The SoapBoxers

It is that time of year. It is the time for office and school parties and other holiday celebrations. Whether you are celebrating Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, New Years or just the bowl games, there seem to be parties everywhere. A lot of these parties are pot luck, meaning you have to bring something to share as food. Every year here at the Soap Boxers, I have provided a list of cookies that I like to make and share. Each year I expand the list. This year’s offering is free to download. This year I have added Triple Chocolate Chip cookies and Peanut Butter Chocolate Rollup Candy.

It does not seem like much, but making cookies fills me philosophically (and physically). I spend time with my children, baking and teach them how to make cookies. I spend time with my co-workers sharing the cookies and recipes. I get to eat the cookies (and the dough) and remember back to when I learned to bake and share them as a child.

I enjoy sharing the stories and hearing them. One co-worker told me how her youngest son tried to make some of the cookies in my download. Although the cookies were basically inedible, she was still very proud of him. He tied to bake them himself, and for the most part succeeded. He did not burn down the house, and for both him and her, they tasted of ambrosia. His next attempt was better and she is sure that this year, his product will be good enough to share outside of the family. Having an older brother has really helped him since a teenage boy is willing to eat anything. I have not sampled his work yet, but I am sure I will like it at least for the effort he is putting forth.

My each of you enjoy this holiday time and celebrate as you wish, even if you just consider this a gift giving season without religious affiliation. Even if you do not believe the same way or things that I believe, I wish you joy and I hope you can return that wish.

On Friday December 14, a young man entered an elementary school and killed twenty students and six staff members, before taking his own life. He did this after killing his own mother in their home. It will take detailed investigations to determine the why of this crime, all that any of us can do at this time is to pray for the victims and give the survivors the respect and privacy that they will need to heal.

One of the immediate responses to this crime was a call for additional gun control. Before continuing this discussion, I will say that I do not own a single functioning fire arm, although I do have several muzzle loading pieces that are dry loaded (that means there is a ball wedged in the barrel with no gun powder so it cannot be fired). There are already plenty of gun laws, additional paper will not make this type of horrific event go away. Disarming law abiding citizens will also not diminish this problem. By the logic of stricter gun laws, New York, Chicago and Washington DC would be the safest places in the world. Enforcement of existing law is what is needed to protect ourselves from people bent on senseless murder.

Something that has been overshadowed by the events in Connecticut is a similar attack on elementary school children in China. The assailant used a knife or sword to hack at and injure 22 children, some of them critically. In fact there has been a spate of attacks on school children around the world. It would seem that these criminals are looking for the most defenseless victims. It will take experts a long time and involve much debate to come up with an answer for the Why.

The response to these events should not be to find political advantage, either for more gun control or less. The response should be to grieve and provide solace for the victims and the survivors. We should also rejoice that this type of incident is so rare that it is national news. There are certain number of people who are going to commit heinous crimes, guns certainly make them more spectacular. We have witnessed even more spectacular mass killings with the various bombings around the world (including Oklahoma City) and airplanes (such as the World Trade Center). Let us all hope and pray that these events remain rare and that more are thwarted than succeed. May each one of the victims and all of the survivors find peace.

Last week, a professional football player killed his girlfriend, the mother of his child, then killed himself at the Kansas City practice facility. During half time of the Sunday night game on NBC, the commentator, Bob Costas, took the opportunity to do what he is paid to so, comment. His against guns, thinly failed in quoting from a like minded reporter, set off a firestorm of publicity from both gun rights advocates and gun restrict advocates. My concern with Mr. Costas is not his known attitude towards guns, but rather his response to the event. He did not criticize the criminal who committed the crime, rather he attacked what he perceived a gun culture and even threw in a preemptive defense of football in general as if a root cause can be defined by public opinion rather than investigation.

The terrible events in Kansas City may have been preventable, none of us were inside that relationship. From what has been reported, he shot her several times with his mother and daughter in another room, then left to go to work to kill himself. He had spent the night away from home in questionable activities. If he had not had a gun, would he have been out of control enough to kill her with his bare hands? Possibly, again none of us were there.

This last weekend, there was more bad news for professional football. A member of the Dallas Cowboys was killed during a single car accident where he was the passenger. The driver was another player who has been arrested for intoxicated homicide, meaning he was under the influence and responsible for the death. Mr. Costas again used his pulpit to comment. Again, this is what he is paid to do. His comment again missed the mark. He attacked a culture of alcohol. What he missed is again the personal responsibility. Again he is providing a preemptive defense of professional football.

If we are going to blame a culture, what about the culture of professional sports? Young men and women are given huge amounts of money and told just how great they are. All doors are opened, alcohol, drugs, fast cars, fast women (for the men), and the attitude that you have to prove you are hot stuff every minute of the day. We have athletes in shootings, rape, murder, suicide, DUIs, drugs, just to name a few. When these people are done with their careers, most are dropped onto the trash heap of history, unless they are trotted our when some new hot gun is about to eclipse some measure that they had achieved. A select few get to join the ranks of commentators, but that group is even more select than the limited population who get to play professional sports. And what of the fans? We demand entertainment, encourage outrageous activities and eat up the intrusions into private lives.

I personally do not by into any of this. Actions are personal. What happened in Kansas City is deplorable, but not unique. Every winter, there are reports of farmers who commit murder-suicide. Are they under the pressures of a professional athlete? What weapons do they use? Sure some are with guns, but not all. There are plenty of car accidents where the driver was under the influence and a passenger died. Are all of them wealthy, high profile personalities? Obviously not.

Let us pray for the families of all those who have died, not just the famous, but especially the young one’s. We can all hope for prayer and hope that these high profile events will make everyone think before making terrible decisions that have consequences.

December is finally here. The college football regular season is complete and the bowl invitations have been made. If your team is in one, the travel plans are in work. The sports talk shows are arguing the merits and weaknesses of each team and bowl pairing. Fans are excited by or bemoaning the season, the rankings and the talk shows.

The Big Ten conference has provided much of the fodder for discussion this year. The two best teams (Penn State and Ohio State) are not bowl eligible, and a five loss team (Wisconsin) is going to a BCS bowl because they absolutely trounced a theoretically better former Big XII team (Nebraska) 70-31. The Big XII put 9 out of 10 teams into bowl games with both of the new comers (TCU and WV) showing well and with 2 of the 4 teams who left (Nebraska and Texas A&M) getting bowl bids as well. The SEC is the SEC and a couple of weeks ago the writer decided that they would be the second half of the championship game. I am not saying that Alabama does not deserve to be there, I am just a little tired of a one loss SEC team being considered so much better than a one loss team from any other conference. In some polls, and SEC team can have two or even three losses and be considered better than a one loss team from anywhere else.

One last college comment, here is a big shout out to the Northern Illinois Huskies! Great season and good luck in the bowl game. Florida state will be a challenge, but you guys are playing on New Year’s Day!

In Pro football not much has changed over the last few weeks. The New York Giants as still slogging away leading the mediocre NFC East. Atlanta and San Francisco have control of their divisions. Green Bay and Chicago have to decide who gets the division and who gets the wild card. Although it looks like Seattle will get the other wild card, there are several other oh so average teams that could take it. On the AFC side, the divisions are pretty much locked up with Houston, Denver, and New England locked in, and Baltimore needing an absolute melt down to fail. The wild cards are also almost sewn up with really only three teams vying for the spots, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. Indy has to play Houston twice while Pittsburgh and Cincinnati have to play each other.

In the end, the AFC wild card and the NFC north are the interesting battles. If you are a fan of one of the six teams trying to get the last NFC wild card spot, it will be interesting for you, but, honestly, none of those teams have shown well against any of the division leaders.

Yes, that is right, I have successfully completed the 2012 National Novel Writing Month challenge. I have captured 50,000 words of a novel titled “Return to Normal: Volume 1 of the Holleran Chronicles”. I know that this is a pretention title, presuming that there will be additional volumes, but I do have plans to keep writing on this theme. I have a long way to go to actually complete this novel. My first NaNoWriMo attempt took an additional two years to get into a form to publish. That book, “A Changed Man” is available on Amazon – free until the end of the day on Friday.
 

 

It was important that I finish the challenge early if I was to finish at all. We had guests in for Thanksgiving, which had me worried, and my work schedule is going to be crazy the rest of the year. I was lucky in that my guests let me write every day, in fact they encouraged it. I had all of my duties for the Thanksgiving meal completed by mid-morning. I have to set the formal table and make the dressing. Once the dressing is in a dish ready to go in the oven, I am no longer welcome in the kitchen. Too many cooks are a bad thing.

So, here is a synopsis of the book. The main character, Cole, is released from the army and sent out to grow crops and grow children and protect the roads. After exploring the country, he finds a location to settle down. He meets a woman, first known as Ish, later as Hon, and gets married. Ish/Hon’s past is left nebulous intentionally as I plan on making her the main character of volume 2. They have children and have to interact with people moving into the area, some with good intentions, some with bad. A settlement is started near their home as others try to fulfill the kings command of being fruitful and multiplying.

This work differs from my first work, which was a romance, in that there is a lot of violence and no sex. Obviously there are relations as they have children, but I did not include any descriptions, only innuendo. This was actually a lot of fun to write versus the detail of a man and a woman together. The action scenes were also fun.

I attribute my success to several thing. First, this was not my first attempt. I avoided the urge to edit and rewrite, I will have time enough to do that later. Second, I have been thinking about this story for almost a year. Third, I set aside time to write and since I have been under a lot of stress (work, kids in college, election, etc.) I have used the writing as a method of relaxation and transfer of emotion (you know you just cannot pull out a sword at work now-a-days).

I don’t know if writing can be used as relaxation for everyone, but it sure works for me. My wife prefers exercise which would be my last choice. That is one reason she is healthy and slender, while I, though health, am far from slender, can we say obese?

A note on statistics: 50,000 is about 75 pages of 11 point text in MSWord. The plan to follow is about 1,667 words per day to finish in 30 days. Here is a graph of my progress this year.

What you get if you succeed is a printable certificate and a selection of Icons to use in facebook, in your book, on your web page or on emails. Here is one of the icons that I got for completing the event.

Even if you do not get to 50,000 words, you still have the benefit of capturing your ideas on paper (or on your computer). Keep writing!

Football

This weekend was wild in the world of football. First on the college ranks, the championship picture went topsy-turvy. Both number 1 Kansas State and number 2 Oregon fell. Now Notre Dame is the only undefeated (that can compete for the championship, so we cannot count Ohio State). That makes one half of the game easy to set, but now there are eleven one loss teams that want that other spot. Now we should be down to six after conference championships, even there are three contenders in the SEC and a couple of other conferences that do not play championship games. (I have always had the opinion that if you do not win you conference, you should not be considered for the BCS championship game.) So, unless there is another shake up like this week, there will be plenty of people complaining about who gets chosen for the other side of the championship equation.

This last weekend also means that my Notre Dame friends will not be cheering for Texas on December 1 when they play Kansas State, unless of course they are afraid of playing Kansas State in the championship game.

In the NFL, the picture is getting much clearer as teams separate. On the NFC side, although not done with much strength, the Atlanta Falcons continue to lead. Chicago is keeping ahead of Green Bay and the Giants and 49ers are the default leaders of two week divisions. On the AFC side, Houston is leading again without a lot of punch this week. Baltimore is in the driver’s seat for second with New England and Denver as the default leaders of two more week divisions. The wild cards are also almost set in the AFC with Pittsburgh and Indianapolis making some separation even though they both lost. The NFC wild card is a bit more difficult with Green Bay, Tampa Bay and Seattle all in the hunt. This is way to early in the season to actually predict the final standings, but the character of all of the teams is becoming much clearer with only six games left.

NaNoWriMo

We are past the half way point of the NaNoWriMo. We only have one more weekend left, so you actually need to be much more than half way done. There have been a number of pep talk emails sent out by the NaNoWriMo staff. This is the point in the effort where you have captured most of the ideas you had floating around at the beginning of the effort. No what? You are not alone, even professional writers hit this plateau. This is my fourth effort, so I have been thing about this story line for most of the year, especially since I failed last year. I am at 35,000 words, which is well ahead of schedule. This may sound great, but now I face the Thanksgiving holiday with guests arriving any minute, and kids coming back from college. I just cannot plan any large batches of time to write, even if the ideas keep flowing.

Whether you are a NaNo or not, keep writing. There Is nothing to fear but blisters on your fingers.

I am at the half way point of my NaNoWriMo effort. I got to 25,000 words over the weekend, which is the best I have ever done it the four years I have been participating. But this is where the hard part begins. I have captured most of the ideas that I have had swimming around my head before November started, so now I have to come up with the next part of the story.

I hope that each of you is writing and having some success. The point of this competition is to get your story captured, or at least started. You are actually only competing against yourself and the calendar. I have to be brief so that I can continue on my novel. Like most of you, I do not get much time to write. I have mostly been grabbing the hour to two after my wife goes to bed which results in a very tired Martin at work. This weekend, once chores were done, I had the luxury of several hours to write. I hope to have more success next weekend and Thanksgiving weekend. I will be taking vacation from work the week of Thanksgiving, but that will not necessarily result in additional hours to write. We have people coming into town and we have to prepare for the holiday.

My first NaNoWriMo effort is available on Amazon: A Changed Man. It will be available for free download later this month, we will post it here. So good luck and good writing.

On college football, I must say it even though it is difficult (being a University of Texas graduate), but way to go Aggies. First loss for Alabama in how many years? Good work.

On professional football, to all of my Atlanta Falcon friends, good run. You had to expect to lose eventually, too bad it was to the Saints. Here’s hoping that you do not see another loss until you meet my Steelers in the Super Bowl.
 

Kosmo and I are both are deep into the NaNoWriMo effort. I have not seen Kosmo’s update, but so far I am on track with this year’s event with 7828 words so far. This is just barely above the 1667 words per day. It has been fun. My one piece of advice is based on my lessons learned. For the actual NaNoWriMo effort, do not spend time reviewing what you have already written. I have spent many hours in the past reading and editing my work with very little progress to the 50,000 word goal. That is only advice for the month of writing. When you are trying to create a novel, most of your time is reading and rereading your own effort to knock the edges off of the sharp corners and make sure the work in internally consistent.

This year I started with a four element outline, just four major events that I am trying to weave together with a good connecting steam of actions and descriptions. I am almost a fifth of the way into the work with the joining of the first two events underway and background for the next event already sort of in place.

To keep up the pace of writing, I have been trying to get two uninterrupted hours each night. The weekend days provided several writing opportunities, but many more interruptions than the week nights. I have even snuck in a couple of minutes typing before heading to work. I hope all of you are getting similar opportunities.

On Football, the traditional power houses are slowly floating to the top, both in college and in professional ranks. In College, Alabama, Kansas State, Notre Dame and Oregon are the major undefeated with Louisville being the ugly duckling undefeated. In the pros, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, the New York Giants, San Francisco and New England are back in the top. Denver, Atlanta and Houston are new comers, but not very surprising.

I have noticed plenty of chants for the replacement referees. A little sooner than I expected, but it just depends on if you think your team is being short changed. We are in the final stretch for the college teams and the half way point for the pros. Now we should start seeing the games in the mud and snow, which to me is real football weather. I personally cannot wait for Johnny’s college update.

It is that time of year again. National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us. It is time to sharpen you pencil or warm up you keyboard. The goal is 50,000 words captured during the month of November. The rewards are tremendous; bragging rights, nifty icons, and your novel captured.

I have participated in NaNoWriMo each of the last three years. The first two saw success. My first effort was finally complete and available for the public early this year. It is a romance, and nothing like what I had originally planned. I am planning a freebee week during November, and will advertise it on The Soap Boxers. My second effort was also a success in that I reached 50,000 words. It is still incomplete, a science fiction effort that I have really enjoyed writing. My third effort fell well short of the 50,000 words and will likely never be finished. It is a teenage adventure fantasy involving fire breathing ninja squirrels from outer space. I thought it would be the easiest of my attempts, but I was wrong.

This year I am planning a fantasy word epic that I think can actually spread across several books. Of course you have to finish one before you can have a second.

Some of you may not have heard of NaNoWriMo before. It is an event sponsored by the office of letters and lights at NaNoWriMo.org. The site provides plenty of encouragement, examples of success, and the opportunity to support writing at all levels, from kids to professionals. There are writing communities that can be joined either electronically or locally. They schedule write ins and web casts. The official word counter is provided so that you can gauge your progress and claim your prizes.

I hope that each and every one of you participates. It is not really about winning the day, it is about writing. It is about capturing your ideas in written words, and if you choose, to share them with others. It is not a contest to see who is the best, strongest, or most long winded. It is not an election or a game. This is an opportunity to have fun, write, and be with others trying to do the same thing. It all begins on November 1. If you want to participate in the actual event, log on to NaNoWriMo.org and set up your profile.

Let the writing begin!!!!!

We are hitting the movies again, so here is another movie review. This week we saw Hope Springs. The movie stars Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell. You will recognize a lot of other actors and actresses throughout the movie in bit parts. The most intriguing aspect in this movie is the reversal of roles. Steve Carell is the serious character with Meryl and Tommy being the comics. Tommy has had experience being the straight man in comic movies throughout the Men In Black series, but in this movie, he is the comedian. His delivery, facial expressions, responses to dialog and situations is supurb. Meryl continues to be the best older lady actress, playing her age. I would rate this as a third success following The Iron Lady and July & Julia.

The trailer sets up the action as an older couple in the doldrums of a boring marriage. The wife decides to spice things up. After reading a self help book, she pays for a marriage counseling session. The couple live in Omaha (and from the scenery, it looks like they actually filmed in Omaha) and the counselor is in Maine (again it looks like if was filmed on location). The wife drives the husband into attending and the action moves on from there.

The advertisements and even the movie suggest that the problems are all because of Tommy Lee’s character. As the story unwinds, there are plenty of problems for each to solve. The attempts at physical reconciliation are well played, along with the deeper character development. This is a good movie, especially for the over 40 crowd. Teenagers may be disturbed to find out that their parents and even their grandparents might still be sexually active.

I would recommend full price theatre, but if you missed it, pick it up on video or at the discount theatres.

Next week I hope to have seen Hotel Transylvania.