Went to see Pirates of the Caribbean II today with wishweaver, mollymorrison and dzeytoun. Of the four of us, I think I enjoyed the movie the best, but at Molly pointed out, the first movie was so good and was such a dark horse when it came out, expectations were very high for this one that it was going to be very difficult to match it. As cookie_dreams noted in her blog entry, they did seem to have a fascination with round rolling objects, but there were some outstanding moments in the movie. For the six people out there who haven't seen it yet, I won't go into any spoilers, but while not the best movie I've ever seen, it certainly was $7.00 well spent.

Had a nice BBQ this evening. I stopped at the Laurel Meat Market again and picked up some very nice sirloins. I probably needed to let the charcoal burn down a bit more than I did because we had a heck of a time with flare-ups. But, even with a bit of "charring" on the outside, the steaks were nice and Wishweaver did a nice job with the rest of the fixin's. My co-writer April made it up but due to traffic on the Capital Beltway, she got her a lot later than she'd anticipated, so we had time to chat, eat and chat a bit more before she had to head home. We'll be getting together later to work on Shattered Mirror.

Kicked around some ideas for a Star Trek short story with Dzeytoun while I was barbecuing. Got a couple of good ideas, but I need to drag my DVDs out and possibly check with kradical (aka, the Guardian of Trek Trivia), to make certain this hasn't already appeared in book form already.

Finished up Chapter 26 of Harbinger tonight. I keep thinking there's a way to put this chapter and Chapter 25 together, but that'll wait for the next go round. Now, I need to keep my eyes on the target and finish this draft before I go back and start editing again.

Time to go read some Sluggy Freelance and Kevin and Kell before calling it a night.

Current Harbinger rewrite status:

104,455 / 110,000 (95.0%)

Had a great time over the weekend. No writing accomplished (sigh), but we had a "Firefly" party.

( Protecting the sensibilities of the vegetarians who might read this blog. Carnivores welcome behind the cut )

After dinner, we watched the 2nd Firefly disc as well as enjoying the Key Lime Pie we'd passed on earlier. We wound up the party around 12:45 Sunday morning. We offered to let our friends stay for the night, but they needed to get home. wishweaver and I watched the other two discs Sunday evening. There were a few sections she didn't care much for (the hypersonic weapon in Ariel didn't do anything for her and she really got squicked during "War Stories"), but other than that, I think she enjoyed the shows and now, I understand why a number of my friends were so hyped about this series. We went out and bought Serenity Sunday night and hope to watch it this weekend.

I had a talk with my Intro to Fiction instructor after class this evening, and she made a strong suggestion about my college career that scares the heck out of me. She recommended that I skip working toward my BA in English and apply either for the MFA in Fiction at John Hopkins or the PhD program in Creative Writing at UM-College Park.

Holy change of direction, Batman!

I have to admit, that thought scares me a bit. Although I'm doing very well at Howard CC (I'm in Honor's English) and I had straight A's at Anne Arundel CC in Computer Science when I was studying there in 1997-99 and I did pass the Defense Language Institute's courses in Czech and Arabic and I did pass every military school I took with a 90% or higher and I'm not the same dipstick at 46 that I was at 19, I'm worried my old college GPA from CMSU is going to haunt me.

I'm going to need to contact the schools and see if I can get a pre-interview with the Department Chair. I'd like to sound them out about how they deal with non-traditional students before I waste a lot of time and money applying for programs that I have no chance of being accepted for.

Wow.

I'm still having problems wrapping my head around jumping straight into a doctorate program, even if I could get accepted. Although, I have to admit, even the MFA would let me apply for some adjunct faculty positions (and I do love teaching). Hell, the PhD might even let me apply for a full-time teaching slot.

Wait, slow down there, White. Let's get this semester in the bag first.

Anyway, just to let you know, I'm really excited, scared and confused right now.

In other words, just another typical day at the ranch.