Chapter 8 Sumitted + Delay Explanation

I just submitted Chapter 8 to Equestria Daily and Fanfiction.net.

Now, in the post-chapter comments I promised an explanation for the delay in chapter 8, so here it is. The quick explanation is that life simply got in the way. The long explanation follows.

Some of you may recall from previous opening and/or closing comments that I am engaged, and that I also finished my Graduate program earlier this year. Well, it's getting to the point in my engagement where we are seriously starting to plan our wedding, and October managed to turn into a huge planning month. I never realized how much work goes into planning a wedding, and if I never have to plan one again I will be content. Between securing a venue, hiring musical entertainment, hiring photographers, picking out decorations (oh, and a color schemed for those decorations), making guest lists, sending out invitations, doing wedding registries, etc. it can get really hectic. Let's not forget the most important thing, either: all of this crap costs money, which is where my point about graduating comes in.

Since I graduated, all I've heard from everyone around me is that I need to find a better job than the two part-time jobs I work now. I have no problem with that idea, and I fully agree with these people. The problem is that I can't simply snap my fingers and make a job appear out of nowhere, and the employers in my area seem to be getting more and more picky. What's really holding me up is my lack of a "professional" background. My Master's degree more than qualifies me for most of the jobs I'm looking at, from an educational standpoint, but these jobs also want several years of professional experience, which I don't have. During college, I basically worked for whoever would accommodate my school schedule, and it seems that this decision is coming back to bite me. At any rate, I started hitting the application trail a lot harder, given the fact that we are now getting more serious with the wedding planning.

Of course, the fact that we're getting married also means that we need to get our own place to live, as well. So house hunting has figured into the equation. If you're wondering why we're looking at houses as opposed to apartments, it's because the going rates for the crappy apartments around here are outrageous. After some research, we've determined that it would actually be more cost-effective to get a loan, buy a house, and make monthly payments on the loan. Of course, this requires more money than we're collectively making right now (read: she has a good job, and I'm still stuck at these crappy part-time jobs) so we return to the point about the job.

On top of all this (yes, there's more) is that my future brother-in-law--a high school dropout with no job--has managed to get his girlfriend pregnant. Now before I proceed, I want to make it clear that I am not being demeaning towards high school dropouts. I know several of them who live excellent lives. My brother-in-law (to be), however, has done nothing with his life since dropping out. He's 22, in case you were wondering. He basically lives off of my fiancee's mother and father, and now he's bringing a child into the equation. Needless to say, this has caused a good deal of tension, and since I'm marrying into this family I (unfortunately) got caught up in the whole situation. The most noteworthy event was the night he assaulted my future mother-in-law. To make a long story short, the keys to his car were taken from him (the car is in his father's name, his father pays the insurance on it, and more often than not I think his parents pay for the gas). I can't remember why they were taken from him, as I came into the situation after that happened, but at some point he basically took the keys back and drove away. He came back, and of course this lead to an argument, where he ultimately assaulted his mother. So yeah, police involvement and all that. There were other incidents throughout the month, but this was the biggest and most noteworthy.

And of course my old friend Mr. Writer's Block paid me a visit a few times.

Anyway, that about sums up the events surrounding chapter 8's delay. I'm usually not this open about my personal life, but this actually feels a bit therapeutic.