Think someone was ticked off at ABC journalist Charles Gibson? Click on the image below to see a screen capture his Wikipedia entry last night.
That's why you should always take anything you read on that site with a grain of salt.
However, the entry was worthy of a good laugh.
Adding swimming twice a week to my workout routine has had some nice, unexpected benefits.
First, every muscle in my body has become stronger and better toned. Marathon Girl is very happy with the results.
Second, my running’s improved. Yeah, that was truly unexpected. I thought since I was replacing two three mile runs with swimming that my pace would slow. That’s not the case. I’m running faster. When I started swimming Marathon Girl told me that, if done right, swimming would help my running. Did I believe her? No. Do I have egg on my face now? Yes.
Best of all, it’s given my fitness goal to work towards. After benching my weight (yes, I can still do it) I ran out of fitness-related goals. As a result, my workout routines have been rather flat and there been several days where I’ve had to motivate myself to get to the gym. My new goal is to be able to swim a mile without stopping by the end of the year and gives me the kick I need to go to the gym. Right now I can do seven laps before taking a break. In an Olympic-sized pool, a mile is 33 laps so I’m already 1/5 of the way to my goal.
Wish me luck!
My latest post on the HopeToHope blog is up. It's a response to the following question: I am angry at my wife and angry at God. My wife shot herself after receiving the news that she had been fired for a drinking problem. How do I deal with the fact that my pastor says, “God does not give more than we can endure?” Some days I feel like jumping off a bridge but I have two boys to raise. Any advice? You can read my answer here.
As a self-described political junkie, this presidential election has been anything but boring. I watched the primetime Democratic Convention speakers last week and the primetime Republican speakers this week at the expense of finishing my novel. Now with both sides equally energized, this presidential race is going to be a nasty fight all the way to the end which will make it all the more entertaining to watch over the next two months. Now if I can just stop refreshing the Drudge Report, I’ll actually get some writing done.
***
As someone who wouldn’t mind making a living as a speech writer, I have to say the best speech from either convention was delivered by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Describing herself as pit bull with lipstick was classic. And her zingers aimed at Barak Obama were good. Best of all, she showed just what a good speaker she is when the teleprompter stopped working and she had to occasionally glance at her notes. She didn’t miss a beat.
Obama’s speech was the second. It was well delivered, well-paced, and he did a good job trying to shed his liberal background and position himself toward the center. He still needs to prove that he can be an equally eloquent and effective speaker without a teleprompter.
McCain and Biden are tied with the most tepid speeches though McCain wins the tie breaker by at least speaking from the heart and sounding genuine – something more rhetorical and polished speakers often have a hard time doing.
Win or lose this November, Palin has a bright political future. If Obama wins, his political career is over in four or eight years – depending on whether or not he’s re-elected. But Palin could easily be the GOP nominee in 2012 and could make a strong case to run again in 2016 as well as define the Republican party the same way Ronald Regan did in the 1980. And should the GOP win this November, watch for a resurgent Hillary Clinton in 2012 who could have the same impact on her party as Palin will in hers.
Before you're wowed by any more Barak Obama speeches or revving up for Sarah Palin or John McCain's speeches this week, please consider the overwhelming groundswell support for the most talked about presidential candidate. Me.
Yeah, I'm serious. Click here.
Channel 3 News is NEVER WRONG!
:-)
See the above photo?
That’s the entrance to my new office.
That’s right. Office.
With number four due sometime in January (if you missed the subtle announcement, you can read it here), Marathon Girl and I decided it was time to get our basement finished. In all we’ll be adding a play room for the kids, an office, a half bathroom, some storage and finishing the washroom. Everything should be finished by mid-September.
The only thing I need to make the office complete (after it’s finished) are my overflowing bookshelves and a big, comfy couch. I’ll be browsing yard sales, Craigslist, and thrift stores for something I can feel comfortable stretching out and writing on.
I’ll probably still do a lot of writing in bed. However, it will be nice to have a quiet room I can retreat and write or edit when I really need some space. If anything, having an office should expedite the completion of my novel.
Writing in the (Salt Lake) Deseret News, Scott Pierce makes the following observation:
On multiple occasions in this column, yours truly has written that "Lost" took a sudden turn for the better.
That, once an end date was announced, the show quickly became much more watchable. Actually, that it stopped being unwatchable after a second season that drove viewers away by the millions. I'm not the only one who thinks so.
"That made all the difference in the world," executive producer Carlton Cuse said. "We now basically knew exactly how much time we had left to tell our story, and we were basically able to blast towards that ending. I think that really completely changed our storytelling approach."
I made a similar observation last year when ABC gave LOST and end date because I knew it would give the writers a time frame to work with. It’s a lot easier for the writers to tell as story when you know the story’s going to end. That gives the writers the ability to have all the pieces fit into place.
I hope the final two seasons of LOST prove to be a big success because I think all television networks should examine their hit shows and decide years in advance when to end them. That way you avoid the "ER" debacle where the show has just dragged on and on and lost any sense of what it was. (USA’s "Monk" is heading down a similar road.) It also avoids the fate of "The X-Files" where the last episode ranks as one of the worst finale of a long-running television series.
Were I in charge of a TV network, after a show has had two hit seasons, I’d sit down with the producers, creators, and head writers and figure out where the show it going and a good time frame to end it. I think that would increase or, at the very least, stabilize the number of viewers and give them a hope that their favorite TV show will have a satisfying ending.
If you’re interested in winning a free, personalized copy of Room for Two, fellow author and friend Anne Bradshaw is sponsoring a contest for one. You can read the contest details on her blog here. Contest is open through Wednesday, September 4th.
A couple months ago I was approached by the Open to Hope Foundation about writing a blog for those who had lost a spouse. (I was a guest on the foundation’s radio show last November. You can download the MP3 of the program by right-clicking here.) I was hesitant to accept. Between my widower blog (no longer updated) and Room for Two I didn’t think I had anything left to say on the matter. Besides, I’ve been happily married to Marathon Girl for five and a half years. I haven’t thought of myself as widower since the day she agreed to marry me. In a lot of ways, I’ve put that sad chapter of my behind me. Thought thoughts of the late wife and daughter occasionally enter my mind, 99.9% of my thoughts are on making a better life for me and the family I have now.
I also have a novel and other writing projects that take up most of my free time. Even if I had something to say, I was unsure I’d have the time to write regular blog posts.
Then I checked my email.
There were three new emails in my inbox. Two were from women dating widowers. One thanked me for writing an essay that helped her see that her widower boyfriend wasn’t ready to commit to a serious relationship and she was going to finally end it. The other was from a woman asking for advice about her widower boyfriend’s behavior and whether or not she should be concerned about it. The third was from a young widower who thanked me for my website and telling me it had given him hope that he could one day again be happy.
These kinds of emails flood my inbox every day. (I’m not complaining about them – just stating a fact. If you have something to say, you can contact me here.) In the back of my mind, I thought the number of widower related emails would stop after my book came out and this blog focused on other things than widower related issues. But every day there are new emails in my inbox similar to the ones above and I realized there are a lot of people that are hurting out there.
And I thought back to a wintry afternoon six years ago. I had just spent most of my Saturday afternoon searching for something – anything! – online that would make me feel that I wasn’t the only young widower in the world. Something that would give me hope that tomorrow would be a better day and if I just put one foot in front of the other and stuck with it.
I found nothing.
And in that brief moment of grief and anguish I vowed if there was some way I could help someone else from feeling the pain and loneliness I felt at that exact moment, I’d do it.
So I called to the foundation’s director and expressed my concerns about writing a blog and we came to mutual agreement. I will write an occasional blog post (three or four times a month as time allows). And instead of making it a traditional grief blog, I’m going to focus on putting your life back together and moving on instead of becoming bogged down with self pity and the “woe is me” attitude that infects so much of grief literature and makes it completely worthless – often hindering people from putting their lives back together.
It’s going to be very different from typical grief blogs. It’s going to have an attitude.
So be warned.
If you’re content wallowing in grief and self pity then the blog’s not for you.
If you don't want to think of yourself as anything other than a widow or widower, then find another grief blog to read.
If you don’t want straight up advice about learning to put your grief aside, making the most of your life, and becoming happy again, then do not read it because I’m not going to mince words.
Finally, though I have permission to do so, I won’t be reposting the content on this blog. However, I will post the first paragraph or two and link to the latest entry for those who are interest in reading it. (As soon as I complete some other projects, I will create a URL on this website for them, however.)
Also, I have about 30,000 words of material that I cut from Room for Two before it was published. Some that content will probably find a home there – in a slightly modified form. (My first entry is a part from my book that was cut from the book and tweaked for the blog.) For those who have read the book and want to read vignettes that were cut between the first draft and the published manuscript, I’ll let you know when those are posted too.
The website I'll be writing for can be found here.
You can read my first entry here and my second one here.
I’ll let you know when the third one is up.
Many thanks to Chris who gave me the fixes for the two issues mentioned in the previous post. It’s nice to know there are talented programmers who read my blog. Chris has also just started a blog about a subject that is close to my heart and many readers here. If you want, you can check it out here.