Nightmares of Katrina 18

I slipped under for only a moment, freed from the need to stand against the raging current I was able to better orient myself, to find a better footing, to better place myself and rise again.

As my head broke the surface I realized that the dark, slimy, viscus waters were perfectly clear below, I had been able to see as clearly as through a rain cleaned sky.  I had seen Brown, her head dragged under by one of the creatures, barreling toward me.  But I had seen others as well, I had seen other people and other things, swimming, turning, churning seemingly through open space.

I also realized as I hadn't before that the building was full of people.  Had only the floorspace been available it would have been standing room only, wall to wall.  With the wall and ceiling space used, they had room to dance and gyrate; as well as fight off their attackers.

None of them seemed to be able to fight them off, presumably because they were not focused on that task, abandoned as they were to the rapture.  I saw that there were far more creatures than I had ever expected and something that really didn't sink in at that time because of the brevity of my glimpse, but I saw that once a devotee was completely ensnared and wrapped in tentacles, the capturer and the victim began to disappear.

As I regained the surface I was aware that I had planted my feet and stood upright on the wall beside the door by which we had entered, the gravity of Earth no longer with any meaning in that cavernous, gyroscopic well.  I was well braced between the jamb and some sort of sconce as I prepared to receive the writing mass of Private Brown and her tormentor.

Her head surfaced and I saw, no I heard her singing, chanting at the top of her lungs, sputtering and spurting water and chords.  She was lost to the passion again, oblivous to the tentacle that wrapped itself around her throat and mouth.

I tensed and I launched myself at the pair.  Our velocities combined and we struck with tremendous force.  I had been braced for it, the creature was not.  I still had my Gerber multitool in hand and I drove it into the tentacle around Brown's throat.  It withdrew and I struck again, this time against the creature's body.  It was massive and thick, but not as strong as I had anticipated.  It writhed and fought, but I was able to make blow after blow land and take a physical toll.  I twisted and pulled, bit and struck.

Suddenly the combination bore fruit and I had Brown free.  The creature realized it a scant moment after I had, but I moved first and decisively.  I turned her to get myself between the creature and the Private, nearly throwing her out of the water.

It wasn't until that very moment and action that I realized that I had been fighting subaquisly for several minutes and my air had run out.  Sparkly tunnels of darkness began to strangle my vision.  I got my feet below me and stood to clear my head into the air.

I found I was standing on or near the ceiling and the atmosphere was not much dryer than the water had been.  There was so much humidity and spray in the air that I could barely breathe or see.  Brown was mercifully close, nearly floating on her back, and I snatched her up into my arms, ready to fight off another attack, but the creature had gone off to find a more suseptable victim.  I saw it moving against the current.

All the creatures, when they moved they moved against the current of the spherical eddy.  I made three realizations, that I had no idea how to get down from a ceiling that disobeyed the law of gravity flagrantly; that although we had won a localized victory against one creature, the battle raged on from water to creature to air, at an even more fevered pitch, cressendoing past all reason; and finally, I realized that Doctor Zoe was no longer on my hip.

Where Are the Boys?

I've read all I have of Boys of St. Leonard's.  It's less than I thought there was.  I did a bit of skipping around when I wrote what I wrote so I not only have to finish the book, I have to fill in the blanks.

This is actually very exciting since there were some problems that I now know how I want to fix.  I don't know if they are the right fixes, but I know what I want to try.

One thing I realized when reading this is that the problem I have with writing mysteries is that I can make a plan and get the characters started, but sometimes I have trouble making them do what I need to to get the story done right.  I suppose that's why there are so many cardboard characters in mysteries.

Anyway, I'm happy that I have at least gotten this step done.  I hadn't even gotten this far with the last book I tried to edit (Seekretya) last March.

I thought I should post an update since the only way to make sure I get this done is to be beholden to someone/something about it.

Nightmares of Katrina 17

The eye of a hurricane is the calm, the safe place, but to get to it you have to go through the eye wall, the most deadly, destructive, powerful part of the storm.

I dragged Doctor Zoe into the chapel expecting sanctuary, a kind of eye in the temporal, physical, psychic storm.  I found nothing of the kind, no shelter from the mayhem nor our pursuers.

The foetid, slimy waters of the street flowed muscularly into the building bringing all their chaos and swimming monsters that could only be of another world, another aspect of our universe, one in which the beauty and wonder of life are dark and base.  Two of the creatures flowed through the doorway as soon as I put it past me and torpedoed deeper into the ruinous edifice.

I watched as they went by swimming as my mind swam in the sights, smells, sounds, and what I could only describe as a tactile sensation of time being stretched and distorted.  My mind followed them deep into the building.

Deeper and deeper it went, the interior of that building.  In New Orleans no building had a basement, so what was I observing, how could such a building, euclidean on the exterior be so alien within?  The floor dropped away and the waters swirled around the concave bowl of the chapel, carrying chanters, whisking them away as they still danced, sang and played.

The whirlwind, whirlpool within spun all around the hollowed interior from that chasmic floor up the walls, onto and over the vault of the ceiling high above, all studded with acolytes.  In all the known universe, the wind the air, the planets, the stars, the galaxies themselves all spin on the plane, spin round a circular epicenter.  This was like none other, spinning as it did in the spherical.  How such a thing could occur I could never fathom nor even imagine if I had not witnessed it my very self.

This was no two dimensional vortex in a three dimensional world, but a three dimensional one which must have twisted four or more dimensions.  It was all I could think of in the din and roar of the waters, air, pipes and throats.

Amid all the swirling flashed lightning and the past and future.  Mixed into the cacophony of those ill-tuned instruments and adulational ululations were screams as the tentacled beasts made their attacks, dragging the choir within the waters forcibly.  They must have past us after spying the target rich environment of the maelstrom.

I slowly, painfully, was forced into realizing the Doctor on my hip.  In my adrenaline addled state I had become completely unaware that I was carrying her bodily.  The pull of the vortex tugged at my legs and I was slowly succumbing to it, but additionally my shoulder blade sent pain signals to my brain as Zoe pounded on my back to get my attention.  She was also screaming in my ear.

"My leg is broken.  My leg is broken!"

"What?"  I asked her, with complete absence of understanding.

"Don't put me down.  Don't let go!"

My feet slipped, the current pushed me, my attention was drawn away again.  I had spotted Brown, there above us, over head, swirling on the ceiling.

She was throwing her arms around her head, she sang with all the gusto of an enraptured soul.  Parts of her uniform had been torn away by the howling wind, by the slashing waves.  Everyone in that wailing pandemonium was being declothed by forces shearing against them.

I stood as solidly as I could, clinging tightly to the woman on my side, yet struggling against twisting consciousness to attempt complex thought and planning.  How could I reach Brown, how could I get both the women out, out of this.

What was this?  Where, if where was even a concept that could be applied to the situation, where were we, and how did it relate to our world, the world which I had to return.  Was our world still out there?

My eyes swam round and round as my brain screamed courses of action hysterically, desperately.  I searched for what my own mind could not supply, for an answer.

I saw there at the center of it all, a glimmer of the eye.  The eye of this storm was clear, elemental, galactic, a perfect glimpse at the heart of the universe itself.  Then the thought struck me that I was not at all sure it was our universe.

A particular, individual scream struck the consciousness of my senses.  It was Brown.  The currents were swinging her directly towards us, but she had three tentacles wrapped round her.

It had brought her to a realization of reality and she screamed my name.

Zoe screamed beside me as well, "We're going under, don't drop me, don't let go!"

And I slipped beneath the waves.

My Path to the End of 2011

I put forth the question:  "Which book should I work on and get to a publisher by the end of the year?"  I gave you five choices to vote on, and I got 16 answers.  That's not bad for one of my polls.

The choices and results were:

Eve's Christmas Eve Adventure	6	38%
Reach Out	1	6%
Guya Principal	0	0%
Boys of Saint Leonard's	9	56%
Seekretya	0	0%

St. Leonard's is the clear winner, and I'd be happy to do that one.

My wife, however, voted for Eve's Christmas Eve Adventure, so I'm inclined to do what she says.  She told me that I can do whatever I want, but I’m conflicted.  Of course I don’t want to ignore the voters, and I want to do what my wife says, and I want to do St. Leonard’s.

I think I will try to do both.  I will work on both of them.  I suspect I will be able to finish Eve before the end of the year, and I will have to continue BoSL into next year, but that will be alright.

Thank you so much my voters.  I hope you also continued on and read some of the older posts or maybe, dare I hope; the whole blog?

There is one more thing, aside from the fact that I will have to finish Nightmares of Katrina.

I am going to have to set in my mind that writing is my second job, no, I’m going to have to set my mind that my job at Abbott is my second job, and that my writing is my real career.

What would a boss expect?  Daily output, working every day, producing results, certainly.  I will have to provide those if I am going to get anywhere with all of this.

This is not a hobby, Rugby is a hobby, Ukulele is a hobby. 

Exercise in all it’s guises is a way of life, a lifestyle.  It’s what I must do to physically live.

Scouts is my vocation, my duty to the community of mankind. It is what I must do to spiritually live.

Being a good father and husband is what I am, I cannot be any other way.

Abbott pays the bills, but it is neither my soul nor my life.  It facilitates me, it doesn’t define me.

I am an artist and writing is my career.  I best start ACTING accordingly.

Nightmares of Katrina 16

The sky grew dark and the rain was starting to fall.  As Hurricane Rita made herself known I felt a sinking feeling in the bottom of my gut.

Doctor Kin in the cab of the truck that splashed along the soggy streets toward a questionable destination, following unspeakable submerged creatures, chanted along with the beckoning tones, possibly enraptured as Private Brown unquestionably was.

"Kin, Kin!"  Zoe shouted at our driver while pounding on the roof of the cab.  "He's going to take us straight to that chapel."  She announced.

I agreed, but pointed out that we needed to follow Brown and get her out.

"I'm not convinced he'll let us get back out again."

While we followed Brown I spied several people slipping in the dark open maw of the chapel's undoored doorway.  Brown sang at the top of her lungs, skipping oblivious.  The two huge forms followed in twin wakes behind her, gaining on her as the rain fell harder.

"We need to go faster, get Brown," I said.  Zoe pointed out that the fastest way to the chapel was in the bed of our very truck, as long as we were headed toward the chapel we would have no problems.

Just then lightning flashed across the sky, stretching and bending time, everything was out of proportion, distances wrong.

We were further away from the chapel, yet closer to Brown, then she stretched further away, sliding ahead without ever changing speed.

It all snapped back, tentacles reached from the water, grasping for Brown who headed pell- mel for chapel with nary a care.

"Go, now, faster!"  I shouted.  Kin was oblivious to me, but I got the impression that he was not only aware of Private Brown's plight, but that it held great interest to him, that it was of some import that she got to the cursed building.  He slammed the gas pedal to the floor.  Water sputtered and sprayed as the tires tried in vain to accelerate to match Kin's urgency.  It threw Zoe and myself back onto the floor of the truck bed.

More tentacles reached up and over the sides of the truck, there must have been an uncountable number of the creatures.  Kin sang at the top of his lungs, the notes from the chapel penetrated my chest and vibrated the truck.  I could see ripples in the water from the sound waves.  High, sharp notes pierced our ears and the sky.  Lightning flashed revealing eye stalks mixed in with the grasping tentacles.  We were moving too fast for them, were too heavy.

We barrelled ahead, Brown raced, arms and legs churning, pumping.  The creatures could not get a grip, could not slow us down.

Suddenly I was sitting in my own hummer, straining to hear the music, but it was there faint and distant, but there.  It's rhythm matching the rhythm of the music Kin sang in the truck that now carried me to the chapel.  I shook my head to clear it.

"The time flux is getting worse," Zoe mouth spoke from beneath wild eyes.  Chief Mac answered from her front seat, "What?"

I closed my eyes tightly, then reopened them, my mother was leaning over me singing, singing in a language I did not understand.

Then it snapped back, Doctor Kin singing along with the unmistakable music and chanting.  The rhythm was the thread that wove through all the dreams, tying them together, keeping them all in sync.  All of time oscillated on the carrier wave of that accursed tune.

When I focused on the song, letting the music fill my head I could feel myself being pulled along, down into the rhythms, the tones, the beat, the chords...

Until Doctor Zoe called to me, "Major!"  She slapped me.  That brought me back.  The chant was the link, but it was doom as well.

One of the tentacles had a-hold of Zoe's leg, "Help me!"

I reached out and grabbed at it.  The fur was thick and hard like frozen grass.  I kept one hand on it and pulled my multitool out with the other.  Zoe and I struggled against the pull of the hideous grasping creature until I could managed to get my Gerber out.

I couldn't get it open in time so I just used the hard metal to slam against the tentacle.  The shock made it release.  Zoe dove across the bed helped by the fact that the truck had hit a bump.

Zoe landed on me.  I grabbed her and twisted to the side.  We ran over other creatures and the truck came to a stop.

"He's gone!"  Zoe shouted into my ear.

I turned and saw that the truck door was open and Kin was running the now few paces to the chapel.  Brown had entered ahead of him.

"Follow, follow!"  Zoe said, "The only place away from them is the chapel."

I could hardly think, hear or move.  I was still being crushed and tugged by the music, like the current of a class 5 rapids dashing me against the rocks of my sanity.

"Get us in the chapel now!"

Going in the chapel, yes, I had to go in the chapel, Zoe and the chant agreed, and go I must.

Though she was not a small woman, in one confused and adrenaline driven effort I lifted myself and Zoe up out of the truck and landed on my feet in the water beside it.

"Get out of the water, get inside!"  She shouted at me, I had no time or presence of mind to think why she needed me to carry her.  She was Chief Mac, and my mother, it all swam around and around like a whirlpool being sucked into a sink hole.  I could not think why so I carried her, on my hip as I ran the few steps into that chapel of horrors.

Thank You Vets!

Happy Veterans's Day and thank you to all the vets and their families!

Nightmares of Katrina 15

As I was ripped from the tree's grasp, as the too blue sky whizzed past my vision I managed to catch a glimpse of what had yanked me bodily into the air, what tremendous power was treating me like a rag doll, completely at it's mercy.
It was a woman.

More specifically it was a woman standing in the bed of a pickup truck with a rope. She had caught me in a loop in the rope as they drove by. The power that was pulling me was the truck. She pulled on the rope as I flew and maneuvered me into to land on my upper back in the bed beside her.

"You alright?" She asked, looking down at me. I couldn't speak at first, having just had the wind knocked out of me. I nodded.

"You after that girl?" She asked. Again, I nodded. "You got to stay out of the water, there are things in there."

She had a New England accent. She was a healthy, fit middle aged woman with a farmgirl build and straw colored hair under a faded Boston College cap. She told me her name, I'll call her Doctor Zoe because she was a Biologist from Boston College who had come down to study the affects of the storm and flood on the biology of the area. When she arrived she found that she was blocked from entering as a scientist until the area had been secured and cleaned up. She joined a volunteer group. She was part of a larger group of animal collection and control. They were the same group I had originally encountered, but her group was involved in collecting and rescuing non-domesticated species.

The man driving the truck was another scientist. It was his truck and he had convinced Zoe to make the run they were on. I'll call him Doctor Kin since he was a Physicist. I had no idea why a Physicist was involved in collecting animals, but I was in no position to argue.

I asked what she meant about things in the water, if she meant microbes. She replied in the negative. There were much larger things, she had seen them once or twice before in the past two weeks, but this day she had seen several and moving much more, obviously.

I asked what she thought they could be, she didn't have time to answer because just at that point I had spotted Brown again.

"There!" I shouted, "We have to get her back."

Zoe told me to sit and knocked on the back window of truck. The small window was open and through it she told the driver to turn right at the end of the block.

"They aren't like anything I've ever seen," she told me.

I asked how much of them she had seen. She said that she had not seen much above the water, but the size and what looked like fur did not seem to go together. She mumbled something about tentacles, but was very hesitant about that.

I told her that I had seen one out of the water.  I described it for her in as much detail as the urgency of the bouncing truck would allow.

She stared gape-mouthed at me. The only thing she could say was, "Really?"

I asked her what she thought they could be. I had to ask her again, she seemed to be off in her own mind. Finally on the third try she came around to me again, "I have no idea," she managed.

I asked her where she thought they could have come from and she shook her head.

"I think I know how they got here though." I said and told her that it looked like the one I saw just materialized.

"I wonder," she said. She told me just the other day that she and Kin had been talking about the weird things going on, about how the time and spaces didn't seem right.

"I noticed that too," I interjected.

She said that she had suggested to Kin that it was almost like friction, like our universe was rubbing against something and the uneven friction was causing the time to go faster or slower depending on how the two things rubbed and jumped between each other. She thought that they could be distorting each other too.

She said that Kin thought that it was nonsense. He didn't suggest an alternative or an explanation, just told her it was ridiculous. When she pressed him, and told him that she had read something about the universe being a bubble inside of other bubbles he laughed and asked her if it wouldn't be just as reasonable to think that maybe our universe was just a giant gas bubble inside the gut of some trans-dimensional monster, and the titan had just taken an antacid.

"He's very odd about it," she said," I know he's considering it seriously, but it's like he knows something and he's hiding it."

I asked her, "Do you think it could have anything to do with these creatures appearing? Do you think he might know something about that?"

She looked at the back of his head through the window. "If he did, he wouldn't tell us. There she is!" She shouted this last as she jumped up in the bed of the truck. She had spotted Brown skipping through knee deep water. Everywhere here it seemed to be flooded, though before there had been patches of higher ground that were clear.

Zoe tapped on the window. Kin shouted, "I see her, let me just get around these trees." She sat down as he slowly drove around some downed trees in the road.

"Brown!" I shouted, she showed no sign of hearing, or caring. She didn't look like she was following any dog anymore. She seemed to be gleefully skipping off to some predetermined location. I shouted again, and again.

Zoe didn't join me, instead she put her hand on my shoulder, "Wait, do you hear that?"

Above the slosh of the truck's tires and beyond the distant splashing of Private Brown's skipping I heard the music again, if it could be called music. Now it sounded more urgent, more pleading and calling. The pan pipes were more pronounced and the rhythm quicker.

Brown seemed to hear it too, and it drew her quicker. I could see her laughing and her skipping changed to running.

We came around a particularly large tree and Zoe pointed ahead, "Look!" She pointed at the dark waters behind Brown and how they bulged menacingly with the portent of two pursuers. The things we had seen and only glimpsed were clearly and purposely following the Private who obliviously ran forward.

I looked ahead to see where it was she was so intently heading and saw several streets converging on a corner where prominently stood a brick building. Though it had no markings as such and no actual steeple, it clearly had been a chapel. All around it were littered vehicles, but not like we had seen before. These were much less damaged and some seemed to still be running. There were others there too, other people moving toward the chapel, and they all seemed to be singing.

Then I heard the strangest thing I had that very queer day, I heard Kin humming the same distorted tune in the front of the cab.

I Need Your Help to Finish My Novel!

The first thing is I need to decide which novel to finish.

I have talked with Mrs. Prop and we decided that instead of writing another NaNoWriMo novel at a break neck pace and with no regard to quality.  I know I can do that and it doesn't really get me any further to becoming a published author at this point.

I need to take the next step.

I have tried to edit these novels before, but I have run into problems.  I think what I need to do it dedicate the same amount of time I would have to write a new novel, to fixing one of these.  I've given myself to the end of the year and since I don't have to meet NaNo's deadline of 30 November, I can start later as well.

For the next week I'll leave a poll on the blog where I'm begging you to vote.  Which novel should I finish?

Here they are with some comments:

Eve's Christmas Eve Adventure
A children's Christmas novel in 12 chapters designed to be read one chapter a night around Christmas.  It was the first one I did.  Ultimately I'd like to record CDs of this and hand them out as Christmas presents.

Reach Out
This is a YA (young adult) SciFi novel.  It was the first one I wrote for NaNoWriMo.  It has a very truncated ending.

Guya Principal
This was the second "finished" NaNo novel.  It is a SciFi comedy and it's sort of aimed at teen to adults.  It too has a truncated ending.  I think I want to change the ending though.

Boys of Saint Leonard's
Mystery novel.  This is not finished, but it is probably the best written so far.  I really love these characters and I'm dying to write a mystery, but I'm not sure I really well equiped for it.

Seekretya
I finished this NaNo last year.  Like all my NaNo novels it's ending is truncated, but it's further along than the others.  It is a YA Fantasy novel and in addition to the novel I did a lot of world building for this one.  All that world building can be found here on this blog.  This was also the novel I tried to edit last March, but I never really got through a complete critical reading of it.

PLEASE vote on the poll on right, and comment on this post.

2011 Resolutions - Fourth Quarter Review

Health

1. Waist - 36
Q1 - From 41 to 38
Q2 - Loose 38s
Q3 - My belts and pants are really too loose, my wife and kids have started to mention how my pants look gathered at the waist. I can fit into my old suits well now
Q4 - Bought new pants and 36s fit noticeably better than 38s. Was measured at my health screening with my shirts on at 36

2. Weight - >220
Q1 - From 244 to 232
Q2 - 231
Q3 - I was right about 222 (100kg) at the lowest I checked

3. Finish P90
Q1 - Switched over to Body for Life
Q2 - NSTR
Q3 - NSTR

4. Bike commute as often as possible (75 times)
Q1 - NA
Q2 - On track
Q3 - I'm on track, and if the weather holds I should blow right through this
Q4 - DONE 2 Nov 11!

5. Walks (10k steps a day)
Q1 - Averaging 8,000
Q2 - With the bike commuting I'm up to 9,600 average.
Q3 - With bike commuting I'm up over 10k

Family

1. Pay more attention to family finances
Q1 - I think I'm doing that.
Q2 - Started keeping track with Evernote.
Q3 - NSTR

2. Quarterly Dates
Q1 - We've gone out to dinner several times, but no overnights yet.
Q2 - None
Q3 - Still haven't had one, but I'm trying for mid November.

3. Game Night
Q1 - One failed attempt
Q2 - Fail
Q3 - In truth I had forgotten about this goal. The kids do like to dance with the Wii though quite a bit and now that the weather is getting dodgy they do more.

4. New Pet
Q1 - NSTR
Q2 - NSTR
Q3 - NSTR (doesn't look good)

5. Walks
Q1 - None
Q2 - None
Q3 - Have not done once this has been a total fail

Music (these are sort of in order):


1. Learn to play ukulele (the definitions are still subjective)
Q1 - Working on
Q2 - Work on memorizing 5 songs for Owasippe.
Q3 - I have about 4 or 5 songs memorized, I led a song at Reneker's closing campfire, but that was Make New Friends and it's only two chords. I still feel like I'm not doing this right and I think I'm starting to sound worse than before (I think)

2. Play with my family (both in my house and a holiday gatherings)
Q1 - Marginally successful
Q2 - NSTR
Q3 - It did play at camp and at g/Pete's birthday I played Wild Rover for everybody. They seemed to like it

3. RE-learn to play sax.
Q1 - NA (goal changed from harmonica)
Q2 - I think I terrible, but I'm in the band (see below)
Q3 - Decided not to continue on with the CLC band, maybe next year, I'm too busy with bike commuting and such

4. Learn to play bass
Q1 - Not yet
Q2 - Sax took over
Q3 - Pushed off to next year

5. Join a band
Q1 - Not yet
Q2 - DONE! Libertyville Village Band.
Q3 - Back out again

Scouting

1. Commissioner Key
Q1 - NSTR
Q2 - Working on
Q3 - Working on

2. Archaeology Merit Badge Clinic
Q1 - Little done
Q2 - Talked to an Archaeologist who runs one in another district. He hadn't held one yet and promised to call me when he did
Q3 - Never went to a clinic or a mock dig. I did sign up again to be a MB counselor

Writing:

1. Do NaNoEdMo in March
Q1 - FAIL
Q2 - NSTR
Q3 - NSTR
Q4 - Not doing NaNoWriMo so I can get this done

2. Submit my NaNoWriMo 2010 novel to a publisher
Q1 - NA - Not scheduled until after #1 above
Q2 - Not yet
Q3 - NSTR
Q4 - Not doing NaNoWriMo, the new goal is to edit one of my previous novels and get it to a publisher before the end of the year

3. Blogging
A. I will blog more posts this year than any previous year
Q1 - On track
Q2 - Slightly behind
Q3 - Back on track with my bike commute reports. I attempted some audio reports with mixed results
Q4 - Success - I already have more than any other year by 1 Nov 11

B. I will review and update my 2011 goals at least quarterly
Q1 - Done, here, now.
Q2 - Yep, and done again.
Q3 - A bit late, but done

Work

1. Don't get laid off
Q1 - So far so good
Q2 - NSTR
Q3 - They pushed the layoffs back

2. Get a Promotion This is a Q4 thing, and I've told my boss about it
Q1 - NA
Q2 - NA
Q3 - Mrs. Prop has given me some things to apply for and I've redone my resume, but I haven't applied yet

I have some new goals. Some have developed from these and some are completely new. I'm going to record them so I don't forget. These are new and not carry-overs from 2011:

1. New Job outside ADD
2. Fix Lincoln Avenue Trail
3. One new fiction story a week (maybe I can split this between fiction and Papa stories)
4. Learn sax and get back in both the Libertyville Band and the CLC band
5. P90X or Insanity
6. 100 Bike commutes
7. Learn bass
8. Earn the right to write a NaNoWriMo by making 3 novel submissions by November