A final hurrah in '08

This will be my 510th and final post of 2008, barring perhaps a Happy New Year blurb.

I hope you all had a great Christmas. Mine was, surprisingly, very good and may very well rank as the best ever. Nothing spectacular happened, and there were no grandiose presents, it was just a general . . . feeling of happiness, camaraderie, and peace. It was very nice.

Be assured, you will be swamped with boring photographic essays of the festivities. I won't disappoint on that score.

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It's been a week since my last real post here, and even that was a rehash of my column. So let's catch up.

There was the holiday, sure, but there was also:

- a (part-time/seasonal) job that ate up hours [more on that at a later date]. And no, I wasn't Santa Claus.

- two big snowstorms, a patch of sub-zero weather, and a severe rainstorm that melted most of the snow and led to a small amount of water in the corner of my basement

- the kids, playing at gymnastics in the living room, collided with my big screen TV and smashed the speakers in, rendering the TV mute. I should have/would have been demonically angry, but I received the news at work and had six hours to cool off before returning home.

- The TV is still out of commission, pending the arrival of some money that can be spent on a luxury item, but it isn't so bad. There's a lot more reading going on here, and no one, not even the kids, seem to mind its absence. Mind you, there's a TV upstairs, but I can't stand laying in bed and watching television. The TV usage in this house is easily down 70% or more.

- I did want to watch football though, and Sunday night watched NBC while listening to the Westwood One radio broadcast. The two were out of sync, with the radio three to five seconds behind. Very annoying way to watch a game.

- While we're talking football, let's visit the better late than never department. It's a lousy injustice that Texas Tech's quarterback Graham Harrell didn't get more votes for the Heisman. Pure economics. The votes go where the money goes, and the cash goes to the network's favorite teams - cue Florida and the vastly over publicized (but damn good) Texas and Oklahoma.

- On the other hand, at least he was excused from listening to the sappy love-fest ESPN made of the Heisman presentation. It's not the Nobel Prize people, and I'll say it here: 2007 winner Tim Tebow may kick ass in college, but in the pro's he'll have no more sucess than Ty Detmer.

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I've also been busy writing. I've gotten 19 posts written here on Slapinions, all of them scheduled for automatic distribution throughout 2009, with more on the way before the New Year.

This way, no matter what -I spend the summer on jury duty, I get hit by a meteorite, I go and pull a Judge Crater - you'll still be treated to the wit and wisdom of the Dan.

Spooky eh?

Naw, the real notion is that I'd like to devote more time to getting paid to write, but don't want to neglect Slapinons in the process. This seems like the best way to make that happen.

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I was aggressive on the writing front this week, and I'm proud of myself. I laid my hands on an advance copy of a novel due out in January and thought:

"You know, it's not like I don't know an editor at the Journal. I should review this and send it in. Ah, wait. I don't know her that well. I should give her some more material to work with, just to make sure my name rings a bell, THEN send in the review."

Normally, a thought like that would occur to me and slowly escape into the ether.

Not this time.

In one night I hammered out three columns, each and every one of them livelier and more Danny-esque than the previously published piece, and sent them in to the editor.

I then read the novel in a single night. The next morning, in an hour I had to spare before work, I put together a coherent and (I think) publishable review and sent it to that same editor, boldly asking her to forward it to the appropriate party and thus bypass any objection to outside reviews.

I'm not sure it'll get in the paper. I'm not sure that the book editor will even read it. But damned if the op-ed editor didn't forward it on to her.

As London Tipton would say, 'Yea Me!'

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See ya in '09 folks. Keep it fun, but keep it safe. Thanks for listening for the last twelve months :)