When under stress, she finds relief in creative expression. However, she’s not primarily a writer, she’s a musician. And we had to leave her guitar behind in Minnesota, to be shipped out later, and to ship it safely is going to cost over $200.

Being without an outlet has been hard on her. It would be similar to how I’d feel if I couldn’t write. Se this weekend we decided to invest in a more temporary solution and get her a lower-cost replacement guitar. Sure, it’s not as nice as the one sitting in Minnesota; it’s not an Ibanez Bass or Guitar. But it’ll get the job done while we save up for shipping the nicer one.

I’m glad we found a way to get a guitar in her hands. It’ll make life a bit more manageable for her.

My air bed started dying on me 2-3 days before we left… because it could only stay inflated a few hours by Sunday morning, I woke up at around 6:30 a.m. with my back in the shape of a “v.” Good way to get off to an early, if painful, start.

We had a couple friends come over to help us out with the final cleaning and packing bit on our apartment. They showed up at 9 AM and left by 12:30 PM and their help was greatly appreciated. But when they left, they predicted Andie and I wouldn’t be “ready to leave” until midnight.

No way. Never challenge my wife like that. We were done by 3:30 PM, checked out of our old place by 4 PM and after a stop at PetSmart and the gas station, on the road by 5:30 PM. We completely forgot to eat until we arrived at our first stop, Worthington, MN, at just after 8:20 PM.

In fact, we almost got heat stroke and dehydration because we barely stopped to drink any water or pop until we were on the road. We visited my sister and her family for a while, and then headed to our hotel. Once we got Dad and the animals settled, we had just enough time to get some food at Subway before it closed.

We hit the sheets around midnight. So we were up for 18-19 hours straight and didn’t eat a meal until about 16 hours into our day… all while hauling stuff to the trash bins, packing, and loading up the car. It’s a wonder we were even civil to each other!

Today was a stress of a different kind. We got up, visited my sister at the bakery her and her husband run, and got on the road a bit late… around 11 AM. We had over 420 miles to cover, but thanks to crossing over into the Mountain Time Zone, we did okay in terms of arriving.

We stopped about three times… once just to be touristy at Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. We were all achy and tired by then, being cooped up in an over-packed Kia Rio Cinco most of the day, but after a round of slushies we pressed on the extra hour to arrive at Keystone, SD, about five miles away from Mount Rushmore.

Our hotel, contrary to advertising, has no view of Mount Rushmore but is conveniently located in downtown Keystone.

Tomorrow is our longest day of driving… just under 480 miles to cover. If we cross into the Pacific Time Zone by the time we arrive, though, we should be okay.

Fortunately, after tomorrow, our travel times reduce greatly. It’ll only be about six hours of driving from Montana to Spokane, and about four hours of driving each of the last two days.

I’ll try to get some of the pictures I’ve been taking posted here, or at least on Twitter or Facebook, but T-Mobile coverage in the Badlands has been spotty at best, and usually only 2G, so… no promises.

But we are en route. So far, so good.

While we plan to ship light stuff and essentials, many items will have to be sold off, given away or otherwise abandoned and replaced when we reach our new home. It’s a painful process. Whether it’s the Incredible Hulk boat oar I made as a kid in summer camp or just a favorite computer desk or even personalized aprons, only those items with the most practical use, greatest value, or highest sentimental attachments are coming with us. The rest are staying behind.

Of course, we can’t take it all with us ultimately, either; maybe there’s a spiritual lesson to be learned in the process.

The Wood Anniversary (5-year) Bear

Five-year marks are always extra special, or should be. It’s the halfway point to a ten-year mark and the incumbent tenth anniversary gift. While I’m not always big on traditions, the fifth anniversary tradition has an interesting element: it’s considered the Wood Anniversary, and gifts exchanged are generally made of wood. (That’s way more interesting, in my opinion, that the tradition of aluminum at the tenth anniversary. How do you come up with an interesting aluminum tenth anniversary gift?)

Wood gifts can be incredibly interesting and hold value. I was looking recently online at real estate and amid all the dropping real estate prices, I say a cabin-style house listed up in Wisconsin that still boasted an asking price at a cool half-million. While the house was to good condition, it was not markedly better than many listing for twenty percent of that amount.

The difference? The husband was a wood carver and had hand-carved the counter-tops, and many of the moldings, with his own unique carvings and wood-burning designs of wildlife. That one feature made that house worth about two to five times more than any other similar cabin, even in the current depressed market.

So the wood anniversary is incredibly unique and not an opportunity to skimp on one’s wedding anniversary gifts. So whether it’s a wood item from a clever Web retailer, or something with a more personal touch like that cabin-owning wood carver, the fifth anniversary is the first opportunity to give one’s spouse a more lasting gift than the previous four: paper, cotton, leather and fruit. All make somewhat less interesting wedding anniversary gifts than wood.

Food for thought, as my fifth anniversary gets closer.

So fire up the karaoke machine, ring in the New Year and celebrate good times. If NaNoWriMo taught me anything, it’s that there’s no substitute for time spent writing. Nothing that’s not writing gets you any closer to a completed manuscript. And until you have that, you’re not really a novelist.

One must remember that even though we joke around in Writer’s Cafe about needing some Davidoffs when we do well, the heart and soul of each person who shares their numbers is to inspire others to go ahead and take the risk of going indie, because one can be successful by doing so. It’s that simple.

So it’s not a bragging indulgence or a whizzing contest. It’s simply a reaction to all the negative nelly talk that’s out there in the world; the conventional wisdom that suggest that without the backing of a big New York publishing house behind you, you can’t make a living as an independent novelist.

So when someone posts about passing a milestone in their indie journey, whether it’s selling their first book that they know wasn’t bought by a non-family member, all the way up to the heights of success enjoyed by Amanda Hocking, to whizzed from 50K sold to 100K sold in less than a month this December, I’m thrilled to hear any good news from anyone.

Thrilled for them, and encouraged in my own journey toward indie novelist status.

Let me tell you that calling up to 200 or more people a day, only to get told to buzz off, and then have a couple “road days” a week to visit the handful of people willing to talk to you, only to have most of them change their mind, and know that you’re only getting paid if you close a few of those potential sales, is not easy. It’s not easy at all.

And sorry to burst any bubbles, my fellow scribes, but no matter how much drudgery it seems to be to go through your novel for the tenth time looking to pare another five thousand words and catch mistakes you missed the first nine times through … while hard and not fun at all … is a day at the beach compared to commission-only sales jobs. It’s that simple.

One daydream I’ve spent more and more time considering of late, because I’m hearing so many good things about them, are Outer Banks rental homes. I was looking at one in particular recently, the Seahawk, which appeals to me because my wife is originally from the Pacific Northwest, and of course, the Seahawk brings to mind the Seattle pro football team, so… there’s some novelty in that alone.

Of course, Carolina Designs has done a beautiful job with the house, which rents at anywhere from $800 to $3500 a week, depending on when you go; and the great thing about the Outer Banks area is there’s never a bad time of year to go. I drove through part of the Carolinas once in college, on the way down to Florida, and it was beautiful. Plus, it’s within a hop, skip and a jump from Kitty Hawk, NC, where Orville and Wilbur Wright pretty much invented the airplane! How cool is that?

The Seahawk, one of the premiere rental homes at The Outer Banks.

While the Seahawk is huge – five bedrooms, ten TVs and the like, which is way more than the two of us would ever need, even if we took Dad with us – I take one look at that stately three-story home and the gorgeous hardwood floors and the picturesque countryside that surrounds it, and the access to the beach and the ocean (which would really appeal to my wife) and I could easily imagine going there not only as a reward to myself for getting a book done and published, but as a great place to get started on my next one.

About the only downside I can see is that it’d be hard to want to come home when our time there was up. But as far as a great motivator for my writing efforts, it’s hard to imagine anything that would be more effective than the idea of a week-long getaway at a place like that!

That’s because I am using Kindle for PC on both my laptop and my desktop, and I keep finding great reads at ridiculously low prices. Take tonight for example. I started out looking to see if Amazon had a copy of the Talmud available. I got a copy of all twenty volumes of the Babylonian Talmud for less than a dollar.

Then I looked up some other handy reference materials that might help me in the future… things I definitely want easy access to on my Kindle. I ended up picking up the first and second books of Adam and Eve, the book of Enoch, the book of Jasher, the complete works of Josephus, some Midrash writings, and so forth. And I bet I spent less than ten dollars!

After only a month, I already have 64 items in my K4PC app. Sure, about half of them are novel samples to see if I want to by the whole books they are from, but still; between very low-priced novels and reference works, as well as some $2.99 novels and free stuff, if you eliminate the samples, I still have acquired thirty-five books that were purchased at prices ranging from free to about five bucks; and I’ll bet I haven’t spent more than about $40 over the past month on the whole bundle.

Yeah, when it comes to Kindle, I’m already hooked. Now I just need to get my own work out there.

The best weight loss solution might just be me worrying over whether to take another crack at my Thirty Minutes Or Less mystery novel or move on to a fresher, less tainted project. It’s hard to say for sure which is the best decision, but I’m willing to be a lot of fishing, hiking, outdoor grilling and time to sleep will certainly aid in my bid to make a decision.

I really want to avoid having to go to big and tall clothing shops if I can avoid it, and I have been headed in the right direction since last fall; I need to take action so I don’t start bordering on that territory again.

I lost that first twenty in relatively good time; counting my calories and cutting back on snacks and pop were enough to see my go from 252.4 to 231.2 in about six or seven weeks. Since then, though, it’s been a see-saw struggle. The diet I’m on worked well for that first twenty pounds, but is made to simply restrict caloric intake; no exercise is involved.

That appealed to me because it’s not like I have a load of refurbished fitness equipment; but my apartment complex does have a full workout room and two swimming pools (indoor and outdoor, though the outdoor one is seasonal). So I have resources.

Simply restricting my calories with no exercise isn’t working well anymore. I need more physical activity if I’m going to lose the next twenty points and get below 212.4. That’s the next benchmark for me, should bring be back into maybe a 40 waist, and now that it’s warm again, it’s time to stop just starving myself. It’s time to get the blood pumping, too. If that means I eat a little more, the physical activity should make up for it as long as I don’t go wild.