I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 37th

Boy howdy and howdy to my youngest who is now safe and secure at Qunnipiac University. The picture to the right is from the very first post of my picture blog Pictures for Smarties. Man how time flies and I'm definitely feeling old.

So to comeback that ye olden feeling, we have a recently acquired humor piece. This was given to me from a very good co-worker who is moving on to bigger and better things, and he received it from a very good co-worker who retired two years ago.

So now as keeper of the humor piece, I feel it's my sworn duty to share this piece, entitled Man Laws, with all of you. Enjoy!

MAN LAWS

1} Under no circumstances may two men share an umbrella.

2} If you've known a guy for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits forever unless you actually marry her.

3} Moaning about the brand of free beer in a buddy's fridge is forbidden.

4} On a road trip, the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the weakest.

5} Friends don't let friends wear Speedos--ever.

6} Never hesitate to reach for the last beer or the last slice of pizza, but not both; that's just uncouth.

7} If you compliment a guy on his six-pack, you'd better be talking about his choice of beer.

8} Never talk to a man in a bathroom unless absolutely necessary.

9} Never join your girlfriend or wife in discussing a friend of yours.

10} It's okay for a man to cry at the movies only under the following circumstances:

• If a heroic dog dies to say its master.
• If Angelina Jolie starts undressing.
• If you are watching the "The Crying Game."

And as always, you can find my books on Books by G.B. Miller, Amazon or Smashwords, just by clicking on the appropriate picture link.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 36th

Been doing a lot of thinking this month, mostly about my writing. Nothing really earth shattering, but it really speaks volumes to that I'm actually now thinking about my writing, as opposed to running away from it.

But we're not going to be talking about that just yet. Instead, we're going to talk about how I'm trying to be just a shade more social on FB with my friends. Normally I'm the king of being Uncle Social on FB, but with everything that has been going on in my life since the beginning of the summer, I desperately needed to find a small sliver of quiet somewhere so that I could re-calibrate and face the world again.

Granted, doing it on FB is not necessarily the most brilliant option to choose, but it was the only sensible one available. But over the past year, I made some  adjustments to my personal FB algorithms, which in turn has made me a happy camper. So I consider this to be just a simple continuation of those adjustments.

As most of you know, I'm a payroll clerk for a guv'ment agency with the state of Connecticut. And there are times during my work day where I have small chunks of unoccupied moments to actually listen to my radio (and my smart phone as well). I also have small chunks of unoccupied moments where I'm left alone with my thoughts, which in turn allows me to latch on to the music portion of my memory banks. More often than not, I will bring up a personal ear-wormy song that will keep me occupied for the day. You know, singing some bars/lyrics to myself and the like.

And more often than note, I have problems maintaining the memory of that song long enough to get home, search YouTube and post a link on FB. Yes, I know I should write it down, but ya know, we can get easily distracted when we're putting out dumpster fires throughout the day at work.

Anyways, when I do manage to remember the song, I search out the video and post it on FB. More often than not, I get nice compliments and nifty conversations about my choices. Why? Because I'm all over the music genre landscape with my tastes. You name it, I've probably listened to something in it and probably like something in it as well.

One example is jazz.

I actually like jazz, but I'm very particular about the kind of jazz I'll listen to. I don't like the heavy brassy/bold type jazz, nor do I like scat/be-bop. I lean towards smooth, muscular and guitar oriented. The reason why I bring up this particular genre is that the other day, a particular song managed to stick in head and it happened to be in that genre. The song was the theme to the Pink Panther cartoon. Very smooth late 60's jazz and it's one my earliest exposures to the jazz genre. Additionally, if you've watched enough of them, the incidental music is also somewhat jazz oriented.

So I posted the video and got some nice comments and a nifty discussion as well. While I responding to a comment, another interesting tidbit came to light. If you were a big fan of the Pink Panther cartoons, you've probably saw episodes of The Inspector (Clouseau) and The Ant & The Aardvark. The theme and incidental music are jazz oriented as well.

So in general, I like all kinds of music and as of late, FB allows me to share/give an intimate look into what I enjoy listening to with my friends. Growing up in the 70's as well as being the beginning of the MTV generation will set the groundwork for the skewered musical outlook, while adulting will give you exposure to other kinds of music (which is usually accomplished at first by listening to college radio, then moving on to Sirius/XM or Pandora or Spotify) that will shape and accentuate the kind of person that you are.

Have a great week everybody as I will be counting down the days to August 22nd, which is when my lovely and talented daughter Jenelle goes off to college. As Yes would say, "One down, one to go, another town and one more show."

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 35th

It has been already been a somewhat brutal/semi-nostalgic month of August, and as the month progresses, it's only going to get worse.

"But G.B., you're only 11 days into the month. How in the world can you already be thinking like this?"

Very easy, my good reader. Very, very easy.

I have two children: a daughter is about 18 1/2 and a son who is about a month short of being 27. And for the both of them, serious changes are indeed afoot. Before I continue, I should note that I'm already halfway through being an empty nester (well, as empty nester as you can be while sharing a roof with your one surviving parent), and by the end of the month, I'll be a complete empty nester.

I got to the halfway point of being a empty nester when my son moved out to live with his fiancee in the spring of 2018. His fiancee is a very lovely young lady who loves him dearly and his soon-to-be in-laws just love him to pieces (and then some). They've taken their relationship on the slow and steady (like a couple of turtles, so to speak) and will be getting married next month after an almost one year engagement.

This is the first part of the brutality/nostalgia that is August, as the wedding countdown officially began with a very lovely and entertaining Jack & Jill party held this past weekend (that would be August 9, 2019), where I got to meet said future in-laws and extended family. Note, both parents are very outgoing and gregarious and love my son to pieces.

Note: I suffer from a very light case of social anxiety, so for me to attend and stay to the very end is saying quite a bit. But, this is my son who is getting married, thus we do suck it up and assimilate the best we can.

The second part of the brutality/nostalgia that is August will culminate in roughly two weeks when my daughter goes off to college. She has decided to live on campus so as to 1} experience the whole academic life and 2} to save time/money on the two hour round trip commute to school. For those who are curious, she will be cramming a six year master's degree in social work into five very hectic years.

So moving day will be in roughly two weeks, and I'm sure that more than a few tears will be shed in the process. My daughter is a very resourceful girl as she's done all of the leg work required to get into the school of her choice (including hunting down the renewable scholarships that thankfully takes away some of the financial stress/load).

I, as only a loving parent can do, will help her get the student loans required on a as-needed basis throughout the school year (Fall 2019 semester is already paid for with scholarships and two CHET/529 educational accounts. Spring 2020 will be pretty much the same way, with about 25% paid for in advance), as well as finding her a very good job lead for next summer.

And thus is the reasoning why the month of August, and to a lesser degree the first half of September, will wax and wane for me. So while the work drama has effectively subsided, the 100% necessary family events won't subside until late September. Which ultimately means that October will be the earliest I'll be able to tackle my writing.

We leave with one of the most ear-wormy songs from my childhood to start your week with. Enjoy!

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode IWSG the 7th!

IWSG

Howdy do cowboys and cowgirl and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where nothing is as it seems and we're gosh darn proud of it.

For those of you who are simply driving by because your curiosity cured the bacon, sausage and ham, today is the monthly blog post for the IWSG blog hop, where a plethora of writers suddenly tune into the same wavelength and get down and get with it (Shaun Cassidy will knock your socks off) and blog about all kinds of writer stuff.

So.

This has been an absolutely brutal summer for me writing-wise. Writing has taken such a backseat to family obligations (daughter starting her freshman year of college in roughly 3 weeks and son getting married in about a month), that I may have to decloak with a few of my writing groups so as to figure out what I'm supposed do again once these obligations are completed.

But, since this is a writing related blog hop, we must offer up our 64 cents (inflation) to the masses. So I present to you, the topic for discussion: mistakes.

Somewhat big and somewhat costly, there are some mistakes that run parallel to the old adage, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me".

The costly mistake that I made twice was to send a manuscript off to be edited to a high glossy finish, instead of recruiting a few beta readers to offer up their valued opinion on what should be fixed in the book.  The 1st time, I sent it off to a ex-FB  friend who was a freelance writer to be edited. What I got back was as book that needed a boatload of extra work to make it readable. Chalk up the $350 spent to a very expensive lesson learned that I swore not to repeat.

Fast forward about 6 years or so, and we're finishing a fourth round of edits before sending another manuscript out to be edited to a high glossy finish. However, we ultimately wound up with the same end result: a nicely edited book that needs a ton of work in order to make a good stand-alone story while also being part of a trilogy. Only this time, we dropped twice the amount.

Unlike the first time, the second time was a well delivered and well deserved reality check on what I did wrong in writing this story (trust me, there were a lot of things done wrong by me with this story). So basically, we repeated the expensive mistake made 6 years ago, and got the same end result.

Definition of insanity, eh?

So my friends, think very long and hard before you finally decide to hire a very good professional editor (like I did)  to work on your book, because the last step that you should do is have a few people take a look at it, so that you can do one final round of edits and fix whatever glaring errors there may be.

Because the last thing that you want to do is to fix major holes after the fact that should've been fixed before sending it off to a professional.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved