The weekend once again proved to be too short for my personal taste.

Near our house, where we’ve lived for almost 3 years, is a Mexican restaurant, nothing revolutionary there. However, this restaurant—Cancun’s, never seems to be open. Leslie and I once tried to go there at a time when most restaurants would normally be open, they weren’t. We’ve often driven by at night and seen crowds of people outside, doing what crowds of people do outside of a Mexican restaurant in the early hours of the night.

We remained puzzled as to how this restaurant stayed in business, and what it was a front for. We figured since we aren’t Mexican, just a Scottish-Hawaiian-mutt and a German-Irish-mutt, we would never be privy to the real world of Cancun, the Mexican restaurant around the corner.

The other day we were chatting with our next-door neighbors, who we’ve become quite fond of. We asked if they had ever been to Cancun’s, the local Mexican restaurant, not the coastal city in Mexico’s easternmost state. They had not.

So deciding that there is strength in numbers, we decided to check out Cancun’s on Friday night with Mike, Kirsten and their daughter Bailey, the neighbors. We discovered that we weren’t the only white people in the place. We also discovered that the food is pretty darn awesome. Oh, and it’s just a Mexican restaurant, not a front of anything, as far as we know. And if it is a front, I don’t want to know about it. I just want to be ignorant and enjoy the grubby Mexican grinds.

So we have another place to add to the small list of restaurants we like in the area. And…they have dancing starting at 8:00pm Friday through Sunday, need a little more prodding to tackle that one though. I’m content to just enjoy the bottomless Coke and Chimichangas.

On a not-so-fun note, our downstairs bathroom is still in process. A week ago last Thursday we discovered a leak in the wall that flooded the bathroom and laundry area. We’ve been letting it dry out, as there was mold in the wall. Yesterday, after over a week of “drying out,” I sprayed the open wall down with bleach and water.

We’re hoping that on Saturday we’ll be able to get the new drywall in place. Mike is going to help us out, we’re very grateful. Especially me, I don’t know much about construction and “DIY” stuff. I’m good with computers and virtual things. But I feel this new found DIY attitude is going to get the better of me and I’m going to want to do more.

Speaking of virtual things, I got my Airport Express back up and running. This time though, I was able to hardwire it into my network with a cat5 cable. This allows me to now stream music from my iMac, upstairs, to the Airport, downstairs. Before it ran just over WiFi, so I was only able to stream to it from my Macbook when I was downstairs, which was cool. But using the hardwire is so much nicer. Now I can have some tunes playing when guests come over without having to have my Macbook out and open for all to see.

Currently Listening: Hillsong United, The I Heart Revolution

Currently Reading: Dean Koontz, By the Light of the Moon

So after a period of neglect, I finally sat down and did some belated spring cleaning around here. I started by upgrading WordPress to the latest version 2.5.1 as of today from 2.3.3. That was the biggest change.

I added a new contact form plugin, still playing with that. Added some links to the bottom. Changed the underlying coding and some of the styling of elements.

After all my changes, I now just need to post more. Finding the time is always hard. I can seem to find time to play Rainbox Six or the guitar but not blog. Sometimes a video game or playing music just seems so much more interesting than blogging. One step at a time.

For many writers the idea of self-publishing is like giving up on a dream, selling out. I used to think that until I ran into BookSurge.com a company bought by Amazon in 2005. I came across the print on demand information on Amazon’s site the other day along with publishing information for Amazon’s Kindle. My preconceived notions about self-publishing all went out the window.

Now there are upsides and downsides, of course. The upside, you get your book out there for the world to read. The downside, you book is out there for the world to read and nobody knows about it but you. The upside, you receive a higher return on every unit sold. The downside, you probably won’t sell as many units self-publishing as you would with a traditional publisher, but who knows.

The self-publishing route holds a certain fascination for me. I look at it like an indie rock band, instead of signing with a major label who has a huge overhead and marketing division, they instead do it all themselves. They retain more money and control, in exchange for having to promote themselves really hard. It’s kinda the same way with self-publishing. You are the author, editor, marketing department, and publicist, all in one.

Self-publishing doesn’t preclude anyone from selling out and going with a big publisher. In fact, a case could be made that it gets your work out there for more exposure to the big publishers. So it seems like a win all the way around. I can still look for the super-agent to sell my book to the super-publisher while I self-publish and get my work out there to build a fan base.

The update in all of this is that I’m currently working on finalizing my manuscript. I figured being the editor, the only editor, I should probably go over it once again and make sure I like it and it’s presentable, I’m a little paranoid about this kinda thing. Then comes the cover design and layout, then the actual publishing. Hopefully it won’t be too long before I can say, go to Amazon and buy my book or download it to your Kindle.