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Writer Dad

Redbook… an Excerpt Part DuexNovember 20

“Yesterday should have stayed put.  Now it was too late.”

~ Conner Quick

The RedBook wasn’t a book at all.  It was a vintage notebook computer, designed to look like a leftover from the early twenties.  It held 50 Terabytes of top secret government design, spanning everything from ten years back to the entire crop currently on the Facility’s drawing board; blueprint to prototype.

You’re probably wondering why anyone would lay that kind of trust in the hands of a fifteen year old kid, but the answer is simple: half the prototypes were either designed by Conner himself, or someone directly beneath his wing.  The few designs that weren’t, served as practical reference for the hundred or so projects hovering in various stages of production.  If Conner could be trusted with most of it, then Conner could be trusted with all of it.

Whatever the thieves were planning, it could easily affect the entire globe.  If they didn’t attempt to cripple the government with ransom, it was probably because they wanted it leveled.  About near anything in the RedBook could be tweaked toward the nefarious.

The Memory Wipe came first to Conner’s mind.  The MW1 was coun

Oktober High-FiveNovember 20

Oktober 5 is a bit of a mystery.  We don’t know his name, or even the meaning behind his moniker.  This matters not at all.  Few things hold as much gravity as the wisdom in our words, and in that, Oktober has no shortage.  His posts are peerless, each one perfectly pithy.

I’ve encountered no one else online who brandishes brevity as he.  Sometimes, there are no words, only a photograph worth a throw’s more than a thousand.  You can subscribe to his feed here.  Please enjoy his words below.

Oktober 5

At Least My Writing Understands Me

One of the most frustrating things in life is not being understood, or worse yet, being misunderstood. This feeling is often expressed in the words of your typical angst-ridden teen to his parents, “You

Write on Mia!November 19

Note: This is another one of those posts where I unabashedly fawn over my daughter. I’ll try not to be too sloppy.

“To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.”

~Josh Billings

Last week was our parent-teacher conference for Mia.  As some of you know, Daisy and I send our daughter to a dual immersion program where eighty percent of her day is in Spanish.  She’s in first grade now.  Last year, that number was ninety.

Daisy and I were keen to hear what her teacher had to say.  We felt we had a clear idea, for better or worse, but were looking forward to a dot at the end of our sentence.

Our daughter, it turns out, is quite the the little wordsmith.  Her magnificent maestra is pleased when students can line up three well articulated sentences.  Mia is penning five paragraph papers… in a second tongue.  She has a mature grasp of punctuation, and an apparent fondness for the quotation mark.

Mia isn’t a genius, but she is willing to work hard, and push through most any barrier impeding her comprehension.�

Happy 100!November 18

If you’re here from ProBlogger, welcome. You’ve come to a special place on a special day. You can subscribe by RSS here, or Email here. Check out some of the archives and enjoy!

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time.  You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”

~Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Writer Dad is 100 posts old today.  We’ve moved from two digits to three.

I was wondering if I could ask you all for a favor, to celebrate our little landmark.

One of the things that has made this blog what it is, has been the constant flow of reader feedback.  To this, I am forever grateful.  It is you who have pushed my writing far further, and far faster, than it would have flown otherwise.

In leiu of a lengthy post, I’d like to ask that you leave a thought below.  I’m requesting one of two kinds; a

Finding My FridayNovember 17

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

~Paul Sweeney

Life never unfolds exactly as expected.  Hoping it will is only swatting at fog.  Days transpire, weeks disappear, and we are often engaging our best when we simply catch up, and catch our breath.  We keep our eyes fixed on what’s coming and then accept it when it does; remain thankful for all we have that works well, and arrange to change what doesn’t.

We cannot stop life from happening.  It goes on every day, with or without us.  It follows us everywhere, surrounding us everywhere we go, no different from the air we breathe.

We never know how that first drift will flutter the next, so it is paramount that we regard our moments as each a possible precursor to the last; forever holding our head in the now, while never forgetting to flick our eyes at the horizon and whatever prize we’ve placed beneath, while understanding that there are few things we can simply compel to happen.

When big things happen suddenly, there is often unreasonable cost attached.