So remember a few posts ago when I said that I didn’t have a girlfriend which in turn, would afford me much more time to write? Quote: “I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment which means my time is MY time. And as an added benefit, that also means I have much more money on my hands too.”

Unfortunately, or fortunately that is no longer the case. I met Ms Right at the end of November, and as she pointed out to me this morning, the last sign of my presence on this website was November 29th. Up to that point I had a solid third of the next chapter written but I stopped around that time to pursue her (she runs fast, took awhile to catch her.)

I am returning to writing again because it’s something I will finish, but mainly because she’s read through what I’ve written so far and has threatened me with either violence, or as added incentive, she’s offered to sit naked by my computer while I write – which is not going to work because of the distraction factor. So violence it is, Shorty.

By the way, if you’re not on Facebook get on Facebook. That’s where I became reacquainted with her. We’re old high school classmates that ended up on each other’s friends lists. Even if you don’t meet or aren’t interested in finding Ms or Mr. Right, you’ll meet so many old friends, classmates, and its so much easier to keep track of people that have moved to other cities. Just make sure you don’t get hooked on a game called Farmville. I have an addictive personality so I was like a moth to the flame when I played it for the first couple of times.

I just wanted to give an update. Getting the website back up and promising to finish the novella were not idle threats, nor a passing fever. I am writing. In fact, today I’m writing instead of watching football. How about that? And I’m having fun too. I had forgotten how fun writing can be. How do I forget stuff like that? It’s like a week or two back I bought a can of A&W root beer. I don’t know why. It just ended up in my hand. And I drank the thing and I was thinking to myself “I like root beer. I’ve always liked root beer… so why hasn’t it occurred to me until now to drink some?”

It took me over ten years to remember that I really like writing. Man I’m a dumbass.

One more thing — on Friday I decided to travel over to the rocketship playground and get some pictures. In the nosecone of that rocketship, I did indeed mess around with someone many years back, so I guess you could say it has a place in my heart – or a place in loins. You know what I mean. Anyway, I drove there only to find that they’ve torn it down and replaced it with some newfangled rocketship. I guess it’s true what they say. You can never go back.

I took some pictures anyway. I Googled pictures of other rocketship playgrounds but I can’t find one that looks like it. Even if I could, I don’t want to appropriate someone else’s picture. Ok, maybe I’ll just appropriate for just a second here. Here’s the best photo I found.

I’m somewhat proud that I’ve worked very diligently on the website and posting the old chapters of “Futon” recently, yesterday and Friday night. They’re all up! Each one has navigation to the next (PS: if you’re a Wordpress Pro let me know. I need HELP!).

Today hasn’t been so productive though. Despite what you’ve read about me/Craig in Futon, these days I’m a huge Football (and Baseball) fan. So with the football season winding down, on Sundays I am glued to the TV. Rather, most of the time I’m glued to the LCD computer screen left of the computer. My Fantasy Football team is beating my coworker Holly’s team by 102 to 52 as I write this. She still has two players playing later tonight but it’s her Defense and her Tight End. In other words, I have totally p0wned her. I’m looking down the nose of an 8 and 3 season so far. I rule!

I haven’t been very productive today for another reason. Read the last post. My friend and coworker Sara introduced me to the HBO Series “True Blood” which was like introducing a moth to the latest, most powerful Coleman lamp. ZZzzzt! I’ve been downloading episodes of that series like… I don’t want to give you an analogy.

Still, I have been going back and re-reading what I wrote more than 10 years ago. I’ve had many revelations going through the chapters, things I’d like to change, and plenty of things I never noticed. From the things I’ve never noticed department are all of the references to specific songs and music. Yes, I named a chapter after Prefab Sprout. “Two Wheels Good / Steve McQueen” is my favorite album of all time, bar none. But what I never noticed is that because of my love for music I make reference to songs repeatedly. Not just repeatedly, but in my opinion maybe too much.

Even before I’ve finished this novella there could be a movie length soundtrack.

• The Human League “Human”
• The Zombies “Time of the Season”
• Corey Hart “Never Surrender”
• Stevie Nicks & Don Henley “Leather and Lace”
• Steve Miller Band “The Joker”
• Prefab Sprout “Bonny”
• perhaps something from Jonathan Richman?
• perhaps one of many Ramones songs starting with “1-2-3-4!”

Oh well. I will address that later. I just want to keep up with this workout of writing every single day. I’m aiming for the finish. Not unlike, as soon as this back of mine gets back to normal, I just want to do whatever I need to do to make it stronger. As workout people say: “strengthen the core.” Damned straight.

I’ve been playing around with this Wordpress App for the iPhone and it’s just so nifty. I can open it up anytime I have five minutes to spare. I can write a few sentences. A paragraph. And then save the draft to my webserver until I’m ready to publish it.

If this had been possible ten years back I could have finished ‘Futon’ from the damned toilet. Seriously. You think I’m kidding but I’m not. I know, you say ewwwwww… But you’re the same weirdos talking on your phone from the restroom. I’m sorry but that’s the very definition of disgusting. Seriously. If I’m sitting in one of the stalls I feel like it’s my responsibility — no, my mission — to let your caller know what’s being perpetrated. I make really loud hand, mouth, and armpit farts. I flush the toilet a few times. Maybe I throw in a few extended grunts for good measure.

Speaking of, “there’s an App for that.” Apple is quick to tell you that they have over 100,000 Apps for the iPhone in their store. What they don’t tell you is that 40,000 of them are Fart Apps that do nothing more than make… a large variety of farts and toots.

Gotta run. I need to watch several episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 and then I’m heading to the local 74 screen movie megaplex (they have trams to get you to your seats now) where I’m going to watch Twilight II at least three times in a row. I kid. I kid. I haven’t seen the first one yet. But what I’m NOT kidding about is another vampire thing. My friend Sara has been recommending the cable show “True Blood” for several months now. Then the other night I’m on a naughty site (hey, we all do it) and I see a screenshot of Anna Paquin naked. VERY naked. And it’s from an episode of “True Blood”!!

So I tell Sara about it at lunch today. She sighs and then matter-of-factly informs me, as if it’s the most banal and commonplace thing in the world: “Oh yeah, she’s nude in almost every episode.” Holy. Mother. Of. God. Who needs “pr0n” sites when you have a show with vampires and Anna Paquin getting naked at the drop of a hat? Now if they could just get Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, and Charlize Theron on the show. The next time I drop a coin in a fountain I’m wishin’ for… a sexy vampire Christmas.

Last night I configured the rest of Wordpress. I got rid of all of those uneccesary default sections like “My Tweets.”

I don’t tweet. For starters it sounds really ghey and I flinch every time I hear the word in the media. And though up to a few months ago I said I’d never do social networking and ended up doing Facebook, Twitter is just.. for youngsters. It’s perfect for those with ADD. If you tweet, sorry. I couldn’t resist.

Anyway, I got one chapter of Futon reposted last night too. Tonight I should have the rest up. It won’t be fancy. Maybe one picture, no logos. I’ll get to that later when it’s finished either or I have writer’s block.

This is the second attempt at getting my website going again.  Recently the World of Warcraft addiction suddenly just… let me go.  It’s as if WoW said “You’ve done your time in this gaming jail.  You’re free to go now” so I went from playing it daily to doing… other things instead.  Needless to say, besides goals such as losing weight, and finding a way — surgery or otherwise – to escape from painful issues with my back, getting back to writing is right up there with those.

My first try at famousboot.com involved installing Wordpress, some popular blogging software.  However, I ran into a series of problems with it that escalated as I tried to force it to fit my needs.  For example, I didn’t want my main page to be blogging posts (like the way it is set up now, for the time being.)  I wanted it to be the index to my writing like my old site used to be – perhaps with the blog being just another menu option to click on.  Or maybe the main page would include a blurb from the most recent blog post but the rest of it would be an index of my crappy writing.

Wordpress didn’t do that at the time so like an idiot I started re-coding it to do what I wanted it to do.  Two problems with doing that, though.  First of all, once you spend several weeks completely re-coding large portions of the application, now upgrading to newer and better versions of Wordpress is out of the question.

Second, I was spending so much time trying to get the foundation of my website to do what I wanted, I became distracted from the real goal. I should have been spending that time writing.

So I think I’m in a good spot now.  In the latest version, Wordpress does the things I wanted it to do back then.  Right out of the box, I should be able to use it to start “Futon” again.  And having learned from my last website failure, I think I’m going to try to avoid posting much of my other older content (‘Ready Made Essays’, ‘The Boot of Life’, “Monkeyman & Finch’ etc) until I get Futon finished.  Keep your Interwebs goals small and you may achieve them.  Did Confucius say that?

I don’t know how much bloggy type posting I will do here either.  Mostly I think I will post small blurbs to Facebook.  Speaking of, I did open full access to my Facebook page So we can do the social networking thing.  Get it on.  If you want to be my friend that’s cool too.