This has been a busy week with a lot of appointments and tasks. For some reason, it feels like it’s been longer than it actually was. On Monday, we had enough snow for a school delays and that feels like it was a month ago. I’ve been trying to figure out what caused this weird time event, but it might just be a busy life. This week had everything from faculty meetings to the regular weekly events to doctor appointments. At least it started with a blast last Sunday.
I don’t have any pictures to share, but my parents and I took my son to ‘Aladdin’ on Broadway last Sunday. This was his first Broadway show and my second, so we were both excited. Had a nice lunch beforehand and then got on line. It was an autism friendly showing, so they had people walking around giving out sensory toys. My son ended up getting 4 because he would hand one to me or my mom then be offered another by a different person. The last volunteer was told that he had a few of the toys, but he asked for a purple one anyway. It was okay and he forgot about them once the show started.
‘Aladdin’ on Broadway has many differences, but it was cool that Jafar was played by the original voice. Just wanted to throw that out there. Abu and Raja (monkey and tiger) weren’t in the story. Although, they showed a picture of Abu at one point. Instead, they were replaced by three friends and three handmaidens respectively. Honestly, they were so good and entertaining that I forgot they were in place of previous characters. The changes to the story worked really well and there wasn’t anything out of place. Genie was fantastic and the songs were memorable. It is a challenge not to sing along with the familiar ones. The carpet ride was a great setpiece too because they’re on a giant carpet that goes up into the air.
Another big change that I’m giving its own paragraph is Iago. In the movie, he’s a parrot, but they made him a person in the show. At first, I wasn’t sure how this would work, but he had to be my favorite part of the whole thing. The actor’s delivery of lines and voice was what I would imagine a human version of Iago to be. He was hilarious and the way he moved had me focusing on him every time he was on stage. Don’t get me wrong. The entire cast did a great job and this is coming from a guy who isn’t a fan of Broadway shows. Yet, I think Iago really stood out for me. Guess I do tend to become a fan of sidekicks and secondary characters a lot.
I wish I had more to talk about, but I had a lot of busy days that left me drained by the time I got home. Only managed to write 2 blog posts for April and didn’t touch my books at all. Friday night was supposed to be the start of a writing weekend, but that life event took a turn. I needed to just settle back and talk to friends with the hope of clearing my head for tomorrow. Next week doesn’t look very promising for writing at night, but I might be able to do some more blogs. I have a list of topics to cover April and May, which still takes some of the edge off.
Oh! I did reach 1,000 posts in a row on Thursday. I’m going to keep going. Tomorrow might break it though since I’m going to be posting my War of Nytefall: Rivalry blurbs then deleting them Monday morning. Just hoping to get some insight since I’m rusty there.
Got a new messenger bag too. It’s smaller than my previous one, which I’m retiring due to the bottom starting to fray. That and there a few too many memories tied to it, which are starting to sour. Think I need to do some more fresh starts in some aspects of my life that aren’t at my core. It’s hard to explain since I can’t go into details. Look at the bag:
Seven Deadly Sins Messenger Bag
That’s the symbol of Meliodas the Dragon Sin of Wrath from Seven Deadly Sins. He isn’t my favorite, but that’s the only bag from the anime/manga. I’m hoping to find patches or pins of the other 6 symbols then attach them to the bag. Probably put Ban, Diane, and King on the back. Escanor if I can fit him. Merlin could go under the leather flap and then Gowther can go . . . somewhere. This plan might fail if the patches are too big since the bag is smaller than I expected. Pins might be better and then I could possibly add other anime symbols. Might be overdoing it since this is something I’ll be carrying around school.
Well, that’s really it. Feel like I’m not doing much to report. I was thining of talking about my superhero series since I’m eliminating a few characters and that changes the overall dynamic. I haven’t had any time to look into the whole thing so it would be sloppy to present it to the public. Let’s dive into the goals of the week:
- Writing this weekend. Finish chapter 5 of War of Nytefall: Eradication and get through Chapter 6. Maybe push into Chapter 7 if I can.
- Work hard at job.
- Continue reading Yu Yu Hakusho.
- Get back to biking.
- Try to relax since my stress levels have been high.
- Test out blurbs.
- Set up some April blog posts.
- Finish getting tax stuff set up and sent out.
- Get a little extra sleep.
Add-on: So, I woke up this morning to being told that there are issues with one of my books. Specifically, I do not have a Logical Table of Contents (NCX). Yet, I’ve checked the Word file and the Kindle file. The ToC that I have works with the links sending readers to the proper chapters. Anybody able to clarify this? The book in question is Legends of Windemere: Allure of the Gypsies. The strange thing is that this book was put out with its ToC back in 2013, so I’m surprised Amazon said something now. Is this something that was reported by them or a reader?
Turns out, these don’t have to be limited to documents. My story boards are living documents, in a way. They evolve slowly, and I harvest them when they’re ripe. You can read more about story boarding 
