Something handy for a change

I was researching some metaphysical stuff this morning, looking for some unique and creepy powers for the bad guys in my new book, and I came across the following article. It's completely sincere, it's practical in its application, and best of all, anybody with basic warlock powers can do it. Happy chanting!

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Making Warlock Staffs: Go and find a long branch, or limb, about 1 and a half inches wide, and about a foot as smaller than you. Carve the skin off of it with a knife. Carve it so that it's the actual wood that's showing, not the bark or skin. Once you've carved what you feel is enough off, enchant it by doing the following. Sit is a mediataive position and place the staff in front of you. Grasp it with both hands and lift it a little off the ground. Start drawing energy directly into the staff itself. Once there is a lot of energy in it, make the energy burst out and surround it like a flame. In your mind it should be like the staff itself is powering up. While holding on to it tightly, tell it what you want it's use to be. If you only want it to have control over fire, than chant something like "This staff shall have the power over fire, and listen well to my every desire" in your head. If your experienced enough in warlocking, you can make it have control over all elements by chanting

I am Nervous.

I have read the following words hundreds and hundreds of times, and I am conviced that they are either thoroughly putrid, each one of them diseased and wrong, or I am so intimately familiar with the material that I have lost objectivity. This is the first page of my book. Agents are reading it. Should I be worried? Or should I just chill out?

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The sun was cheerful, the sky was full of clouds, and the birds sang out through the forest.

None of it matched the old man’s mood.

He stomped up the path of the tree-filled vale, muttering to himself, and spearing his walking stick into the ground with each step. He ignored the balmy feel of the warm day on his skin, he ignored the faint scent of spring wildflowers, and he ignored the swish of old leaves around his ankles. Despite the calming beauty of the woodlands around him, he knew he was about to face a situation that called for focus, and courage, and righteous anger. He followed the path towards the edge of the woods until he saw an opening between the trees, and in the sunny clearing beyond, he got his first glimpse of the hill.

The hill from his dream.

The green mound stood stark against the blue sky, like the upper half of some monstrous egg. A light breeze sent waving ripples of grass chasing after one another, over the hill’s surface and across the clearing. To the old man’s eye, the hill was too round, too symmetrical, too unnatural. Just as strange in real life as it had been in his dream. It caused him to shudder, but he shook it off. Now was not the time for nervousness; it was the time for daring. He squared his narrow shoulders and burst out of the shade of the trees, scanning the clearing for what his dream had shown him he would find. Aged though they were, his eyes were still sharp, and they locked onto the creatures instantly.

They were Duergarr, dark-skinned dwarves, and there were two of them.

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How we observed Easter 2008

Here you see the combatants, and below, a picture of those not battle-ready.


We had a ball with this Easter egg hunt, not so much as last year, but fun nonetheless. Before we began, I gave the kids strict instructions regarding the littler ones, “the bigger kids should help the littler kids, and you should leave the more obvious eggs for them to find.” Sound simple enough? Keep your eyes on Elia about two seconds after I say ‘go’.

Brooke had a flare up of her tonsils, and ended up sleeping the whole afternoon with a temperature that got up to 103.6 overnight. The other kids were very good to her, though, and collected extra eggs just for her. When we counted the total eggs at the end, we realized there were still some hidden, and several of the bigger kids ran back out and found five more, just for Brooke.

We missed having Grace and Brandi, and since I knew that the hunt would mostly be the younger ones (and since we were so cruel to them last year), I abstained from my usual pranks and shenanigans. It was a straightforward ‘find-the-egg-eat-the-candy’ hunt. No quiz, no chores, no competitions to get out of doing said chores, and no multiple-choice answers dealing with ‘poop’.

Hailie was actually disappointed.

I should mention, so that you don’t think we’re ‘bunny-worshippers’, we did go to church, and Aunt Wendy gave the kids an object lesson using colored jelly-beans to illustrate the Easter message. Now you can enjoy the video with a reassured mind.

Celebration of the 56th anniversary of the birth of my mother

Happy birthday, Mom, hope you had a good one, and that you didn't mind having it tacked on to the end of our Easter festivities. You're not an afterthought, you're more of forethought combined with hindsight, intention, suspicion, and distraction. Surely you can plainly see what I clearly mean.

Updation

Gaw. I've been working on my car for three days - not sure if I've got it fixed yet. You know I really suck at anything mechanical right? What I need is a big strong man around the house, to fix the crack in the wall, the hole in the bathroom, the one lightswitch, the broken panel on the island, the drywall seam on the cathedral ceiling, and then, I'd have him go outside and get those cars in good working order, but only after he finished mowing and patching the lawn, transplanting some trees at the edge of the field, filling in the holes in the driveway, and the landscaping between the sidewalk and the house. Of course, after all that, he'd probably just come back in and flip on the TV and expect to drink my beer. Jerk.

If I ever get published, maybe I'll hire me a sherpa of some kind.

Writing-wise, I emailed the mega-agent to give her my new addy, and her assistant wrote back, saying that they appreciate my extreme patience, and that I can continue to send my manuscript out while they continue to consider it. That's really good. It means I can continue to send my manuscript out while they continue to consider it. So, I'm back in the market.

Before I received this request for exclusivity, I had a whole slew of agents carefully researched and targeted for solicitation. I kept the ol' query gun carefully aimed these last two months, but I had the safety on and the ammo in my back pocket. Today I'm gonna lock, load, and pull the trigger.

Wish me luck.

(shout out to sparkle_girl19, wuzzup!)

Veenie Babies: Ready to go!

Come with us, on a journey of the everyday, the commonplace, the life that is the Veens, as videographed by Chantze. Experience if you will, the full range of emotions that the Veenie Baby experience has to offer: thrill at the adventure, languish in the doldrums, laugh at the hijinks, and bite your nails at the frustrating and shaky bits.

It all starts early on a Sunday afternoon.

Picture this: the tender mother gives her children a Bible lesson because the lazy father keeps them home from church, and somewhere along the way, a plucky young twelve year old discovers, at his elbow, a video camera - unattended - and simply begging to be fiddled with. His fashion-sensible diva of an older sister bears the brunt of his creativity, while the rest of the clan wanders in and out of the picture, innocently having their likenesses captured, all the while never suspecting that soon, their candid and quiet home life will be displayed for all to see... on the world wide web.

Even the dog gets in the show, here at Veenie Baby land.

So grab some popcorn and a family-friendly beverage and enjoy, because the Veenie Babies are ready to go! (to Wendy's house, in case your curious)

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disclaimer: the odd text you've just read was merely a result of the time it was necessary to kill while the video was uploading, and the boob-shot was purely accidental. No member of the Veen family is in serious need of therapy.

Laura's Life Story

Y'all are in for a real treat here. By popular demand... it's "Laura's Life Story"

(actually nobody came out and said they wanted me to post this, but, I can read minds through my new, blindingly fast internet connection)

I especially enjoyed the commode scene - whilst disappointed that the twins backed out - and the joke scene - did Hailie study that twenty-year-old video or what?

All-in-all, Mistress Shortensweet did a swell job of organizing the skit (and everything else - or so I'm told), and the girls did a good job of acting, and, having the guts to get up in front of everybody and be silly. Which is almost the same thing as saying 'get up in front of everybody and be Laura'.

Although I wasn't invited, and totally missed out on everything fun and funny and tasty and sat home with misty eyes and a growling stomach, I thought I'd throw in a few snapshots by Cindy. Just to show you what a good sport I am. (sorry about the exceptionally poor quality, think I need to adjust some settings on my camera or something)

We finally got some faster internet.

So, in order to test its upload speeds, Im gonna go ahead and upload something. Hmmmm.... how bout this?

In news of an unrelated nature, and to summarize everything I've been doing when I haven't been blogging (hang on now): twins are in cheerleading gonna get their pom-poms next week I started a new book and I'm eighty pages into it still haven't heard from my dream agent but came to the decision that I'll never ever grant an exclusive on partial manuscripts again because I've spent five months of the last year now just waiting on lone agents Chantze is doing well but he's in trouble because he kicked a crack in our kitchen island when he was mad at his sister Paige and then there's Hailie who had a choir competition this last weekend and her choir got all 'ones' which is the highest score and I have video of everything that I could post but I'm a lazy lazy man and I haven't even gotten them off the camera yet.

Huh. This video upload is taking a little while. Think I'll try a picture next, see how that goes.

Holy heck, that was fast. (Ain't Hailie purty) So yeah, we might keep this internet service. Along with the two new phones, which means we'll be shutting off our land line, which means we'll have new phone numbers, and new email addresses, so... be thinking about how best to memorize them.