Michael Pickell

Song mood: One Week by Barenaked Ladies.  It was just a matter of song progression.  Watching Hamilton and enjoying Jonathan Grof play George the Third.  Then my mind wandered over to hip hop and went to Lil Kim, whom I never really listened to but one of her songs was in a movie I like, which lead back to Barenaked Ladies.  And a song that just fits me.
After eating my yogurt, I went nine hours without eating.  I bought some cherries while I was grocery shopping and was eating them while I went from grocery store to Raising Canes.  And I felt ill again.  So I am abandoning the idea of the intermittent fasting.  Or I will change how I use it.  I will go back to small meals and controlled portions, which worked before.  Like if I go to Chipotle, just eat half a burrito and save the rest for later.  I will have to cut out Raising Canes all together.I think it was the Triscuts that got me this time.  I wouldn’t stop eating them while I was working.  The fix is easy for that.  Portion out …

Song mood: Boombastic by Shaggy.  No idea why that song popped into my head.  Just a series of different songs move around in my head.  As I googled the song, I saw a video where Sting did a collaboration with Shaggy.
I’m tired.  Fourth day in on this intermittent fasting.  Felt a little ill after eating Chipotle for my meal today.  It happens.  Maybe tomorrow will be a series of small light meals.  As I research, there are a few signs that you need to pay attention to and stop fasting.  Once you feel better, then you can go back.  It depends on how I feel when I wake.
I didn’t want to write tonight.  I was tired and feeling a bit ill.  I wrote anyway.  I thought of an idea when walking.  If the Dark Prince embedded part of his soul in the labyrinth, then he can show up at the end.  I know I stole that from The Chamber of Secrets, Tom Riddle’s diary.  But that’s what writer’s do, they steal.  Whether they know it or not.  The trick is to make the idea your own, present it in your own wa…

Song mood: Magic Stick by Lil Kim ft 50 Cent.  Not sure why that song popped in my head.  King George the Third’s song in Hamilton  plays in my head, well, the da da part anyway.
In the hour that I wrote, I wrote 1146 words.  I’ve now hit 20,000 for the second time.  I will need to do a little brainstorming for what else to write.  And I haven’t written the big battle between Marianne and Kurt Grey.  Which I’m a little hesitant to write.  The fight scene isn’t my forte.  Nor is the space battles, but I like writing those scenes.
So that was my day off, writing for an hour, walking and watching both Doctor Who and Father Brown.  It’s kind of tough to watch the very first season of Doctor Who as the Doctor doesn’t even know who the Daleks are.  In the first ever season, the Doctor doesn’t try or want to try to save anyone.  It is said that the Daleks were representing the racial hate and Nazism.  Over the years the backstory was written or rewritten so that the Daleks were the arch nemesi…

Tomorrow I head back to Omaha.  It's been a good trip.
   Today, I spent most of the day hanging out with my nephews.  The middle boy is 3 or 4 years old and likes to call me uncle All Might, which is his favorite anime character.
   The oldest has Autism.  He is very different compared to the other two.  He was sitting in the living room, being all quiet sitting under a box.  And then out of nowhere he breaks out and does the 'coffin dance.' Both my sister and my mother tell him, no 'coffin dance.' I didn't know such a thing existed until they explained what it was.  I googled it, it's a real thing.  He would ask me questions about the Catacombs and Big Ben.  And play videos where Big Ben was destroyed and I told him that they were movies.  He is deathly afraid of fire works.  He didn't want to light any up because he doesn't like loud noises and didn't have his ear muffs with him.  
   The middle child would get dangerously close to the fireworks…

Apart from the massive headache, it's been a good day.  I met youngest nephew today for the first time.  He seemed to like me and that's a good thing.
I experienced a moment of intense dejavu, a week after the last episode of dejavu.  I was telling myself, my sister is going to say this.  The television will say that.  Then I search my memories to see will happen in the future and tell myself it doesn't work that way.
I then think of the movie 'Arrival' and tell myself I should finish reading 'Story of Your Life,' by Ted Chiang the novella that inspired the movie.
I know I should be working on finishing the second draft.  But the headache has only dulled slightly after taking Tylenol and Ibuprofen.
Yesterday, I ate a 16oz bag of cherry nibs and drank a 16oz can of Coke and now everything seems to be out of whack.
Tomorrow, I go my hometown and visit a couple of my uncles.  It's a 90 minute drive from the big town that my mum and sister live in to my hometown…

So, on my drive up to Fargo, I listened to the rest of 'The Glass Hotel' and found it more of a disappointment.  It turned out to be a biography of several people, and a cautionary tale of trusting the wealthy. Was it a ghost story? Possibly.  The novel was a slice of life of several people during the 2008 financial meltdown.  The question is, what was the point to the story?  Most of the characters were connected in some way but not all knew each other.  It had a faint smattering of supernatural elements.  I wouldn't really classify it as a horror novel.  It was however, fine writing, but made me wonder what the point of it was.  People knock genre writing, but stories that fall into whatever genre has to have a point or a goal.  Slice of life stories don't seem to have a goal, people just do whatever and there is hardly a character arc. Those are my thoughts on the book, and I can be wrong.  I was expecting one kind of story and got another and that is what is bother…