How Much Do I Write?
At my last book club meeting one of the guys asked if anyone had plans to write a book. Two of the guys in the club answered affirmative very quickly. I didn’t have a very good answer and reflected that I don’t think I could write a book. My friend Dan thought that was odd since I write regularly on my blog, doesn’t that make me sort of a writer already? He even suggested that I wrote more than anyone else in the group which resulted in quick dismissal from our academic colleagues who regularly write research papers.
So the question left was, how much do I write? Dan even prodded me with an email after the fact which left me with no option but to figure it out. 😀
I was able to find a WordPress plugin called Word Stats that made quick work of giving me a word count by month. I threw the data into a spreadsheet to clean it up slightly and make a quick graph. This only includes my writing on my blog.
I write an average of 2,631 words per month for a total of 226,235 words since February 2004. The highest month was July 2004 when I wrote 9,711 words. There were three months when I didn’t write anything: May 2004, August 2010 and October 2010. That graph really highlights that 2010 was a really quiet year for me. That is a trend I’m reversing in 2011.
I did some quick searches and the average novel has about 100,000 words in it. So, it seems I’ve written 2 novels here in the last 7 years. Pretty cool!
If you wish to play with numbers the CSV file of my stats is available.
On the phone with AT&T getting mobile hot spot enabled. Surprised that I only use around 300MB of data a month on my iPhone.
Tyler Walking
Tyler is an exceptional crawler. He passed his 1 year birthday without feeling the need to work on walking all that much. Why walk when you can crawl super fast! In the past few weeks he has worked on finding his balance and taking steps. He can now walk a good dozen or more steps without falling! He is also now sometimes choosing to walk instead of crawl. I have a feeling he’ll be running around the house in no time.
Great day of photography with Steve LeVahn and Dennys Bisogno on the North Shore!
Nice photography options this morning in the snow at Artist Point in Grand Marais.
Busted For Bad Camera Management
This weekend I am up in the Grand Marais area with my friends Steve and Dennys for a photography weekend. We went out shooting today and the weather wasn’t cooperating. We had a lot of grey and dull everywhere, but we persevered.
We shot a bunch in the morning out at Artists Point in Grand Marais and while I was shooting Steve and Dennys busted me for very bad camera management. Of course they photographed me in the act.
Do you see all of my mistakes? Oh boy.
Let me share to help us all be better camera owners.
In circle 1 you can see that I’m actually tilting my 70-200mm lens upwards allowing the hood to catch as much snow as possible and direct little flakes onto the front to melt.
Circle 2 highlights that I have the entire imaging assembly of my camera open and exposed to the elements.
See circle 3 in my camera bag? Yeah, another lens with no cap on the rear element letting more snow accumulate and screw up future photos.
Consider this a public service announcement for us all. 😀
Dennys grabbed this shot of me shooting in the snow today at Artist’s Point in Grand Marais.
Just got an offer for tickets to see Def Leppard with Heart opening. Thought it was 1988 again.
Lasagna on Big Green Egg
This weekend we had friends over for dinner and I tried something new. I decided to try making my lasagna on the Big Green Egg. The Egg can work as an oven, so why not?
I was also doing a squash for the side dish so I fired up both grills to get cooking.
I made the lasagna exactly as I would have otherwise but instead of putting it in the oven I simply popped it into the Egg.
The squash got some brown sugar and butter with nutmeg and cinnamon.
The lasagna came out pretty good. I learned a couple of things.
- I placed the lasagna directly on the plate setter, with feet down. This was a bad call. The plate setter I suspect was hotter than 350 °F and it caused some burning in the pan. I should have done it feet up with the grid on to keep the pan isolated.
- The lasagna comes out with a smoky flavor. It reminded me of smoked mozzarella. Just a thought, you could cover the lasagna with tinfoil for half of the time to reduce the smokiness. You could pretty much dial it wherever you want.
- I would recommend using a ceramic baking dish. I used an enameled pan, and it was okay but I think a ceramic dish would have provided some needed protection for the pasta in the grill.
I liked the end product and would definitely do lasagna in the Egg again.
Tyler refused his morning nap after swim class this morning. By the time we got to lunch, he was too tired to eat.
