If I’ve harped on this before, someone should hit me over the head with a sack of oranges. I continue to have the feeling that there should be some kind of way to organize my life so that it wouldn’t be such a horrorshow. One central focus that brings everything together. You know what I’m…
As of 11 PM last night I became the proud owner of a 50,123 word steaming slag heap of a first draft novel. Yipee. So ends my NaNoWriMo adventure. What am I left with? Let’s call it the Winchester Mystery House of bad literature…hundreds of passages leading nowhere. I do have to say that this…
I’m on the road again. The road to hell, good intentions to blog my NaNoWriMo novel-writing experiment are lying like dead soldiers on the roadway. Early on I was going to post about Banging vs. Swooping. Kurt Vonnegut once said (and I swear I heard this on a public radio interview, though I can’t find…
Here it is, the eve before National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo,) sort of an ongoing joke started by Chris Baty where tens of thousands (150,000+ this year) of people line up like entrants of the Bay to Breakers marathon, and pound out 50,000 words of prose. This month I throw my hat in the ring,…
Today’s frontier adventure involved snaking out the bathtub drain. First we tried using a Zip-It flexible strip. These plastic drain cleaners are a gross, yet effective way to de-gunk most drains. Problem is that a bathtub drain takes a left turn at Albuquerque, leaving you without much room to move the strip. Liquid Plumber failed…
Daughter Em and her husband Matt and their four dogs – more like a single four-headed whirling entity from Hell – landed on our doorstep two weeks ago. And it’s killing my routine. My attempts at running, attempts at writing, attempts at riding…everything has gone to the dogs. As it were. I’d like to post…
The plan was to be in Merced by now, well on my way to Yosemite, Bodie, Tonopah, Tuweep and parts beyond. The reality is that the bike is in the hospital, getting a blood transfusion. If they get the ABS system sorted out (soon let’s pray) then I’m changing plans and heading for the Range…
For those of you kind enough to be following along with my story arc, I set out a couple of weeks ago to lose some weight. My short term goal was to be able to fit into my Adventure Pants, so that I could…you know, have an adventure. I’ve been following a glycemic-index diet for…
So here is the first point in my story arc. I finished the first week of my new diet and exercise plan. My near-term goal is to get back to where I can fit into my Adventure Pants. Started the week at 230 lbs, ended at 227.2 lbs, two week rolling average is 229 lbs.…
In case you were wondering what you should do with the fuzzy cream cheese in the back of the fridge, now the U.S. government has the answer. (Hint, dry salami and hard cheese can be cleaned up and used. Toss everything else out.) You can also use this handy guide for your next backpacking trip.…
Awesome video of a bighorn sheep taking on a Toyota 4-Runner. Courtesy of Wend Blog.
What kind of blog posts do you find the most compelling? A decade ago someone pointed out to me that the surest path to get on a best-seller list is to have “Ten Easy Ways to…” in your title. The Blog-o-sphere bears out this line of attack – list posts (ie “Merlin’s top 5 super-obvious,…
I think I’ve put together some nice little blog posts here at Wild Rye. Just nothing as FREAKIN’ AWESOME as it could be (at least in my head.) Why would that be? It reminds me of my GI Joe. I was seven years old when Hasbro’s action figure first hit the market. The Unique Selling…
Now that’s country. Amazon.com Widgets
I love the wallpaper pictures that Patagonia offers free of charge on their website. I particularly love this Christian Pondella photo of Lonnie Kauk leaping from a boulder in the Buttermilks. But when I showed this photo to a friend at work, a person who has done considerable photo retouching professionally, he instantly said the…
