Taken is a science fiction mini-series currently running on the Sci-Fi Channel. We set TiVo to record it last week (It’s ten two-hour episodes). We’ve been watching it this weekend and only have two episodes left to see. I’m not exactly excited about much of of the Sci-Fi channels recent shows – Tremors the Series and some cheesy-looking ripoff of Fear Factor. So far, though, they’ve done a good job with this mini-series. It’s enjoyable, entertaining, and well-written, which is sometimes a difficult combonation to find on science fiction on tv/cable.

…the weekend is here! It was a long week at work and thankfully I finished everything I set out to do. The firewall I spent countless hours building and configuring is working flawlessly. Now I can relax and enjoy the weekend. Christmas is getting close, so I’m going to start my shopping today. Besides the crowds, I think the biggest reason I usually procrastinate is shopping alone. I need to find a way to trick convince my cousin Annie to go with and keep me company.

The last few days have been busy as hell for me. Since one of the many hats I wear at work includes Network Administrator, I spent the last few nights building, configuring, and installing a firewall. For the most part things went smoothly, and I’m just working out a few minor kinks in the system. The unfortunate side-effect off all this work is that my free time suffered. Monday and Friday were the only days I was able to do any writing. Hopefully now things will level out again and I can make some good progress.

I made some really nice progress today on my current story, Temperament. I managed another thousand words. Then I made the mistake of eating White Castle for lunch. Now, seven hours later I managed to hold down some Cream of Chicken soup.

If work is quiet enough to allow me to take lunch this week, I should have the first draft done. I’m anxious to get started on the next draft. I have the story nicely flushed out now, and I need to add a scene or two in the beginning and smooth out some of the inconsistencies that have found their way in. Overall I’m happy with where it’s going, and I hope that I’ll be able to have it ready for the group to critique within a few weeks.

Yet another long night at work last night. My boss upped the deadline on a project yesterday, giving me twenty-four hours to get it finished. I managed to pull it off in just over twelve hours, but I had to miss another writers group, which pisses me off. It’s one thing to miss a meeting because I was busy with contract work and couldn’t get to the readings in time. It’s another to be caught up on readings and ready to go, then have to miss because someone promised something to someone and mismanaged the schedule. If I had been given the deadline one day sooner, it wouldn’t have been an issue. As it stands, the works done and running flawlessly, I missed group, and I’m tired. I didn’t exactly win out on this one.