on writing

Over the past month I've been working on what I hope to be my last zombie novel. I have this weird OCD thing where I like to write things in three (why'd you think I made "Dwellers of the Night" a trilogy?). This project will be my third and, I hope, last zombie novel. I don't know why I'm so into writing about zombies, especially since I'm not into other zombie books, or graphic novels, or movies, or really anything at all. It's quite surprising. Perhaps there's a sort of romantic element involved, because I wrote my first successful zombie novel in high school; maybe there's a touch of charm and antiquity thrown in there. 

This story's more an experiment than everything. I'm toying with a different writing style, and though I'm tempted to abandon it, I'm going to stick with it just to see what happens. Describing this writing style is difficult. You see, the highest level of English and Literature I ever reached was a sophomore college class. I don't know all the technical names, the formats and structures, all that stuff. I just like to write stories, and I'm damned good at it. My writing style has been an eclectic mix largely dominated by the varying influences of Michael Crichton, H.P. Lovecraft, and (more recently) Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy (though I could just say Hemingway, since what I love about McCarthy is how he took Hemingway's style and reworked it a bit; and the echoes of the Faulknerian tradition in McCarthy take me down happy trails, as well). This writing style could be something glimpsed, perhaps, in Chuck Palahniuk (I'm reading his "Lullaby" right now) or Bret Easton Ellis ("American Psycho," the novel and not the Christian Bale adaptation). 

The story begins in Hilton Head, South Carolina (the beginning part was written in Hilton Head, so why not?), then blossoms in Cincinnati, and then takes a drive up 71 to the Old House in Wilmington, and then cruises right back down to the Ohio River. That's a geographical mapping of the story-line, which follows the Main Character through the first several days of a zombie epidemic (not a pandemic, as I've done in the best), and the story is retold from the main character's perspective as he awaits his final resolution. There's a lot more going on there (sub-plots, turning points, rising and falling action, see what I did there?), but that's the gist of it. My hope is that it's not over 350 pages. I want to keep it small. But my attempts at novellas over against novels always fail, so I'll just accept that it won't be 300 or fewer.

of o.j. and vampires

It's a low key evening with some Magic Hat 9 (a surprisingly delicious beer) and Mandy telling me that it's bullshit that I'm updating my blog only once a week. Umm, okay. That's not what I said. And to prove that her worries are ill-placed, I'm updating with a promised story.

Yes, that's right. A story.

Fun and awkward and real-life.

Sarah B. (she's actually Sarah C. now, but we all still call her Sarah B.) is apparently fed up with my bullshit. Having observed some vegetables on the table, I inquired as to their purpose, and Sarah told me that I should just up and move out because she's tired of all my bullshit, and she doesn't know if she can handle it anymore. Writing it down, it sounds pretty awful. In reality it was hilarious. That's just how she is. 

So the story. I think this happened Saturday. Let me check... Yep, Saturday. I'm back at my parents' house hanging with Sky, feeling kinda sick and drugged up and craving orange juice. Periodically I'll be overcome with an insane craving for orange juice. It's about 11:00 at night and instead of going to bed I go to the Speedway on Austin and Yankee. The petite, blonde, vampire-toned girl was there. Think I'm pale? I'm like an African spider-monkey compared to this chick. And she's super cute, too. I was feeling kinda loopy, what with Nyquil surging through my system, and I made some chitchat with her because I've moved away and I didn't care about making a fool out of myself, and it turned out that we were flirting. She was flirting pretty hardcore, especially this time. It's happened before, but it was just the two of us in the store, and we're talking, and I'm realizing that she's into me, and that I'm kinda into her, and she asked me my name. Apparently that was too much for this little koala brain pigeonholed into eucalyptus daydreaming, and my mind just shut down with alarms blaring, and I said, "Have a good day," (despite it being around 11:30 at this point). I half-walked, half-tripped out the store, hastily and nervously unscrewing the cap to my orange juice so that it sploshed out onto the linoleum as I reached the door.

Smooth, Killer.

Next time I'll just apologize for being a fuck-show.

Leave it at that, see what happens. 

I'm awkward, sure. But I can be charming. As a matter of fact, the majority of my exes always loved how charming and playful I would be, without it being obnoxiously nauseating. But when it's with someone I don't know--such as a super cute girl--it never flows right. Except for every once in a while, with girls I'm for some reason comfortable around after seeing them only a handful of times (how strange that is), this seems to be a rule in my life. Damn my INFP personality type.

t of the store, hastily and nervously unscrewing the cap to my orange juice so that it sploshed out onto the linoleum as I reached the door. Smooth, killer.

the past week

I've been getting into the habit of only posting my "daily activities" (unless they be noteworthy) once a week, a re:cap of the past week. This leaves room throughout the week for special, deep, more thoughtful posts (which, as you can see by looking through the archives, are few and far between; nonetheless, my intentions here are good). So here's the past week re:cap:

Monday. I opened the store with Cat and Jon, and on my break I poured myself some iced coffee and sat out along the tripel fountain. Amanda and Blake came in to eat lunch with me after I got off. I went home and took Sky for a walk 'round C.C.U. Amanda and I ran to Clifton later in the evening to see a mutual friend, and I spent the evening hanging out with Ams and Amos. Nick came by and made an amazing dinner, and afterwards I took one of my spontaneous but predictably-relieving late-night drives, this time through Mount Adams with the heat lightning pooling the mirrors.

Tuesday. A crazy and hectic day coupled with insane heat made work miserable, and I was glad to get home. I met up with an old friend Monica from my C.C.U. days, and we grabbed Skyline for dinner and hung out at the house for a while. We laughed a lot about when I asked her out on a date, she said yes, and then changed her mind. I was pretty traumatized by the ordeal, and the silver lining (if there needs to be one) is that Monica and I remain good friends. This trend--girls agreeing to dates, then changing their minds--tends to be a recurring theme in my life. And hopefully the retainment of friendship (did I just invent a word? check "yes") is a model to be followed as well. She left and I spent the evening writing, playing with Sky (who's in town for ten days; well, nine), and driving past Ludlow on 50 East in the search for a certain type of chocolate milk. 

Wednesday. The most uneventful day of the week, by far. I spent the first half of the evening just watching TV by myself--been getting into King of the Hill lately--and then doing the same thing with Amanda when she got home. Exciting, I know.

Thursday. Carly and Jessica came down to visit me. They got here around 4:00, and we went to the Tazza Mia at Carew Tower to see Amos and Hartman, as well as to get some drinks. We went to some forbidden outlook at Bellevue Park in Clifton, and then we grabbed dinner at The Anchor. Jess' first time. She loved it. As she should. The rest of the evening was spent hanging out in the basement, and Jessica did lots of work on an art model for a kick-ass sculpture she's building for a Dayton-area hospital. They headed back home and I hung out with Amos and Ryan, smoking cigarettes and *attempting to* play Smash Brothers Brawl.

Friday. I'm really liking the people I work with, and my comfortableness around them is growing. It's difficult for me to become comfortable with people (except for certain people, and I never know why that's the case), but here (like at Starbucks) I'm quickly becoming comfortable with them. I spent the afternoon cleaning, and then I met Rob at work for our second training station, where I finally nailed my first heart (post below). We gathered back at the house and tried some of the homebrew peanut butter porter (it still has a little while to age), and we spent the rest of the evening just hanging out. Both Gambill and T.J. came by.

Saturday. Spent the evening back at the parents' house. They're away for a vacation/marathon thing for the next couple days. Basically, my dad's doing the Iron Man, he's a bad-ass, there's that in a nutshell. The blasted heat made me nauseous, and so I spent most of the day feeling quite moist and unhappy. I felt a wee bit better late at night, and I made a run to Speedway for an orange juice (more on that anon). 

Sunday. Tyler came over early in the morning, and we spent the day just watching TV. Dinner from Jimmy John's. I felt sick again, so I slept through half of this planned event. He left around 5:00, and I did some cleaning around the house and then Sky and I returned to Cincinnati. Lots of people were at the house: amidst the usual six housemates, there was also Andy, Josh, Nick, and Mandy's little sister and her friend (who pointed to me and said, "He looks like he's eleven. Is he albino?" Ha. Love it.

So. That was my week.

Nothing really exciting.

But I do look like I'm eleven. And sometimes I look albino.

You can't fault the girl for saying that; she was being honest.

And besides, I've heard worse.

But we koalas, we're finicky creatures.

We'll fucking tear you limb-from-limb.

Just graze your finger over a single leaf of our eucalyptus,

and we'll be on you like sharks in a feeding frenzy over blood,

because sharks, they get all turned on by that shit

like emo girls reading poems.

End Scene.

first latte art

Baller shot collar.
Making it rain. Koala-style.

*random* weigh-in

The "Classic" Picture: shirtless, eating
yogurt, and wearing my pajama pants
(yes those are pajamas, not jeans) and
my boxers hiked up along my hips.

It should be known by now that anytime I jump back up the “monthly weigh-ins” I fail to keep it up. This is mostly due to me just not caring, as well as the fact that… Well, no, that’s it. But here I am yet again, because a milestone’s been reached: 132 pounds, my lowest weigh-in yet (even in high school), but yet not underweight (which is where I don’t want to be). I’m confident that me dropping a good five pounds in a month is due to (a) vacation, where we ate healthy meals except for a few nights dining out, and (b) the fact that my diet has as of late been extremely healthy, mainly fruits, grilled chicken, and vegetables. I honestly haven’t been working out as much (though I’m recently back into the swing of things) so weight loss can’t be due to that. Nevertheless, this was a pleasant surprise. I’ve finally reached my high school weight. It feels weird, and I don’t know if I should be at this weight, but to hell with it, I’ll gloat.

October 2009 to July 2011. How long is that? Quick math (heh) in my head, and in about a year and nine months, I’ve dropped eighty pounds, returning to my goal of weighing as much as I did in high school. Really, it was just something I was doing to try and woo over a foolish girl I was head-over-heels for (what a hilarious and sad story right there), but by the time I didn’t care to even be around her, I’d found that I simply enjoyed the new lifestyle of eating healthy, exercising, and having to buy new clothes (to intensify my earth-tone look, yo). So I just kept going, not really with the overarching intention of losing weight, but just because I liked being healthy. And here we are, at the goal I so earnestly set and then so casually pursued, at my original high school weight.

I’m continuing my healthy lifestyle, which is made simple by the fact that all my meals are generally healthy (as well as free). I usually don’t eat at work, so I take my free meal home with me. Delicious salads with dozens upon dozens of toppings and seven types of meat, and a host of salad dressings (many of them healthy) to choose from. I get enough for half a salad and a whole wrap. It’s filling, freaking amazing, and it’s healthy. Tonight’s salad/wrap consists of—trying to remember, ha—corn, peas, black beans, crunchy Chinese noodles, feta and blue cheese, and an Aegean dressing. And I’ll most likely be watching “Arrested Development” during the escapade.

the second week (?)

Although this is my second week working full-time in Cincinnati, it’s actually been my fourth week since moving all my shit down here. Thus the (?) at the tail-end of this post’s title. Things have continued being great, and here’s the rundown of my day-to-day life last week here in Cincinnati.

Monday. Probably the hottest day of the year yet. After work I picked up Mandy from Fusion Sushi, and although it was only a five-minute drive, we were drenched in sweat by the time we got back to the house. That was only the beginning: we rented a U-Haul in Delhi and spent the afternoon moving the rest of Amanda’s stuff from her apartment into the Claypole House. We were done by 6:00, a good three hour ordeal in the blazing heat. Mandy almost passed out and I had a splitting headache from not drinking enough water. Spent the evening in the cold basement hanging out with Amos.

Tuesday. After work I hung out with Mandy and her friend Kelly at the house. Kelly’s pretty cute, and I told Mandy as much, and she said, “She wouldn’t be into you like that. She thought you were eighteen.” I had a good laugh at that one, I think. Picked up Brittany from the college where she teaches, and then Amos, Rob and I had a work meeting after the shop closed at 6:00. Afterwards we went to Rohs Street in Clifton to hear a band play, and then Amos and I went back early because we were so damned tired.

Wednesday. Mandy and I went for a walk around C.C.U., our old college. It was vacated, obviously (because of summer), and it was weird walking that “hallowed ground” many years later, reminiscing on all that took place there. And the chapel—the birthplace of countless legends. We went to Clifton to see Sarah & Chris, and Begley was there. We sat out in the alley at a foldout table with foldout chairs and smoked cigarettes and drank beer late into the night.

Thursday. I went to Mount Echo after work for a bit, and then I hung out with Amanda back at the house. Jessie came into town for her wedding Saturday, along with her best friend Rae. Jessie, Rae and I went to the Bloc Coffee Shop and they went out for their bachelorette party and I went to bed.

Friday. Work went so well that I even had time to go walk around Fountain Square once the lunch rush ended. Rob and I had my first official barista training session. Learned how to operate the synesso machine, pulled shots and made excellent steamed milk, better than I ever have, and I topped the night off with my first attempt at latte art, which came off looking more like a dick and balls than anything else. “You’re off to a great start,” Rob said. Later on in the evening I went for a drive through Mount Adams and Eden Park like I would do back in my C.C.U. days. T.J. stopped by for a while, and we sat on the front porch long past the fall of night, smoking cigarettes and chatting about life.

Saturday. Breakfast at The Anchor: toast and coffee. A trip to Mount Echo, and then a trip down to the Starbucks in Mariemont for a pumpkin scone and an iced soy caramel macchiato. Blake, Ams and I hit up Rock Bottom Brewery for dinner. I had an amazing vegetable pizza (pic below), but I spent most of Sunday trying to expunge it from bodily memory. At 6:30 we had the Heckenmueller wedding (see previous post), and after the reception a bunch of us hung out at the house.

Sunday. Went to Dayton for a few hours. Saw Mom before she and Dad ran off to New York to visit Niagara Falls and to participate in the 2011 Iron Man. I went to Spring Valley to see Carly for a bit. So good to see her; the aim is to hang out later this week, on Thursday. Maybe hit up The Anchor or something classy like that. Tyler came over in the evening and we had Subway for dinner. When I got back to Cincinnati we made a fire in the backyard and a handful of people came over. I went out there this morning and found the remnants: tons of beer and liquor and wine bottles shattered and molded together in the fire-pit like some grotesque and inexperienced postmodern art.

A new week’s beginning, and it should be good.

Tomorrow: I get to see Monica, the first time in over a year.

Thursday: I get to see Carly, and spend a decent amount of time with her.

And, of course, there are all the everyday antics of the Claypole House.

Life. Is. Good.

wedding day

Tony and Jessie got married today. The wedding was at 6:30 and was quite short. I read from Colossians during the ceremony, the exact same passage I read at Jesse and Mandy's wedding a year ago. It's joyful yet strange to see people getting married. Both my cousins were married last year, along with Nate and a handful of others; and this year, Kyle and Jessie both got married to their respective spouses. These are just the weddings I've gone to; there are countless more taking place with acquaintances and old friends with whom I've fallen out of touch. Years ago weddings depressed me, only because I was a self-centered emo kid with a pie-in-the-sky view of marriage, but now there's great joy--or, depending on the bride and groom, apathy--when it comes to weddings. It's not about "Oh, I wish this were me!" and getting all mentally flaggelated because you're still single; really, I can't believe my old mindset, nowadays marriage is one of the furthest things from my mind (without being removed completely). Now there's great joy at seeing two people connect on a deep level and then decide to spend their lives together. The decision to spend the rest of your life yoked to, in commitment and faithfulness and perseverance, another person, is a beautiful (albeit terrifying) decision. When it works, it's the most beautiful thing in the world; and when it doesn't--almost always due to the failure of one or both parties to actually live out their wedding vows--it's about as scary as going into an ocean with a slit artery because sharks get wet over that shit like an emo girl reading a poem, and who wants that?