The problem with memory he 
said was that you don’t
get to pick what you
remember. Sure you remember how
much it hurt and how
stupid you felt for doing
it again. But you remember
other things. You remember the
smiles and the laughs. You
remember you loved her and
you hate yourself for it.

Tags: Friday 55, NaBloPoMo '08

I have an idea for a story that might pan out tomorrow with any luck. It is about the nature of stories and about values and what not. Don’t want to say much more than that, but I think it might be read if I let is simmer for a little while longer. 

I caught up on the photo of the day. I think I have identified my laptop problems. I think a new power cord is what I really need. I also need more hard drive space. My desktop has 240gb of hard drive spave and less than 2 of it is still available. So I am going to pick up another external Hard Drive some time this weekend.

I still need to unpack more from my move. I have made a house cleaning plan that will make me do this. So next Tuesday night I start on the room with all my boxes in it – hopefully. I need to clean out some space so my dad can come visit me for Thanksgiving. Speaking of him, I am so jealous. He is on Vaca in Florida right now and tomorrow night if the weather is good he will get to see the next space shuttle launch. How jealous am I?

So I guess I did have something to say tonight. If I don’t get to the story tomorrow night I will at least write a Friday 55. Peace out and remember to keep it real.

Tags: Florida, NaBloPoMo '08, Vacation

I didn’t have any insperation for a story today. Sorry kiddos. I jsut worked a bunch of hours and got a lot done at work. In the last two weeks I have done as much as I did in September and October combined and I am still only halfway done. 

I have sad news. Not sad for you most likely but sad for me. A while back I downloaded 106 episodes of Big Finish Audio productions of Doctor Who. Today I finished the of the 106 stories. I am going into withdrawls without my stories. I spent two months listening to over a hundred 30 minute to two hour and 30 minute aduio productions. Most of them were extremly well done. The audio productions also had some of the best Mondosian stories ever, better than any from the tv series. If you don’t know what Modas is or Monosians let me clarify. I am talking about Cybermen. Yes the one, the only, the cybermen. Star Trek fans out there (I am one of them mind you) the Borg ripped the cyberman off coming and going. The borg are just cyberman painted black with a bunch of tubes and hoses runing in and around them. 

That is all I have to say about that I guess.  I just hope they restock Diet Dr. Pepper in the soda machine at work.  One last thing, I totally didn’t write this one, just in case you were wondering.

Tags: NaBloPoMo '08

Everything except Sci Fi tht is tonight. I had two very positve things come up today that I wanted to share with you. Yesterday i wrote something for one of my states to use. Not a bit of programing but some information for the end users. Today it sounds like several other states are going to be using my text also (tweaked to apply to that state of course). I don’t know the numbers but I imagine that it will be used by more than a dozen states. So having some of my work go around like that is great. 

The other bit of news is one that put a HUGE smile on my face. Back in my days at university when one my favorite professors taught philosophy. I still email him from time to time now. Today he emailed me and asked me to do a favor for him. He asked me to write a letter for him to the Tenure Committe at the University. I am sure lots of professors get asked to write letters for students but how many students get asked to write letters for professors?  I guess it doesn’t sound huge now, but to me it means a lot. 

I guess that is all I really have to say tonight. I welcome suggestions for story Ideas to write about, but mostly they ideas come from weird places. Sometimes the title comes first, sometimes I hear something to triggers a scene and I create a story to go around that scene.  The last story idea came from overhearing some religous talk on NPR, the stories can come from anywhere which means I don’t know when I will next have a good idea for a story or what it could possibly be about. For example Poem of my flesh, that title just popped into my head as I was walking down the hall of my apartment. Then I pulled out some old poetry I wrote in High school (A decade ago) and found something that would work well. Then I told a story with a poem of my flesh as the punch line and worked them in to together. I think it worked out well. 

In other news, if you leave a comment for me on the a Journal post and it doesn’t show up,one of two things might have happened. First time commenters get held until I can approve them. The other possibility is my spam filter might have caught you. I don’t have much of a problem with this on the journal but it does occasionally happen. Sadly I can’t do away with the spam filters. Let me show you a little bit of the spam comments I get. This is just for today and it isn’t all of them either. 

Tags: NaBloPoMo '08, Philosophy, Spam, Work

The professor said the ship was humanities last hope and I believed him.  I worked with the professor to help build the ship. Dorothy, the name, that was my idea. Ok, well it was our idea. Honestly, it was the professor’s idea, but I was there when it happened. I had been working with the professor for eighteen months. He had become almost like a father to me. He invited me over every Sunday night for dinner with his family.  His family was very kind to me, his wife Mary Anne and his daughter Susan. 

Just hold on a second, I am getting to the part where he thought up the name Dorothy for the ship, just be patient. 

Like I was saying, the professor took me in and looked after me. That is why I waited so long to tell him. I felt like I was betraying him, but I had to. So I worked my way up to, slowly. I asked him if he ever watched the ancient video stories. He said he had seen some, when he was in college and studied ancient literature. I asked him if he had ever seen one called the Wizard of Oz. I think it was that very moment when the idea came to him. And unfortunately it was that moment that I had to tell him I saw it the night before, that I watched it with his daughter, that I wanted to be her husband. He pretended that he hadn’t heard me, that he was to busy thinking about naming the ship Dorothy. He pretended that he hadn’t heard me, but I knew he had. He stopped inviting me to his house for Sunday Dinner and he ignored me the last three months of preparing the ship to leave. He made sure to assign me to tasks that did not involve him. 

The day finally came when the ship was to launch. He asked me to join his crew for the pre-launch preparations. I thought he had forgiven me. That on the day when we were all going to set off for a new home that he could finally accept me as his son. I thought I was going to be the happiest man in the world. He kept me so busy that day. We were running back and forth, constantly on the comm line with other crews. I lost track of time. We were three kilometers away from the ship when I heard the final boarding call. I yelled at the professor “we better get going or we won’t make the ship”. That is when he looked into my eyes for the first time in three months. He looked into my eyes and said that we weren’t going on the ship. He said I wasn’t good enough for his daughter and that he was to old to be a valuable member of the crew.

He left me at the station all alone without any transport. I walked two days back to town. The town was deserted; there was no reason for anyone to be there. The ship had launched. The town was empty. It took me ten years to finally track down the professor. He had taken a consulting job on a nearby colony. It wasn’t a dark and stormy night when I finally found him. It was midday. The sun was shining bright. I followed him, he was returning from a lunch meeting. I followed him across the street and into the alleyway. I must have caught him by surprise. The expression on his face was one of fear. The years hadn’t been kind to him. He looked like he was suffering from the illness that so many others were. I grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him close to me. I looked at him in the eyes. He knew there wasn’t any point to beg for mercy. He knew there wasn’t a chance of me showing him that.

I held him, he couldn’t get away from me. I told him, I told him that I had loved his daughter and that he betrayed not only me, but her as well. I told him that she would never forgive him. That she was out there somewhere in deep space, the last hope of mankind, on a ship that she would grow old and die on, and she would do that without ever seeing her father again or the man she loved. I told him that what he did was un-human and unforgivable. He asked me if I was going to kill him now. That he was ready for death and he deserved it. I looked him deep in the eyes, he crying. Then I said the last three words he would ever hear from me.

I said “I forgive you” and I walked away.

Tags: Dorothy, Hope, NaBloPoMo '08, Oz, Sci Fi