I had great intentions to blog yesterday. I did so over at An Arrow Through the Air, but didn’t get back here. We had quite the storm yesterday and last night, and actually it’s not over. Radar shows another storm wave is about to come over us, probably more potent than the last couple.

I’m batching it again, Lynda having gone to OKC to help Richard and Sara with grandkids and other things. It’s a busy time for a young pastor and his wife, and it’s good to be close enough that Lynda can go up there from time to time and help out.

So in my temporary bachelorhood, I should make good progress on a number of fronts. I should get the income taxes done—except I haven’t even touched them the last few days. I should get caught up on the family budget—except that has gone the way of the income taxes. I should maybe clean somewhat in the house, and use this opportunity to throw out some things that Lynda’s saving, but which she will never actually miss—I’ve ignored all that.

What I have done over the last two days is write. I added over 4,000 words to The Candy Store Generation between Sunday and Monday. I wrote all of chapter 4, Boomer Congress, and most of chapter 14 (the last chapter), Had Enough. At the same time I completed some good research on Saturday, did some more on Sunday and Monday [the rain just started again], and outlined the remaining research for the book. I don’t have a lot more to do.

I can now see an end to this project. I at first thought it would be around 40,000 words, but the chapters are completed in fewer words than what would make up the 40 thousand. That tells me I’m more likely to be around 35,000, maybe even a little less. I don’t want to pad the book and make an arbitrary word count. I feel already that I’m more repetitive than I want to be.

All other writing is on hold, except for articles for Buildipedia.com. My last one went up Friday March 16. As of a few minutes ago it had been read 132 times, but remained unrated and without comments. That’s how all of them are. These are informational pieces, not subject to controversy and not likely to generate comments.

Meanwhile, over at Suite101.com, I haven’t written an article since February 2011. Changes in the Google algorithm in February, May, and October of last year pretty much killed the site. Page views and revenues (which had never been much) dried up, and continuing to write didn’t seem to make much sense. Except lately page views are trending upward, and revenue has somewhat recovered. So far this month I’ve earned $5.29 for my 127 articles. That’s not much, of course. For the full month it might come out to between $8 and $9 dollars. But every little bit of revenue helps.

A few days ago I received this comment on my article on George Washington’s cabinet:

Mr. Todd,  Thank you for your article and your work. It gave me a nice insight into the workings of the early government which I needed for a class. I made sure you received credit!  Mark I.

It’s not exactly fan mail, and doesn’t make me a rock star among writers, but it’s a nice comment. I’m glad I was able to help a student out.

I haven’t yet pulled the trigger on writing for Decoded Science. I may do so after I finish TCSG.

Interspersed with all of this, I should be preparing Doctor Luke’s Assistant for Kindle and Smashwords, and making one last round of edits on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People before also e-self-publishing it. I think, though, I need to get two to three thousand more words done on TCSG before I pull off for a short while and tend to these other books.

Well, these musings have certainly been miscellaneous. This week I may blog a few times about TCSG, or at least about the premises behind it. They say that a blog, to attract visitors, needs to be about something more than yourself. It needs to give value to a reader. I don’t want my blog to become a political blog, but since TCSG is about a political topic, a few political posts will be necessary. Hopefully I’m going to post all the rest of this week on that.