I fell asleep sometime probably around ten last night.  I know that was the time, because I was watching something on television and looked at the clock at 9:47, and then when someone awoke me at 10:30 to ask me to add something to the schedule for today (which they asked me to remove from the schedule for today about five minutes before it would have had to have been done) the program was something I’d have changed had I noticed it.  I am not certain when I next fell asleep, because I think I saw the entirety of a Monk episode that ran from eleven to twelve, and put something on after that, but was asleep when my wife entered, whenever that was.  I had to put away supper and tend to a few other things, but was back to sleeping before four and up just after five, and then managed to get a solid five hours from seven to noon.

All of which is to say that I am well rested today, and not worried about falling asleep on my long errand to drive people tonight–the girlfriend home and the son to work.  I am hoping also to meet with the friend who is interested in buying the books while I’m up that way.

He will also be interested in the fact that amidst the confusion of today I picked up a free drum set.  It may be worth every penny, as my father would say, but it’s the best drum set I’ve ever owned.  My thinking at this point is that it might provide supplemental pieces for one of our drummers, although I’m not terribly impressed with the quality–and this from someone who knows very little about drums but that he has worked with a few drummers over the years.

I uploaded the updated pages last night, although I still don’t have a banner for the special.  Here’s hoping it will help.

I’ve more to do than I can in the time that remains, but I’ll do what I can and try to squeeze a bit of extra time out of this somewhere.

–M. J. Young

I did not really get enough sleep last night; however, when I returned to bed this morning I was antsy.

Part of it is that I’ve been thinking I’ve got to make a change in an arrangement of one of the Collision songs–I’m demanding too much of my bass guitarist, and if I want to get the six core songs down I’m going to have to take some of the riffs from the fifth on myself so that I can push him to learn the sixth.  Thus I was lying in bed trying to make sense of riffs in my head–where are the notes on the fingerboard, on the staff, in that nebulous tonal recognition center in my brain.  After lying in bed for half an hour locked into this, I got up, set up the coffee for later (which I should have done sooner), and picked up a guitar.

Fifty minutes later, I was satisfied with that and had run through a few other guitar parts, and decided that I was no closer to going back to sleep than I was when I got up, so I might as well find my glasses and start my morning.  That’s not to say I’m not tired; only that I’m not sleeping.

It also occurred to me that I did some work I neglected to mention.  Sunday night, after doing the weekly file backup, I created a new specials page, uploaded to the site for the M. J. Young Net site, complete with a descriptive banner.  It announces throughout the site the availability of the new books Faith and Gaming and Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1, which hopefully will help sell the books.  Meanwhile, I also did a fair amount of updating of the pages on the Multiverser site, but have not uploaded these.  The changes include adding links to our other Cafe Press storefronts, the new Game Ideas Unlimited store and the long-neglected Nagaworld store in addition to our standard Multiverser merchandise.  I also did the work to launch the announcement of Game Ideas Unlimited Volume 1 on the Multiverser site, but am awaiting a banner from our art director before uploading all of this.

So I did a fair amount of web work, but it doesn’t all show yet.

If I’m going to make this early rising thing work, I’m going to have to get something done, so let’s move to it.

–M. J. Young

Word reached me today; I am not at this point certain whether I misunderstood what was said before or whether financial circumstances have been reviewed since then, but Anonycon cannot afford to provide me with a place to stay, only free admission. I understand completely and have no bad feelings about this, only regrets–I know no one of whom I am aware in the Stamford, Connecticut area, so I will not be able to attend. I wish them the best. I don’t like to be among those who can’t attend a convention without some arrangements being made to pay for my room, but I lose money when I attempt to cover my own expenses, generally, and this business is tough enough without that kind of cost.

My big accomplishment of yesterday is a substantial improvement in the new Multiverser.org web site. I have probably doubled the number of dead links, thank you, by installing pages to fill all the dead links that already existed which in turn link to other non-existent pages. Still, there is now more information than there was, and I believe that any link on the entry page which you select will take you somewhere.

I also did a smattering of editing on the Romans notes, which I of course do whenever I can anticipate being stuck waiting somewhere. I finally got my mother-in-law to the bank with her social security check, two and a half hours on my part to get there, wait for her, take her to the drive-up window, return her home, and get home myself, primarily because she is uncomfortable if she does not take the check to the bank herself. As Arthur said of knights picking flowers, someone’s got to do it.

The weekend cometh, and I will have a day to attempt to catch up all things at home, but I do not yet know how that will go. Let me not get ahead of myself–I am not yet done with today.

–M. J. Young

I managed, with a bit of help from the printer’s technical support staff, to upload the corrected file for the book About the Fruit. That was a positive thing, but I was up until five finishing it, and up again at six, struggling to keep myself awake and to awaken the schoolboy. I was not the only one fighting this battle–the houseguest son of one of our houseguests missed his bus this morning, apparently due to a failure of the alarm clock. I am so very grateful that my son made it, and I was back in bed by seven.

I was up again around eleven, because Kyler needed me. He had an important appointment at four, almost an hour from here, and so I already had accepted that I would be driving him there immediately after dropping his mother at work. However, he was also concerned that he needed to get an important errand done, half an hour in the opposite direction, and so felt it important to do before the afternoon pressure hit. I might have managed to drag myself to the truck in under an hour, and we managed to get back in time for everything else.

The appointment was the sort where you must be there on time but should anticipate waiting forever. I took my Romans notes along, and made some progress while waiting. I also brought along and read a printout of a very favorable review of the newest game from my friend Seth Ben-Ezra, of Legends of Alyria fame, Dirty Little Secrets. I’m going to have to break down and buy a copy, it’s that good. The system design generates a Noir Mystery Genre feeling, even if you have no idea what that is. That’s good design.

However, in case it did not strike you, this appointment took several hours. Kyler did very well at it, probably one of the most encouraging points of the day. I, however, was already concerned about how to get home in time to feed people as we left.

That concern increased greatly immediately after I stopped for gas, four miles from home, and then could not start the vehicle again. The starter had complained a bit here and there before, but tonight it did not function properly at all. Kyler and I, and our papers and gear, had to be picked up and brought home; the truck will have to be picked up and taken to a shop tomorrow.

Mercifully, two of our houseguests are equipped with their own cars, and are pitching in to help us deal with transportation. This is especially important, since the other son has to return to Delaware tonight so he will be at work tomorrow.

Coming home to find that the counter where I was planning to make the waffles for dinner was covered in unwashed cups, I realized I had little hope after nine at night to feed anyone before ten. Chinese delivery became the order of the evening, and I turned my attention to my morning study, along with my first, and probably last, cup of coffee, both interrupted multiple times in major ways.

I am now working my way through today, and the light at the end of the tunnel is dimly visible.

In other news, our company president decided, posting on our private company forum, to create a cooperative effort on the new website by having development (me) and public relations work together with art on the total site, rather than having each of us working in his own section. Because I’ve got all the access codes and am the company contact with the hosting service, I’ve been given the task of chairing this. As usual, I’ve taken a significant part of that upon myself–the best way I can see to start is to do a bit of recoding on the old pages (which I still have), and then upload these and make changes as we go. That hopefully means that we will have a website in the next two and a half weeks–in time for the directors meeting, where he wants a report from development on the progress. What’s Gandalf’s phrase? And I was already tired. Hopefully some of the others are ready to pitch in and help make it work.

On one last point, it appears that there might be yet another chance of getting a car, but it’s a long story, and I’m going to leave it for another time.

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.

–M. J. Young

Yesterday’s predictions proved optimistic. I got home from freshman orientation just after nine, but one of my houseguests had needed help somewhat abruptly, and taken both my chef and my dishwasher away (I still do not know why, and probably never will). Thus I had thought I would be feeding the boy and sending him to bed while diving into the rest of my work, but instead had to tackle undone dishes and half-done dinner. Shortly before ten the chef returned, and helped me finish it but left me to serve. The boy got to bed late, and I to work later.

It was evident as eleven approached that I would have to interrupt the work on the Lutheran forum, and that being of the phpBB variety it does not work well interrupted. Thus I delayed starting it, and instead I was on time to pick up my wife–but she again was not, and I got a forty or fifty minute nap in the parking lot while waiting.

Upon my return home, I was handed laundry. I got it started eventually, and finished before I got to bed. I did a lot of other things before I got to bed as well–like help the boy get started for school and drive the houseguest to her class. I got dressed for bed and hit the pillow around eight forty-five this morning, and was up again three hours later to retrieve the houseguest. There was not enough time when I returned to do anything major before taking my wife to work, and since the new car has been delayed yet again (the wrong part came in and has to be reordered) and it was fairly certain that upon returning home the student would have to go purchase school supplies, I had to keep the truck. Since the schoolbus behind which I got stuck on my way back home was his, I gave him a lift.

While we were debating when to go to which store for supplies, I discovered that one of our houseguests missed the bus to work and needed a ride to have him there by five. That gave me my hour for my morning study and sent me to the stores near the mall (he works near the mall), which is where I preferred to shop.

The houseguests made dinner for me, but still left me to serve it. It was delicious, so I am going to express my gratitude on that. In the cracks I did a bit more updating to the new Multiverser.org website, including links to Legends of Alyria, which you might recall is the first game to include Multiverser interfacing rules so you can use it as part of a Multiverser campaign.

The night is drawing to an end, and I’ve still a few things to do and the strong desire to get to bed in time to get a few hours of sleep before the day starts anew tomorrow.

–M. J. Young