Good things

So I have nailed down a space to practice acupuncture for after I graduate. I will be an "associate" at Xin Xing Acupuncture with Dr. Xinmin Zhao. This rocks. For starters, I only have to pay a small percentage of my per-patient fee to the business, and I get use of a crazy nice medical office space. Further, I get to learn from one of the best practitioners of Chinese medicine that I know. It's a relief, I tell you.

I'll tell you what else-- it was sweaty work walking in to someone else's clinic and asking if I could set up shop there. By the end of it, she was pumped. So was I. And my wife may think I am a big pussy (shut up, Mike), but it took some balls to sell my self to that woman, and I am proud.

I just read "Understanding Comics," by Scott McCloud, and it rocked my world. It is a treatise on life through the lens of, well comics. Again, shut up, Mike. This will definitely change the way that you look at any kind of cartoon/comix. It blew my friggin' mind.

I am also on page 249 of the novel, and it is just starting to make my hands sweat a little. I have given myself an April 20th deadline to finish the goddamned thing. I'm shooting for around 100 more pages, which will bring it in at just around eighty thousand words. Incidently, I hit the fifty thousand work mark a while ago, completing the national novel writing month in just four months.

Good stuff, all around.

Lovin' life

So, we are the proud owners of a fully functioning horse stable, by George.

You might ask, but Bryan... I thought that you didn't know anything about horses? And I also thought that maybe you had made enough dumb mistakes to smell a poor idea from a mile away? That maybe your pain-in-the-ass-o-meter was slightly more developed after 27 some odd years on the planet.

And to that, sir, I would say this: True, I have, and it is.

But unfortunately, I took a wife.

So here's how it went:

Tuesday, March 6th: I come home from working on the website. Andrea says, "hey, so this woman stopped by. She rescues horses, and she doesn't have any money. What do you think about temporarily boarding horses in our barn? I tell her that it sounds great, but we have to have absolutely zero responsibility, and a hell of a sturdy contract before we go any further. Andrea agrees.

Thursday, March 8th: I come home from clinic. Andrea says, "hey, so I talked to our lawyer. She said she could do the contract for 250 beans. I say that that's fine, but the horse whisperer has to pay it. Horse whisperer of course is unable to pay it, and suggests that she find a contract on her own. The PITA-o-meter flicks, slightly.

Saturday, March 10th, 10:00PM: Horse Whisperer calls our home phone. My pain in the ass-o-meter begins to flick into the red. "What does this woman want?" I ask my wife. "I dunno," Andrea replies.

Sunday, March 11th, 7:00 AM: Horse woman calls again. I ignore phone call on general principle, even though I am awake. At eight in the morning, the incident repeats itself. I feel a sinking feeling in my guts. A half an hour later, a redneck shows up at the barn, with a fat child, and they both enter the barn. The redneck is smoking. He doesn't leave. I hear hammering. At this point, Andrea discloses that the horse people intend to seize the horse that day. There is no contract to speak of.

By noon, we had some half-assed contract from a different stable that said we were responsible for feeding the horse, mucking the stalls, and giving it water. I crossed out everything that implied we were responsible for anything at all. Then, I turned to my wife, and indicated that I would expect better communication the next time. By 7:00 Sunday evening, we had a horse in our barn.

A postscript: Turns out that the mare is preggo, the horse woman is moving her personal gelding (whatever the hell that means) in free of charge, some pregnant hillbilly girl adopted the pregnant horse, and we are officially suckers. They showed up at 5:30 AM (which still feels like 4:30 AM), waking up the house and the baby.

And Andrea is in a pissy mood about it. If I were more of a man, I would rub her nose in it. Instead, I will probably end up being the horse's personal caretaker, as well as the redneck's personal piece of man tail, all the while apologizing to Andrea because I am spending so much time getting buggered and taking care of the horse.

Right. So. Anyway. I bumped through a sticky point with the novel, which is good. I graduate in four weeks, which is petrifying. I need a new iPod, which is good and bad. I am reading "From Hell," by Allen Moore, which is excellent. I just saw Gremlins for the first time since the eighties, which was poor. My dog has Lyme's Disease, which is poor. Andrea's entire extended family is coming to town, which is alright, I guess.

Other than all that, not a whole hell of a lot going on.

Failure

Well, approximately fourteen days into the seventeen day prep program for about.com, I got my ass dropped. It wasn't about my content, but rather, site creation stuff, which is only nominally less depressing. I guess that the bottom line of this very time consuming foray into writing for the web is that I am not fantastic with rigid requirements.

Or any requirements, for that matter.

I think that it is time for me to review a few things, make a few changes to the way I operate. It is clear that I am able to wiggle and finagle my way through, occasionally shining, often failing, but I am tired of holding myself back for no other reason beyond sheer unwillingness to do anything that I don't want to do. Couple that with some fairly severe procrastination issues, and what you have, ladies and gents, is a loser.

But not just any loser... no, I am a loser who doesn't need to be a loser. A real slacker.

I think that the problem is that my life lacks structure, and without structure, I tend not to do the things I should be doing. For instance, right now, I could be writing, cleaning, meditating, working out, or even (ugh) studying for the test I have tomorrow-- a test that I really shouldn't try to pull out of my ass. But instead, I am tinkering around on my blog.

I think I need to put a little thought into it, and create a schedule for myself.

That, and I need to quit smoking (again).