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CarlHoliday

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Blog Entries posted by CarlHoliday

  1. CarlHoliday

    7227

    By CarlHoliday,

    I spent the night on Donner Summit over by the sign saying 7,227 feet. It was a hard slog up the hill from Sacramento and I couldn
  3. CarlHoliday
    I drove across Wyoming today; well, actually I drove the first 158 miles early, like just after midnight until 4 AM when I ran out of hours and needed to stop to reset my logbook. First of all, I
  5. CarlHoliday

    ND is OK

    By CarlHoliday,

    First of all let me make this perfectly clear, I like North Dakota. I know some people think it as an American version of Siberia, but from what I
  8. CarlHoliday

    Prescott, AR

    By CarlHoliday,

    Don't you hate it when you're traveling and you get to some place that barely has cell service. Kind of between towers. That's Prescott, Arkansas. When I arrived yesterday I couldn't get a signal, so internet access was haphazard at best. So, I slept. Good thing, too, because I'm heading into the Metroplex this morning. Fuel in Irvine, delivery in Fort Worth, and a hell of a lot of four wheelers buzzing about paying attention to no one but themselves and the person sending them a text message, which they have to answer right now at 70 mph weaving through the big trucks going much slower.
     
    Yesterday morning? Night before last? I don't exactly remember when, but I was reading Krista's blog and she mentioned working on a story for the Anthology. Well, didn't I have a cow? I'm not working on a story for the Anthology. I'm struggling to get Chapter 12 of The Pastel Cowboy out the door. Happy to say I am working on it, sometimes I get out 200 words. Sometimes only a sentence. Sometimes not even that. I am up to page 8. Only 12 more to go. Two and half months and only eight pages. Oh, joy!
     
    Anyway, the ol' gray matter was thinking about what Krista said and it came up with a terrific idea for a story. It's sci-fi, has a strong religious element (sorry, no Christian bashing), a tiny bit of gayness (gaiety?), and rain. I thought of the story first, then last night in a brief moment of access I discovered the theme was "The Rainy Day." Well, let's just say my main character is not looking for a rainy day. I don't think that gives away too much of the story, does it?
     
    Oh, well, time (03:04) to go to work.
     
  9. CarlHoliday

    Ohio

    By CarlHoliday,

    I drove through Ohio yesterday. Mostly across, but a good portion was actually through the state as I drove down State Highways 66 and 48 from Minster to I-70 where I headed west again.
     
    Small town America. That
  12. CarlHoliday

    Waiting

    By CarlHoliday,

    Do you enjoy waiting?
     
    I don't.
     
    I'm at a truck stop in Idaho Falls waiting until it's time to go pick up my next load. I've been waiting here since noon yesterday.
     
    When I was on my way here the day before yesterday, I received a load that was supposed to pick up two hours before my current load was to be delivered. Not only was it two hours earlier, it was over an hour away. I figured, with a lot of luck and favorable weather, I'd be six or seven hours late for the pickup. I let the weekend dispatchers know the situation. Thankfully, they took the load away from me, but they didn't give me a replacement load. Such is life.
     
    Then yesterday, as I was getting ready to deliver the load, I received the replacement load. It doesn't pick up until 13:00 this afternoon, thirty some miles down the road.
     
    So, I've been waiting.
     
    I actually wrote a little bit, too. I should've written more, but that didn't happen.
     
    I have to be in Topeka, KS, Wednesday morning. Needless to say, I'll be hauling ass for the next two days. According to my figures, if all goes well, which is highly unlikely, I should arrive at the delivery location ten minutes late. Sooooo, I'll have to make up time by going a little further each day than I should, pushing the limits, running right up to that out of hours time and going a bit further, all the while hoping nothing unforeseen happens.
     
    Oh, and the depression? Well, let's just say I'm doing too well, I'm too happy, which is not good either.
  13. CarlHoliday

    What do you wear?

    By CarlHoliday,

    What do you do for endless hours with nothing to do except keep the big truck between the lines and away from four-wheelers made of plastic and sheet metal?
     
    Listen to music? Yeah, sometimes and sometimes the road is so washboarded that the CD player doesn
  16. CarlHoliday
    I will be so glad when I get back to work. The past three and a half months have been totally not fun. The truth be known, I've always had a tendency to poo-poo co-workers with sprained joints for all their complaining about not being able to do anything. I mean a broken bone is definitely something bad, but a sprain? Come on, the word doesn't even sound bad. Broken bone, torn ligament, bruised tendon, now those sound painful and probably deserve a get well card, but a sprain, or even worse, a strain, just doesn't sound bad.
     
    Well, now I know the truth. Not being able to pick up my five pound Chihuahua is not a good thing, especially when she keeps coming to me to pick her up so she can see the world. Being only six inches tall doesn't give a dog a good view of the surrounding territory. Until just a few days ago, picking up the dog was, well, not something done without thought.
     
    That's all changed. My wrist is definitely getting better. Next week the hand therapist is going to start me out picking up weighted boxes. I have to be able to pick up 75 pounds to be able to go back to work. Next Thursday, I'm going to pick up that 75 pound box and put it on the shelf. Then next Friday, I'm going to the orthopedic guy and he's going to release me to go back to work. Happy days!
     
    Only, there's a tiny bit of a problem.
     
    Yeah, mother is getting worse. I'm not certain we'll be able to get her into the new place. Hopefully, that will work out before I leave, but I'm not certain.
     
    Then there's the wife. She'll be having surgery on the bottom of her foot on the First of June. Seems she tore a ligament when she twisted it back in December. It's not the bunion that is causing all her problems. The problem she's having, though, has more to do with her sciatica which is being aggravated because she can't put any pressure on her big toe. She walks funny and gets a pain.
     
    But, I'm going back to work and I'm going to have fun, a lot more fun than I'm having today.
     
    And, going back to work means getting back into the swing of things writing-wise. I'm possitively certain getting out on the road is going to increase my need to write. There's nothing like staring Death in the face on America's highways every day to get rid of writing blocks.
     
  22. CarlHoliday

    No words

    By CarlHoliday,

    Okay, I haven't written much more than nothing. I'm beat and I haven't done anything, not that I can do anything. I'm sleeping too much, then taking a nap because I'm too tired to do anything else.
     
    Strange thing is, I don't feel particularly depressed, although being super lethargic and not giving a flip about anything is a classic symptom. Maybe it's just that I'm getting settled here, after all it has been nearly two months since I've been grounded. Or, maybe, just maybe, it's the three doses of the antidepressant doing their magic. Maybe I'm just chemically subdued.
     
    I'd like to work on my three writing projects, but I look at them and nothing comes. Mostly, I think my filters are overpowering my need to write. It's damned near impossible to write when you keep filtering out the crap instead of leaving it for editing to tidying things up; oh yeah, that's right, I'm my own editor and have to remember to turn the editor off so the writer can write. When I'm feeling good, getting plenty of sleep, and getting up early in the morning to write, I'll write a thousand words or so, then go back in a few hours and edit the hell out of what I wrote. Maybe my editor is trying to be the author.
     
    Of course getting up early means going to bed early. Other than last night when I stayed up until well past one, I've been waking up about 2:30 with my mind aswim with writing ideas. The night before last it was all a bunch of esoteric crap from when I used to be heavily into the spiritual realm. It's fun until you wake up at 2:30 to discover the bump in the night is sitting on your bed and wants to go play high and seek on the astral plane. I haven't seen the bump in years, but he (well, it comes across as a "he") is still around. I can hear him sometimes. Like right now as I'm writing this.
     
    Yesterday I wandered over to the Argottean Federation and poked around on Orcol and Gurd trying to find a Schtickist for a story, but even that didn't last more than an hour. Boredom set in and I melted into oblivion.
     
    I need to get Chapter 11 of The Pastel Cowboy finished and out the door. It's been a month since Chapter 10, but nothing plus nothing is still nothing. Chapter 3 of Flight to Syracuse needs to be started and the short story I'll be writing for the Spring Anthology needs to be put together, right now! But, other than this little missive, there is no interest in venturing forth.
  23. CarlHoliday
    I'm currently at 17 pages (5,300 words) on The Pastel Cowboy, which is okay, but I need at least another 6 pages, or about 1,000 words. It's going quite well, but not well enough as far as I'm concerned. It's been a real slog getting to this point and I didn't get as far as I wanted along the story's timeline. In fact, barely two weeks have gone by when I originally wanted to go nearly three months. I don't like writing in the micro, but events in Zach's life at this point are occurring rather slowly.
     
    I've started working on a story for the Spring Anthology. It has three characters: Jamie, an eighteen year old high school senior; his boyfriend and narrator, also eighteen, but as yet unnamed; and the narrator's ninety-two year old great uncle, also currently unnamed. The only thing I know about the narrator and his great uncle is that they are Hispanic, but I haven't decided if they are recent immigrants or not. Interestingly, the narrator's mother is from a small town in Southeast Alabama and isn't Hispanic.
     
    When I was stationed in Abilene, Texas, back in the early Seventies I knew a guy from California and whose family was old Spanish, having come over in the Eighteenth Century. Also, in the mid-Nineties, I worked for a woman whose family was from Cuba. Then there was the guy in basic training who had a traditional mile long Hispanic name, who, when asked by our DI, in Spanish, where he was from, responded in classic Brooklynese, "I don't know Spanish, I'm from Brooklyn."
     
    I'm thinking the great uncle's generation will be the immigrants and the great uncle will be the last of his generation, his older brothers and sisters having already passed away. As I see it, he's living in a retirement home on Capitol Hill in Seattle, but I might put him in a small apartment in the same area. I haven't quite worked that out. The boys will be from North Park (my handy-dandy fictional city carved out of a large portion of the north end of Seattle).
     
    It's still a little early to pin a lot of things down, but the characters are coming together. I'm, also, thinking of giving a boyfriend to the great uncle, but as I see it right now, that person may have recently died, just to set a little tension in the storyline.
     
    On the personal front, taking three pills a day seems to be having a significant impact on the depression. I'm not suicidal anymore, but I am a bit more lethagic. Once I get to doing something, I'm able to continue doing it. It's just getting going that is the problem. And, I tend to save up a lot of similar tasks, like phone calls or writing projects, and doing them all a the same time. I don't know if that makes any sense, but today has been a writing day at the expense of all other activities, like exercising.
  24. CarlHoliday
    I finished Chapter 2 of Flight to Syracuse and got it posted to eFiction this morning. The boys are on their way, but have a slight detour to get away from one of David's brothers.
     
    I was thinking about the old TV series, Route 66, the other day and how Flight to Syracuse might end up being something along those lines. Well, when you consider half of the cast of Route 66 was gay, even though that did not come out (silly pun) in the storyline, it might work with my story. Well, my boys don't have a Corvette, but a Civic could be an appropriate substitute in this day of high gas prices.
     
    Then there is the reason for the David's flight, which comes out in this story, sort of reminds me of The Fugitive.
     
    Anyway, the boy's have made it to Lakeview, Oregon, which isn't on the way to Syracuse, unless you have to take a detour.
     
    The Pastel Cowboy is back on track and I'm actually almost done with Chapter 11. It's taken quite a bit to get back to enough sanity to handle the doom and gloom of the storyline, but other than a few minor conflicts nothing bad should be happening for a couple chapters. Considering how much fun I'm with Flight to Syracuse, I might try to keep writing the light stuff. It certainly does wonders for my overall attitude.
     
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