Tag Archive: apartment


Springtime and a thank you

480px-dsc002161The picture above is not my house. It is, however, the house directly next to mine. I have no idea what happened to their door, but its precarious balancing act struck me as pretty funny. It’s not attached to the frame anymore whatsoever, it doesn’t need to be leaning up against the house. They could have brought it inside. They could have thrown it away. They could have put it in their garage, or any other place. Did they? No. Someone picked it up, leaned it up against the doorway, and decided that was sufficient. Someone did this and then said to themselves, “Eh, good enough.” It makes my head hurt a little.

It was an absolutely beautiful day outside when I took that picture, so I took a few others around the house as well. We moved in here around mid-February, so our entire yard was dead and lifeless when we got here, not very pleasant. The last week or so in MilwaukeeOl’Milwaukee reviewsOl'Milwaukee reviews has been perfect early Spring weather though, so things are starting to come back to life. A few hard rains mixed in with mid-70s weather? That’s pretty ideal for April/May.

I love having a yard, so things growing again is extremely exciting to me. I grew up around my grandparents a lot, and my Grandpa was a role model of sorts for me, though I didn’t come to realize it until the last couple of years. His yard meant a lot to him, he was constantly out there tending to it, even when his health told him he shouldn’t have been. It drove him nuts if things weren’t being tended to, and when his health finally dropped enough to keep him bedridden, I found myself going out into the yard in his place and taking note of what needed to be fixed. None of those things ever happened because we had to sell the house when he died, but it was fairly eye opening. I loved having a yard that was, essentially, my own.

Now, I live in a duplex. The yard isn’t mine, not nearly, but it’s still cool to see it coming alive, and I was already taking notes of what I could clean up out there when it’s warm again.

There are a lot of pictures incoming, so for the sake of load times I’m going to put it all behind the link below. If you read my work over on WI, you know how this works. Just click the link and you’ll see the full post. If you’re already seeing the flower picture below, you probably followed a direct link to this post and you don’t need to worry about it. It only affects those reading this from the front page of the site.

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Obligatory February Post

I was bothered by a friend of mine to get some actual words in this thing before the month is up, so I suppose I should do that. I’ve actually been meaning to do so for awhile now, but things have been obscenely busy the last few weeks. Why so busy? Well, thanks for asking!

I’m finally moved in my my own place. Well, I share it, but not with my family. That’s the important part. My girlfriend and I found a place together, so I actually have my name on a lease for once rather than just paying family members and friends in cash. You would be surprised how important rental history is when looking for a place to rent. It’s one of life’s great Catch 22s.

It’s actually a really nice place. It’s the downstairs of a duplex, and the landlord lives offsite.  The upstairs neighbors aren’t especially noisy. The place is a bit pricey for the area, $750 per month, utilities not included. Ouch. It’s a pretty spacious place, though. I would take pictures, but I’ve lost the A/V USB cable for my digital camera somehow so you don’t get any of that.

I haven’t been doing any personal writing at all in the last month. Not working on any of my projects, none of that. Purely job-related work right now and trying to get settled into the new place. I won’t go into detail with any of that, it’s not particularly interesting and I’d really like to keep the topic of this blog seperate from the topic of that blog. Just kind of a thing, you know?

To update you all a little bit on something I posted awhile ago, some of you might remember that I was asking for book suggestions for my little sister. I ended up getting her The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because it’s a book I loved when I was little, but it was an utter failure. She started reading it, told me she really liked it, hit the halfway point and tossed the thing aside because it was boring. She hasn’t picked it up since about two weeks after I gave it to her.

I don’t think I’m going to have much success giving her books to read, she’s in that phase of childhood where she only reads joke books. You know, like 101 Wacky Kid Jokes and things like that. I had a phase like that and it was horrible. I remember how many times my grandparents would take me to the library and all I would get is stuff like that. The only thing that broke me out of that phase was Animorphs, so maybe I should give that a try. Not exactly the finest pieces of literature in the world, but I really enjoyed them as a kid, and that’s really what matters.

I’m going to make like a tree and split for the moment. I can’t promise that I’ll post more frequently in the future, but I’m going to make an attempt to do so. That’s almost the same thing, right? If I’m not updating, just do what prompted this post: Bug the hell out of me.

Happy Holidays!

Hello hello! I am not actually dead, contrary to popular belief. I’ve had a very busy… *checks the timestamp on the last post* …month and a week? Good lord. Alright, I haven’t been busy for that long, I’m just a worthless husk of a human being. To my credit, I have been writing. Just not here! And not as much as I should be! But I’ve been writing, I assure you.

Some of you might remember that a couple of months ago I asked for book recommendations for my little sister. I think you’ll all be happy to know that… I didn’t buy her anything you guys recommended! Haha. I’ve added them to a list that I may look at later if my choice of a Christmas present goes over well.

I bought her The Lion, The Witch and the WardrobeThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reviewsThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reviews, which was a favorite of mine when I was around her age. She’s currently going ot the same school I went to, so if the curriculum is the same she’ll be reading that book in class in two years. I think that if I can actually get her to read the thing, she’ll feel pretty good about saying, “I’ve already read that!” when it comes time to read it in class. Maybe it’ll encourage her to not pay any damn attention in class, but ideally she’ll be proud she already read it. Assuming she even opens the book I gave her. If she does read it and dig it, it has the advantage of being part of a pseudo-series. I can sucker her into reading the other Narnia books as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading myself, but it’s not exactly recreational. I spent a whole load of money in the last couple of weeks on books for research purposes. That sounds far more eggheaded than it actually is. It’s a lot of books on mythology and and feudal/medieval eras in various parts of the world. Europe and Japan are the biggies right now, and I plan on moving into other parts of Asia as well shortly. China, Korea, et cetera.

A really long ass time ago I mentioned on WoW Insider that I was working on an Eastern Fantasy setting. That’s still something I’m working on. It’s going to be a delightfully pulpy and (mostly) original story and setting, but I still want it to have some foundation in the mythology of the areas it’ll be based on, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading and a lot of watching documentaries. I have no intent of being purely historically accurate, but I don’t want to be one of those guys either. You know what I’m talking about.

I think it will be a fun setting, I just don’t want to go too deep into development without really knowing what I’m doing. i think that you’ll like it when I actually have something postable. I have some old-ish concept art for a couple of characters from my awesome girlfriend that I would post, but I don’t know if she’d appreciate that or not. You should leave comments asking her to let me do so!

I’m still working on my Western, somewhat more traditional (but still pulpy) setting, but I’ve been working on that on and off for years. Literally years. I have never dedicated hefty time to it until now, but it’s existed on paper and in my head in some iteration since I was 15. It’s absolutely nothing like that it was at that time, because my god was it terrible, but it’s technically the same project. Technically. I also have a single concept art for that, but again, I don’t think she would appreciate me just posting it out of the blue. Again, ask her to let me do so! By the way, my readers that filtered over here from WoW Insider, you may have heard of her.

You guys will be seeing a whole lot of me (and maybe her!) pretty soon, because I’m getting my own apartment come February. That means I’ll have a lot more workspace to myself and hopefully I’ll have decent stints of uninterrupted work time rather than my current family-related interruptions and in an ideal world, more time to yammer. So, get ready.

Bonus question of the day: Do you guys have any experience with simple, easy to use ads? Google ads are the easiest and simplest, but I can guarantee I’ll be loaded up with WoW gold selling ads because I mention my job now and then. I’d like to avoid that. Are there any similar alternatives?

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