A sunny day is a welcome recharge. But they go away every night and I begin to doubt myself again. Piece by piece we've been cleaning and throwing things out. But I can't stop feeling empty inside. Now it just looks like clutter in the wrong areas, and I keep staring and shifting and moving things.

After a full check up by the doctor (which included blood work and me climbing the ceilings away from needles) I'm in perfect medical health. Which means all this depression and malaise is mental. And so I'm staring at an email of another offered therapy appointment and having a hard time hitting accept.

I hate that. I'm a person of progress, and I'm not sure how I got so bogged down. But it starts getting darker sooner during this time of the year. And so I don't move as much and I worry my kid, who is lively and beautiful and dances to make me smile. I'm really hoping she doesn't suffer through any of this when they're older.

Yes, sir, that's my baby! Jarnsaxa Rising is LAUNCHED. 

Episode 1: Two Witch Trials

Episode 2: The Hungry Place

It's available on iTunes, if you use Apple's Podcast app. if you use the desktop browser, it doesn't show up. Android users can find it on Pocket Casts. 

or, if you really want the RSS feed, just ask. 

And now... I'm done wrassling with Libsyn for the night. Enjoy, please. 

I had some cheese last night, just a little, and by itself. Well, with some wine. But I also had some lactase. And I don't feel gross this morning.  Although it wasn't much cheese, it's not a contraindication, and possibly good news. Because I like the taste of cheese. And it's good food.

Past couple of days I was doing more motorcycle training, culminating in a test for my full M license. I've been riding on an M2, which is a long-term learner's permit. You have to hold an M2 for about two years before you can test up to an M, but if you don't pass the test within five years, you lose your M2. I suspect the province figures most people will quit riding a bike after a short time and doesn't want people licensed to ride permanently if they're not riding actively.

The M2 exit is a road test, so they give you a radio and an earphone and send you out on your bike and follow you around in a car and tell you what to do, and they grade how safely you did it. There are 418 points you can accrue for fucking up. If you get 26 or more points (or if you break any law, have an avoidable collision with anything, or drop your bike), you fail the test. Perhaps half of the points are variations on "looking at things" like mirrors, over your shoulder, at driveways, at cross streets, at busy businesses like Tim Hortons, over parked cars. (The rest of the points are safety things like which tire track to ride in, when to use your signals and brake lights, not driving on painted lines, etc.) 

The training is optional; one can go to Ontario Drive Test and pay $30 and they will give you an M2 exit test to anyone walking in off the street. And I understand that most people fail. Because they don't know what the tester is really looking for. You could go to the test and obey every law and regulation and fail it miserably because you weren't checking your blind spot during a turn or lane change. So the training, which is $400, is about six hours of riding a motorcycle and being coached on exactly what the test will look for. It's drilling, endless drilling, stop signs, turns, lane changes. 

Check your mirrors. Turn on your signal. Check your blind spot. Change lanes into the correct tire track. Turn off your signal. Check your mirrors. Put on your turn signal. Make sure your brake light is on. Come to a stop. Keep the brake light on. Keep the bike ready to move. Look behind you. Check cross traffic. Check your blind spot. Accelerate briskly but not hastily, turning left into the right tire track of the left lane without driving over any painted lane markings. Turn off your signal. Check your mirrors. Turn on your turn signal. Check your blind spot. Change to the left tire track of the right lane. Turn off your turn signal. Check your mirrors. --- Hours of it.

I passed the test with one point marked off; I didn't switch into the right lane of a two lane road fast enough after a turn. And I felt it wasn't exactly fair, but fair isn't really what was being tested. They emphasized that you should drive safely no matter what the tester told you to do. It's not that the tester told me to do something dumb, it's just that they didn't tell me to move over after having given me a long series of instructions immediately prior. Kind of sucks, but whatever. 

I now have a piece of paper that I can take to the bureaucracy that will get me a permanent M designation on my Ontario driving license. And that's a good thing. 

I have news about the audition for King Lear but I'm not supposed to share it yet.

One Post Wonder has completed its move and the URLs have been changed over.

I'm sure a glitch or two will be found, and I'm sure folks will report them here, or by emailing me, or even via the little bug icon. All of the above are fine.

A security warning is seen when the old personal blog URLs are used, so if you see that, just update your bookmarks to point to the new location of your blog. But you probably just have onepostwonder.com itself bookmarked anyway. And there's no issue there.

I want to thank the folks who very generously donated to help cover the costs of running One Post Wonder. Yes, I did blush.

We should be good for another year. OPW now lives on the same box with boutell.com, which is a big enough site that OPW can pretty much hang out in the margins without significantly increasing my hosting costs. Unless it gets big. In which case, it becomes a business anyway. So we're good there.

Thanks again for your support and understanding. You got me motivated to knock out the whole move in one evening.

And now back to my regularly scheduled locked posts for friends... just like everyone else on One Post Wonder. It's nice being home.

But I didn't used to. There's such a stigma around it and why you go. And the first time I went I lied to them. The 2nd time I lied to myself, and then finally after a few sessions I finally said "I'm paying you a lot of money to help me with something that I'm not being honest about. So. I'm not getting any better. Here's the deal..." 

And it's a lot of hard work, but that's why I'm seeing someone. Because at the root of it all, I'm unhappy with myself.  And I need to figure out why? After a year and a half break I'm finally going again thanks to insurance and it's time to get back on the road to solving things. 

I wish more people had access to it. I wish more people could reach out when they needed. And rather than vilifying it, I choose to be open and support whoever wants to go. I'll update progress as I go.

Writing letters from characters to supporters is harder, but more interesting and fun than I expected.  

Jarnsaxa Rising's teaser clip is now available in iTunes. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/jarnsaxa-rising/id1041736696

we got 40 downloads TODAY. 

I'm flabbergasted with excitement. 

Nine pounds to go. Probably won't get to 190 until the end of the year. And that's okay. I was 220 in April. A pound a week is good steady sustainable progress. Had to take in the drawstring on my fuzzy pjs this morning. I am also looking forward to introducing some very light physical conditioning once the exercise bands I ordered show up. And I should be doing more bike rides while the weather holds. But I've been so busy during the day with all my projects. 

I finished the seventh revision to my stage adaptation of House at Pooh Corner. It's just 132 pages now. Mostly because I removed every bit of non-essential stage direction. People will figure things out. And if they figure out something different than what I had originally put in, that doesn't mean they're wrong. It just means they found a different truth out of Milne's words. 

I auditioned for a staged reading of King Lear yesterday. The production intentionally mixes experienced professional actors (they already cast three roles, including Lear) with community shmoes like me. It went okay, and what was nice is that I didn't recognize anyone else auditioning. But it's a longer rehearsal process for a reading than I'm familiar with (like 8 rehearsals), and it includes some Shakespearean dialogue workshops which I'm eager to participate in. I don't have an answer yet. I hope I get cast!

Moving in the past week or two seemed to switch from something we hope do to someday to something we will do when we are able. It's best for both of our careers. While it makes sense that there are many more opportunities for strategic IT management work in Toronto, it is even more the case that if I ever hope to make money from my art -- any kind of art -- that I have to go to a city where people actually care about art. Because, I'll be frank, Waterloo Region is a hole when it comes to any kind of creative endeavour. No, I stand by this statement. I could rant on it for hours. 

I have a slightly swollen lower eyelid the past day or two. It's tender in one spot. I'm figuring it's a nascent stye, and I'm hoping it doesn't develop much further. Styes are no fun.

I have too much work to do on the podcast admin today to do anything else. BUT, here is a thing. 

Last night, Vince wanted to go out to get something to eat, and he suggested The Ashburner Inn. I said okay. It just seems like a local pub, and I would have been perfectly happy to make scrambled eggs at home, because I was tired. But, I said okay, because we've never been there before. 

It's a sports bar in a converted old building on Torresdale Avenue. When we arrived, a ton of middle-class people were partying down to DJ Boringface or whoever this guy was. Hits from his fresh flow included Bob Seeger's "Old Time Rock n' Roll," and many other pop tunes, none of which existed before 1995. Fortunately, they had a separate dining area, which kept the party action at a distance. 

The food was variations on the hoagie, or things that can be made with hoagie-shop elements, with a huge emphasis on iceberg lettuce and mayonnaise. Vince wanted nachos. What we got was a plate of blue, red and yellow corn chips, covered in Velveeta, the mystery meat used in cheesesteaks, chopped tomatoes and iceberg lettuce. There was some salsa, sour cream and jalapeños on the side.  They had 12" pizzas, so Vince got a spinach, roasted pepper and mozzarella pizza. I wish I did. I got a wrap that was described as a Turkey Avocado wrap. It was turkey breast, a ton of iceberg lettuce, chopped tomato, bacon, a ton of mayonnaise, and not one hint of avocado. 

The menu also included a lot of buffalo sauce; buffalo chicken tenders, buffalo chicken pizza, buffalo chicken salad. But iceberg lettuce was in every dish except the pizza Vince ordered. I haven't seen that much iceberg since the Titanic. 

My yelp review will be five stars, starting with "Iceberg and mayonnaise lovers rejoice! The Ashburner Inn has finally accommodated your favorite cuisine!" 

It occurred to me, midway through the meal, that between the music, the food, and the general look of the place, that we must have time-traveled to 1991. Vince agreed. I suggested that we warn people about 9/11 and The Bush Administration, and he said, "They'll never believe you. That's the problem with being a time traveler."  

At least they had bacon. 

Time travel, iceberg: it was a Doctor Who episode waiting to happen, but I was too tired to write that spec script last night. 

Did admin stuff for the podcast today, nit-picky details like making sure things in Libsyn are set up properly. It seems too easy to be right. 

Did Day 2 of Week 1 of Couch to 5K today. It feels easier but still challenging. Took Squeaky for a walk and gave her a bath. She hated every second of it, but she seems more relaxed now. She smells like Dog, instead of Dog Who's Just Gone Swimming In Stale Budweiser. 

Today I got my rubber stamps in the mail, things I wanted for the letters to Indiegogo backers. One of them is hand-made and makes me really happy. It's a design I definitely could not find anywhere else, and I'm sort of surprised the person made it. But also grateful. 

I'm going to have to go to bed now; tomorrow's a long day at work.