.  Not the healthiest attitude in the world, I know, but heck, it might be the safest.

I guess that's about all I have to ramble about tonight.  I gotta get up early tomorrow (early for me is 9:40 am, which sounds AWFUL) to go get the paper.  Which doesn't mean I'm going to go to bed at a decent time, as you'd need at least twenty percent more common sense than I have to do something like that.  I'll just stay up late as usual, and then grumble and cuss when my alarm goes off at 9:40.  And then push snooze like 8 times, and eventually leave my house around 10:30.  Yes, I'm "that guy" when it comes to setting an alarm and getting up.

I cancelled my Blockbuster Online account today.  It was a mercy killing, something I should've done long ago.  I hate Netflix with a passion, and I think they're pretty worthless, but over the past year Blockbuster Online has become just as bad, if not worse.  Of the 24 titles in my online queue, 18 were either unavailable or on "long wait". The thing I always liked was the ability to swap movies from the mail with movies in the store, but our local Blockbuster has been nosediving in quality for the past year.  Now they only order a handful of new releases, and if you're not there within the first thirty minutes they open on Tuesday, you just don't get a chance to get a new release.  I guess I see most movies in theaters anyways since I have to review them all for the paper, so I can live without a rental service.  If the urge strikes me I'll either go Redbox it or just use On Demand on my satellite service.

I have no clue why anyone on Earth would care about me cancelling Blockbuster Online, or my plans for renting movies in the future.

I jumped down an entire staircase in high school on a dare.  I was sort of an idiot in high school.  It hurt super bad, but I did it.  I landed on my feet at the bottom and just collapsed, then slid into a brick wall.  The whole thing knocked the wind out of me and I just laid there like the idiot I was for quite a while.

Anything else we should talk about before I go?  My bank has made me mad.  I jumped through a bunch of hoops to keep my checking accounts free (I have two, one personal, and one we use for Hall Bros business).  They forced me to set up two savings accounts, and link them to the checking accounts, and schedule regular monthly transfers into the savings accounts, and thus my checking accounts were free.  And then one day last month, both checking accounts get hit with a $15 fee, causing one of them to go negative (yeah, yeah, I've been broke lately), so they then charged me a $39 overdraft fee.  After talking to them, apparently now no checking accounts are free, so I'm a dope with 4 bank accounts for no reason at all.  I think I'm going to go close 3 of them.  I'd close all 4, but I have direct deposit from my second job set up to my main account, and I'd have to make a long trip into Dallas to switch that at the corporate office.  It's pretty much the worst drive ever in the history of traffic, and I'll probably not do it ever again if I can get away with it.  So yeah, Wells Fargo, you are a crappy, greedy bank.  The only thing you have going for you is employing the girl that I so dearly like.  She's delightful, and I'm sure if it was up to her all the checking accounts would be free.

You know what the thing about working out is?  It's not that it's that hard (at least now that I'm in better shape), it's SUPER BORING.  As a music freak, you'd think I'd just listen to music, but that gets really boring to me.  I try talk radio, but it's rare that I find the right program when I'm exercising, so I either get forced to listen to Hockey Talk on sports radio or like a discussion about the physiology of turtles on NPR.  My roommate and I are talking about going in together on a small flat screen TV to hang on the wall.  Not sure when I'll have the freed up funds for it, but I can't wait to make that happen.  It'll really remedy what is my most hated thing about working out, which is just the crushing boredom.

Seriously, what's the deal with this new boy band "The Wanted"?  I thought we abolished boy bands.

I bought a book called The Black Opera and I can't wait to start reading it.  It's set in the 1700's or 1800's, something like that, and there's this group who are putting together an opera so evil that it has the power to summon the devil.  And so this down on his luck writer gets hired by the king to write a counter opera, something so pure and good that it would counteract the black opera.  Such a cool idea, and I'll probably start reading it once I'm done editing the book I'm editing.

Okay, I'm gonna shut up now.  If you read this far, then I'm fairly certain some amazing good fortune is going to befall you soon.  I hope everyone is doing great, and life is treating you well, and that you are in good spirits, and that there's more good than bad in each day for you.  That's how it tends to go for me, but then again, I'm kind of simple :)