Nuggets of Delight

Thought I would do a scatter-shot of stuff that’s happening in my world.  That way you don’t have to waste time reading about stuff you don’t care about.    You can be all like: Ugh…who cares about his books?…and then skip onto the next thing.  You see how I do that?

I do it for you.  I do it ALL for you.

Here come the nuggets.

BIGGEST LOSER – WOODBURY FIREFIGHTER EDITION

It’s old news for most, but I want to make it official since Facebook sort of swallows posts and updates and who knows where those things go.  Ahem.

I won.  I set a goal to get myself at 185 pounds and I weighed in at 184.5 on the final weigh in.  Pretty sweet.  I keep thinking back to ol’ Jim’s face (he’s the guy that started all this nonsense) when I said I wanted to lose around 30 pounds or so.  He didn’t think it was possible and quite frankly, neither did I.  Anyway.  Yay me.  I’m not a big of a chunk as I used to be.  The best part?  I’m still working at it and maintaining my weight which they say is hard.  So far, I’ve got it down to a science.

A simple tip?  Don’t skimp on the exercise.  You can even eat a little more irresponsibly as long as you exercise.  For real.  As an experiment, I ate 6 cookies (big ones) in one day and ended the day with a nice 90 minute workout.  Ended up losing a pound for the day.  Boo ya.

BOOKS, Y’ALL

I’m currently working on 3 (three!) books.  Two of them are for my pals at Stone Arch for their Jake Maddox MG Sports Series.  They’re coming along pretty well, but in truth not as easily as the first two I wrote.  I tore through the first two titles (due in Spring of 2011) but for some reason, these ones are being a little harder to wrap my arms around.  Despite this, I’m about half-way done with the BMX book and I’ve got a pretty good game plan for the Skateboarding one.

Outside of that, I’m working on a MG book tentatively titled LITTLE BROKEN WINGS (the name grows on me more and more each day) that is sort of for me.  I don’t want to say too much, but it’s based on a period during the summer when my little brother and I were kids.  I sort of ‘pitched’ it to my awesome critique partner (Triple S) and she seemed to think it had a bit of merit.  Can’t tell you what a shot in the arm (and a kick in the pants) that was to hear.  A lot of times I think that I have good ideas, but maybe ruin them with the execution of those ideas.  Maybe other writers go through this, especially those trying to find someone on the ‘inside’ to believe in their work.  Anyway, I’m hoping I don’t ruin this story by writing it.  I’m about 3 chapters in and I’m liking it so far.  It’s kind of different than anything else I’ve written.

No.  There are no zombies or armor-clad gymnasts in this one.

BLOG

I’m thinking of shirking off the name of this blog (TAPPITY TAPPITY) like a wet pair of pants.  The name has bugged me for a long time, especially hearing the words come out of my mouth.  So…in the coming weeks, there is going to be a poll to see what you (all 5?  6? of you) think would be a good name for this threadbare blog.  I might even make it a contest…or something.  If you’ve got suggestions, fire a comment into the box and I’ll see what’s what.  I gotta couple o’ ideas, but nothing that I’m completely in love with.  I don’t know.  TAPPITY TAPPITY sounds sorta…(wait for it) CRAPPITY CRAPPITY

*rim shot*

SCHOOL VISIT

I get to do an author school visit tomorrow.  I’m going to read a couple o’ books to around 90 kindergartners.  I seriously CANNOT WAIT.  Those little people crack me up.  I especially love the Q&A portion of the program.  Little 5-6 year olds don’t care about being an author.  They just need to tell me stuff.  “Did you know my dad has a trophy?”  “My brother plays with Bakugan.”  “I saw a dog throw up on the street yesterday.”

Priceless.

DUMB IDEA

I got to thinking today, which can be dangerous.  I sort of think it would be cool to do a road trip out to Detroit and do a photo-journal kind of thing.  I mean, the city is practically empty and there’s talk that they’re going to start leveling some of the buildings and stuff.  Knowing I’m not alone in thinking how fascinating that would be, I think of how awesome the pictures might end up.  Plus, it’d be cool to capture the ruins of a once thriving (albeit dangerous) city.  I don’t know.  Am I crazy?  Might it be dangerous?  After all, Dr. Claw (from Kentucky Fried Movie) doled out Detroit as punishment.

And finally, I’ll leave you with a short iPhone video of my kids.  This was shot in the hotel we stayed at, moments before hitting THE WATERPARK OF AMERICA, one of Travis’ favorite places:

MY KIDS ROCK

Is it me, or does it look like Travis took an elbow in the chops  toward the middle, there?  Like a big brother, he took it like a champ.

Until next time, party people!