I thought I knew how I wanted to start this post, but my mind is shot.  This is only the third day of Spring Break and I’m tired.  In fact, I think I may be more exhausted than when I started.  Can’t say I’m surprised because it’s been a busy week even with the last two days being off.

First, those last three days of work/school leading into break was utterly crazy.  Not that I was surprised.  It was also the end of the third quarter, which means everyone was scrambling to get work done.  I faced this on two fronts.  One was at work when I was in the Testing Center and handling a large flow of test takers.  Really happy that those times were only the last two periods of my day while I spent the rest with our Life Skills kids.  A little off there due to the schedule, but it was fine.  The second front was as a parent with my son having to get a lot of work done.  This . . . Had some issues that I found out about later and will have to consider for the future.

Of course, this left me too exhausted to write that final section of Darwin & the Demon Game chapter 11.  I haven’t had a chance to even remotely tackle it since and I doubt I’ll get a chance until Tuesday evening.  I’m going to have to extend my timetable given that 99% possibility and at least one day where I don’t have my son being taken by hanging out with people.  I’m thinking I’ll only get 4 of 7 chapters done if I’m lucky.  That means I won’t be finishing this book in April, but by mid/late May.  I won’t start writing the next one until mid-July either.

June needs to be geared towards getting things ready for Do I Need to Use a Dragon? and the ensuing posts.  The major step forward of mine this week was preparing the eBook and Paperback formats.  I have everything set up on Amazon too.  The ‘book is live’ post is ready to go once I get the Amazon links.  This means I don’t have to scramble to piece everything together at the last minute.  I have all of the June posts ready to go as well.  Those will be teasers from the book while July is going to be posts revolving around the concept of advice, how to stuff, and general writing.  I’d like to come up with similar topics for August, but I’m coming up blank.  Anybody hear a good opinion or subject that authors are discussing?

Stepping away from the author side of life will clarify why I didn’t and won’t get very far there.  We had the second night of Passover on Thursday, which meant family visiting.  This meant no writing, but it’s when I got the formatting and publication stuff set up.  The rest of the time my son is with me will be events.  Yesterday was ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ and today is a friend’s son’s birthday gathering.  Tomorrow is my 43rd birthday, which will involve setting up two Easter egg hunts and then going to see the ‘Super Mario Bros’ movie.  Monday is the only day that my son and I have no plans, but we’re going to do something.  Tuesday is our last day of break together.  Needless to say, Darwin & the Demon Game can take a backseat to father/son time.  My characters understand and I’m getting better at returning to them after extended breaks.

Backtracking a bit, but I would really recommend ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to anyone who played the games.  My son liked the movie, but I got an extra kick out of the nods to the game.  Not just with the monsters, places, groups, spells, and characters.  There were several times where my brain recognized a point where a player would make a mistake.  Just that sense of ‘you read the situation wrong and now we have a bigger headache than before’, which appears in these types of games.  The improvising in the face of danger was another nod since I’ve been in so many campaigns where a DM’s plans were undone by players using tools in unorthodox ways.  Heck, Darwin Slepsnor was born from me getting far too much use out of a basic sleep spell.  So, it was fun and I expect Mario to be the same.

Haven’t talked about television in a while.  All I’ve done is finished watching ‘Leverage: Redemption’ season 2, which I enjoyed.  Can’t think of what to watch next.  Not that I’m able to get any me time because I keep letting my son stay up later than usual.  So, we watch our father/son shows until he goes to bed.  That gives me maybe 40 minutes to get myself ready for bed.  Another part of Spring Break though.  One day, he won’t want to spend this kind of time with me.  Hopefully, we’ll be done with ‘One Piece’ and ‘Dragon Ball Z’ by then.

Next week is the full week of Spring Break, which means there aren’t going to be many plans.  The goals will be simple:

1. Time with son.
2. Deal with birthday stuff.
3. Write more Darwin & the Demon Game.
4. Set up some July posts and come up with August topics.
5. Clothes shopping.
6. Biking and sleeping maintained.
7. Get pizza after Passover is done.
8. Puzzle time.
9. Figure out what to get with birthday giftcards and money.  Torn between buying fun stuff (Legos, puzzles, The Witcher novel boxset, etc.) and adult stuff (Clothes, electric shaver, etc.) This is another reason why I’m ‘meh’ on birthdays.  I never know what to get myself.
10. Maybe tinker with Phi Beta Files if I have free time, but not enough to write or blog.