Holidays and Family
Oldest Daughter and Lego Dude made it official this week, tying the knot at the local courthouse in their living room. They’re the second couple in the family to go to the courthouse, after Oldest Son and McNugget Tamer. Middle Daughter was going to be their witness, which I thought was sweet. There was some confusion about setting up an appointment prior, but it all worked out in the end. Now I get to add stuff to the family tree.
Sunday marked my mom’s birthday. She would have been 98. It was a busy day for me, with Nutcracker rehearsals from 2 to 6:30, then decorating the tree. Diana is in the show this year as my partner during the cup dance, so we were both gone when the kids started decorating the tree. I got home after she did, and they already had the tree up and about half the ornaments on it. It rather warmed my heart. I think the busyness of the day made it easier to get through the day.
The first Sunday of December was the traditional day for Dad to conduct Handel’s Messiah as well. The performance and the afterparty always marked the “real” beginning of the holiday season for us, even if it sometimes didn’t happen until the 6th. I try to listen to at least a few selections from the oratorio each year but haven’t gotten to them yet. I’ve got Spotify playing “Fantasy Music for Writing” right now because I thought I was going to focus on Ghost, but instead I started this post. If I’d known I was going to work on the blog, I’d have played some Christmas music. Sure, I could have changed stations, but I’m in the living room and the music is playing from my desktop, and I’m too lazy.
Speaking Of Music
Back in October, I mentioned that the free trial of Sirius XM I’d received with my car purchase had run out. Then a few weeks later, I noticed the channel buttons on the screen enabled again. My assumption was that it was somehow tied to Middle Daughter’s car purchase, because it also came with a Sirius trial period. Why did my radio get reactivated? I’m not sure, but my name was first on her loan, so there may have been some confusion at Sirius.
At any rate, I’ve been enjoying Radio Margaritaville again for the last few weeks.
Until Tuesday, when I got in the car and the buttons were all dead again. Ah well. Back to XMPlaylist and Spotify. I may end up playing a bunch of Christmas music over the next weeks since it is that holiday time of year.
Though they have offered me $3 a month for the next three years…
Football
Wednesday was “Signing Day” in college football, AKA the day when high school seniors sign their National Letters of Intent. That’s their formal acceptance of whatever offer a college has made to them. Michigan seems to have a pretty nice class. We picked up a 5-star quarterback, widely regarded as the top recruit in the nation. That should help us out for the next few years. The rest of the guys we got look like a balanced selection on both sides of the ball.
We’re losing four players to the transfer portal so far, which isn’t terribly surprising. One lineman is a graduate transfer who didn’t see much playing time lately. I was surprised to see WR Tyler Morris announce though. He’s had a couple of good seasons, and I think Warren’s going to be a very good QB next season, so Morris should see a lot of targets for the next couple of years. But such is life.
TikTok
Interesting news concerning TikTok dropped this week. Briefly, Congress passed and President Biden signed a law that bans “social networking services within 270 to 360 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a ‘foreign adversary controlled application.’” The law explicitly applies to TikTok and its owner ByteDance.
ByteDance sued. This past week, they lost. ByteDance has indicated they’ll appeal, but there’s no guarantee that SCOTUS will take the case, especially because the DC Circuit ruled unanimously. According to Ballotpedia though, of the 53 cases from the DC Circuit that have gone to SCOTUS since 2007, only 16 have been affirmed on appeal.
In theory, the deadline is January 19th, 2025. President Biden (or President-elect Trump) can extend that deadline 90 days. I’m of the opinion that the clock should not have been running while the court case was being decided, so the deadline should be 270 days from December 6th, 2024. There are probably legal reasons why I’m wrong about that.
ByteDance has previously said they won’t sell.
What’s that mean for me and my intention to add more video to my social media content? Eh, probably not much, really.
I still haven’t put together a “video social media strategy” or workflow yet, because I’ve been focused more on getting Ghost done. On top of that, it’s Nutcracker season and Christmas is coming. I’ve got a couple of weeks of down time after the first of the year when I’m helping Editor Friend recover from surgery, so maybe I’ll hammer something out then. I’ll probably know more about TikTok’s future by then, too.
Even if TikTok goes away, there’s still YouTube with both long-form and shorts as well as Instagram Reels. And I’m not heavily established with video content yet, so I should be fine if I have to change.
Writing
Missed goal by 253 words this week, even with this longer blog post. That’s okay.
I find myself at something of a crossroads with Ghost, and it’s not something I can really talk about here because it gives away a big chunk of the plot. But it’s one of those things that writers deal with on a regular basis: What Happens Next? Which, of course, is the essence of what we do as writers. We bring characters together in a set of circumstances and ask, “What Happens Next?” Sometimes we say, “And then?” but the basic question is still the same.
I basically need to do some rubber-duck debugging. Unfortunately, my gargoyle isn’t helping right now. I’ve got several chapters generally outlined, which is about all I do. That generally works out to 75-100 words for a 2,800 or so word chapter. It’s just enough to give me a good guide to the action, but not so much detail that the outline becomes the book. I suspect as I continue writing, my outlines will grow a bit to give me an even better sense of direction.
We’ll see.
And the soundtrack for this post has been the Happy Holidays playlist at Spotify.
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