movements & measures - One Year Later.

movements & measures
ISBN: (ePub) 978-14524-6192-2
Publisher: Zero Edition Press
Distributor: Smashwords.com
Release Date: November 08, 2011

One year ago, Zero Edition Press, an experimental self-publishing co-operative I started with Ben Bowlin, released my first collection of poetry as a digital chapbook distributed by Smashwords.com.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of that release, Zero Edition Press, is once again offering a Smashwords coupon code that'll allow you to download your own copy of movements & measures for only $0.99 USD.

Go to the movements & measures page at Smashwords by clicking here and enter the coupon code:  AZ36Z  at check out. If you don't already have a Smashwords account, you will need to create one. It's ease and free and will give you access to books by thousands of independent writers and publishers. Even if you don't buy my book please, please, please show your support for the literary endeavors of great artists who you'd otherwise never hear about because the big publishers see them or their books as unmarketable, i.e., it's not Twilight or 50 Shades.

I want to take this time to, once again, thank all my fans and followers, my family and friends for all the love and support. You guys are wonderful and I wouldn't be able to do this with you. An especially heart-felt thank you goes out to my wonderful wife for putting up with me and my addiction to writing.

Thank you. Thank You. Thank You.

Well! Hello, Stranger

Welp! I'm back! Good Morning! Long time, no post. I sincerely apologize for that. It's been busy these past few months.

So! Let's see: what happened since my last post?

I Turned 31. That was fun. I had family over at my place for birthday dinner and the next morning my brother-in-law, James, and I went to the shooting range near my house to break-in the Savage Arms Mark II GPX .22 long rifle Brooke bought me for my birthday.

Back in May, I posted about attempting a photo-a-day project inspired by Cowbird founder Jonathan Harris own photo-a-day project.  That was a massive fail on my part. More on this in a later post. Promise.

Primary elections, Syria, Libya, general elections debates, blah de blah...

I got an A in my Basic Newswriting class for spring semester then I turned around and took on a heavy summer semester courseload which included an accelerated World Religion online course and Public Speaking as an accelerated on-campus class—which, I must say, I enjoyed thoroughly. My favorite speech for the class was on zombie disaster preparedness. (I know, right?) So, school totally kept me away from here. But I made an A in both classes. And I made some awesome new lifelong friends as well. (You can follow two of them on Twitter here and here and here.) They, along with my sister, James, Ben Bowlin and several others, joined me at my very first DragonCon, which—coincidentally—was also my pseudo-bachelor's party. Holy poo on cheese crackers! That was an amazing night!

So! Yeah. I got married. Definitely, recommending it. The planning was a pain and it got especially intense as we we got closer to the date. I even decided to take the semester off from school so I could be more involved in the planning and logistics. But I think it was worth marrying the girl who has been my best friend and—for all intents and purposes—my wife in all but legally filled paperwork these past eight years. It was a long time coming. Brooke did an superb job in bring a lot of the elements together that made our wedding so beautiful. (It didn't hurt that she was stunning in that dress either.) I would say that 90 percent of the decor she either made herself or had custom ordered from Etsy. Our wedding venue pinned some of it on their Pinterest page, if your interested in taking a gander [1][2][3].

[Image Source: Janet Howard Studio]

Speaking of wedding venues and vendors, we had some of the best, most amazing folks helping us get hitched without a hitch. (HA! Sorry, couldn't help myself.) Brooke and I will be posting reviews for them in all the wedding sites. Actually, at the risk of turning this site into a wedding blog for the next month or so, I might even do a write-up for each of them here. The wedding provided me with lots of great material for the blog, both directly and indirectly connected to the wedding. I'd be a fool not to take advantage of that, especially of the all the fun things we did on the honeymoon at Sandals.

So until then. See you guys again soon-ish and welcome back. I'm off to early vote. Fingers crossed—not for my candidate, but for hoping I don't gouge my eyes out and gnaw my arm off while spending my entire Saturday standing in line.

PS: A big thanks to our family and friends—especially, our wedding party—for all the help and love and support and for sharing our special day with us, as well as to all the wedding vendors for being amazing. We couldn't have done it with you.

Bags of Wind, Money, & Punching Varieties

As I've mentioned in my last post, one of the things I like about blogger is the "Stats" tab which allows me to track the traffic that comes to this site. The other tracking service I use is Google Analytics and it has become my new toy (read: O-B-S-E-S-S-I-O-N!). I actually enjoy playing around on the service and reading articles on best practices and hacks. The spousal unit (read: enabler) laughs at me and calls me a dork and then forwards me another how-to article. Then laughs at me some more.

Anyways. The other day, I'm playing around on Google Analytics, comparing reports with those from Blogger's Stats, when I come upon the traffic source tab in Stats. Under the "Search Keyword" report I see that, within the last seven day, someone found Wibbly-wobbly using the search term "gun rack." Naturally, I assumed that this search led to my February 23 post "Troll The Dial to Eleven 2012." But I was curious. How high in the search rankings was my post? So, I typed "gun rack" into Google Search.

Although I gave up after slogging through eight pages of results, my experience was not fruitless. On the first page, I found a Huffington Post article which featured a YouTube video created by a Mr. John Dole of Atlanta. In this video, Dole shows off his brand new Chevy Volt complete with a newly installed gun rack.

Using PVC pipes and some hardware available at your favorite home improvement store, Dole—a registered Republican according to the Huffington Post—crafted this masterpiece as a pointed response to Newt Gingrich's comment about not being able to put a gun rack into a Volt, a comment that this proud Volt owner did not appreciate.