Bryce's Ramblings

First of all, a very happy fourth birthday to my son, who's at home right now having a party with some friends. Hopefully the house isn't trashed when I get back. :-) He's been looking forward to today for the past month or so, and I really hope he has as big of a day as he's been hoping for. Too often it seems to me that "big days" later on in life just don't live up to how I remember them as a child, so I figure he's got to get as many "big days" in while they can still be truly Big Days. If that makes sense.

My wife, not to be outdone, had a Big Day herself yesterday. To the tune of $2,200. Well, technically that Big Day won't happen for a week or five, but that's what her root canal and crown replacement are going to cost. Add to that the $1,100 crown replacement she's already had scheduled . . . Dentists are no longer my friends. We're even contemplating going to Slovakia to get the dental work done. Sigh. So much for home improvement this year.

And while I'm thinking of it, if any of you out there are looking for good flight prices, I've found a lovely site that searches them most spiffily. Kayak.com. Check it out. You can see price history, search a buhzillion fares at once for multiple days and airports. Feel the goodness.

Finally, since I haven't given a writing update in a while (on this blog, which is supposedly a writing blog), I'll fill you in on what's up right now. I've been researching agents to send Ichabod to for the last while, and I have about 15 picked out. Tomorrow there's a couple more I want to look into, and then I'm going to work on my query letter and synopsis (which I've been fiddling around with in the meantime, as well), and then off I go a' querying. Not holding my breath. Ichabod's a strange duck of a story, and it'll likely take a strange duck of an agent to take it on.

As for new writing, I've been thinking and pondering and toying with several ideas. The one I'm most fond of right now is taking Barboy and adapting it into a contemporary fantasy. Those of you who have read Barboy might find this rather strange. But I have plans. Good plans. We'll see how it pans out.

First and foremost, I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to wish my wife a very happy birthday. Things have been crazy around the house the past while, and she's been doing a smash bang job of keeping everything going. Of course, she also has stopped checking my blog, but I can forgive that. :-) Happy Birthday!

Last night's movie was The Adventures of Robin Hood. I have to say that I now feel like I should sue someone for not having forced me to watch this sooner. When my son's a bit older, I'm showing him this movie. It was an absolute blast. 100 minutes of Fun. One thing that stood out to me in particular was the veritable cornucopia of color this movie is drenched in. I don't think there's a single shade in my Crayola box that they missed. And not the small Crayola box, either. The big one with the crayon sharpener on the back. Good clean fun. Three and a half stars out of four, with a half star missing simply because it didn't quite translate to today's modern audiences as well as some other older movies.

Also, a reminder that the NCAA tournament is gearing up, and if you think you're better than me, you should post your picks to my blog group. I don't have the money to participate in pools, but I'm all for pitting myself against other people for just the simple warm feeling of superiority you get when you beat those other people. So far I've only had one taker. Anyone else? Go to ESPN and join the group Bryce's Ramblings. Password: ichabod. Post a question if you have one. And if you win, you get a free Cavern of Babel copy. Just for participating, you can buy all the Cavern of Babel you want for $10 each. I know. I'm so generous. But I mean it--join up!

And for your laughing pleasure, raisinfish linked to this and I laughed so hard I had to close my office door. Garfield comic strips with Garfield taken out. Hilarious!

When I'm not killing mice or working on websites, I'm checking out other things on the internet. Today, I found out that you can search Wikipedia for any day of the year and find out what happened on that day over history. In other words, you can search for "September 21" (my birthday--presents gladly accepted, even if they're late) and find out who was born then, who died, what battles happened, etc. Granted, since it's all user-generated, some of it (or even a lot of it) might be wrong, it's still interesting to browse and look into further if anything catches your eye. Highlights of my birthdate:

Bill Murray, Stephen King, H.G. Wells, Chuck Jones, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ethan Coen all share my birthday, which made me start wondering if we aren't predisposed to liking the work of people who share our birthday. Then I saw that Nicole Richie has the same birthday, too. So much for that hypothesis.

Sir Walter Scott died on my birthday.

In honor of my birth, countries around the world celebrate. It's the International Day of Peace, International Day Against Alzheimer's, International Banana Festival, and Independence Day in Malta, Belize and Armenia. So perhaps millions of people celebrate my birth each year. I'll never feel lonely at a birthday party again, because I'll know that somewhere, some people in Belize are blowing stuff up (or doing whatever they do to celebrate).

Events of note to happen on my birthday:
The angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith
The Hobbit was published
The "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" article was published in the New York Sun

So. What cool things happened on YOUR birthday?