Monday, April 26, 2010

Review: Zombies of Mora Tau

Wow, what a lifeless movie. No, really..bad pun aside, this film was boring. About as exciting as watching tryouts for the flea circus. A bunch of Americans travel to Africa where they meet more Americans. Seems there are some diamonds in a sunken wreck off the coast, but it's being guarded by a bunch of zombies. LOTS of talking, arguing and yelling ensue. This one is dark, hard to see and has characters that you want to see pulled to a watery grave. Overall, a real snoozefest.

Lesson's imparted by this film include:

1. Every ship has at least one crewman named Johnson.
2. Zombies are clean freaks, maintaining pristine abodes.
3. Zombies have swimming skills that are only eclipsed by those of Michael Phelps.

Go to review.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

When It Rains

After two solid weeks of rearranging the interior of the house, I thought I had reached the point where I could return to a normal schedule.

Wrong.

The Other Half's dad had to hospitalized due to low blood sugar. The following week (this past week), her mother went in for surgery. Her dad was so stressed by everything - coupled with his bouncing blood sugar levels - that he had to be taken to the hospital again. My poor wife has been run ragged, and she is nearing the point of utter exhaustion and mental breakdown. Right now her dad is at home and her mom is doing good in the hospital, recovering. I took some days off from work last week to help, but man am I pooped. It's been a hell of a month.

For fans of the Graveyard, a new review is coming soon. It's been written now for weeks, I just have not had the time to proof read it. Tomorrow I should have the chance to do that.

On the writing front, I have not written a damn thing in weeks, but that is about to change. I got the news today that my submission for the Permuted Press "Times of Trouble" time travel anthology made it past the first elimination round (meaning it didn't get rejected right off the bat). The editor asked for some mild rewrites and expansion in some spots, so I'm gonna work on that this week, too.

Another bright spot has been reconnecting with an old friend. We fell out of touch over the last few years, but hopefully we can keep the lines open again this time.

It's back to the day job tomorrow. :(

Monday, April 12, 2010

The Great Spring Rearranging

About two weeks ago I came to the realization that I was rapidly running out of bookshelf space. The bookcases in my office: crammed. The DVD shelves in the bedroom: overloaded. The bookcases in the downstairs library: close to bursting. The solution? The four big bookcases given to me by my mother before she died. They've been sitting out in the garage for the last few years and the time finally came to clean them up, move them into the house and use them. Alas, things could not be that simple. Are they ever? Those four bookcases don't really match any of the others, so I wanted to keep them all together on one wall. This necessitated moving half the freaking house around. Because various bookcases were bought separately, not all match and are the exact same height. Others were inherited and are unique. Thus the great move went like this:

1. Move the four bookcases from the garage into the library.
2. The three bookcases usurped from the library would go upstairs, one to my office, two to the bedroom.
2. Move two existing bookcases from my office to the bedroom.
3. Move two different existing bookcases from the bedroom to my office.
4. Completely rearrange the (now) 8 bookcases in the bedroom.
5. Remove collectibles from one large bookcase in living room and place into two barrister bookcases given to us my The Other Half's mother.
6. Move this now empty bookcase and use it for books.
7. Move four small bookcases from various locations around house to bedroom.
8. Move one (of two) TVs from bedroom to office.
9. Rearrange entertainment center downstairs.
10. Buy wood and cut new shelves for various bookcases.

Of course, in order to do all this moving, all the books and DVD's in these bookcases had to be removed. Great googly moogly! I never knew how many I had until I went to take them out and keep them in the same order. There were books and movies stacked EVERYWHERE! Some books moved from one room to another, but for the most part, they stayed where they were at. The really tough part was because The Other Half has a pinched nerve in her neck/back, she can do very little physical work. Thus it fell on me to move everything by myself. With my bum shoulder it took some work, but I managed to get everything done over the last two weeks - and this is why it's been so quiet on this blog...I've been utterly exhausted. Now, after all this moving, there is plenty of shelf space for more books and DVD's. At least for another five years or so. After that, I have no idea what I'll do.