I’ve been trying to think of a proper title for this post for days, but I can’t think of anything to imply that this is simply the most important post I’ve ever made other than to title it The Most Important Post I’ve Ever Made.
 
I will tell you right now that this will not have a single thing to do with gaming, but I ask you to please read it anyway.  Even if you don’t like me, please read it.  I’ve been thinking about this post for days… trying to find the right wording because I don’t want to screw this one up.  As it is, I’m jumping the gun a little bit because the meat of the subject will require a link that I don’t have yet.  I’ll go back later and add the link in once I have it.
 
And now to the subject at hand.
 
The odds are not in our favor.  Chances are that at some point in every single one of our lives, either we ourselves or someone very close to us will suffer the debilitating effects of cancer.  I know that I always heard about it, but I figured it was something that only hit other people.  And then the flood gates opened.
 
When I was in high school, my grandmother on my mother’s side came down with breast cancer.  She survived, but was never quite the same.  A few years later, my other grandmother came down with lung cancer and didn’t survive.
 
When I was in college, a woman who was like a second mother to me came down with bone cancer that quickly spread to her brain and she passed away.  Less than a week later, the mother of a good friend passed away from the exact same type of cancer.  Later that same year, a good friend’s father passed away from pancreatic cancer.
 
Three years ago this month, two friends from work passed away from cancer.  One was a woman in her early 50’s who went home from work complaining of back pain one day.  A few days later, the doctors discovered cancer in her body.  She passed away a few days before Christmas.  The other was a young guy… probably a year or two younger than me.  He was at home with his wife and he collapsed on the floor.  She rushed him to the hospital and they discovered cancer in his brain.  He died on December 23… less than an hour before his first child was born.
 
Earlier this year, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer.  My father had several patches of skin cancer and my mother had cervical cancer.  Both got treatment and both are in remission right now.  Less than two months ago, the guy who sits right next to me came down with thyroid cancer.  He had his thyroid removed and has undergone radiation treatment.  They aren’t completely sure yet if he is in remission or if he needs further radiation treatments.
 
That is just my life and those are just the cases off the top of my head that have impacted me in the last few years.  With each of those people, I could name hundreds of family, friends and associates who were also impacted by what happened.
 
A few months ago, when I first started really getting into cycling, I stumbled across a particular website.  I first clicked the link because the name was funny.  What I found on the other side was a real treat.  For those of you who ever read Coyote’s columns, this guy wrote on a par with Coyote for humor.
 
As I kept reading his site, however, there were times when I got hints that all had not always been well.  When I got to surfing back through his archives, a story unfolded that literally brought me to tears.
 
His name is Elden Nelson and his website is www.fatcyclist.com. 
 
Elden first created fatcyclist as a means to make fun of himself.  He had been an avid cyclist for most of his life, but one year, he discovered that he had gained a lot of weight and could no longer ride very well.  He said that he tried diets, exercise plans, and all the other “loose weight quick” gimmicks out there and nothing was working for him.  He opted to create fatcyclist because he figured the one thing he hadn’t tried was public humiliation.
 
Somewhere along the way, Elden and his wife discovered that she had breast cancer.  Rather than hide from the cancer or deny it was there, they decided to fight back and to educate.  Elden transformed fatcyclist from a site where he only talked about cycling in a humorous way to a site where he talked about cycling in a humorous way but also gave status updates on his wife, how she was doing, what they were going through, and what they had learned.
 
Elden’s wife, Susan, survived breast cancer and they thought that all was well.  A few years later, they discovered that her cancer had returned, metasized, and spread throughout her body.  Rather than giving up, they fought even harder.  Elden got heavily involved with the Lance Armstrong Foundation and started raising money.  He got a lot of companies involved and they would donate things that he would hold raffles for.  All the money raised went to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.
 
Through it all, he continued to tell the world of his wife and the way she fought.  Her story was so moving and so inspiring that many people adopted the phrase, “Fight Like Susan.”
 
Elden ended up forming a group called Team Fatty that participates in fund raising for the Lance Armstrong Foundation around the country.  Last year, Team Fatty participated in all four LiveStrong Challenge rides.  Team Fatty has their own bike jerseys that have the slogan “Fight Like Susan” imprinted on them.
 
In August of this year, Susan Nelson passed away.  That night, Elden made a post that still brings tears to my eyes.  The title, “Don’t Say She Lost” is not a plea but rather a challenge.  So many people would say “So and so lost their fight against cancer,” but that isn’t how Elden sees things.  He says “Don’t say she lost” as a challenge because he doesn’t see it that way.  In his own words, “Susan inspired me to expand the focus of my blog from nothing but bike-related jokes to a serious and pitched fight against cancer.  Then she inspired 500+ of you to join Team Fatty, the largest LiveStrong Challenge Team there has ever been.  And Team Fatty has raised more than $500,000 – a record amount.  Susan’s part in the battle is over, but she didn’t lose.  She led the charge.  She showed the rest of us how to fight: with determination, focus, creativity, and outrageous endurance.  Now it’s up to the rest of us to Fight Like Susan.”
 
When the Lance Armstrong Foundation put in the final count for 2009, Team Fatty had raised more than $800,000 for cancer research… a figure that shattered the previous record held by Dell Computers.
 
Elden is now the single father of two teenage boys and pre-teen twin girls.  He hasn’t given up his focus or his fight though.  He has set a goal for Team Fatty to this year break the $1,000,000 mark.
 
I am very proud to say that I have signed up for the 2010 LiveStrong Challenge as a member of Team Fatty.  I will be signing up to participate in the LiveStrong Challenge 90-mile bike ride in Austin, Texas taking place next October. 
 
I am going to sticky this link to this site and, once I have it, I will add a link to my LiveStrong Challenge page where anyone that is so inclined can go to make donations.  In order to participate in the ride, I have to raise at least $250, but that isn’t going to be a problem.
 
You see, I have been a smoker off and on since I was 16 years old.  That is 22 years of poisoning myself.  Watching people I know and love suffering the effects of cancer and, sometimes, dying from cancer never moved me to say I was going to quit.  Reading about Susan Nelson, how she fought, how Elden fought back, and how a national cycling community rallied behind them and said, “Enough!  It’s time to beat this thing”… that finally inspired me to quit.  I thought it only poetic to decide to take at least a percentage of the amount of money I used to feed into Big Tobacco and funnel it to an organization that fights the very thing I was helping to propagate.  That amount will more than equal the amount I have to raise in order to do the ride.
 
I’m not going to ask for money.  In fact, should you choose to give, I won’t even know who did what as it will all be handled through the LiveStrong website.
 
All I will ask is that if you believe that we can eventually find a way to beat cancer for all of our sakes, do what you can.  That might mean donating a little money.  That might mean spreading the word.  That might mean linking back to this post or to fatcyclist.  Whatever you feel like you can do to help, please do.
 
One brave woman and her husband set out to change the world.  With our help, her husband doesn’t have to continue that fight alone.

Edit: My donations page is now set up.  You can visit it here.  It will also be linked to the side under the Help Fight Cancer heading.

I’ve been wondering lately if the gaming community is wounded.  Granted, we are in the phase of “between time” where our favorite MMO’s are at the tail end of last year’s expansion and not quite ready to release this year’s expansion.  I can’t speak about how things are with stand-alone games or console games as I haven’t played either in over a decade.  MMO’s have also been stagnant for a long time now with only clones with minor variations being released.  People beg for and call for innovation, but when innovation comes along, they scream “Too hard!” and jump ship.
 
But all of that isn’t really the point here.
 
I have long said that the gaming community has never been as strong as it was back in the EQ days.  I’m not talking gamer numbers here… I’m talking about the strength and enthusiasm of the community as a whole.  Since I wasn’t in on EQ from the beginning, I don’t know when the whole community thing started flourishing, but I do know it was well-established by the time I started playing and was still going strong up until just a few years ago.
 
Some of you are probably scratching your head and thinking, “What the hell are you talking about?”
 
Back in EQ, it seemed that a new fan website sprung up every 15 minutes.  Message boards were everywhere and they were all active.  Every class in the game had its own website dedicated to that class and members of that class, as well as others who had some measure of interest in that class, flocked to those boards.  Posts, write-ups, and walkthroughs by the hundreds were posted every day and most sites maintained a fairly constant online presence of 100 or more people at all hours of the day and night.
 
Over time, quite a few of the sites disappeared as the kings of the mountain were established.  People knew that if you needed information about a quest, general information about a mob, or a brief description of a zone, you went to Allakhazams.  If you had questions about spells for a particular class, you often went to castersrealm.  If you wanted to know what was in a particular zone or how to get around, you went to eqatlas.  If you wanted bard-specific information, you went to the concert hall or eqdiva.  The list goes on.
 
Hundreds of sites visited and contributed to every day by hundreds of people. 
 
And here is the really shocking part… aside from a very small number of sites, flame wars were non-existent.  People got along.  People were interested in helping each other figure things out, exchanging ideas and strategies, and finding solutions to problems.
 
No longer.
 
What message boards do exist for games these days are full of flames and child-like behavior.  There are few people who still visit the sites because those who once enjoyed contributing to the community grew weary of the trolls and instigators and simply quit visiting.  Many of the EQ sites have vanished completely or hardly see any traffic any longer… and it isn’t because of the age of the game.  It is because of the low quality of people who do actually contribute.
 
It goes beyond that though.  In recent years, fan blogs have replaced the message boards and fan sites of yesterday.  A lot of people who were once active in the gaming community or who once ran sites turned to blogging.  For me, I found it was a great way to express thoughts and ideas that I once would have put on a message board somewhere without having to deal with the tidal wave of flames and inane response that is now the norm on regular websites.
 
It seems lately, however, that the fan blogs are starting to dry up.  Much like the old mainstays of EQ, those who run the blogs seem to be either losing interest in the blog itself or gaming in general.  The lackluster attempts by the gaming companies have, I admit, given me more than a small amount of lethargy when it comes to giving a rip about what is going on in the gaming world. 
 
Two and a half years ago, when I first created this site, I would hit every site on my blogroll every single morning.  Every single morning, all of those sites had at least 1 new post up.  Every single morning, I couldn’t wait to write something myself and see what, if any, response it garnered.
 
The list over to the right has changed over time.  Sites have been added and others have gone away.  Only a few have been there from day 1.  That is the nature of the beast I guess.
 
Over the last few months, however, I have started to realize that maybe the old guard is simply ready to pass the torch.  There are very few people that I started gaming with a decade back who are still playing a game of any kind.  Back then, none of us could even fathom a time when we wouldn’t have some form of online entertainment.  Talking to them, it isn’t that they don’t want to be playing something.  They aren’t playing for the simple fact that game developers seem to have given up even trying to do something new.  It’s like the comic book industry from the 90’s.  A couple of titles went ballistic due to a pretty cover, a certain storyline, or a particular artist and then suddenly everyone is churning out copy after copy, clone after clone, until finally, the industry collapsed under its own greed.  Where are all those companies now?  Most are out of business.  The survivors are still trying to find a way to recover.
 
I went through my blogroll from the top to the bottom this morning for the first time in a long time.  As I have said on more than one occasion, I have largely quit caring… about gaming, about blogging, about industry news, about all of it.  The industry is stagnant and uninspired right now and that doesn’t exactly garner interest on my part.  I do still like to keep up with what everyone else is doing or thinks, so I thought I would hit all of the various sites.
 
What I discovered is that, apparently, a lot of people are feeling the same way I am.  Most of the sites on my list haven’t been updated in weeks, if not months.  Several have folded up their tents and said their goodbyes.  Others are updating far less often.  Pretty much no one has anything new to say because there is very little way to put a new spin on something that has been done a thousand times by a thousand companies.
 
The community is wounded because the industry is wounded.  And from what we have seen over the last few years, I’m not sure if I am hoping more for some miracle cure for what is wrong or for the whole industry to finally be put out of its collective misery.

And so another month comes to an end.  It seems strange to me to be posting so infrequently.  I think I am still averaging more posts than a lot of people out there, but after nearly 3 years of at least 1 post per day, this seems odd to me.  At the same time, how many times can I re-tell a “what I did last night” story and keep it interesting… if I ever did manage to keep things interesting in the first place?
 
If you have been around this site for any amount of time, you have heard me say several times before that this is my favorite time of the year.  I can’t really put into words the ‘why.’  It just is.  During a day and age where Christmas has become a “bad” word and where people battle growing stress and depression, I guess I am still a little boy.  I remember that when I was a child, the days and weeks leading up to Christmas were almost unbearable.  Pretty much from the moment the tree went up in our living room and the first Christmas ad hit the television, I was one massive raw nerve on the edge of my seat.  As the pile of colorfully wrapped gifts grew under the tree, I would reach a frenzy that I almost couldn’t stand… and my mother probably couldn’t.  I would sit for hours staring at the packages and wondering feverishly what was inside.  Occasionally, when I thought no one was looking, I would slink quietly closer, pick up a gift with my name on it to judge the weight, and gently shake it in the hopes of having some magical moment of insight.  These little detective exercises were usually disrupted by a screech from the gate keeper (aka my mother) catching me in the act and shooing me back outside.
 
I’m an adult now.  My family is spread out all over the place and most of them don’t like the rest of them.  We rarely speak and even more rarely get together.  My family was one of the many victims of present-day society where the pressures and expectations simply grew too great and we splinted like shattered glass and got as far away from each other as possible.  My 5-person immediate family (2 parents and 2 older sisters) now live in 5 different cities and holidays are not a family gathering opportunity.
 
Still, in spite of all of that, I love Christmas.  I love the memories of innocence that this time of the year awakens within me and I love the sounds, smells, and sights of the season. 
 
And somehow, through it all, I have created some all new Christmas traditions of my own.  There may not be a big tree, lots of decorations, piles of gifts, and holiday food, but that is alright with me.  No matter where my current attitude lies with regard to whatever game I am currently playing, Christmas time seems to always bring about a new resurgence of interest and enjoyment.  After all, it was Christmas season when I took my first steps into MMO’s so it stands to reason that the overall atmosphere of the season would invoke some old feelings.
 
With talk of Frostfell looming just around the corner, I feel like that little boy again… anxiously awaiting my favorite time of the year.  Instead of hopes of whatever holy grail of a Christmas gift I hope to see that year under the tree, I wonder instead about the Frostfell events and what will unfold in that snowy winterland this time around the calendar. 
 
Here in about 30 minutes, I’ll step outside to head off to lunch.  The temperature hasn’t really turned yet and the clear sky and soft breeze outside are keeping the temperatures in the 60’s, but nature is aware of the time of year regardless.  The trees, which browned weeks ago and started shedding their leaves, are really casting off their summer cargo now.  Brown leaves crunch under foot with every step and blow in the wind.  Houses and shops are lined with festive lighting and Christmas jingles play on the radio.
 
Before I know it, it will be over again and I’ll be packing the Frostfell goodies back into my house vault for another year, but for the next 31 days, I plan to enjoy that feeling of being a child again.

I’m probably completely and totally out of touch, but I honestly didn’t know anything about the world event going on right now until I logged on and heard guildies talking about it Wednesday evening. 
 
I know that live events, questing, and storylines are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I have done my best to participate in every event since I started playing.  There have been times where I felt the event fell flat (all of the void events leading up to the release of TSO for instance) and realized that I couldn’t care less early on in the event.  I think I only did one or two quests for the void events and only did those on 1 toon.  I simply couldn’t stand those and was happy when they were over.
 
For the most part though, I enjoy the world events and typically completely them on all of my toons.
 
This particular event is, in my personal opinion, the best one I have participated in.  I like the story, I like the quests, and I love the rewards.  The mini-Claymore is freaking awesome as is the painting and the banner.  The only thing about the event that isn’t cool is the random world kicks when you zone, but that bug hit me a lot less frequently than it did other people.  In all, I’ve taken 5 of my guys through the events and quests so far.  I’ll definitely take a 6th through, but I’ll probably pass on the 7th.  The 7th is a healer and is barely equipped at all.  I don’t imagine he would be much fun to take through.
 
I’ve been debating deleting him and creating a class that I actually want to play in the character slot.  The only thing that has kept me from it is that he’s a level 80 provisioner.  I love having my own provisioner, but of all the tradeskills I have done, that was my least favorite… by a fairly significant margin.  I hated the provo grind passionately.  I really don’t want to have to do it again.
 
Of course, if I did, I would at least have the 50% server bonus this time… something that hadn’t been introduced yet when I originally did the grind on him.
 
I ran my first tradeskill instance in months yesterday.  I’ve been meaning to do them again for a while to get the achievements and to get the final reward once all 4 are complete, but I’ve been dragging my feet.  The events are good and are fun… the first few times.  Once you have done them a few times though, they are more tedious than anything.  I’m sure they wouldn’t be so bad if I did them as they were intended… with a full group.  Unfortunately, most of the people I know either view tradeskilling as a necessary evil or something to not be touched ever-ever-not-even-on-a-bet ever.  I could be wrong, but I think I’m about the only person in my guild who tradeskills out of a genuine enjoyment of it.
 
I’m still finding myself constantly wrestling with the whole “What’s the point” argument.  When I can log on, throw all the concerns and pressures out of my mind, and simply play the game, I have a blast.  As soon as people start talking about raiding and calls for groups start going out and people start in on flagging, backflagging, and mythical updates, all I want to do is cancel my account and walk away.  I’m tired of being told that I’m suddenly not good enough.  Never mind the fact that I was doing X zone months ago before I even had my fabled or a single piece of T1. Suddenly and mysteriously those zones can’t be done by anyone who isn’t at least in full T3 with a mythical.
 
I find it a rather amusing paradox that it is people and friends who make MMO’s fun to play… and it is people and friends who make them miserable experiences.

Not sure why the text and formatting for the previous post is so different from every other post, but honestly, I’m too lazy to try to figure it out or fix it. 

I got an e-mail a bit ago from SOE informing me that they are releasing a new all-inclusive box set of Star Wars Galaxies.

Really?  A new box set?  Seriously?  All-inclusive?

It has been 4 years since the last expansion to SWG.  Trials of Obi Wan, the expansion that introduced the NGE, was released in November of 2005.

Since then, there has been at least 1 other box set that was all-inclusive.

And nothing as been released since then… but they feel the need to release a new box set?  And what do you get for buying it?

A new 2-person vehicle.

An old 1-person vehicle that was given out with the last box set.

An instant travel vehicle… which is just a graphical fast zone mechanism… of which several are already available in game for free.

That would be kind of like them releasing a new all-in-one box set for the EQ Mac server Al’Kabor.  “We’re not giving you any new content, any new patches, any new expansions, or any new reasons to play the game, but we reeeeaaaalllllly think you should buy it anyway.”

For some reason, I woke up this morning with a song stuck in my head.  That is not overly unusual in and of itself.  What was strange was that the song stuck in my head was the old piano theme that played during the install of Scars of Velious.
 
I have always loved that melody and I even copied the files off of my old Velious CD.  There have been times when I am sitting at the computer writing or doing research where I will put that song and many other midi’s from EQ on a loop and let it run.
 
I haven’t done that for a long time though so I have no idea why it was stuck in my head this morning.  All I do know is that it stuck me in a nostalgic mood for EQ.
 
Things are quiet here this morning for a change, so I have relaxed a bit and spent some time surfing old EQ websites.  It is always sad to me when I do that.  No game before or since has inspired the kind of online community that EQ did.  I’m not talking population here, so all the Warcraft people untwist your panties.  I’m talking about the eruption of online websites dedicated to the game.  I don’t mean blogs.  I mean sites like castersrealm, allakhazams, everlore, eqatlas, bilgehunter, eqstratics, eqdiva, graffes, monklybusiness, steelwarrior, and countless others.  Those sites were everywhere and new posts and comments sprung up by the second.  You could post a reply and, in the 30 seconds it took to do, 10 more topics could spring up.  It wasn’t unusual to see hundreds of people on these sites at any given time and they were all active participants.
 
Games since don’t seem to inspire the same internet presence.  Maybe it’s because so much is handed to you in the game and you don’t have to actually figure things out for yourself.  Whatever the reason, the massive website phenomenon that EQ created seems to have vanished.
 
Anyway, I was hitting a lot of these old websites and it made me sad.  Many are gone.  Others haven’t been updated in years.  A few are still around and still get updated, but it is almost like the people who run them just can’t bring themselves to let the sites go.  They make occasional updates, but there is no outside contribution.  Message boards are dead and abandoned.  Sites that used to get 200 new threads a day haven’t had 20 new discussion threads created this year.
 
I was on a site called EQLinks or something like that.  It is just a webpage with a bunch of links on it.  On the left side of the page is a bunch of EQ links and the right side is EQ2 links.  I was pretty much clicking down the list and getting increasingly sad at how much things have changed for EQ even in the time since I quit playing just 3 years ago.  I found myself thinking about how much I would like to reactivate my account temporarily just to go run the roads one more time… see everything that I miss about the game.  Of course, the last time I did that, it only increased my sadness over how much the game has changed.  I’m not saying it is bad the way it is.  It just isn’t the game that I loved.
 
But then it happened.
 
I accidentally clicked a link on the wrong side of the page and ended up over at eq2traders.
 
Mum has posted a write up about the next GU, posted about a new monthly event coming soon and posted a write up about Frostfell hitting Test.
 
And just like that, my sadness over EQ-that-was evaporated and I started to get excited about all the things on tap for EQ2.
 
Nostalgia can be a fun thing from time to time, but staying in the present is much more enjoyable.

I don’t know that I could call it “triumphant,” but it was a returning.  That is to say that I spent more time online over the last 4 days than I have over the last 4 months.  Part of it is that work is starting to slack off a bit so I’m less stressed… which makes me more open to things like gaming.  Part is the holiday season coming.  If nothing else, the holidays are more or less synonymous with gaming for me.
 
That being said, I don’t have a whole lot to report… at least, not a whole lot new.  I did a lot of running around.  It seems that shard missions are starting to die down for the most part as people are definitely getting tired of the same old offerings.  Some of the harder missions are still fun, but there is that whole stigma attached that “you have to have the perfect group” or people won’t go.  Unfortunately, that misconception that you have to have a perfect group results in an awful lot of people and classes getting left out on the fun.
 
And that is just one of the things that bothers me about EQ2.
 
If the whole “perfect group” ideology bothers me, the press release for the next expansion absolutely disgusted me.  The whole basis of them billing station cash and LON card packs as “bonus items” for pre-ordering makes me realize that my days of having faith in SOE are definitely starting to come to an end.  Hell, even when I cancelled my second account a few months ago, the new exit survey was kind of like, “We’re sorry you are canceling.  We don’t really care why.  Did you use the Marketplace?  You didn’t?  Well, why the hell not?  If you come back, will you use the Marketplace?  No?  Why the hell not?  Did you buy LoN booster packs?  You didn’t?  Why the hell not?  Will you play LoN now that you are quitting EQ2?  No?  Why the hell not?  Screw you then… good riddance.” 
 
You think I’m kidding?  I’m obviously exaggerating, but I’m not kidding.  Most of the exit survey revolved around the marketplace and Legends of Norrath.  Very little was actually concerned with game play, game bugs, content, classes, balance, raiding, tradekilling or ACTUAL parts of the game.  It was all about the “cash now” element.
 
With their increased emphasis on the marketplace and LoN, I am definitely taking the game with a grain of salt.  I might be playing a bit more right now and I’ll even admit that I am enjoying myself, but I’ll be watching every corner for the shifty eyes.  I’ll have my fun and do my thing, but I won’t be ruled by or bullied into RMT assiness that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual game.  If they try to force it down my throat, I’ll ram it down theirs by taking my money elsewhere because no matter what people like Brenlo might like to believe, we are not all zombies who are ruled and fooled by the soft glow from the LCD.

I think I have probably spent more time playing this week than I have for months.  I don’t claim to understand the ebb and flow of my interest in the game these days, but there are times when it is there and times when it isn’t.  Right now, it seems to be more present than it has been for a while.
 
Maybe it is the things I’ve been doing that make it more fun though.  I haven’t seriously tried to join a group for several weeks now.  Groups happen, but I’m not going out of my way for them.
 
There are still frustrations of course, but rather than trying to push through the frustrations, I now just log off when they hit.  If I’m not in the mood to play Rao and I immediately get asked to, “Sorry.  Not staying online.”
 
I’ve mostly been running around by myself, mostly on alts.  I’ve been chasing some achievements and collecting shinies.  I’ve stopped by the dudes that will lower your level and send you off to old zones, but I end up waving at them and continuing on.  I’ll do them some day, but I’m just not driven right now.
 
On other fronts, work has been so busy and so crazy the last few months that… well, I honestly don’t even know how to articulate it.  Suffice it to say that I don’t think I’m going to make it to my vacation at the end of December.  Between that vacation and the first I took, I didn’t actually schedule my full 80 hours this year.  I was planning on carrying over the rest so that I could take some 3-day weekend biking trips in the spring, but I’m starting to feel that it might be more important for me to take a couple of days off now rather than carry them over.  We’ll see though.
 
Which leads to the biking.  I won’t go into it here much.  If you are even interested, I expect you have already checked out my other site where I talk about it in more detail.  All I will say here is that it is continuing to be of growing importance to me and I am now riding every day of the week… and I love it more each time I climb into the saddle. 
 
Finally, there is NaNo.  I wish I could say that I was enjoying NaNo as much this year as I did last year, but I have to be honest and say that I have pretty much hated every minute of it so far.  I picked a story that I wasn’t too excited to write, I quickly learned to hate all of my characters, and completely lost what little interest I had in the story after about 500 words.
 
I’m still plugging away though.  I’m determined to finish regardless of how much I would rather just quit.  I’m nearing the halfway point in my word count and expect I will hit that tonight.  Then it is just a matter of pushing through to the end and then I can strike this whole NaNo year as a bad experience that I survived.  I don’t expect I’ll even keep this story once it is done and I have kept nearly every word I have ever written in my life.  I hate this one that bad.  Once it is done, I just want to delete it from my hard drive and put it out of my mind.