Books, Book Clubs, and Other Stories

So, a couple of ideas have been rattling around my head for a while, and I just wanted to put them out into the ether so that maybe someone, someday will hold me responsible for my goals.

I've always had a goal of writing a book.  If you'll look at the Prierium Saga, you can see that I don't have enough patience, diligence, perserverance, or interest (or something) to see a project of this kind to completion.  This is where the idea part comes in.

I'm considering purposely constraining the length of my writing, so that I actually get a sense of completion.  It's probably because of the internet, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.  Super-short stories, like 200 words or less, I think will help me focus on developing basic plot, setting, conflict, and resolution in my stories.  Then, if I feel like it, I can expand any of them I actually feel passionate about.

Also, I've decided that I can become a more well-rounded person by reading books while I'm on the bus, and during other down time.  This has necessitated me to move my scripture study to the early morning, which hasn't been bad so far.  So far I've read My Story by Elizabeth Smart, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, and am now working on The Infinite Atonement by Tad R. Callister.  This is all within the last week or so.

I thought that maybe I could further my well-rounded-ness (by making up words) and guide my future reading by having a type of book club.  Don't really know where I would go with that at all, especially since that's all I remember my high school English classes being (I didn't really like my English classes, probably because of all the writing).

Any comments or suggestions are appreciated.

Update (November 11, 2014):
I discovered that through the miracle of the internet, you can buy most books published for less than $4.  If a book club read twelve such books in a year, that would be a total investment of $48 every year.  I guess I wouldn't have to limit myself to the public domain this way.

October in Review

Life in Wisconsin has been fun.  It's also gotten colder.

Fall in Wisconsin

It was nice to have a fall for a change this year.  The leaves actually turn colors and stay there for a significant amount of time before the snow comes.  It reminded me of the pictures I've seen of myself in New Jersey when I was a kid.  I would say that I remember it, but I don't really remember it much at all.

I wanted Baby Thor to have a similar false memory, however, and made sure to have him play outside in the leaves and took pictures of him sitting in them.  He loved crunching the leaves under his feet, but he had just learned how to walk, so wearing shoes and not falling over outside on the bumpy ground didn't really happen.

That reminds me that Baby Thor learned to walk this month.  Now he does his very best at running at full speed.  Thankfully, he's not quite there yet.  He also knows a few baby sign language signs (I have to admit that I made some up for him) and frantically signs everything he knows all in a row when he wants you to do something.  If he was talking, he would say something like "Please please milk please more please please" when he wants a cracker. It kind of defeats the purpose of teaching him the signs.  But it's better than listening to him cry.

We also took him to the ward Halloween party on the Saturday before Halloween.  He was a very cute Captain America.  There was a trunk-or-treat at the church and we went around teaching Baby Thor to say "hi" and then say "please."  And by say I mean sign, with us as interpreters. The hard part was getting him to let go of the candy and put it in his bag.

It got cold enough for hot chocolate one day.
Bonus points for the glass stir rod.

Just musing here.  It'll be interesting to see how much more documented Baby Thor's childhood will be than mine, thanks to the smartphone.  It doesn't cost me anything (except hard drive space on a Google cloud server) to take a picture or a video.  And I don't have to own a camera or a camcorder.  Or buy film for either one.  The wonders of technology.

I joined a research group this week, which is a relief for me.  I wondered for a second about what might happen if I didn't get into a group.  I could only think of sitting by myself in the TA office (where we hold office hours and hang out when we aren't in our groups) and possibly getting kicked out of the program.  I would be stranded in Wisconsin without anywhere to live (can't live in student housing if you aren't a student) and without enough money to get home (we're on a tight budget, but making it).

Anyway, I'll be doing research that I'm excited about, and I like the people that I'll be working with as well.

Hayley and I set up our Christmas tree on November 1st.  Now, before you go all Thanksgiving-comes-first on me, we've decided to make it a Thanksgiving tree.  We'll add a crappy plastic ornament every time we show our gratitude for something.  Then, after Thanksgiving, we'll add all our sentimental ornaments, just in time to fly home for Christmas and spend it with family.  We would be coming home for Thanksgiving too, but I only get a four-day weekend.

I've been busy and not writing in my journal, so I can't think of any really funny things that have happened to us.  I'm planning on getting better at that.

And good work voting America.  If you are able to vote and didn't, [insert guilt trip here.]