Unfinished Story

I started this story a while back. I've come back to it a few times, but I've never been able to decide on the meat of the story. I think that it's a decent start. I want to eventually finish out a full fledge novel. This starting is only about 1,000 words. I want to write somewhere around 50-60,000, so obviously its only just begun. I want to decide on a basic story line before I proceed much further.

Maple and 42nd Street

In a dimly lit bedroom, a teenage boy types furiously at his computer. The rhythmic strumming of the keys being the only audible sound. As his fingers come to an abrupt halt, he rotates his head toward the door. Silence enters the room as his ears strain to catch the slightest creek. Convinced that no one is there, he resumes his melodic clicking:

I just can’t get over the eerie feeling that I got stepping inside the house. As if there was another presence hidden among the abandoned knick-knacks. Someone or something was spying in on us that day. I could have sworn that
I even heard whispering. I don’t know what it means, but I intend to find out.
Thump...thump, one of his parents was climbing up the stairs. He quickly closes his journal entry and pulls up another assignment. The door opens.
“Doug, time to eat Honey”
“Seriously Mom. Honey for dinner again. Isn‘t that a bit strange?”
“Yeah, yeah. It was funnier the first hundred times. Would you finish up and come down please?”
“Alright, I’ll be just a minute longer.”
“You’ve already been up here for hours. What on earth could be taking so long?”
“I’m finished with my book report. I just want to check it for errors.”
“Ender’s Game. I thought you did a report on that book last year. Don’t tell me that you’re reusing an old paper!”
Realizing his mistake, Doug quickly comes up with a solution. “Oh, thanks Mom I almost forgot.” he deletes the word Game and replaces it with Shadow. “This is actually the fifth book of the series.”
“Very clever. You’re getting better at masking your dishonesty. It may work on your father, but I can still read your expressions. Just promise me that you won’t cheat.”
“I promise. I have never cheated on a paper before.”
“Well, now you speak the truth. Only...that means that some other devious act is going on here. Douglas Harris, what are you up to!”
“Nothing! Can’t a man just have his privacy!?”
“Hmmm so defensive. Okay, I’ll leave you alone. But be down in three minutes or I’ll let your father eat your food. You know how he loves my meatloaf.”
“Fine.” As bizarre as it sounded, this was a legitimate threat. “I’ll be down in two.”
His mother leaves and he shuts down his computer. He needed the two minutes to come up with a new way to approach his parents. He had already tried paranoia and scare tactics. Perhaps tonight he’ll go for the usual parental soft spot. Pity. The trouble was, Doug’s parents were acting very unusual at the moment. Everybody knew about the house on Maple and 42nd street. Everybody, that is, except for Doug’s parents. At least they pretended not to worry about the strange disappearances. “It’s all just a big misunderstanding.” His mother would say. Followed by his father “I don’t care what allegedly happened there. For a price like that I’m not going to change my mind.” Maybe this new approach will strike some sense into them.
“But mom, I won’t know anybody in the new neighborhood. You know that I don’t make friends easily. Can’t we just stay here?”
“We can’t stay here. It’s not that you can’t make friends, you just choose not to. Anyway, we’ll still be the same distance away from Eddie. On top of that we’ll be closer to school, which means that the buses will come fifteen minutes later. More time to sleep in.” She definitely knows how to cater to my needs. Thought Doug. I can’t give up now.
“Mom, you know something strange went on there. How can you just look the other way!?”
“It’s all just a...”
“Big misunderstanding, I know.“ There was no sense in arguing. They had been having the same conversation at dinner every night for two weeks. What Doug needed was hard evidence. Something that even his parents couldn’t ignore. If only he knew where to start.


The Cover Up

The next morning, Doug went for a walk with a head full of mush. He was up all night trying to come up with a game plan. A fool proof way to obtain the evidence that he so desperately needed. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. After an entire night of wrenching his brain, all he had written was Consult with Eddie. Pathetic, but at least it was a start. Eddie was the man with a million ideas. Certainly he would have the answer.
“I’ve got nothin’ man, sorry.”
“You’ve got nothin'. What do you mean you’ve got nothin’! You’re the man with a million frickin' ideas for cryin’ out loud!" Screamed Doug.
"I said I was sorry! Ever since you told me that your parents wanted to move there I've been working at it. There just isn't any explanation for what happened. One day the house was full of people, and then a week later not a soul was left. The police and FBI were there for over a month last year. If they didn't find anything, what makes you think that three days of a couple of 15 year old kids snooping around will amount to anything?"
"A week later?"
"What?"
"I thought that the Kensingtons disappeared overnight."
"That was what the official story said, but the neighbors remember differently. They can't be sure, but they thought that the strange buzzing started about a week prior to the house being completely empty. If they weren't so nosey, they probably wouldn't have noticed. The average person would have written it off as a busy family. The kids probably off to summer camp. The dad on some kind of business trip. The mom relaxing inside with an empty house."
"Buzzing?"
"Oh come on. You can't tell me that you haven't heard it. I mean, you were actually inside the house. I could even faintly hear it from the vacant lot across the street.”
“Oh that buzzing sound. Yeah, of course I heard that.” Doug didn’t have the slightest idea what Eddie was talking about, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment. “So why didn’t the neighbors report to the police about it early on?”
“They did, but nobody believed them. Apparently they call the cops at least once a month for bogus stuff. You know “The kid’s won’t stay off of my lawn!” or “The Reese’s cat pooped on my newspaper again!” No one gave them the time of day. Even the FBI wrote them off as delusional.”
“So why did they eventually go and check it out?”
“I guess some new guy was answering phones and sent out a patrol car. They were really ticked off when they realized what house it was, until they saw the blood.”
“What blood?! I never heard anything about blood!”
“That’s because there wasn’t any, but the one officer swore up and down that he saw blood dripping off of the ceiling from the front window. Weird right?”
“Yeah. Well what else happened?”
“Nothing really. When no evidence was found they turned the house over to the state and put it on the market. I don’t think that anybody would have bought it, not even your parents. It’s just too bad that your dad’s shop burned down.”
“I know. Now it’s the only house in a 2000 mile radius that we can afford.”
“Maybe we can raise some money to get you into something else.”
“My parents would never take handouts. Too prideful.”
“So what do we do now?”
“There’s only one thing to do. We have to keep a close watch on that house. We’re going to camp out at the empty lot across the street.”
“Our parents won’t let us do that.”
“Eddie, tell your mom and dad that you’ll be at my house and I’ll tell mine that I’ll be over at yours. What’s the worst that could happen?”

So I leave it up to anybody who reads this post. Where should I go from here? What should be the main story line? I'll continue to work on it myself, but any feedback would be great.

Seven Peaks Summer

One of my favorite summers ever was when I was 14 years old. I had just passed freshman year in high school and my best friend was Bryan. Seven peaks is a water park here in Utah that got its name from the original 7 different water slides that were the main attraction. Neither of us had much money. In fact, it took us each about a month and a half before summer started to save up for the season passes. After all of the hard work, we were reluctant to blow all of the money on just 1 item. It just so happened to be a free day at the park for any high school student on the last day of school. You only needed to bring a student ID. It's almost like a drug dealer giving away a little bit at first in order to hook you, then they take all of your money. Which is exactly what happened to us. We had such a blast that we got the passes the next day.

It wasn't as if we were penniless for the rest of the summer. We had jobs. Well the kind of jobs that a 14 year old kid can get. I mowed lawns and Bryan did a paper route. It was actually pretty good money. It would take about an hour to mow and the job would pay $25. Not an abundance of cash, but it was plenty. We had very few expenses. The park was free to us, so most of it got blown on junk food and video game rentals. For some reason we never brought food to the park. Instead we opted to buy food there. About 90% of the time it was the Super Nachos. We never got sick of those.

We didn't get the season passes because of the slides, or the food, or the relaxation of basking in the sun. The one thing on our minds, if you couldn't guess, was the girls of course. Seven Peaks never let us down when it came to the ladies. So many hotties, so little time. That's not to say that we would hit on every girl in the park. No, we would scope out the scenery and only hit on the hottest of the hot. At first confidence was not on our side, but after awhile it came natural. It didn't take long to get super tan since we never used sun screen, and those were probably the best abs that we've ever had. We never went to the gym, but walking around with our shirts off all day made us flex and hold for the entire afternoon. We got pretty dang cocky actually. No girl ever turned us down the entire summer I don't think. Of course, we didn't have much for competition. I remember talking with one of the girls saying, "So how old are you girls anyway?" then she said "Oh we're freshman at college, you guys too?" Then truthfully I answered "Yeah we're freshman too." Only she didn't know that I meant high school. Which is all the better for her I suppose. It felt cool at the time, but looking back there's no way we looked like college students. They just needed to believe that minor delusion in order to have a good time. It's not that we would find a corner and make out with them all day. If we would have suggested it, we probably could have gotten lots of action. Since we were only immature 14 year olds, hanging out was all that came to mind. It was the thrill of the hunt that was the most fun part of it anyway.

I remember walking around looking for hotties. Bryan would say "Dude, check out 8 o'clock.", and it would be this gorgeous girl rubbing lotion on herself. Then I would say "Dude, your 5 o'clock.", and it would be some hairy fat guy exposing his crack while he tried to straighten out his towel on the ground. Nasty stuff. In fact, 9 times out of 10 it was a gross sight. We could never resist looking though, just in case it turned out to be the other 1 out of 10.

Every so often, huge buses of japanese tourists would expand the park to its limits. They were actually some pretty dangerous times. There was a big pool in the middle of the park that would create fake waves. Since it cost extra money to rent tubes, we were always out in the middle of the wave pool just swimming around. On busy days it got bad. If your head went under the water, the tubes would close in together above you leaving no escape. I damn near drowned a few times. It was during one of these occasions that Bryan and I got separated. Desparate for my life I wanted to get to the side so that I could rest for a minute, but there was a mass of those tourists in my way. I tried to swim under them only to get caught in a tangle of legs. I turned towards Bryan and said "Man, it's like the Great Wall of China over here!", but when I looked in that direction it wasn't Bryan at all. It was another tourist. "Oh no offense dude.", I said as I swam away. I finally found Bryan a while later. He had been looking for me as well, and thought that he saw the back of my head. He dove down behind me and pulled me under by my foot. When he came up laughing, it turned out to be some random guy drowning. He didn't even stick around to say sorry.

We did have good times outside of the park as well. Neither one of us had bikes, so we ended up walking everywhere. We put in a lot of mileage that summer. The park was a good 30 blocks or so away. We walked to and from there every day unless we could bum a ride off of a girl we met. Going through the downtown area, we ran into a lot of interesting characters. One of them was this crazy native american dude. We were walking out of the grocery store with our six pack when he first approached us. "Hey, you got some beer for me?", he asked. "No man, it's only cream soda." "Oh Okay. Well let me tell you a story." Then he spent the next 20 minutes explaining about the "Rainbow rollercoaster of life". Boy was he intense. He didn't let us go until he saw some other poor fool come out of the store with cans in his bag. "You got a beer for me buddy?" We only saw him one other time. We were walking past a pavillion at the city park when he stopped us again. "Hey, you guys want to buy a watermelon?" "No thanks dude. We don't have any money anyway." Which was true enough at any given time. Then a lady comes running up to us yelling "Hey that's ours!" He just gave it to her, said "I thought you didn't want it", and walked away. He wasn't as weird as some of the other ones. One guy would walk at full speed past us while talking to himself at full volume. "No, the brownie covered the trampoline!" Another one had a blow dryer in the middle of the city park. After he rolled up his pants, he plugged in the dryer and started to blow dry his legs! In the middle of summer! I wonder what was going through his mind. I think that our favorite was the Missing Link. It's kind of messed up to call him that, but with his patchy beard and protruding chin it was the name we came up with. He always had on this really shiny Jazz basketball jacket. Well, it would have been shiny if it wasn't so dirty. Anyway, we were outside of the grocery store again and Bryan was trying to buy a 25 cent soda from the machine. "Ah, it stole my money man!" Then he came up behind us. "I've got a quarter.", and Bryan took it! He looked like he was homeless, but Bryan still took the money from him. We saw him the most over the next few years. Most of the time in the mall eating at McDonald's.

It doesn't sound like much, but I often reminisce about those good old days. Since we heard it multiple times a day, New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle became the theme song of the time. To this day that song still takes me back. It was a time of no responsibilty. A time of eating junk food and staying up all night playing video games from the sugar high. (Mostly Mallow Pies) But most of all, a time when 2 two hot girls would come out of the tube slide in slow motion. Water spraying though their lucious blonde hair. Being blinded by the shining of their perfectly white smiles. Then realizing "Hey those chicks are with us!"

Quarter-Life Crisis

I first heard the term Quarter Life Crisis from Mr. John Mayer himself in the song Why Georgia:


“It might be a quarter life crisis or just the stirring in my soul. Either way, I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life. Am I living it right?”

A lot of people go through a transitional phase around 25 years of age. It's a time to start thinking about settling down. Still not too old for the single life, but not getting any younger. It seems that there are limitless options to choose from. Deciding what job to take, what city to live in, when to get married, when to have kids, and who to be. Becoming a True Adult. Not just being old enough to make decisions for yourself, but being mature enough to make the right decisions for others. Growing up, I always thought that I would have a similar experience. I never imagined that things would turn out so different by 25.

My struggle seems to be in complete contrast to most people my age. We each have questions where the other has already had answers. I got married 5 years ago, I already have 2 kids, and I just built my first house. I've had to be a True Adult for a long time now. I also never finished college, we live pay check to pay check, and my job is far from reliable because of the economy. My questions are "Should I go back and finish college? Should I get a different job/jobs that pays less, but is at least steady? Should I dump my new house and go back to renting? Can I change my schedule around to accomplish any change at all?". These and many more are in constant rotation for me. It seems easy to say "Duh, find a steady enough job to get the bills paid and then finish college with night classes." The problem is responsibilities. Not that they're problems exactly. I love taking my boy to and from kindergarten. I love playing with my 2 year old until the afternoon comes. It's fun to have all of the kids play in the background while my brother and I work at his house. It's just becoming less and less practical. My wife works full time during the day. She could stay home during the day and watch the kids. That would allow me to go and get a stable job and then do college at night, but the house payment is too high. My wife could make up the difference by getting a night job, but then there's no college time for me. Someone has to watch the kids. I could go back to renting a house, but prices have gone up considerably since we moved. It would still be a struggle financially. Plus, I don't know if we're ready to lose the investment of the house. We could delay college for now and both work, but then we'd never see each other. Could our marriage last through all of the hardships? Even if I went back to school we'd still have those problems. I could just live off of student loans until I'm done, but I'm not sure that I want $20,000+ to pay back later. I could get a day care to watch the kids, but they are too expensive to be practical. On top of that, I don't want to miss out on our kids growing up. Once both of the kids are in school full time our schedules would open up some, but we're also thinking about having another baby. So instead of waiting 3 years we would have to wait 6 or 7. How could we afford to have another child anyway? There is just so much to consider. It drives me crazy.

At 25 years old things are supposed to be winding down. Settling into a comfortable state of being. As you can see, my life is far from comfortable. Each different potential path has even more discomfort in store for me. I suppose that it's true for everybody. Nobody has a perfect, easy life. Money would solve a lot of problems, but not all of them. In fact, it would probably lead to just having different ones.

The plan for now is to just wait, if waiting is a plan, and see what other options the future will bring. None of the current choices feel quite right, and my feelings have never lead me wrong before. Of course, I didn't get into this predicament by listening to Ann Landers.

Elantris: One of the Best Books Ever

If you love fantasy books then this is a MUST-READ for you. I was going to try and explain the story for you, but then got a better idea. Here is the synopsis from the author himself, Brandon Sanderson.

"Tor classifies this book as an epic fantasy. I'm not sure if that's actually the case. There is no quest in this book, nor is it about the end of the world. It takes place (as many of my books do) in one city, and is a mixture of political intrigue, interesting magic, and character dynamics.
The setting is the city of Elantris and the surrounding suburbs. There's a force in Arelon known as the Dor that randomly chooses people and grants them divine powers. Elantris was once the city of the gods, where anyone who was 'chosen' went to live. Ten years ago, the Elantrians lost their powers and caught a terrible disease instead. From that point on, Elantris became a prison city/contamination zone for any who caught that disease--for the Dor continues to choose people and curse them.
The book follows the experiences of three people as they interact with the people of Elantris. Raoden, a prince, catches the disease in chapter one and is thrown into the city by his own father. Sarene, Raoden's sight-unseen fiancee from a political treaty, arrives in the city and gets involved in schemes, troubles, and politics involving Elantris. Hrathen, a priest and missionary, is sent to convert the people of Arelon--and is told that if he fails, the people of the country will need to be killed instead.
The three stories intertwine as the truth of what happened to Elantris, and its inhabitants, ten years ago is unearthed."

If that didn't catch your interest then just read it anyway. You will not be disappointed. Not that I'm an expert on fantasy novels or anything, but just trust me.
It's kind of funny how I stumbled upon it in the first place. My wife is a hair stylist and happens to cut Brandon's hair. Small world right? Anyway, she wanted to get me a good x-mas present and had no idea what to get. After some small talk with Brandon, she decided to buy Elantris and have him sign it. An excellent present indeed. (It's not always about the cost after all.) They decided on Elantris because it is written very much in the style of Orson Scott Card who happens to be my favorite author. I'm a fairly slow reader, but I finished it over the weekend. A pretty amazing feat for me considering its around 500 pages.
I'm lucky to have "stumbled" upon this book. It was out for 2 years before I had ever heard of it, and I'm a local. Hopefully somebody else will find their way to this blog and be inspired to read a good book.

Why Gyro's Magical Adventures?

Why did I call this blog Gyro's Magical Adventures you ask? Because it's an amazing title! Also, no one else has used it yet so why not? If you read my profile at all, you would recall that I like "Classic 80's Cartoons". One of my favorites happens to be Duck Tales. If you've never heard of it, you're lame. Or maybe I'm lame. Hmmm... Anyway, Gyro Gearloose is the town fix-it man, or bird, or whatever he's supposed to be. He's also commonly known as the "Gadget Man". I also recently discovered what Google Gadgets are. Nifty little things I know. Obviously, it reminded me of Gyro, and since it wasn't used yet I went with it. And as for the Magical Adventures part, it just sounded right.

(Remember Doofus? He's the dweeby one on the left above Webby. What about the episode when he found a meteorite or "Magic Doughnut"? It gave him extra powers to him turn into Superdoo. Then he earned all of the Junior Woodchuck merit badges. Classic!)