Easter, the Zoo, and Other Things

This past weekend was a fairly eventful one. On Saturday we went to the Columbus Zoo, which was awesome. It was their Eggs, Paws, and Claws Easter thing, so it was crowded. We didn't go for that, though, it just happened to be the one day that week Will and I both had off. In fact, last week it was the only day I had off. Everyone at my work except me has recently suffered some kind of personal tragedy. I'm not kidding. Anyways, so we went to the zoo. Chaela probably only had a middling amount of fun, but I LOVE the zoo! Also, it was 4 and 1/2 hours of walking, which is excellent exercise.

Chaela in a model of the stinkiest flower in the world.

Tired baby and daddy leaving the zoo.

Here's Chaela in her Easter dress.

Then Sunday was Easter. It was a pretty quiet one, Lindsay and I did a musical number for church and then Will had to go to work. Yeah. Stupid. Then that afternoon I hid some eggs in the yard for Chaela. I didn't think she'd get the idea, but she did, and she loved it! So that was really fun.

Other than that, not too much is going on. I've been working a lot because, like I mentioned, everyone else there is having personal issues. One lady, who doesn't have kids, had to put her cat down. To her, that's almost like losing a child. Another lady's mother is in the hospital in PA, and another one had a mild heart attack last week. It's only me and the early morning person who haven't had any problems like this.

I've been writing a lot lately, as well. It's mostly been whatever project I feel like at the moment, but I'm really trying to finish the "book" that I started last year. It's strange, the more I write, the more I feel a compulsion to write even more. I kind of like it. It's like a legal addiction. The only problem is that now I'm almost rushing to get my story out, and I feel like it's not as good as it needs to be. At all. I think that's ok for now, though, because it's only first draft. I just want to get it all out at once, then go back and flesh it out. No wonder it's so hard to earn a living as a writer; you put hundreds of hours of effort into something and then, unless you're extremely gifted, see minimal returns.

Oh well. I read a recent article by Orson Scott Card in which he reviewed Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success. In the article he stated that 10,000 is the magic number. It takes 10,000 hours (or, in the case of a writer, 10,000 pages) of practice/crap to become really good. That's a lot. So I'll keep plugging away for now because, hey, I like it, and it can only help me improve.

I hope everyone had a happy Easter!