One of the reasons I wanted the tattoo on the front of my forearm is that I think it won’t be so obvious to everyone else. When I stand with my arms down at my sides and my hands turned toward my body, which is my usual stance, the tattoo is pretty much undercover unless you’re standing in front of me. I don’t have a problem showing it to you because I am proud of it. I love it, it’s beautiful, and I hope you think so too. But I don’t like being noticed much. I’m very shy in person and I usually keep to myself. I don’t like giving people reasons to single me out. This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t gladly let you have a closer look at the tattoo if you asked, I just don’t want it to constantly be in your line of sight. I’m not the only one of my friends or family to have a tattoo, but I think I have the biggest and loudest tattoo yet.

Another reason I wanted the tattoo on the front of my forearm is so I can easily see it. This is the most beautiful woman in world, hands down.  It’s not a portrait tattoo, but it’s still a realistic image of her.

The overall reason I got this tattoo is that I wanted to express how much she means to me.

So, yesterday, my friend Peggy gave me a ride down to the tattoo shop here in Lapeer. Peggy already has a couple of tattoos of her own and she was a good source for information. She knew what I needed to do before and after getting the tattoo. She took me to Rite Aid and helped me find the gooey stuff I need to smear over the tattoo for the next couple weeks to keep it moist and she’s who I check with to make sure I’m caring for it properly. I guess I have to be careful with the tattoo for the next couple weeks or something might get messed up.

From the moment the design was finished, I was eager, even impatient, to get to the tattoo shop and have the tattoo done. But I was also nervous. I’m very sensitive to needles. Some people can get pricked by a needle at the doctor’s office, or wherever, and they’re like, “Gosh, that didn’t hurt at all.” What planet do you people come from? You can’t be human, because getting pricked by a needle hurts. It hurts A LOT!

Needless to say, getting this tattoo was painful. It was two hours of torture. I yelped many times. I was afraid I would jerk my arm up and mess up the work the artist was doing, or worse, end up with his needle stuck deep in a vein. At one point I warned him that this might happen, and I think he said, “That’s okay, I’m used to it.” Damn my hearing impairedness.

I flinched a lot, but somehow I managed to not pull my arm away. I think it was my desire to have this tattoo that kept me reasonably still. When the tattoo was done, I was very pleased with it.

I want to thank my friend Peggy for giving me a ride down there and for all her help. I want to thank Melissa Lytton for drawing up and coloring in the design, she did it by copying from a very blurry picture of the woman and I liked the results so much that I got the tattoo a week after Melissa finished the design. And finally, I want to thank Ed Weston at Chaos Ephex for inking the design into my arm. You three kick ass.

Jim Joyce

I don’t know how widespread the story is, but it looks like its gone national rather than stay put in these here parts. With articles in the LA Times and the New York Times, it’s fair to assume that anyone who pays much attention to the news has at least caught a glimpse of the story about how MLB umpire Jim Joyce made a bad call at the June 2nd game between the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians, which cost Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game. Galarraga would have been only the 21st pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball to have accomplished this. Needless to say, it was a big deal. Not the most important thing in the world, of course, but Galarraga would have gone down in history as one of the few pitchers to have pitched a perfect game.

What does all this have to do with me? Why do I feel the desire to apologize to Joyce? I didn’t throw popcorn or hotdogs at the man. I didn’t utter a single boo. I wasn’t even there. I was watching all this from a safe distance, at home on my TV. But when I saw that play and then the replays that proved Jason Donald did not make it to first base, I wondered whether Donald was Joyce’s nephew-in-law’s son, thrice removed, and if Joyce was just cutting the kid a break. I couldn’t figure out what the man’s deal was, I thought he was just being an ass.

The next day my mom announced that she heard about what happened on the news and she wondered if I saw the game. I admitted that I had and went on to say how I thought Joyce was a jerk and ought to be fired. People who know me know how I’m prone to run my mouth and throw out rash opinions that later have me feeling like a dick.

For those who don’t know, here’s what happened.

It was the top of the 9th, the Tigers had the field and the Indians were batting. The score was 0-3, Detroit. Two outs. Armando Galarraga was pitching and Jason Donald was batting. Galarraga threw an 86 MPH and Donald swung true, catching the ball and driving it across the field.

Miguel Cabrera broke from first base to snatch up the ball as Galarraga scrambled from the mount to cover the base Cabrera had abandoned. He gets there and catches the pass from Cabrera a whole step before Donald steps onto the base.

And Joyce said Donald was safe.

The crowd booed and I’m sure there were a lot of nasty remarks made about Joyce.

Today I heard about Jim Joyce’s apology and how he was reduced to tears about what happened. I felt bad for him. Although he never heard a word from me, I wish I hadn’t been such a peckerhead. The guy has been a professional umpire since 1989, of course he’s doing his job the best he can. It was an honest mistake.

Armando Galarraga is a good guy. He holds no hard feelings toward Joyce.  Because Joyce’s call was obviously a mistake, Galarraga probably still will go down in history as the 21st pitcher to have a perfect game.

So, now that I have a theme I’m satisfied with, I’ve come up with some rules on how I’m going to do things around here. First I wiped my blog… again, because Rule Number One is: Every blog post must be no less than 500 words. I had too many one-liners and brief paragraphs, and I wanted to clean up that old junk. I don’t know that my blog will be anymore interesting than it ever was, but I no longer want to post short messages here. Those of you who’ve come to the site in the last couple weeks probably notice my site kind of looks like a web magazine now. That’s what I like, and that’s why there’s a 500 word rule now.

It does mean that if whatever I’m talking about doesn’t reach the minium wordcount, then I have two choices. I can either keep rambling on, which will most often be the case, or don’t post at all. Yep, I’m being tough on myself, but I think it’s good exercise for a writer, even though this isn’t actual work. It’s more fun, but then writing was always fun, or it’s supposed to be, but often it’s a freaking pain in the ass.

Rule Number Two: Every post must have at least one picture. This is mainly because the home page no longer features entire posts, instead everything is an excerpt  and has a thumbnail, which is the main picture from the post.  Besides pictures make the post look more like an article. That’s what I like, and that’s why there’s a picture rule now.

Rule Number Three: Every post must fit into a category. At the moment there’s three, Roundup, Disaster Zone and MLB. I’ll make more when I need to.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Still got to reach that 500 word mark, and this is a Roundup post, which means I’m just giving an update on my life. So, besides making changes to my website, other stuff has been going on. Still working on that novel and I’ve been putting some effort into short stories too, because I haven’t written any in a while. I’ve also rejoined Eric Reynolds and the team at Hadley Rille Books and we’re looking for awesome science fiction and fantasy novels.

The last week has been sunny and hot, but today we’re having a good lot of thunderstorms. Not that I mind, I like thunderstorms.

I recently read these short stories:

I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno, by Vylar Kaftan.

The Atrocities of King George, by Lon Prater.

I’ve been active on Facebook lately. I used to think Facebook was crap like MySpace, but it’s actually more like Twitter. I’m finding Facebook not only fun, but useful.

As far as I can tell, the drain itself isn’t damaged, but the ground around it is caving in. See the gaping hole at the top of the first picture? If not for the overhanging grass or if I had taken the picture at a different angle, you might be able to see the hole is actually longer than it looks here.

The drain is about three feet wide and it’s at the bottom of a sloped terrain. This second picture is from a couple years ago. It shows how bad my yard floods under heavy rain. Even with the storm drain, I can still end up with a huge body of water in my front yard. However, I think if the drain wasn’t there, all that water would not have run off as quickly as it did once the rain stopped. So, I see the importance of a storm drain. I don’t have a ditch or a channel, or whatever, for rain water to run off.

I suspect the caving ground is the result of floods like this, as well as melting snow. I don’t know how serious the damage is, but yesterday I got my dad’s opinion. He shined a flashlight under the steel planks and he agrees that about two feet of the ground around the hole in the first picture is about to fall through. It sounds like an accident waiting to happen. I’ve had re-occurring nightmares of being trapped in a big pipe that’s filling up with water. But I doubt the storm drain in my front yard is my destined grave.

The damage isn’t just the hole in the first picture. Here you can see the side of the drain across from that hole.  Mostly what you see here is grass, but those two spots encircled by the grass are little pits about the size of my foot and a few inches deep. Doesn’t sound bad, does it? But this is another spot where the ground will eventually fall through. When it does, I imagine the hole there will be twice the size of the hole on the other side of the drain.

Those pits were not there a few years ago. I could push my lawn mower over this spot without hitting a bump. The damage started showing up about two years ago and it’s been getting worse ever since.  In this forth picture you can see a crack going from the side of the drain and continuing along the length of the road. The crack goes all the way to my driveway.  Is the ground going to open up here? I have no idea, but that crack is getting worse.

Here’s another picture of the crack a little farther along. It’s deep, it’s long, it’s the beginning of the end of the world. Something is not right here. 

The ground at the base of the utility pole is also sinking. This morning, my dad called the township office for me, but they’re closed until Tuesday. I’m anxious to see how they’re going to fix this problem. I don’t know if they’ll just need to work around the drain or if they’ll have to repair the whole stretch between my driveway and the fence.

Stay tuned for an update on the matter.

As you can see, I’m using two computers on the same desk. My writing base has been like that for a while now, even before I got this new desk. I’ve been working with two computers out of comfort rather than necessity. Those of you with keen eyes might be able to see that I have… a game? running on the desktop. No wonder it takes me so long to finish anything, I sit here playing games when I’m supposed to be writing. It’s all about comfort, right?

Well, actually, that’s not a game, it’s just Google Earth. I’ve found that Google Earth is a helpful tool in writing this novel. Not only does it give me a bird’s view of the areas I’m writing in, it has photographs of many areas from ground level. I also use Google Earth to pin point the locations of my characters and places. There’s a lot of yellow thumbtack icons with notes all over Samoa and China at the moment, which helps me keep track of who and what is where and when. I also use the desktop for looking up written material on whatever I need, and sometimes I look for area photos that I can’t find on Google Earth. YouTube is also helpful, I’ve found several videos of areas I’m writing in. It would be nice if I could travel to these places and see them in person, but I don’t have the money for that, so I’m using what I have.

The idea is to keep the current project open on the laptop and use the desktop for everything else. I’ve tried to do all my research, then write. But that just doesn’t work for me. I think it has more to do with my lack of patience than anything else. I find it easier to do my research while I write. My daily writing goal is 2,000 words.

I’m currently reading Red Phoenix, by Larry Bond. It’s about the issues between North and South Korea, like we’re seeing in the media these days, except Red Phoenix is fiction. I like it so far, it’s just that type of thriller novel I’ve come to love. Lots of action, suspense and political issues, maybe some romance in the mix, too. 

In the last week, I’ve also read these short stories:

Talking to Elephants, by Mary Anne Mohanraj.

Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride, by Saladin Ahmed.

A Sweet Calling, by Tony Pi.

All I’m going to say about these stories is I liked them.

And finally, Anthony got a go-cart. He and a friend spent yesterday afternoon driving it. I’d drive it too, if I could fit in it.

Sparky Anderson

Just last night as I was watching the Detroit Tigers play the Los Angeles Dodgers, I found myself wondering about Sparky Anderson. I didn’t know if he was still alive or not. He was an old man when he retired in 1995 and I hadn’t heard much about him since.

But at the start of today’s game, a camera aimed at the seats and there he was. I knew it was Sparky before I saw the on-screen text declaring it so. He was smiling or laughing and apparently giving his autograph to various people seated around him. He looked the same as he had fifteen years ago and appeared in good health. It was nice that he came out to watch the team he had coached for eleven years.

Anderson has a place in my heart, next to Kirk Gibson, as well as various other people, not necessarily associated with the Tigers or even sports. I wasn’t always interested in sports and during my teen years I pretty much thought anything sucked if it wasn’t heavy metal. My interest in sports was an off and on thing. It’s only been a few years now that I’ve been following sports more closely. Baseball is my favorite and because I’m Michigan born and raised, the Tigers are my team. In the last couple years, I was happy enough to watch whatever games I could, it didn’t matter what teams were playing. But now that I have cable TV again, I’ve been able to watch the Tigers every game, home and away. No more blackouts. So, I’m just following the Tigers this season.

I haven’t watched every game, but looking back through the scoreboards, I would say the Tigers are having a so-so season. It looks like they’re losing as many games as they’re winning. I’m not sure what this means in the long run, but I guess they’re doing okay. I was impressed with the long standoff against the Red Sox on May 15. That game lasted four and half hours, and finally ended in the twelfth inning when the Red Sox pitcher walked the batter while the bases were loaded. That was funny, they were tied up for about five innings and in that last inning the man on third base just had to walk home, no hurry whatsoever. The tie was broken and the Tigers won.

Tonight’s game was about the same as last night’s game. Apparently the Dodgers like to pretend they’re losing for the first few innings, and then they pull ahead by three or four runs and give the Tigers a sporting chance to catch up in the last two innings. I had my hopes up in the ninth, but nada, no home run for the Tigers.

But that’s not to say tonight’s game wasn’t interesting. Like when Brennan Boesch squared one away into the junk behind the center field wall immediately after I realized I wasn’t faithfully wearing my Tiger hat and put it on. All they needed was a little more support. That’s the magic.

Also interesting, though not in a good way, was when Austin Jackson was hit in the head by a ninety-two mile per hour pitch. He went down hard and stayed down for a couple minutes. The reports say he was taken to the hospital, but he’s expected to be fine.