Building the Boo-Wheel

OKAY! HERE IT IS!!! This is one of my adventures in SecondLife... With pics! I figure the best way to communicate what's so addictive about SL is to SHOW you.

And to do that, I got Brian to give me a hand with a simple build: I call it the "Boo-Wheel".

Some explanation: Ultimately, I'd love to construct a full-blown Haunted House in-world. But I don't know scripting, and I don't have the (very expensive) programs I would need to create animations that worked in-world. So I need to use the simple scripts available to me, and apply them in simple machines that accomplish a desired result.

My first idea it the Boo-Wheel. It's a large, invisible wheel with a life-size cut-out of a ghost or monster. The wheel is also a "phantom" object -- which means that people can walk through it with out being affected. Also, the monster (in this case, a life-size Freddy Krueger stand-up that Brian made) is a phantom object; so when it pops out at the visitor, it doesn't smack 'em in the face and knock them down.

Now, I know we're talking about virtual people in a virtual world here. But this world has rules, and one of the basic rules of SecondLife is "Don't abuse each other!!!" I don't know that it's ever stated that way, specifically, but if you boil all the rules that get you banned and kicked-out of SL, they all stem from abusive behaviour toward fellow Residents.

So I don't want to build something that abuses my visitors. After a while, they may report me and I may get kicked out. So -- like a RL Haunted House creator -- I want to keep my visitors' safety in mind while I'm designing this.

So, here are the players:



That's us, respectively, Brian (the Grayskin ET) and me (with the blue goatee).

And this is the Project Site:



It's a platform Brian built, set way, way, WAY up in the sky. The location is for privacy, and so we don't disturb our neighbors. The size is use in that it allows more than one of us to create multiple objects at once without getting in each other's way. It also serves as a launch/landing pad for the many, MANY flying vehicles Brian owns. (You can see a small blue personal craft in the pic, but he's got some HUGE ones, and he'll sometimes fly us around, all at once.)



I didn't even have to ask Brian to get started. Before I knew what he was doing, he was already creating the Boo-Wheel. At first, he didn't fully get the concept of HOW I wanted to attatch the Freddy stand-up. I wanted it sticking out, rather than pressed against the wheel.

The next step was to create the wall, so I got on that while Brian was doing his thing.

My job was the easiest, and I was done in no time...



So then we moved the Boo-Wheel behind the Horror Wall (Ya like that? My creativity with the names?) and attatched Freddy.

Then it was time to test it out...







A SUCCESS!!!

That was the last pass, of course. We had to adjust Freddy's proximity to the wheela couple of times before we nailed it.

And what the pics can't show you is that the Boo-Wheel makes a long arch, unseen behind the wall. And every time the Freddy stand-up comes around, he pokes through the wall, appearing to the person on the other side of the wall that Freddy is swinging out to take a swipe at them and then disappearing back into the wall.

The final step of the process was to turn the Boo-Wheel completely invisible. What you DON'T see on the other side of the wall is the Boo-Wheel (which was previously wood textured).



And there ya go... My first guided tour through one of the many, many addictive aspects of SL!!! I hope to take you on more of these tours as my adventures continue.

That is, of course, if I can pull myself out of the world long enough to organize the pics and write the article!!!

Bed Time...

I need to get some sleep now, but I just wanted to record here that I spent more time meeting new people in SL today and tonight than I have in RL in FOREVER!!!

And it was really fun!!!

It started out with me hanging with Brina, then Tommy came along, then a woman I met a few days ago (whom I DO NOT know in RL) and the 4 of us hung out and made stuff and fixed stuff, then I hooked up with another woman I met last night, and she introduced me to her friends...

It's been a REALLY SOCIAL day for me!!! And I didn't leave the house!!!

Now, I get that this is sort of antisocial... Only, it's not really...

I mean, in-world the subconscious can't really distinguish between RL and SL... You're seeing stuff, you're hearing stuff, you're doing stuff....

And the people you're surrounded by are like real people -- because they ARE real people, with their own personalities and preferences, and likes and dislikes...

I'm just trying to wrap my head around this, really...

I mean, for 35 years REAL meant material, physical, able-to-be-measured-by-physics. And I knew that stuff you read, or movies you saw or music you listened to made that idea of "real" a bit more maliable. And then a deeper exploration of spirituality sort of inverted that idea.

But Virtual Living... This must be what people in the '60s who experimented with acid and LSD felt like, kind of! Because Reality is really, really unreal for me!

Am I insane?

Aw, who am I kidding? I'm not particularly concerned about my sanity! :) Experience has taught me that 9 times out of 10, insanity is a LOT more FUN :)

I've spent the day in SL

My computer crashed and is rebooting, so I thought I'd take a second to drop you an entry...

DUDE!!! I am SO addicted to SL!!!

Okay, I spent the day with Brian and Tommy and our new friend "Tam" -- that's a nickname for her SL name.

We made some stuff, rearranged our store -- where we sell stuff we've made in-world -- and now we're AT AN SL CLUB, DANCING!!!

I don't know how long it's been since I've been dancing -- in REAL Life -- but that's what I'm doing now!

I mean, I KNOW that you're not gonna get it until I can show you some pictures (video would be better, but we're not set up for that yet), but this world, SecondLife, FEELS amazingly REAL!

When you're doing stuff in there, you just DO NOT feel as though your sitting in a chair with a keyboard in your lap! You FEEL as though what you're seeing is what you're actually doing!

It's amazing!

Blah.

I'll try to get you and entry with pics soon, so you'll have some idea what I keep going on about!

Meantime, RL or SL, I hope you're having A BLAST!!!

P.S.

I'm not a complete freak...

639 people just logged back into SecondLife. I'll make an even 340.

Hi, I'm Ray Jay, and I'm a SecondLife Addict

ALL: "Hi, Ray Jay."

Okay, so Brian and I are BOTH sitting at our computers, logged into the SecondLife site, the forums pages, announcements from the Lindens section, WAITING for the announcement that the grid is back up and we can log back in.

How SICK am I?!!

After a Tuesday spent ignoring email and just cattin' around SecondLife, I spent an inordinately large portion of my day today THINKING about SecondLife. The last few hours were spent waiting for the time that I could drive home and log back into SecondLife.

This is how sick I am: I even found a way to share SecondLife with YOU! I figured out that a picture is worth a thousand words, and planned a couple of blogs that would include photos: One is a tour of some places that I like to frequent, and the other follows me as I create something in-world.

I figured that if I combined images with my words, you might get a better impression of what it is that I love so much about the virtual world.

Hold on a sec...

Had to check the announcements. The grid is still down.

:(

Okay, now to be fair to me, I'm not ALONE in my obsession. (And I'm not just talkin' about my brother/roommater, either.) I don't remember the precise number, but out of a total residency (people who have are members of SecondLife are called "Residents") of 165,094, there were a little more that 2,000 people logged in when the grid went down.

AT 3-something A.M.!

Now, granted, some are from different parts of the world, so their time is different from mine.

At 3a my time it was 4a in New York, 2a in Los Angeles and 9a in London. (I know Londond time because last year when they aired the last 2 series of the HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY radio series, the only way I could hear it -- at first -- was to wake up and listen to it live on the BBC website.)

My points are these: (1) If most of the Residents of SecondLife are American, then there are upwards of 2,000 of them as obsessive as I am, because they were online at an odd hour, too; or (2) if Americans do not comprise the bulk of the SecondLife Residents, then the addiction is far-reaching, and I should be cut some slack on THAT account.

So there.

OHMYGOSH!!!

Andrew Linden just announced that the "asset cluster" is in the process of coming back up now!!!

This means I may be MINUTES away from loggin back in-world!!!

I think I'm about to wet myself!!!

:)

HEY! DON'T you judge me! Not till you've walked down 3 flights of stair in my commander boots. (That's what Walmart's "Survivors" brand calls its combat boots.) Brian's in there looking at snapshots from his excursions into SecondLife. Mock HIM!

Isn't it kinda cool, though, that we live in a world where the term "asset cluster" actually gives us some idea of what the problem is? I mean, if you had put the words "asset" and "cluster" next to each other in a sentence, I would have thought you were suffering a siezure. But with even the layman's understanding of computers and software nowadays, "asset cluster" gives you some idea of the nature of the problem.

Or am I just a nerd?

Brian just reported that one more person just came online in the last 5 seconds! That brings the total number of people in-world to 4.

The disheartening aspect to this news it that those 4 are probably Lindens -- people who work at Linden Labs, the creators of SecondLife -- who are only online to analyze and fix the problem. (You know, get the Asset Clusters back up and running...)

There are no new updates...

:(

And Brian just decided to retire for the evening.

Which is fine, really. I was surprised to find him awake when I got home this evening anyway. He's usually crashed by the time I get home. But the nature of the SL addiction is that you think of something you want to do in-world during your First Life, or RL ("Real Life"), and then you obsess about it until you can log in and do the thing you've been obsessing about. His hit him on his way to work. So the poor guy had some 8 hours to obsess before he could slake his SL thirst!

I just checked the updates, and it doesn't look like I'm logging in anytime soon, either.

It's funny, I spent all last week overwhelmed by all my pretty, shiny new toys. I've got HOURS of Vincent Price Old-Time Radio shows to listen to, 2 dvds worth of Jim Gaffigan's standup comedy, a bunch of PRIME PS2 games, 2 novels and 3 comic books to read, and the ONLY toy in my toybox that I really, really, REALLY want to play with is broken.

I supose I am a little bit sick.

Okay, I've got 8 minutes before I need to go to bed... Let's check the announcement board again...

Still down...

7 minutes...

Still down...

You know, one cool aspect to this evening is that I FINALLY leanred the keyboard shortcut to refresh an Internet window. It's F5.

6 minutes...

Still down...

5 minutes...

Still down...

I thank you for waiting here with me. I don't know if I could handle this withdrawal on my own.

4 minutes...

Still down...

I wonder how many 12-Step programs exist to help those of us with SL addiction...

3 minutes...

"Normally the asset cluster is resilient to a node failure, however shortly after tonights initial failure other nodes also went down and we don't yet know why. The cluster is in the process of coming back up now."

That's the last message posted by one of the Lindens. It hasn't changed. SecondLife is still down...

2 minutes...

Still down...

1 mintes...

YES!!! THE GRID IS BACK UP!!! Tesla Linden just thanked me for my patience!!!

I'll talk to you guys later!

Better Than COFFEE

I learned today that RESIDENT EVIL 4 is the way to wake myself up.

Last night, after woork, I had to get back into the game... Twice. There's this village full of psycho simps wielding axes and scythes and pitchforks, and you HAVE TO take them all on for a long while. It's just part of the game.

Now, if you've ever played RE4, you know that I've just barely started the game. But that's okay, because I'm STILL trying to get used to those frickin' PS2 controls!!!

Anyway, I was drinking last night, so I didn't notice my physiological responses to this game. But this morning I dragged myself out of bed, played the game for a half-hour or more, and I noticed that my heart was RACING when I finally put it down. (I cleared the village once, night before last, but I didn't save it because I had used up all my Herbs and Ammo in the slaughter, so I'm still trying to fight my way through that village.)

So tonight I elected -- difficult as it was -- NOT to play the game until morning. Because that game GETS YOU GOING!!!

You may have read or heard that the human memory cannot distiguish an image in a film from an actual memory. You can test this idea if there's a particular scene -- of any genre or nature -- that you can remember in vivid detail. You can elicit just as powerful a physiological response by the memory of the movie as you can with the memory of something that actually happened to you. (RETURN OF THE KING: "YOU bow to NO ONE." That's one of mine. Man-tears EVERY TIME!)

So the biological responses are fairly open to suggestion, yeah?

Well, I was SO jacked with adrenaline after playing that game!!!

So I figure that the best way to utilize the game is to use it to wake up to, except on days when I don't go into work... Then I'll just ABUSE that game until my thumbs bleed!

This is a really interesting time for me -- though, not necessarily for you -- because I'm co-writing Kelly's story, I've got a little some'in'-some'in' of my own that I'm toying with here and there, and then I've got this NIRVANHA of videogames!!! (If I wanna come down off of RE4 I can play BUFFY for a while, or drive around Springfield, or BE Spider-Man!) And then I'm also working.

If you hop backward in Time on my blog, you'll find that I've been working on projects before. But here's the odd thing for me: I seem to be -- SEEM to be; Time will tell if this perception is correct -- accomplishing QUITE A LOT right now!!!

And what makes that wierd is just how MUCH I seem to be squeazing into every day. Gene Simmons talks about this in his book SEX MONEY KISS, but it's a little surprising to experience it. I mean, I've experienced it before -- there have been many times when we were shooting a short film for 12 hours then going to work for 8; and that doesn't even include when I was a teen in the theatre (mainly because I was a teen and had all that hormonal energy to burn) -- but it surprises me now because I'm 35, and SHOULD be feeling tired from all this activity.

But instead, I feel energized.

I'm guessing this is why people are encouraging you to "follow your bliss", or simply do what you're passionate about, all the time. It really does seem to add hours to your day and give you the energy to FILL those hours!

May YOUR hours be filled with bliss!!! (And shooting zombies, if you're so inclined.)

Resident Evil 4!!!

I popped SILENT HILL 4: THE ROOM in the Playstation last night and got through the credits when Kelly called to do some writing.

It was a good conversation, but it went on long enough that I didn't get my horror-game fix.

So this morning I woke up jonesing for some horror gaming. But I didn't have time, before I had to get ready for work, for the slow and somewhat plodding (or, rather, "suspenseful") pace of a SILENT HILL game. I need some Action/Horror.

There's my BUFFY game...

But that doesn't really FEEL like a horror game. It feels like an action game, like SPIDER-MAN 2... You know? Like a super-hero game. Doesn't give me that horror fix.

So I'm looking through my huge-ass library of games (getting bigger by the day) and I spot RESIDENT EVIL 4, which I haven't played yet...

...and I pop it in...

AND IT RULES THE WORLD!!! I mean, I probably only played it for half an hour -- and I'm not a proper gamer, so I probably accomplish much less than most people do in half an hour -- but I LOVED every second!!!

It reminded me why I love the RESIDENT EVIL series as much as I do! There's just nothing like an RE game! Wandering around creepy setting with zombies popping out at you every few feet, and shooting!!!

Only, the graphics for RE4 are, naturally, MIND-BLOWING!!! I popped a dude's head OFF with one of my shots!!! Dude's coming at me with a pitchfork, I fire and TAKE HIS HEAD OFF, and he keeps coming for a few feet before his body realizes that it's not getting any signals from upstairs anymore!

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's HORRIBLE. But it's horrible in that Horror-Flick/Horror-Game way!!!

I do need to go back and play some more of my SILENT HILLs -- I DIG ON the psychology they employ -- but I think I'll be focusing every moment I can steal away on RESIDENT EVIL 4 for the time being! (At least, until I come up against a Boss that refused to die, and I get all frustrated because I can't progress any further. Then I'll be able to take a break...)

Okay, I'm going to go now. I have some research I need to do to create some backstory for some bad guys...

You KNOW you SO wish you were me!

:)

He's BACK!!!

Okay, so last night I pretty much finished setting up my "new" computer (new to me, anyway) for use and tonight I read the first 6 pages of script/treatment that Kelly wrote, then sent him some feedback.

I'm back in the game!!!

But now I'm torn: Part of me says "Good job, Ray Jay. Go play some Playstation", and part of me goes "You know, you could apply what Kel's written to your yWriter program and..."

Torn between 2 lovers...

WHAT A GREAT POSITION TO BE IN!!!

:)

I Am Worthless Right Now :)

Usually, when I'm writing with someone, it's a lot of me calling and emailing and IM-ing going "Okay, so now what? How about THIS? Or how about THIS?"

I get home from Bossier City and I've got a bunch of emails from Kelly, one of which consisted of the words "Why won't you write me back?"

Now I'm THAT guy, the guy who is too busy to work!

Not really. Actually, I don't know if I told Kelly Bossier City was this week. I just find it ironic -- and REALLY encouraging -- to be on the other side of that paradigm! (The difference is that starting this weekend I WILL get my ass bacxk to work! When I was the one going "Let's get busy" the other parties never did.)

Just before I left for Bossier City Kelly sent me 45 PAGES OF NOTES on our script!!! This cat's ready to roll!!!

Got me a PS2!!!

:)

And as of yesterday, I have FINALLY played a SILENT HILL game!!! Not all the way through! I've only spent a couple of hours on SH2, but I've gotten to taste it!!! My Special Makeup Effects Friend Marvin -- who will watch ALL horror movies, good or bad -- can't play the first game for more than 20 minutes at a time. It scares him THAT MUCH! So I've been dying to own a platform for 6 years or more!

And now I've got one!!!

I gambled $500 in Bossier City and won back $369 of it!!! I mostly played the slots. I put a $20 in a machine, and play until I won back more than what I put in. Many times I lost the entire bill, but then the next game I'd be down to $7 or so, and win, say, $19, and I'd cash-out at $26! It's not much of a win, but I didn't loose that bill! Then I had a couple of big wins: I won $190+ off one twenty-dollar bill, and $150+ off another! AND THAT WAS MY FIRST DAY THERE!!!

It was fun.

And the car ride there and back was a lot more fun that I imagined it would be! Mom and Brian dig on Oldies (70s & 80s stuff), so there was some fun to be had singing along or mocking or just remembering. (We got a lot of history, the three of us...)

Mom wanted to leave super early (6a) Monday so that we would have time to gamble our first day, so I just didn't go to sleep Sunday night. So on the road there I dozed a lot.

Then we got there around 1p and pretty much hit the casino right away. Mom was meeting an old (old, OLD) friend for dinner, so Brian and I planned to be scarce. But by the time 5p rolled around we all three ended up back in the room, taking a break. (Well, Brian and I were taking a break; Mom was getting ready for her dinner.)

I was about to say that by 9:00 pm Brian and I retired from the casino for the day, but he just reminded me that we STAYED IN THE ROOM that night! Can you believe that?!! We, a couple of young, verile party animals, were gambled out our first day after a mere 5 hours... in the casino... It was some 7 hours in the car before that.

We did go eat a dinner buffet, though.

To be fair, though, part of the reason we stayed in the room is that we had a plan: Gamble half or LESS of the money we had. And although I had won big TWICE within the first couple of hours, I was going through $20s like a married guy at a topless bar by the time we left the casino! I hadn't yet figured out that you don't play for the big jackpot, you play to get your money back, with a little extra. It took all that loosing to figure that out.

So Mom had said, several times, that when she gave Brian and me the $1,000 each to gamble with, we could do whatever we wanted with it: Gamble half of it or gamble it all away, just whatever. Well... Brian has been looking for a new computer with a better processor -- so he can more thoroughly enjoy Second Life, without crashing -- and I've been itching to spend hour in some horror and action games. (I think it's the weather... I think Brian and I must have gotten our Dreamcast in the Spring, so now when it gets all Spring-y outside I start jonesin' for videogames.)

So Brian and I spent Monday night in the room. We found some FRIENDS on TBN or TNN or one of those Turner stations, and after that was back-to-back episodes of FAMILY GUY!!! (One of them had KISS guesting!!!) Mom had gotten back from her dinner in time for the sitcoms, and had crashed by the time that SNOW DAY came on.

My brother and I watched SNOW DAY Monday night!

It actually didn't suck! I mean, if it weren't free on TV, I seriously doubt we would have ever seen it. And I don't think we'll be renting to watch it again. But we did have fun pointing out writing/filmmaking tricks to each other. And there were a few good laughs in there.

Actually, I'm not being fair to the movie. There was some really good filmmaking going on in that flick! And it was A LOT better written than, say, those MUMMY movies or VAN HELSING. VAN HELSING WISHES it was as good as SNOW DAY!!!

So anyway, at some point early in the movie it occured to me that this might be more fun with beer! So I went downstairs to the bar for a 6-pack of Coors Light and 6 bottles of water. Naturally, being a bar, they didn't have the cans in the plastic rings, or a shopping bag to put them in. However, being a casino/hotel, the barkeep was more than willing to help me out. He suggested I go to the gift shop and ask if they have a bag.

They did, and I had my six and my water.

Actually, the beer just made me sleepy. (I still hadn't has a real night's sleep yet sleep.) I think I only drank 2.

Anyway, after SNOW DAY the station aired SURF NINJAS, and I figured that was my cue to retire.

OH! I haven't told you about the room yet! Okay, we stayed at the Horseshoe Casino/Hotel, and it was a room with 2 beds. So Brian and I were doubling up, or one of us was taking the couch.

I brought my sleeping bag.

But when we got there, Brian volunteered for the couch, so I got a bed.

And you can smoke ANYWHERE IN THE HOTEL/CASINO!!! So poor Mom, not a smoker, got a little smoked-out. To make matters worse for her, they sold Rum Runners cigars downstairs, so Brian and I had to get ourselves one of those. (I got 1, but Brian went back for seconds... GOOD cigars!)

This trip was about excess!

When bedtime rolled around I popped in my ZVUE headphones and fell asleep to George Carlin's A PLACE TO PUT MY STUFF. I think I got as far as track 2 before I was out.

The next day, Mom was up around 5:00 am. I figured I should probably get on her schedule since we would be leaving early the next morning.

Brian was still dead asleep when she and I decided to go back to the casino. The plan had been to eat breakfast at 9a, but by 8a Mom and I were getting bored with gambling and starved! So we went back up to the room, just as Brian was beginning to stir. But he wasn't awake enough to eat, so Mom and I went downstairs for breakfast.

It was cool. She told me about how her dinner with her friend went, and told me all this backstory about them growing up. And it wasn't like our usual conversations, it was kind of like the way I talk to my friends. I kind of got to see a side of Mom that I haven't seen ever before -- sort of like the side of Dad I only got to see after he passed away. A real bonding moment.

Very cool!

Oh, and the BACON was OUT OF THIS WORLD!!! I had scrambled eggs, bacon, hash-brown-y potatoes, and biscuits & gravy, and that was a GOOD breakfast!!! Imagine the most delicious bacon your mind can muster, and that's AT LEAST as good as this bacon was!

After breakfast we went back to the casino.

Now, when I say "we went back to the casino" I don't want to give you the wrong impression. Mom gambles ALONE. It's not like we're at the mall together going from store to store together. Hu-uh! We step into that casino and Mom's all "Okay, see ya later". She's not an addict or anything, but she doesn't mess around, either!!! So it's not quite as gay as it sounds: "My Mommy and I went gambling together." No way. We step through that doorway and she's all "See Ya!"

Before breakfast I had spotted a dealer at a Black Jack table who looked bored. I had intended then to learn how REAL Black Jack was played, but it was time to meet up with Mom for breakfast. So now I found another lone, bored-looking dealer and sat down for some school. She was really nice, and very patient, and took me through what real Black Jack is. (Helpful Tip: In casino Black jack, you're goal isn't to reach 21, it's to force the dealer to keep hitting and bust. Good to know! Also, you play with 6 decks shuffled together, so you always assume that the dealer's face-down card is a face card.)

Brian showed up while I was at the Balck Jack table, but he was (as the dealer put it) "hot for the slots" so I finished up my schooling alone. I bought $40 worth of chips, and I walked away from the Black Jack table with $60+! Not bad for a beginner!!!

I caught back up with Brian and we gambled for several more hours, then around noon we met up with Mom. And we all decided that none of us would be sad if we went home today...

Remember, Brian and I had our own agendas, so we were trying not to lose everything. And Mom hadn't gambled all her money away, but she had started to get a little bored with it.

So we hit the road around 1p, Tuesday.

Like I said before, the trip back wasn't bad. There was a lot of laughter, and Brian was the one dozing this time.

When we got into town, I ran to Walmart for beer and a couple of groceries... And I came back with a Playstation 2! (And the beer and groceries, of course.)

I woke up yesterday and went to Game Stop to expand my PS2 game library further, then spent the rest of the day playing all my new games! (There was a couple of hours in there where I went over to Mom's to help her with her new computer that Brian and I had just hooked up the day before the trip.)

And that's my week! I have done NO writing, not work of any kind!

I've just been hangin' around, being WORTHLESS!!!

Not a bad week! :)

HELLO, BOSSIER CITY!!!

I don't remember if I've mentioned this yet, but my mom and Brian and I are going on a road trip to Bossier City next week!

I'm not much of a gambler, but I'm off until NEXT FRIDAY!!! So I get to go to Louisiana for 2 and a half days, then I get to crash at home for another 2 days. AND... If I don't gamble away all my money, I might be able to see a movie or something one of those days off.

Then I go back to work Friday, then I'm OFF for 2 MORE DAYS!!!

I'm SUCH a BUM!!! And I LIKE it!!!

So if you don't hear from me befor Wednesday it's because I'm on the road or drunk and gambling in a casino. If you don't hear from me after Wednesaday it's because I'M CHILLIN' BAY-BAY!!!

Well... There is a possibility that I may -- MAY -- be doing some writing on my days off.

Maybe.

But I wouldn't count on it. I'll probably be drinkin' and watching dvds.

Most likely.

:)

MY 2005 TAXES ARE DONE!!!

I had to e-file this year because they stopped doing the telefile thing -- which sucks!!! So I thought I was going to have to go into one of those places to get them done... Which meant procrastination!

I mean, I don't exactly operate during Normal Business Hours...

BUT... I think it was Mom that mentioned e-filing, and then I remembered that I had done that a few years back -- when the programs weren't NEARLY as efficient as they are now -- so that means I can file any time day or night; EVEN during MY hours!!!

So yay!

It's just a huge invisible weight lifted off me now. I can forget about taxes until next year.

...and with any luck, next year I'll HAVE TO go to a tax-prep place because I'll have sold 1 or more screenplays, and I'll have TOO MUCH money!!!

:)

I can dream.