Short Update

So for the second time today I will be heading down to visit my niece, her mother, and several members of my family in Iowa City, where my niece is still on a respirator only a month after having a beautiful baby boy.

It hurts me a lot to see her that way. I was only nine when she was born, and she was the first real baby I was ever exposed to as a kid. Now I find myself holding her baby and praying for her life on Christmas Day.

I have decided to hold off on updating Metahuman Press until next week. Apologies to the fans out there, but I just do not have the wherewithal to focus on it right now.

More soon, hopefully.

Not-So-Uncanny X-Mas

I apologize to anyone and everyone expecting the first chapter of Living Legends today. I will try my best to have it up on Friday. I have had an unfortunate couple of days around the Ahlhelm family. My twenty year old niece Callie had her first baby on December 1st. A beautiful little boy named Nathan. Now she’s in the hospital fighting for her life and the doctors aren’t even sure why. They spent most of Christmas and Christmas Eve trying just to get her stabilized so they could air-lift her to the University of Iowa facilities in Iowa City. They finally did that late Tuesday. At one point, she was on a respirator with a blood pressure of 50/30, so things were not good.

Now she is still not out of the water, but they still are not sure what happened to her. The thought is it may be toxic shock syndrome, but no one really knows for sure.

So it’s been a tough couple days. Apologies to my fans, but family comes first.

Thanks.

Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas

Here on my wife’s birthday, I just wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy Christmas. I hope everyone enjoys their holidays as I plan to.

And Happy Birthday, honey!

Snow Storm Take ... I don't know, four now? Something like that.

Anyway, we have yet more snow here in Eastern Iowa to celebrate the weekend with, and to top it off we also have blowing conditions. So most of that last minute Christmas shopping will be done on Christmas Eve, at least as far as the Ahlhelm family is concerned.

All in all we had a pretty good weekend though. My daughter continued her quest to conquer Lego Star Wars on the PS2, my wife finished a few books, I got some Fate-playing and Living Legends-writing done on the computer, and we all sat down to watch the excellent new game show Duel have its finale tonight on ABC. Great show with an awesome concept: out of the twenty-four contestants, one of the people is actually going to win the money! You don’t see that too much, especially when the prize is upwards of two million bucks. (I believe the final total was $1,795,000.) If it should return (and with the writer/studio situation the way it currently is it probably will), I highly recommend any lover of quiz shows should check it out.

Finally sat down and watched Eragon with the family this weekend as well. Yeah, so I didn’t really care for the book all that much, but reading it I often thought that it would make a pretty decent movie if they cut out a lot of the crap. I guess Hollywood wanted to prove me wrong. Just a terrible film. All the wrong things were left in and all the right things were cut. The characters had no emotional connections whatsoever and everything pretty much fell flat on its face.

Something about the ad campaign really has me itching for the return of Law & Order. Maybe because there's nothing else coming up for TV anytime soon? I’m not sure, but I will be watching it.

I am actually typing this at my job in our break room right now, about an hour before my actual shift begins. After going to all the trouble of digging out my car, I really did not want to sit around the house and fall asleep, probably while the snow blows back over. So I’m here too dang early, and I guess I might as well enjoy some web-time.

And that is just about enough random thoughts for now. Ciao for now, folks.

An update at last

Sorry about the over a week’s time between the last update and this one. I apologize and can only site an utterly heinous work week as the reason.

With the changes coming fast and furious on mid-shift, I have changed my schedule to now have Friday and Saturday mornings off. Unfortunately, this means that I had to work the last eight days straight. Which did nothing to help the cold I already had. I fell out last Sunday morning, then came back to work the next four days. I am finally on a three day weekend now though so I will be getting hard to work on putting the first chapter of Living Legends together for your reading enjoyment.

Living Legends looks to be quite an epic undertaking. I am mid-way through the first draft of chapter 3 and it seems to already be growing a mind of its own. I am really enjoying the revamp of the golden age characters I am using though, and I think the story should serve to entertain. I have been developing the concept for over two years at this point, so I have these characters well-established in my mind. Even so they still pop up with a few surprises now and then.

Christmas shopping calls, so I will have to cut this blog post short, but I promise to be back more frequently then 9 days this time.

The Ice Storm

I’m definitely not Tobey Maguire (though I wouldn’t mind having even a fraction of his money), but I am buried under an ice storm today. Hannah stayed home from school and I thanked my lucky stars I don’t have to go to work tonight.

We got about an inch of ice on the groud, power lines falling everywhere, and to cap everything else, I am sick as a dog. Coughing, hacking, and otherwise feeling miserable have been the name of the game for me. Thankfully, Hannah can entertain herself for the most part, so except for a few trips out of the room to eat and to type this, I have spent most of the day asleep or at least resting. Got a lot of reading done to, and finally caught up with my comic purchases from last week, just in time to go buy more tomorrow.

What made it even grander was that my last night at work, both of my coworkers called in sick. Here I am thinking that with an ice storm on the way I don’t want to be the guy calling in, and here are both the girls coming off their weekends leaving my sick butt working alone. Not fun that was for sure, but me and the supervisors made it through mostly unscathed.

Speaking of comics above, this was a pretty good week: Ultimate X-Men continued beautifully Kirkman's quest to recraft 90’s X-history in to a coherent saga, The Sword finally got going, Ultimates 3 was beautiful if a little thin on the story end. Kabuki The Alchemy ended well, with most of the story starring David Mack BTW. Suburban Glamour followed in the Ultimates vein, pretty if a little weak on story. Still one of my favorite new comics came out with its third issue as well: The Ninety-Nine. Fabian Nicieza really is a great writer, even if he is vastly under-respected for his dark X-past.

Re-reading The Golden Compass now before I go see the movie. I have seen good reviews and bad reviews, but as long as we get some polar bear ass-kickery I’ll be happy.

And that’s about all the digressions I have for today.

Not so good a mood

You know, sometimes I thank God for writing and reading. Because if I couldn’t escape in to a fantasy of my own choosing, the total and absolute lack of respect and understanding this world gives could just be overwhelming. I am not going to really go in to many details past that, as far too many people at my work place our far too computer savvy. Suffice it to say, I am less than damn happy with decisions made by the higher ups at my job.

Life sucks, then you die. I guess I just needed to be reminded of that once again.