October 28th, 2009 by Chris Eng

There sometimes comes a point in creative people’s lives where, despite the solitary nature of their hobbies and/or trades, they have to admit that they can’t do it alone, that they need the support of other folks. And that’s a hard thing to accept for headstrong sorts. Being able to admit that you need someone else to lean on to get stuff done isn’t easy. It’s admitting weakness and, some might feel, defeat.

I’ve got about five or six partially competed novels sitting in my notebooks and boxes. It’s a collection I’m not particularly proud of, but I wasn’t sure what I could do about it. To be honest, the 3/4 point pretty much kills me every time. And I’ve reached the point where I finally need to say, “Yes, I need a support network, or I will never finish one of these things.” They will become the skeletons in my closet and I’m not particularly interested in raising a zombie army of half-completed manuscripts before I die. Which is why, in order to get past that block, I need the aid of something that makes the simple act of support fun, and that’s why I’m going to do the Nanowrimo this year.

National Novel Writing Month could be considered a contest of sorts, but the only person you’re really competing against is yourself. The aim is to complete a novel from start to finish during the month of November. You’re allowed to go into it with notes and plot, if you want, but you don’t start writing it until November 1st and you must complete 50,000 words by November 30th.

Signing up on the Nanowrimo website gives you a profile page and the ability to mingle with the other writers—about 80,000 so far (from a count that’s a couple of days old). Every day you input your word count and watch it climb toward your goal, which is a nice bit of visual encouragement. And twice a week, they send out pep talks from various established authors, just to make sure you stay on track and keep working at what you’ve started. This year, they’ve got Lynda Barry, Gail Carson Levine and Tamora Pierce (among others) on board. (They get a lot of YA authors to contribute, because there’s an entire Young Writers Program that collaborates with teachers in order to get kids to write—1,100 classrooms so far! Awesome!)

Schedule

I order to do the Nanowrimo, I am rearranging my life schedule. My computer recently died (I tried to give it some beer and it stopped speaking to me! It was Blue Buck, too! What gratitude!) so I’m sharing my wife’s computer. This normally doesn’t cause too many problems because we keep different enough schedules that I can get most of my computing done while she’s at work. If I’m going to be writing for at least two hours a day, however (I write at around 1,000 words an hour), I thought I should probably try to schedule it so I’m out of her hair as much as possible, so I’m getting up at 6am.

This isn’t the most outlandish time of day for me to be up and around—I’ve had jobs where I’ve needed to be up at 6:00, if not earlier—but I’ve still started scaling my wake-up times back incrementally. No, it’s not outlandish, but it’s not natural for me, either. Plenty of black tea will be drunk in November. Coffee, too.

Prep

You can go into the Nanowrimo with notes and prep, but you can’t start it until the first, so I’ve taken advantage of this and essentially plotted the book from beginning to end. Mostly. Some of the characters are a little rough in my mind and I’ve left room for the cast to deviate from my ideas, but I think it’s mostly there. It’s a punk romance novel, or, as I’d like to call this new genre, a “hoodie-ripper”. (Ever seen a punk wear a bodice? It doesn’t happen that often.) I can write 50K about young punks in love, easy.

Contact

If you want to do it too, you’re got about 3 days of prep left and then the shit’s gonna hit the fan. My screen name at the Nanowrimo site is chriseng. (I know—shocking right?) Feel free to add me. And let’s write some damn novels.

September 10th, 2009 by Chris Eng

The Crisitunity (also known as the Great Almost-Flood of 2009) passed without incident. I know that not having closure on that unresolved aspect of my life was keeping you up at night, so I wanted to clear that up right off the bat. The mess that was distorting and cramping our living room is gone, the boxes have been sorted and moved back into storage and six new boxes are on the “For Sale” pile. Despite that, the bookshelves are all still overflowing to the endtables and there’s still a general lack of space in the house. But at least it’s a clean and generally organized lack of space. What else is going on? Here’s some Pluses and Minuses:

+ The Donald Westlake kick I’ve been on for the past few weeks is a massive, massive plus–specifically with his Parker books. Fans of hard-boiled crime fiction need to take specific note of this, in case it’s somehow passed them by.
- The greenpunk books I should be reading are mouldering on the shelves because I’ve been reading Donald Westlake and noir fiction.
+ Gonna go hide away in a cabin on the Island for my birthday in a couple of weeks.
- The general malaise and depression that seems to be afflicting me at the moment. Not sure of the reason. Not sure there needs to be one.
+ Will and Kyla’s fantastic wedding that I went to a week back, hanging out with a ton of awesome people (many of whom I probably haven’t seen in the better part of 15 years). The wedding featured a bicycle procession (with the bride and groom on a tandem bike) through the streets of Victoria to a park for a champagne toast and then to the reception. Freakin’ amazing.
- My friend Jeff getting on an accident on his bike on the way home from said wedding and shattering his clavicle. He’s okay, if a little sore and chagrined.
+ I’ve been spending less time obsessing over what’s happening online and tending to my downloads, allowing me to spend more time IRL…
- …mainly because my computer disagreed with the beer that got poured on it and now refuses to communicate with me. Or with anyone else. Or in any way whatsoever. So it looks like a new computer is on the horizon, but that’ll have to wait for a little bit. In the meantime, I’m on Carla’s machine. *sigh*

All right, I’m off to sell one of those boxes of books. A local store said they’d take them off my hands for $150. w00t!

July 30th, 2009 by Chris Eng

While I was out GMing my campaign of Call of Cthulhu last night, Carla took an hour and picked a big ol’ tub of fat blackberries, which were immediately frozen and told to wait for the day (soon, blackberries, soon) when they will be turned into delicious smoothies. Lest you think Carla’s evening was more productive than mine, however, it should be noted I nearly killed two of the party members and left the entire group wondering whether or not they’d started a race riot in 1920s Harlem. So, you know, we were both productive.

Also, FYI, apparently yesterday was the hottest day in Vancouver OF EVAR. 33.8°C. Plus the humidity. Yeah, sweat-tastic. Glad I live in a basement suite.

July 29th, 2009 by Chris Eng

Well, I had a lovely if not entirely inexpensive weekend. But it was good. And super-touristy. It’s funny growing up in a tourist town, because as a teenager you instinctively disdain doing touristy things. Then you move away and get married to a girl not from your town and you go home in the middle of summer and she’s like “What’s fun to do?” and you’re all, “Weeeeellllll…” So let me tell you what we did:

DAY ONE:
- Took the ferry over to Victoria first thing Sunday morning.
- Had brunch with Carla, my parents and aunt and uncle at The Superior, an appropriately named Victorian brunch spot (both for the quality of food, and for the fact that it’s found on Superior St.).
- Walked around downtown, and went to the Chinatown Market (where they close off a block of Government St. on Sunday afternoons and local merchants and artisans sell their wares). Carla found a nice blue summer dress (c/o Lotus Designs), I bought some tea (at Silk Road) and then we wandered off to find Carla a belt to accessorize her new outfit with…
- Which we did at Value Village! And I found a signed copy of Wil Wheaton’s The Happiest Days of Our Lives there, which more or less made my day.
- Then we wandered back to Fisherman’s Wharf (known for that afternoon as Fisherman Worf—“I throw this salmon back! It has no honour!”), ate ice cream and looked at houseboats.
- After that we caught the bus to Masha’s house where we drank cider (purchased at the store) and somethink like kefir, but made with water instead of milk. It was slightly effervescent and refreshing. Then we made homemade pizza. Then we passed out.

DAY TWO:
- Went downtown and did some shopping at Plenty, which has moved up into my Top 5 Places to Spend Money in the Garden City. They call themselves an epicurean pantry and that’s about as good a descriptor as you’re going to get. Their chocolate goodies are to die for. We bought a buttload of brownies to nibble on for the remainder of our trip. Also… A CAST IRON MORTAR AND PESTLE! It’s hyoooje! And while it wasn’t cheap, it was one of those times where you figure you’ve got a little extra money and when are you going to invest in such a thing otherwise? A good investment, though, and it makes me happy.
- Scampered down to Pag’s to meet Shawn for lunch, which was lovely. Carla and I both decided that the 1/2 pasta and salad is the perfect amount of food for a hot day with a bunch of walking around.
- Ventured to the Royal BC Museum for their ‘Treasures of the British Museum’ exhibit. It was a excellently curated exhibition and we only occasionally made comments like, (assume horrible, faux British accent) “I say, what have those brown people got over there? Well, they’re only going to ruin it! Here, let’s get it away from them and put it on our trousseau where it can be seriously appreciated.” Then we spent a couple of hours in the rest of the museum. I could easily spend an afternoon a week for the rest of my life wandering the regular collections of the museum and never get bored. I <3 the RBCM so much.
- After wearing a hole in the bottoms of our shoes from all the walking, we walked even further down to the Beacon Drive In, where sugary and fried delights were partaken of. Then to Beacon Hill Park itself where Carla was shown the many, many peacocks that she did not believe wandered freely about the park. “How…? But…! Whaaaaaa…?!” It was cute. Then we napped on the grass behind St. Ann’s Academy.
- When we came to again we wandered over to the IMAX theatre (conveniently located about two blocks from St. Ann’s inside the RBCM) and watched Star Trek on the REALLY big screen in the company of awesome friends.
- Following that we retired to Masha and Bryce’s house and drank beer and whiled away the hours with them, Will and Kyla. Then slept, probably at too late an hour.

DAY THREE:
- Up before seven, so we could catch a cab into town, grab a coffee and get on the train to Nanaimo! It cost only $21/person since we bought the tickets a day in advance! How is it I never managed to do this at any point in my life? Still, despite the fact that we were both bone tired we managed to stay awake for most of the train ride, which was enchanting and a beautiful change from the view on the highway.
- Here are two awesome places I discovered in Nanaimo:
1) Bygone Books: Amazing selection. I forced myself to leave after spending an hour there but still managed to come up with $75 worth of goodies. Both antiquarian and general purpose books, as well as a huge selection of nautical and local history material. Recommended for Island book nerds.
2) Mon Petit Choux Bakery: They use all natural and organic ingredients. Their sandwiches are delicious and their lavender dark chocolate tarts? That shit is off the hook. Seriously.
- The ferry ride back was pretty painless, which is about all I could ask for.

And now that I’ve run down three days’ worth of fun AT LENGTH, let me now tell you what I did not do:

- Take pictures. This was not done out of any particular hatred of photography as much as forgetting to bring the camera along with us or being slightly tipsy and not caring where the camera was. I know this is a blog and without pictures it didn’t happen, but you’re just gonna have to take my word for it that most of this occurred.

Since I’m home and have the camera now, though, I will post pictures of what Carla and I came home to, thanks to our crafty and clever friends Jackie and Liz:

Nothing like a little bit of craftiness on the part of your friends to really make you realize how good it is to come home. But it was a good trip with good friends all ’round.

June 24th, 2009 by Chris Eng

So, I should probably explain to you all that I’m a crow. Not THE Crow. I’m not Brandon Lee and I’m not sitting around in my makeup and black clothes listening to Nine Inch Nails as I type this. But I do get distracted by shiny things. Or, closer to the point, I get fixated on one or two things at a time and if something comes along to supercede my interest, I’ll focus on that at the expense of other things I want or need to be doing.

Case in point: there was a secret I mentioned in my last blog entry. Well, it never quite resolved itself to the point where I could talk about it, and the actual secret (not to mention the secrecy involved) more or less took over most of my waking thoughts, to the detriment of my blog (among other things). The secret is this:

Carla and I were going to move back to Victoria—possibly in fairly short order. See, around the time of my grandpa’s funeral I got to reconnect with a lot of my family and friends in my hometown, many of whom I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to over the last several years. And it was nice. On top of that, Carla was really fed up with certain things that were going on at her job and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to continue with it if that’s the way things were going. So we started debating about whether we needed to be in Vancouver over the next few years, and we couldn’t come up with a good reason why we should. I mean, if it’s all about paying down our debts and saving, we could do that pretty much anywhere. If it’s a matter of our friends in Vancouver, Carla has a few good friends that she would miss very much, but most of my close friends are moving or have moved away. And as for the things that both of us moved here for in the first place, well, neither of us goes out to the bar much anymore and all of our favourite restaurants/stores in town seem to be falling prey to gentrification one by one. We’ll miss the food when we move away—A LOT—but that’s one of the few things.

So, we thought about this between February and March and eventually came up with a game plan that could have seen us moving back to the Rock (as Vancouver Island is affectionately known) as soon as June. A lot of prep-work was done on my end. I basically disassembled my office (which was no big loss, because no writing was getting done in there anyway) and turned it into a storage room, and into that I packed up about twenty boxes of books and other random stuff. I assembled about ten boxes of books for the The Purge IV (I think that’s right—God, I can barely keep track of how many times I’ve gotten rid of books this year) and generally tried to get my possessions into a state whereby if we needed to move with a few weeks notice it wouldn’t kill us.

And I succeeded. Our house isn’t in that bad a shape right now and I have less stuff than at probably any point in the last decade. Plus, things will get slimmer with subsequent cleanings. The problem was that moving wasn’t really something Carla and I could talk about publicly, due to our jobs. I mean, you don’t just go and make announcements about making plans to skip town in a place where your employer can read it.

“Uh, Chris, I wanted to talk to you about your blog and these plans to leave Vancouver.”
“Okay.”
“You know how we’re overstaffed right now?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re fired.”
“Ah. Can you wait to fire me for another few weeks—maybe more—until my plans gel?”
“No.”
“Hm. All right, then.”

It might not have gone exactly like that, but it’s still not the kind of thing you want to be declaring until you’re ready to go public (as it were). So we sat on it and sat on it, and the plans I had for spring kind of disintegrated. I wanted to go and work on the UBC farm, but since all signs pointed to me leaving in fairly short order I decided not to. That decision made me slightly miserable after it became apparent I wasn’t relocating immediately and I missed my chance to work through the entire grow cycle (at least this year, anyway). My depression grew, my responsibilities slid and I bounced from one writing project to another without any real sense of commitment to any of them. My one resolution for the year (look back a few entries and you’ll find it) was to speed ahead full-bore, learn and experience as much as possible, and not stop. Well, I stopped in almost every important regard. I let the indeterminate state of affairs in one area of my life (a fairly large area, but still…) engulf most of the rest of it, and I’m currently paying the price.

The status updates since then are these:

- The factors at Carla’s job that were driving her nuts no longer are. She’s quite enjoying it at the moment.
- I’m moving from the comic shop back to a book store I worked at a couple of years ago (and miss very much). I may stay on for a day or two a week at the comic shop, but that’s up in the air. The book store also knows about my medium-range plans, hence the fact that they’re no longer a secret and I’m talking about them.
- We’re still looking at relocating to Victoria, but it’s not as pressing a concern as it was a few months back.

Taking our time with the relocation means we can be more choosy when searching for jobs in what is essentially a depressed market, and it means we can look for an apartment we might actually want to live in (as opposed to the first one that crosses our path). That’s fantastic, no two ways about it, but now I also have to put the pieces of my shattered plans and resolve back together.

Having the attention span of a crow is great when you’re just leading your regular old geeky lifestyle—it enables you to change course at a moment’s notice and chase after some new and cool thing from halfway ’round the world. In terms of trying to keep your life on track and stick to a course of action that runs contrary to most of your instincts, though—not so good. It’s become clear over the last few months that staying on target is something that will require most of my energy, willpower and determination in order to succeed. It will be hard work. It will most certainly kick my ass on more than one occasion. But it will be worth it in the end, no matter where I end up living.

(Also, as a brief aside, I’m not sure why the website has decided to spontaneously put the sidebar on the bottom of the front page, but I’ll look toward dealing with that when I have a bit more time in the next couple of days. Grrr…)

March 18th, 2009 by Chris Eng

I can’t tell you everything that’s been going on for the past month or so. That’s because it’s a mix of “nothing” and “I’m not ready to talk about it yet.” Don’t worry—it’s nothing serious. Oh, all right, here’s how it sort of went:

Nothing’s happening. How about now? Nope—nothing’s happening. This is kind of disheartening. I know I have some long range plans on the horizon but the lack of any immediate change in my life is dispiriting. Also, there’s nothing to talk about on my blog. I haven’t even made any cakes lately. *sigh*

[INSERT MEDIUM-SIZED REVELATION HERE]

Hey, Carla—how about this idea? You like it?1 How about we work on that in the short term? Awesome! Wait until I blog about… aw, shit. I probably shouldn’t talk about this until it’s a little closer to happening. Still, we’d best get to work.

And so here we are. I’ve been busy for the past few weeks working on something I probably won’t be able to talk about for another couple of weeks, but at least I’m not sitting around wondering what I’m doing (in a short-term capacity, anyway).

In the next while I’ll probably try to come up with something new and exciting food-wise to tell you about, but for now I’ll just drop a list of the top three pop-cultural things I’ve been enjoying lately:

1) Harry Potter, as read by Stephen Fry
2) D&D Player’s Handbook 2
3) America’s Next Top Model (but only for Creepy-Chan)

So, exciting updates will be forthcoming sometime in the relatively near future. Yep—I live to keep you in suspense.

February 5th, 2009 by Chris Eng

+ After all of the drama, Sokka is okay. As I type this, in fact, (in a bit of a role-reversal) he’s bullying his sister.
- His adventure to the vet cost $550. I like to believe that the fluid IV drip helped him through it, because if it didn’t we spent $550 to make our cat even more uncomfortable for a couple of days.
- A day after Sokka came home I felt queasy for most of the day and that night came down with the chills.
+ If it was the flu, I’d fought it off by the next day.
- But I had to miss a free screening of Coraline in 3-D to do it.
+ I did however manage to get the books from The Purge II down to the local used book store and received $650 for the trip.
+ I was only able to make the trip thanks to the generosity (and car) of my awesome friend Jackie. Thanks, Jackie!
- Due to the random upheavals, my schedule is still thrown off. I’ve been able to keep up with the housework and general errands since I got back from Victoria, but not much else.
+ Scott Pilgrim v.5 just came out. This might be the best graphic novel news all year.

January 31st, 2009 by Chris Eng

I kind of figured that after Sokka ate his mousie and barfed it out of his system, he’d work through it and bounce back to normal like cats usually do.

I was wrong.

He kept throwing up into the next day; he had no interest in his food and he was barely moving around. There was nothing to do but take him to the vet.

Now, we’re not at the bottom echelons of poverty, but I don’t think that Carla and I will ever be mistaken for “middle class.” As a result, having to take the cat to the vet was a big deal financially—not for the examination or the various tests he’d have to undergo, but because (God forbid) if he needed surgery we were up shit creek. So, we left him at the clinic with no small degree of trepidation and tried to get on with our lives.

Long story short, he seems to be okay. The x-rays picked up something in his stomach, but it could have been a number of things. They had him on a fluid drip to rehydrate him and he came home with me yesterday (a day after he went in), cranky but otherwise well-disposed. I fed him a small portion of food a few hours ago—the first time he’s eaten solid food in two days—and it’s stayed down so far (fingers crossed); if it stays down, I’ll work him back up to full portions over the next day or so.

Things I’ve learned from all of this:

1) Pet insurance is more than a pretty good idea; for us, it’s essential. I’m going to be looking into various plans next week. (If anyone has advice or suggestions, I’m all ears.)
2) I still need to work on my organizational skills. I’ve been much better about keeping everything in order lately, but it fell apart again over the last few days. I know it’s been a bad couple of weeks in general, what with my grandfather dying and then this—hell, even my tattoo appointment threw things a little out of whack—and I’m probably being too hard on myself, but I can’t help thinking that I’m setting myself up for a lot more responsibility in the future and I’m going to need to keep a handle on things so when my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil’s own Satanic herd right when the crops need to be brought in I’ll be able to navigate through it more smoothly.
3) My finances are much more delicate than I had previously realised. I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that in the short term, but having to pull $600 out of my ass at a moment’s notice has certainly made me aware of it.
4) Kittens are trouble. Damn them for being so cute.

January 28th, 2009 by Chris Eng

+ I have a new tattoo. It is nerdy and awesome. I will post pics after it’s healed.
- The new tattoo is on my forearm and is preventing me from doing some of my chores (most specifically, the dishes), which is stressing me out a little.
+ I got the tattoo in Victoria, and since the journey to and from the city involves a ferry trip and multiple busrides I caught up on the latest season of Battlestar Galactica while in transit.
- They’ve been auctioning off all the sets, props and costumes for BSG over the past couple of weeks and I had no idea until yesterday (some auctions are still live on ebay right now).
- I can’t afford any of the props anyway, and even if I could, I’m not sure where I’d put the command console from the control room. Or the life-sized Cylon raider, for that matter.
+ After the kerfuffle surrounding my grandfather’s funeral, things have finally settled more or less back to normal for me (which means the blogging should return to a relatively normal schedule, too).
+ In the wake of the funeral, I got to reconnect with a bunch of my family members I missed seeing (some of them literally at ‘the wake’).
- In the kerfuffle, I forgot about my library books. They are now a couple of days overdue.
- One of our cats ate his mousie and is gurving up all over the house. No more of those for you, mister.
10x - He just gurved up ALL of his breakfast in our bedroom. It was a two-towel job. Yeah. I’m pretty sure this is a large part of the reason I don’t want babies.
+ Luckily, they both enjoy the catnip, which doesn’t make them barf. More dope for the kitties!

January 12th, 2009 by Chris Eng

My grandpa passed away this morning. He died doing what he loved doing—sitting in his chair, reading a book.

In a blog about trying to figure out how to live a sustainable and environmentally sound life, it might not be immediately apparent why I’m discussing something so, well, personal. But it’s because my grandfather was inspirational to me.

He grew up on a farm in rural Alberta and came of age during the war. In fact, he lied about his age and enlisted the first chance he got, looking for a chance to get out of the Prairies. He got it—he was sent to the front lines of Europe where he served his tour, managing to make it out with nothing more serious than deafness in one ear from the falling bombs. He never talked about the war; that wasn’t something he liked to brag about—it was something he did because it had to be done. He honoured those he fought with later in his life, though, by mounting and displaying their medals. This past Remembrance Day, a selection of those he’d mounted belonging to female freedom fighters was displayed in the lobby of the Provincial Museum. He wanted to make sure they got their due.

And it was that kind of tenacity I hope will guide me through the rest of my life. His drive to do the right thing, embodied, in this case, by making sure the next generation appreciates the sacrifices of the previous ones. As well, he clung to his passions with an intensity I hope I will be able to match. He bicycled around New Zealand in his 70s and kept biking until his arthritis got too bad. His love of the outdoors never waned. And he never gave up his love of reading. Maybe that’s genetic.

Two months ago I got my first new tattoo in the better part of a decade. Its of a WWII-era pin-up girl with the motto “Touch not the cat bot a glove.” The motto is Clan McIntosh’s—my grandpa’s side of the family. The girl is based on the wartime tattoo my grandpa got on his forearm. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over the fact that he never got to see it before he died—I was planning a visit to show him at the end of the month—but I’m glad, at least, that my mom told him about it. It’s important that, although we never really shared that many heartfelt moments, at the end he knew I was proud of him.

Goodbye, grandpa. I miss you; I love you.

Colin McIntosh, R.I.P.