My parents spent the Memorial Day holiday weekend with me, so much of the two days I took off last week after May Sweeps ended were spent cleaning house in preparation of their visit. We had a good time, and they left Monday morning.

On Sunday night, I pulled out the laptop and wrote a bit after they retired for the night. (Not that I’m a party animal by any means, but I ususally stay up later than they do.) After they left, I wrote more, and went back and revised a couple of my most recent chapters.

I’ve now crossed the 200th page mark, and I have updated my “word meter” on the sidebar reflecting what I had completed by the end of Sunday night. I’m going to try to enforce my 10-page weekly goal again, even during July Sweeps because it’s not nearly as involved or stressful as May can be. I’m approaching the 70% mark of my overall goal for this novel, although the 60,000 word goal is arbitrary; the finished product may be more or less. I won’t stop at 60,000 if there’s more left to be told, and I certainly have no intention of padding the prose just to reach that many words if I’ve said what I have to say.

But I can say this: it does feel good to be working on the novel again.

The first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” is reported to have been rejected by 14 publishers before it was finally accepted. Since its initial printing in 1997, the Potter series has sold roughly 250 million copies around the world.

Author J.K. Rowling became Britain’s highest-earning woman in 2000, bringing home about $30 million dollars the previous year. The sixth book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince,” is scheduled to be released on July 16th.

The first chapter in that upcoming edition was written for an early draft of the first book. Rowling discarded it when she thought it didn’t feel right, then tried it again for the third and fifth books. She says book six is where it finally fits.

Perseverance with an idea — from completed manuscript searching for the right publisher to individual chapter searching for the right volume — can pay off.

Some details from Fact Monster.

At 3:00pm today, communities across the country will pause to remember veterans lost fighting for our freedom as part of Memorial Day celebrations.

I read that bit of news and found it a bit sad. Sad because it’s shameful enough that we relegate any official commemoration of the sacrifices our soldiers have paid to a single day of the year. Their lives have paid for our freedom and, unfortunately, our ability to be cavalier about the price our freedom cost this nation’s families.

Now, as if being reflective of those losses for a single day of the year isn’t enough, we’ve reduced the supposed obligatory gesture down to a single minute, after which, presumably, we can all return to our normal lives.

I think our soldiers are worth a lot more than that.

I have always enjoyed photography, but I haven’t been getting out as much to take pictures as I should. Recently, several folks in the AOL journal community decided to challenge each other to photograph Mysterious Doors. I found this over at Steven’s (Sometimes) Photoblog. One door immediately came to mind.

This door is on an old Quonset hut that is being overgrown by weeds at the back of a local business. The glass in the windows is long-since gone, replaced with old, rotting plywood. Weeds and bushes surround the old structure, which seems to be largely forgotten. There is a rusting latch on the door which is supposed to hold a padlock, but there is no lock. Someone could just walk right in and see what — or who — is on the other side.

Julie of “Drivin It Home” was first to play last week. Unless I am mistaken, it was also Julie’s first time to play! Congratulations and welcome!

Last time was the first time to play for Gif, Colleen, and Jennifer. Be sure to stop by their journals and say hello!

And I apologize for a misspelling last week: it was Angelia Rian’s first time playing. That’s a pretty name and I’m sorry I flubbed it.

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six.” Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! If you don’t have an AOL journal, you can still play, but of course you’ll at least need an AOL screen name, which you can get for free with AOL Instant Messenger, to be able to leave a comment here. To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. (Again, if you’re playing for the first time, please be sure to say so in the comment!) Enjoy!

1. What is the last product or service you tried just because you saw a commercial that impressed or amused you about the product? Did you like the product or service after you tried it?

6. What day is typically your busiest of the week? What day are you usually the happiest? What day are you usually the saddest?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link on the About Me bar and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:
1. That new version of Dr. Pepper…let’s see, I think it’s Diet, Cherry Vanilla…there were so many different flavors floating around in that glass that I still don’t know whether I like it or not. But the spot with the couple on the first date during which the girl tunes out completely when she takes the first sip and the guy is suddenly shown singing the “mana mana” song from the Muppets was a cute commercial.

6. Monday; Saturday; Sunday

An interesting — and difficult — Reader’s Choice question awaits you. But first…

Kristina of “The Rise and Fall of Phoenix” was first to play last week. Congratulations to her. Thanks also to Tina who was first to post a response last week but alerted me to the fact that she had forgotten to list the answers there before posting, thereby making Kristina technically first to answer the questions. Kudos to both of you.

Last time was the first time to play for Michele and Mary. Be sure to stop by their journals to say hello.

Here are this week’s “Saturday Six.” Either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! If you don’t have an AOL journal, you can still play, but of course you’ll at least need an AOL screen name, which you can get for free with AOL Instant Messenger, to be able to leave a comment here. To be counted as “first to play,” you must be the first player to either answer the questions in a comment or to provide a complete link to the specific entry in your journal in which you answer the questions. A link to your journal in general cannot count. (Again, if you’re playing for the first time, please be sure to say so in the comment!) Enjoy!

1. What is the most inexpensive, non-valuable thing you tend to collect and hoard? Why do you do it?

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #54 from Jennie: What one lyric sums up your current love life? Your view on life? Your past? Your hopes/dreams/fears?

If you have a Reader’s Choice question you’d like to see asked (and answered), click the e-mail link on the About Me bar and send it to me.

MY ANSWERS:
1. Coffee mugs and pens.

6. Current Love Life: “When you’re standing on the edge of nowhere…”
View on Life: “You load sixteen tons, and whattaya get?/Another day older and deeper in debt.”
View on Your Past: “You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes/But they’re the only thing that you can truly call your own.”
Your Hopes/Dreams/Fears: “…I searched and did not find.”

Sometimes you just have to laugh at the absurdity of reality television. CBS is promoting a new summer series that is an obvious counter-program to NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

“Fire Me, Please“ will feature two contestants who are intentionally trying to be such bad employees that their boss — who doesn’t know what’s really going on — will actually fire them. It’s the show, the promo claims, where “You’re Fired” means “You Win!”

It’s not a show I would watch, because I’m sick of reality TV in general. But the spot definitely gave me a chuckle. I can’t imagine the Donald is going to be pleased about this!

I found this at “The Red Pen Diaries,” and several other journals lately, so I thought I’d give it a try.

1. Number of books owned: Wow…I’d hate to have to count. I have three bookshelves in my bedroom that are pretty much full of hardbacks and paperbacks. Then there are more books in a bookshelf between the living and dining rooms. I have lots of fiction, lots of reference books, and a few non-fiction books on television, advertising and writing. I even have a handful of cookbooks.

2. Last book you bought: I’ve been trying to stay away from bookstores lately, but there’s always Amazon. The absolute last book I ordered was Dean Koontz’s “Velocity,” which is released this week. The last books I purchased in a book store were “Three” by Ted Dekker and “Dead Air” by Bob Larson. Both of them seemed like interesting concepts, but in particular I bought “Dead Air” because there’s a story I want to do one day and that was one of the possible titles I’ve had in mind…I wanted to see if that story was anything like my idea. From the description, it doesn’t seem to be at all.

3. Last book just read: “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold. The story is told by a young girl who is murdered at the beginning of the book. She narrates the story from her Heaven. I like the concept of Heaven in her book, I think. One has to wonder, though, what Heaven is really like, and it’s hard to come up with a convincing image of the afterlife that isn’t on some level directly related to life in the present world. I’m not sure that the two would remotely resemble each other. I liked the book overall, although the ending was a slight disappointment. Without giving details away to those who haven’t read it, yet, there were two unresolved relationships leading up to the end of the book: one good, one very bad. The way both were handled were a bit of a letdown to me…but I guess that’s life. The title of the book is finally explained towards the end as well, and it makes me like the title all the more. It has nothing to do with the skeleton of the murdered child.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: This could be difficult as well. Let me see what I come up with:

a) The Bible — I don’t read the Bible with the belief that everything in it was written directly by God and that every concept in it should be followed to the letter. I consider it a textbook of the right way to live as Godly a life as a mortal can achieve. We all fall short of this regularly, but it is helpful to return to the wisdom in those pages from time to time.

b) “Lightning” by Dean Koontz — I hated reading when I was little, because I was usually assigned to read something that I didn’t like to start with. “Lightning” was the first novel I had found after many years of trying to find joy in reading that made me want to keep coming back to it. Perhaps I have some mild form of Adult ADD, but I usually have a hard time sitting down to read for long periods of time. This story took so many turns that it made me want to try to keep figuring out what would happen next, and when I was wrong, it made me want to keep reading to figure out where the story was headed next.

c) “The Green Mile” by Stephen King — I hated the concept of the six part serial that King wanted to experiment with, because it’s hard enough to get me to sit down and read without having to add the additional potential obstacles of having to track down six individual installments of the same book. But sometimes, like in the movie, “Rope,” a gimmick can still be a means of telling a very intriguing story. In single-book form, the novel fits that bill and entertained me on a variety of levels.

d) “50 Great Ghost Stories” Edited by John Canning — This is perhaps the most unlikely book on the list. It was published in 1971, and I received my copy for Christmas, 1976 from my father’s mother. I recall my dad reading an occasional ghost story to me from the book when I was little. The one I became the most fascinated with, and the one he must have read me more than a dozen times, is “The Haunted House at Hydesville,” about a home in New York state in which a peddler was murdered and buried behind a false wall in the cellar. It is unclear whether the story is complete fiction or has a factual basis. I’ve found online mentions of other stories about this specific house. I include this book because I think it helped me develop a love for horror stories and helped me begin learning about storytelling.

e) “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King — I list this book ahead of the others that would could have turned the fifth-place spot into a hopeless tie. This is an interesting book because it gives a look into the background of King that helped create his desire to tell stories. It’s also a useful testimony of one writer’s unique perspective on the writing craft. Not all of King’s ideas would work for everyone, but this can be said of every writer that exists. But King presents his ideas as clearly as anyone else with a bestselling “how to” book and his is far more entertaining than most.

I found this on Bryon Quertermous’s blog, “Coping with Sanity.” He has listed his 25 picks for the Most Useful Sites for Writers.

There are a few changes I might make, but this is mostly because of my preferred genre. (For example, I might include the Horror Writers of America in my list. But I have to agree with him that Writers Digest has a better website than magazine.

NBC News reported recently that scientists have discovered a new moon orbiting the planet Saturn on May 1st.

The Cassini space probe snapped a photo of the moon, which is as yet unnamed, as it orbited inside a gap of Saturn’s ring system. The moon is only about four miles wide.

It seems funny to me how far technology has evolved, and how much arrogance it affords the human race. We have probes that can photograph distant galaxies. We think we own the universe. And yet here we find some new little mass that’s just a couple of planets away that we never even knew was there.

There’s something humbling about that, when you think about it. Or at least…it should be humbling.

It has been a while since I walked along a beach. I was fortunate enough a few years ago to be able to stand at the edge of the ocean on a beach with no one else around. All I could see was water on the horizon. All I could hear was the ocean’s waves rolling gently on the shore. It was there that I considered how insignificant we are, and how powerful God is for having created all that is.

I think all of us need to take a walk along a lonely beach from time to time.

Recently I was criticized by two people — one was a parent, the other wasn’t — about my take on two separate school incidents. In both cases, the punishment levied against a child during school hours was questioned.

In one case, a five-year-old child was handcuffed by police after a temper tantrum that lasted more than thirty minutes and had been caught on tape. In the other, a 17-year-old student mouthed off to a teacher who tried to take his cell phone while he was talking to his mother, a soldier in Iraq, during school hours, thereby violating a school rule. Some argued that the punishments didn’t fit the “crimes,” and that the schools were behaving irrationally.

A new report released last week indicates that expulsion rates are on the rise, and for one particular group, the rates are rising at an alarming rate. What’s most surprising is the age of the students identified in the report as the most likely to be expelled: preschoolers!

I don’t recall anyone I went to school with — even in classes just before or after me — being expelled through elementary, middle or high school. I know there were a handful of suspensions during my high school years, but I can’t remember a single student being expelled. Back then, there wasn’t much of a pre-kindergarten program other than the old-fashioned daycare. Kindergarten started at age five and that was about it. Over the years, we have recognized that starting children in a preschool program prior to kindergarten gives them an advantage in the classroom. But now, these young children are losing out on that opportunity!

The Foundation for Child Development, which published the report, states that pre-kindergarten students are expelled at a rate more than three times that of students in grades K-12. The report examined all forty of the states that fund pre-kindergarten programs. The most interesting fact I noticed in the report is that the lowest rates of expulsion, according to the report, came from teachers who had an ongoing, regular relationship with a behavioral consultant.

A behavioral consultant? How long have teachers had behavioral consultants on call in their classrooms? If my teachers ever had such people at their beck and call, it was a fact never revealed to any of us. I have to wonder if behavioral consultants are something of a new animal in the school system.

If behavioral consultants have always been around, why are there still teachers with no access to them, resulting in this many expulsions of kids that have barely even had the chance to reach a learning environment?

If they are a relatively new resource for teachers, at what point did they begin to appear? And what caused the need for them? Are kids so much worse today than they were years ago? Are parents so much worse at teaching kids how to behave? Are schools so much worse at instructing teachers on how to deal with their students? Or are teachers not learning the lessons they’re being taught?

What’s changing here that leading to such a problem? And how do we fix it?

On Friday, Indiana officials denied a death row inmate’s requests for either clemency or a temporary stay of his execution so that he could donate his liver to his sister to save her life.

Gregory Johnson wants to donate a portion of his liver to his sister, who suffers from non-alcohol-related cirrhosis. Blood tests have indicated that Johnson would be a match for his sister.

Johnson is being prevented from donating his complete liver before his execution because it would kill him. It is unlikely that he could donate his liver after his execution because the chemicals that will kill him would poison the liver, according to some medical experts.

At a press conference late last week, a woman who opposes Johnson’s request for clemency stated that we should remember who the real victim is…the 82-year-old woman Johnson is convicted of having killed during a home invasion. I am assuming that the speaker is related to the victim.

The only trouble with that reasoning is that if Johnson’s sister dies because she can’t get a transplant, we’re turning her into a victim as well, and she’s not responsible for what her brother did.

I do support the death penalty. But I also support the saving of lives wherever possible. If the death row inmate wants to donate his whole liver to his sister, an act that would end his life and save hers, he should be allowed to do so: the state gets its sentence carried out, and an innocent life is saved. The victim’s family gets their justice, because the man who killed their loved one is still dead, no matter who may have gained extra years on this earth because of organ donation.

CNN reports that such requests have happened in the past, with mixed results. In 1995, a condemned man in Delaware donated a kidney to his mother and then returned to death row. In Alabama, a death row inmate won permission for organ donation, but he was not a correct match for the recipient. And in a Florida case, a death row inmate’s request to donate a kidney to his brother was denied; the inmate was eventually exonerated, but not before his brother died waiting for a transplant that never happened.

If the intent of the death penalty is to send a message about the importance of life and to deter others from taking lives, how can the exercise of the death penalty cause innocent people to die?

Governor Mitch Daniels will make the final call on whether to allow Johnson a stay to donate a portion of his liver. Johnson’s execution is scheduled for Wednesday.

May sweeps isn’t even over, yet…its last day is actually next Wednesday…but several networks are already announcing their fall line-ups. Here’s what I know so far: as more details about each show are released over the summer, you’ll be inundated with show descriptions elsewhere: I thought I’d give you a sneak peek.

CBS
It has been a banner year for the Tiffany Network, despite well-publicized trouble in its news division. “60 Minutes II” is one of three shows to get the ax. The obvious question is what will become of Dan Rather, who stepped down from the “CBS Evening News” to focus solely on the Wednesday newsmagazine, which the network has nicknamed “Sixty-Two.” Speculation is that Rather will move to the Sunday edition at least through 2006 when his contract is up. After that, it’s not clear what would happen.

The other two shows leaving after this year are “Joan of Arcadia” and “Judging Amy.” ‘Joan’ received much critical acclaim over its run; ‘Amy’ was a personal favorite of mine, but I tend to like shows that can successfully mix serious storylines with quirky characters. (I still miss “Picket Fences.”)

CBS plans four new dramas and two new comedies. One of their new dramas, “Ghost Whisperer,” which is slated to take ‘Joan’s’ timeslot, features Jennifer Love Hewitt as a woman who can talk to ghosts. CBS chairman Les Moonves tells the Associated Press that “talking to ghosts may skew younger than talking to God.”

ABC
ABC has seen big successes this year as well, thanks to “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives.” The former is moving back an hour next season, which will put it directly up against Fox’s “American Idol.” That sounds like a pretty bold move.

“8 Simple Rules,” “My Wife and Kids,” and “Extreme Makeover” won’t be back. ABC plans three new dramas and two new comedies. Geena Davis will star in one of the new dramatic programs, “Commander-in-Chief,” which focuses on a female American president. Could the show be preparing America for Hillary in ‘08?

NBC
The peacock isn’t strutting as proudly this season after slipping to fourth place in some demographics. “Third Watch” has already had its swan song; “American Dreams” is history. And the newest “Law & Order” spinoff, “Trial By Jury,” has just been cancelled.

Despite low ratings, “Joey” is returning next fall. Martha Stewart will star in her own version of “The Apprentice” on Wednesdays, and Donald Trump’s version will continue on Thursdays. “The West Wing” moves to Sundays.

“Scrubs” and “Fear Factor” aren’t on the schedule for the fall, but NBC says it does plan to bring both shows back later in the year.

NBC plans six new shows, including a reality series staring Amy Grant. The show, “Three Wishes,” will feature Grant traveling around the country to help people.

Fox
The Fox network enjoys a first this year: it will finish on the top of the ratings heap in 18-49 year olds. The network plans to add seven new shows, none of them reality shows.

“Arrested Development,” whose renewal was doubted by many, will return. “House” also returns, but both shows will eventually move to Monday nights.

The reality shows “Trading Spouces,” “Nanny 911,” and “The Simple Life” aren’t on the fall schedule, but new episodes will be ready to replace the season’s early casualties.

“Life on a Stick” and “Quintuplets” were cancelled.

One of its most interesting new shows — at least from a concept standpoint — is “Reunion,” which traces a group of six friends over a 20 year period. Like “24” which uses the gimmick of each episode being a single hour, in real time, of a single day that lasts all season long, “Reunion” also has a time gimmick: each episode will represent one of the twenty years during which the six characters’ lives are traced.

This entry has been moved here because it more accurately relates to posts that have appeared here.

A retraction has been requested over my recent entry, “The Missing Link.” The writer who requested it left the following comment in “Patrick’s Place:”

Patrick, you’re being paranoid.

I don’t like pointing people to blogs that aren’t regularly updated, and your blogs weren’t being regularly updated. Even people working in media can manage to put an update more than once a week, and you’d fallen well below that average. And before you try and figure out to hammer in the last nail, I might point out that I also dropped public links to the blogs of my SISTER and STEP-MOTHER for the same reasons. You were hardly alone in the purge.

I find this tendency of yours toward autoflagellation — not to mention melodrama — a little repellent. You recently wrote on your blog(s) that not everything you wrote in that space was meant to be reflective of Angry Reader, and yet here you are applying the same reactionary principles to mine.

If you figure out a way to keep your content fresh, so that readers of my blog can follow a link and find something more than stale posts more than a week old, then perhaps I’ll put you back on the public blogroll. Until then… unclench.

Also, he responded to my immature overreaction in his own journal, which has since been taken down.

He is perfectly within his rights to remove me and anyone he chooses from his blogroll list for whatever reason. I have never said otherwise.

On the other hand, since I apparently read more intent than was warranted in that action, then I happily admit that I was wrong. Had my responses to him not been returned, indicating that his email addresses were no longer valid, and had I been able to receive a response from him through his own website to a personal message I would have sent, I suppose I would have had the correct information sooner. Since I was left to assume that he no longer wanted to communicate with me in any way, and since my last email from him seemed to me to be harsh, I felt that my assumptions weren’t so unreasonable.

But that’s the past now. I made the judgment I made at the time based on my perception of the situation. That’s something we all do every day. We’re not always accurate in our individual perceptions.

I’m not sure what more I can say in the way of a retraction better than the remarks he has made at my expense, so I hope running his words here as well as my own apology for my part of the melodrama will help the situation. I’m happy to put the matter behind me if he is.

Other people have other ideas than mine. I am not always right. Believe it or not, this is a fact not lost on me.

I recently ran a poll about the 17-year-old student who was suspended after mouthing off to a teacher. The student was talking to his mother on his cell phone at the time, a violation of school rules. What made this situation so unique is the fact that his mother is a soldier serving in Iraq.

I did not — as one reader tried to claim — “begrudge a teenager his right to talk with his mother (currently in a war zone) without having to explain himself to a busybody.”

I don’t personally know the teacher involved, so I have no idea whether or not he or she is a “busybody.” (I suspect that the person who made that statement doesn’t know, either.)

I most certainly did begrudge him the right to speak to a teacher with profanity when he was the one breaking a rule to begin with. I suggested that if he had explained the situation to her rationally, it would have been completely unreasonable for her to still press the rule. But reason apparently never entered into the picture.

In any case, the poll results suggest that 70% of you feel that the student was completely at fault because he didn’t handle the situation well. Twenty percent blame the school entirely for the student’s suspension, despite the student’s use of profanity. One voter placed blame on the student and the school equally, and another placed blame on the mother, who should have timed her call outside of her son’s school day.