We had an excellent, if abbreviated, session yesterday for Collision.

The slight delay in our start was my fault; I did not realize that Brittany would be driving, so I did not drop everything and run when Baxter said she was headed to meet us at the local pizza place. She was waiting when we arrived, but it probably only cost us about five minutes. She also had to exit early for an exam in a college math class; I hope she got there quickly enough.

We started by asking her to sing and play something for us, and we were quite impressed with her vocal abilities. She’s got a strong voice, a good range, and an ear for harmony, all of which are going to be very helpful; already I’m reconsidering how much I can rely on her voice in the songs we’ve chosen. Her guitar playing is probably better than adequate, a notch above Tyler of 7dB. Further, and unexpectedly, she owns an electric guitar, an amplifier, and an electrified acoustic–the instrument she prefers and the one I’d prefer to have her play. Also, she likes most of the songs we’ve chosen, and the rest she really likes, so this is promising.

We’ve agreed on Thursday afternoon rehearsals, as there is a window between when she gets off work and when Baxter goes to work when Adam and I are both available, and when term ends for her in a couple weeks that window gets larger, because she won’t have an evening class next term.

After she rushed off, Baxter and Adam and I worked on some of the instrumental parts, which seem to be coming together nicely at this point. I keep promising myself that I’m going to do more with Adam tonight, but I keep promising myself that I’m going to start dinner in a moment, too, and I’ve a lot to do. I’ve already done a bit of work on a world for use in the forum game, and I have to prepare for the upcoming directors meeting in addition to taking my son back to his brother’s house so he can get to work tomorrow. But all of us are excited about this at the moment, so it’s pretty high in my thoughts.

I am very happy with how much I accomplished on Saturday.

I set up enough of our new web site, Multiverser.org, that people will be able to find it and still find M. J. Young Net without too much inconvenience. There a few apologetic placeholder pages, a few dead links, and a few existing pages that need attention, but there is something there on which to build.

I also organized my notes for today’s directors meeting–a task which turned out to be of less importance than anticipated. One of our directors had informed me over a week ago that he was going to be out of town this weekend; one had a death in the family midweek and between the funeral and the visiting relatives anticipated being otherwise occupied; one did not make it for reasons that are as yet unclear to me. Two directors is not sufficient for a quorum, so our meeting notes were more a mental exercise for me to work through what I needed to remember.

I made an appearance at the funeral Saturday morning before church, and connected with the couple who were interested in the audiobook version of What Does God Expect? at the fellowship meal following Sabbath school to deliver the two-disk set for their perusal.

The meeting was not a loss, however, as the two directors present happened to be the vice president for development–me–responsible for product and product support, and the vice president for public relations–not me–responsible for publicity and promotions. As you probably can deduce, between us we split responsibility for website design and content, and this gave us an opportunity to talk about what steps to take next.

I also managed to pick up the 7dB equipment. I still have to decide where it will live for the present now that it’s here, but at least it’s not there anymore. Late in the evening I remembered to send the other four Quick Word radio show recordings, and even managed to listen this week, to hear the show myself.

Of course, not everyone was happy with what I accomplished on Saturday, and I got reprimanded for failing to do a few important errands, which I did this afternoon instead, so I’m not too terribly unhappy. I also remembered to update the autoresponder letter on the e-mail account for the radio show, so that people who write for information will get information immediately, and I can answer their letters leisurely.

So I’m headed into the week with a good feeling about the accomplishments of the weekend, despite the amount on my plate in the days ahead.

–M. J. Young

I am like way behind today, and it’s really my own fault.

I knew quite well that on Thursday I was going to have to launch the new book, About the Fruit, and that having launched it I would have to update my own website to announce this. I also knew that once I was certain of its availability I would have to send a special program to the radio station for my Quick Word radio show to announce the book, followed by the new programs that have been sitting on my drive for the past couple of weeks. I knew this would all be a frustrating process of jumping through hoops. Even so, for some insane reason on Tuesday night I decided to start recording an audiobook version of What Does God Expect?, which I continued to do on Wednesday night, giving me a nearly finished project this morning.

Then I got a request to drive someone to work unexpectedly; then by the time I’d finished my morning study I was being asked to go on a couple of quick errands which turned into a three hour tour, making dinner (still not served) rather late, and later because no one did the dishes as instructed.

However, About the Fruit is now available, and in fact is for a limited time on special at a twenty-five percent discount from my intended price. The paperback does not yet bear the ISBN, which is being processed, but you can get copies without it if you’re interested.

I have uploaded the new pages to the web site; I hope I caught all the incomplete bits. I’ve also sent the announcement program to the radio station, but still have to send the four new shows to follow it.

I also have a rather important major undertaking that I should be doing tonight, as instructed by our company president; but I’ve been advised to discuss it with our vice president for public relations before I proceed, which makes sense, since it’s as much his area as mine (development). It just means that in addition to getting everyone fed, I’ve got to make a visit to Delaware tonight to catch him at his day–er, night–job. It should be good to get together with him outside of meetings and pressures, but I’m going to be beat tomorrow.

This is not to mention that my mother-in-law needs to get her social security check to the bank; my sympathy for her is low, because she insists that she needs the assurance of actually taking the check to the bank herself, but doesn’t understand the inconveniece to me of two hours of driving just for that purpose. I also promised my pastor’s wife that I’d have the remaining 7dB audio equipment out of their basement this week so they can get the rugs cleaned, and it has just been a crazy week for transportation anyway. The engine of the new car is currently disassembled to fix a broken rocker arm and a bad engine mount, and one of those parts won’t be in until maybe Monday, so I’m still dealing with the one car problem.

I’ve also had to delete a few comments whose sole purpose for their vapid remarks was to add a link to a commercial interest that has nothing to do with our purpose.  That’s not a problem, really, except that the upload of the radio program files was tying up my bandwidth and making the process run like molasses, which increases the frustration level a bit.

You didn’t come here to read me complaining, though, so let me let you go while I find out what else I have to do tonight.

–M. J. Young