Computer Club<\/a> at my kids’ school this week as well. \u00a0While Monday was only so-so, Wednesday was fantastic. \u00a0I gave the kids an extremely easy task, then added more complexity through the club time to the task until at the end, the kids were all able to make their own program that would accept input and display the input back to the user. \u00a0It doesn’t sound like much, but since this is basically the third week of the club, I’m pretty proud of the kids. \u00a0Even better, the kids stayed engaged the entire time, and seemed to have a lot of fun. \u00a0I’ll have to continue with that style of teaching.<\/p>\nBryanna and I went to Band practice. \u00a0We turned in a bunch of music and site read a bunch more. \u00a0That was a lot of fun. \u00a0The only problem with band is that it’s Monday evening, which means that my Mondays are ridiculously long.<\/p>\n
Tuesday evening, I went to my kids PTO meeting and presented the board with their new mailing list and website. \u00a0I’d been paying for the hosting of their domain for years, but no one ever really did anything with it, and it was expensive. \u00a0When it came time to pay them again, I kept my wallet closed and moved the domain to one of my servers, and I spent most of last weekend getting it all set up for them. \u00a0Tuesday evening was my chance to present it to them, and it received many ohs and ahs.<\/p>\n
Wednesday evening, I went to Starbucks, met up with Michael, and did some writing. \u00a0I’m not fantastically happy with my book right now, so it was progress was very difficult. \u00a0I fixed a couple of things and added another 500 words or so. \u00a0It was a productive evening.<\/p>\n
Friday, I attended a “Shut up and Write!” even at a different locale, hosted by a different individual. \u00a0It was at a restaurant near downtown that used to be called Crepeville. \u00a0It looks the same, and still offers the same food. \u00a0I couldn’t see the name of the place, and someone told me that it used to be called Crepeville, so I assume it’s under different management. \u00a0As a venue for sitting down with strangers and writing, it was only okay. \u00a0There was no free wifi, and the only long table available was sort of short, so I wound up sitting at a side table with someone else. \u00a0It was from 6PM to 7:30PM, so I wound up eating dinner while trying to write. \u00a0It meant that I only added about 400 more words to my book, which is a little disappointing.<\/p>\n
After Crepeville, I walked across the street and visited my friend Dael. \u00a0I hadn’t seen Dael in ages, and it was really great sitting down with him for about an hour and a half, catching up.<\/p>\n
If I stop at Friday, then I think it’s safe to say I had a really great week that was fully, busy, and productive. \u00a0I didn’t get as much writing done as I would have liked, and I didn’t get any blog posts up all week, but my well-rounded activities were edifying. \u00a0If I stop at Friday, I can say it was a really great week.<\/p>\n
I have to include Saturday, though, which is the fly in the soup. \u00a0Maybe it’s the flaw in the diamond? \u00a0No, because it came at the end, and it didn’t make me value all the days that preceded it at all.<\/p>\n
Saturday morning, I was supposed to go to another Shut up and Write event, which was a workshop on using the five senses and juxtaposition in description in fiction. \u00a0I was looking forward to the event, but the way they set it up made my teeth hurt. \u00a0In addition to signing up in advance (which is normal), you also had to pay in advance. \u00a0There was a strict no refund policy listed out, and to pay, you either had to show up to one of the previous Shut up and Write events and pay there, or send a check.<\/p>\n
I don’t write checks. \u00a0I learned a long time ago that it’s not good for me to write checks. \u00a0I use my debit card or cash, and I use my bank’s online services for paying bills. \u00a0Most of the time, I don’t know where the checkbook is, and I don’t even have a checkbook for my personal account. \u00a0So writing a check and sending it by mail was out of the question in general, for me.<\/p>\n
That meant that I needed to go to one of the other events. \u00a0Unfortunately, they’re mostly on Monday evenings and Wednesday evenings, which don’t work for me. \u00a0This week I wound up driving downtown to pay at the event on Wednesday evening. \u00a0I then immediately got back on the road and drove out to Roseville to meet up with Michael. \u00a0I didn’t appreciate fighting all the traffic, but I got them the money and secured a spot.<\/p>\n
Saturday morning, I got to the event on time, and as I was putting down my laptop bag, I said, “Next time, you should put up a Paypal.” Two other attendees immediately said, “Yes!” The person hosting the event (not the presenter), decided to argue with me, and turned it into a confrontation.<\/p>\n
She then took me aside and said “Every time you come to these events, you complain.”<\/p>\n
I frowned, blinked, and tried to figure out what she was talking about. \u00a0I’d only been able to make it to one other event, and I told her that. \u00a0To which she said, “Yeah, and you complained about the scheduling.”<\/p>\n
I recalled that I had mentioned my difficulties with the scheduling, but that was only in the context of answering the question, “How long have you been with the group, and why haven’t we seen more of you?”<\/p>\n
I told her that I hadn’t been complaining before, but by that time, the damage was done. \u00a0My emotional response was going into cascade failure, and I had to leave. \u00a0I told her, “You know what? \u00a0Fine. \u00a0I’ll make it easier for you. \u00a0I’ll leave.” She tried to give me my money back and I said, “No. \u00a0Keep it. \u00a0Spend it on something nice.” And I left.<\/p>\n
I wound up coming home. \u00a0I watched a bunch of Star Trek episodes on Netflix, played Solitaire, and brooded in my garage until 1AM. \u00a0At 1:30AM, I went to meetup.com and unsubscribed from the Shut Up and Write list. \u00a0Then I went to bed and tossed and turned for an hour.<\/p>\n
I feel a little better, now. \u00a0I don’t need that group. \u00a0I wound up letting one person chase me out of it, which is bad, but I’ve got a good thing going with Michael that’s giving me what I needed from the group already.<\/p>\n
I guess that’s enough rambling. \u00a0Today, I’m going to try and be productive. \u00a0That might mean doing some work for my job, or it might mean working on my book. \u00a0I really need to get to a place where I enjoy my story again, so I can finish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This last week has been a bit busy and hectic. I did all the normal work stuff, which I won’t talk about too much here. \u00a0I’m a programmer. \u00a0I programmed. \u00a0That’s about all we need to say on that, other than this week, I did more documenting and experimenting than actual programming. I taught the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}