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. 

Lazy day today. Against my better judgement, I ignored the voices that said I should be house cleaning and podcast editing, and lay down for a nap. I snoozed and just had a little daydream, which became a dissection of Lysistrata and why I don't like it. 

Then it occurred to me to write a play in the style of Greek tragedy (with some comic elements) in response to Lysistrata, and as a prequel to Phaedra, about Hippolyta and Theseus. 

Ended up scribbling a couple of pages in a notebook about the idea. Theseus wants to conquer the Amazons and make Hippolyta his queen; Hippolyta will bear his son, who eventually will cause Theseus to lose the Greek throne through his own stupidity. 

Essentially, she's playing a very long game against Theseus. 

There is a lot of reading that needs to be done before I can move any further. It may be that Hippolytus' mother is Hippolyta's sister, and he was named for his aunt. 

I don't know why I want to write another play right now. But I do. I also think it's nice that this idea came out of a Sunday afternoon nap; it feels like it came from good soil. 

Since April I've been working on posting once a week, though not here, and the title of the post is typically my current weight in pounds, starting at 220.

Oogy. I look quite different in the mirror. Still want to lose another 10lbs. It's more difficult with the colder weather coming in. Discipline. Or just bacon.

Unfairly annoyed with lack of progress on several life-related fronts. Had an "everything is the same, my life hasn't changed in 10 years, I've wasted the last decade" attack on Friday, said I was ready to just burn the house down (saving cats, backup data) and walk away. It's one of those things that surfaces now and then. Like many such attacks, the feeling is strong in the moment, and when the moment passes it's less urgent but still there as part of my psyche. 

How do people look back on their lives and value what they've done? I know I've done a lot of cool shit in the past 10 years. But sometimes it just feels like I've done nothing and have nothing to show for it. I suspect this is rooted in the "lack of multiple strong friendships and a good support network" problem. Which I am now feeling upset about. Great, thanks, journal counsellor. Now I need to talk myself down from freaking out again.

So Thursday we went to see a queer variety show; music, dance and theatre. Some good stuff there. The musical numbers were cute, even pleasant. Some disappointments in the theatrical performances. Learning more about theatre as a director has the super-power of seeing where problems are in productions. Like if there's a particular performer who clunks, that may just be bad acting, but if everyone is mostly on the same level, that's a director problem. Or if you get great acting moment-to-moment but scenes don't flow, or if need/intent isn't visible, also a director problem. Or if scenes just don't make sense, or don't connect together, that's a script problem. Or if an actor emotes well in some places but not others, or feels like they are not connecting to the audience or other actors. Could be a lack of warming up.... or it could be that rehearsals didn't really push the actor. 

By contrast, yesterday afternoon we saw HMS Pinafore put on by an amateur theatre group in another town (Guelph). It was really rather amazing to see a "little" theatre with 300 seats (half filled on a Saturday afternoon), a real stage, a lighting grid with catwalks, separate rehearsal space, workshops and so on. And a cast of 20 who all pulled their weight; not perfectly, but no clunker performances either. Decent directing, modest but adequate lighting and choreography. With a little pit band. And in a community 1/4 the size of ours. Makes one think. What are they doing right? What is our community doing wrong?

My friend James drove all the way the hell down from Brooklyn to play in a half-empty bar. He's playing his ass off. A bunch of dumb drunk bitches just showed up. One of them is giving him a look of pure disgust. She's blonde, with elfin looks, and I want to rip her hair out by its ugly dark roots and feed it to her. 

There's a play in this and I don't know what it is.