Aw! Following up Sarah's nifty news, two rejection letters in the mail. One for Josie, from New American Library, and one for ANGLES, from Starscape. Phooey.
Hm. I think I'll send Angles to some agents now.
Hooray for Sarah! Silhouette just asked for the complete manuscript of her romance novel, NO ACCOUNTING FOR CHASE! YAAAAAAAAY SARAH!!!!
I'm pretty angry with Ted's work. He went to work before 9am yesterday. He got home at 5:30am. He's now on his way back to work.
Grrr.
Incidentally, since Garrett has been keeping track, I just thought I'd point out that Ireland isn't part of the coalition of the willing, either.
"We are not a part of the 'coalition of the willing'.
"International law, Irish law, UN law and EU law - all of them accept our position and, in fact, there are very few people who have difficulty in understanding our position and that is fact."
Sarah's stab at the thought process of my cats, who were very very angry about being washed:
Not v. pretty after stupid human dunked me in torture tank. Must spend hours getting fur to lay down straight. Stupid human. Stupid dog. Think it's all her fault. Plan to scratch her while she sleeps. That'll show her. Ha ha ha.
*howls of laughter*
I made stew for dinner. It was really, *really* good. I mean, it wasn't especially interesting or exciting stew, but Ted does the cooking at our house, and I kept thinking "Well, he'll be home tonight to cook," and then he kept having to work (he's at work now. again. still. Sigh. Poor Ted. :() and it was somewhere around Thursday, after two weeks of eating out or eating food from a box, that I thought, "Gosh, maybe I should start cooking some meals." I mean, I know, that's sort of a long time-delay, but, er, I'm spoiled. :) And I'm just not /used/ to the idea of cooking, so it took sort of a long time to think of it. So around Thursday I thought, "I should make this stew meat into some stew," but then Ted came home and said, "Want to go out to eat?" and so we did and then something similar happened on Friday and then on Saturday I went to a movie and ate there and so it wasn't until today that there was really much /chance/ of me cooking, and the point of all that is that after two weeks of eating out, *jeez* is home-cooked food good. Ted ate too much just because it was home-cooked. :)
I also read another book, since my last posting. Clearly I am a very busy bee!
Herein is a list of things which might be accomplished by 4pm if one gets up at 7:30am on a day uninterrupted by work:
1. the laundry
2. the writing of 1100 words
3. the reading of a book
4. the walking of 2 miles
5. the washing of 2 cats
6. the checking of the mail, in which one might find a CD with one's own name in the liner notes! (thank you, Emily!)
music: 3-Finger Charlie, Urban Family Dog
ytd wordcount: 120,280
miles walked to Rivendell: 13
Oh, so what /is/ this Clean Air Challenge thing?
It's a 126 mile fundraiser bike ride--63 miles a day over two days--sponsored by the American Lung Association of Alaska, which is "dedicated to the conquest of lung disease and the promotion of lung health."
Last year I did the ride, but due to a screwed-up back, only (only!) completed 80 miles. It was exhausting, wearisome, insane, painful, and a lot of fun. My Dad and I are doing the ride this year, and I'm really looking forward to it.
I need to raise $400 by April 30 in order to be able to participate in the ride (which is May 11 and 12). I figure that's $10 from 40 people--shouldn't be too hard. (Of course, if you are seized with the desire to donate /more/ than $10, I won't say you nay!)
I'll be keeping track of training miles and whatnot here on my blog, and more to the point, at On Your Left, which is my site for this sort of thing (currently a disaster, incidentally; my templates got broken and I haven't yet converted it to MoveableType. Perhaps this weekend.).
If you happen to donate through the ALA form, *please* email me to let me know--they're not set up so that the person recieving the funds gets a notification email about it.
And that's all, for now. :)
Miles walked to Rivendell: 11
Brr. Cold 2.5 mile walk today. Early in walk, noticed tire tracks along trail. Theorized Nazgul have upgraded to Ford pickups, having decided oily black horses good for show, but ineffective against raging rivers and elves. Hobbits no doubt doomed. Personally smug over whole issue, as *miles* behind hobbits, and therefore safe from nasty Ringwraiths.
Unfortunately, Ringwraiths came back, Cleverly Disguised as city workers in red jackets and white pickups w/snowplows. On one hand, am v. pleased to have been correct in supposition. On other hand, suspect soul is now damned for saying "Hello" and "Morning" to Minions of Evil. Is rough life.
--
In other news, poor Ted is at work and has no idea when he'll return. Shaun's gone off to see The Core. I'm going to give my Dad a call and discuss training rides with him (the American Lung Association Clean Air Challenge is coming up and we're going to participate (feel free to sponsor me! Participant's name is Catie Murphy. Unfortunately, the form there is not a secure one. I have no idea why. If you'd like to donate to my ride and don't want to use an insecure form, you can PayPal it to me, in which case I'd ask that you add 3% + $.30 to your donation, because stupid Paypal takes that much out of a credit card payment. So that would be $10.60 if you were thinking about donating a nice round $10! *big eyes* If you'd like to mail a check instead of donating online, the address to mail to is:
500 West International Airport Road
Suite A
Anchorage, AK 99518
and please write Sponsoring Catie Murphy on the check. Whew. I think that's everything. What the hell was I talking about before all that?)
Oh yeah. I gotta call my Daddy. :)
Miles walked to Rivendell: 8.5
V. nice walk today, appx. 2.5 miles. Shanghaied Shaun into walking with me. Suspect he may be elf, although shorn head, round ears preclude that. Still, is tall, blond, slender. Will be watching him carefully in future.
Suspicious number of footprints on road to Rivendell. May have something to do with 1. not sneaking through trees like wretched hobbits, 2. annoying amount of snowfall to slog through. Note to self: find out how Legolas did that walk-on-snow trick. Suspect could be v. useful.
Certain of footprints v. small. Considering possibility that wretched hobbits have abandoned sneaky trail in favor of roads. Also likely that hobbits have seen error of their ways and have adopted human habit of wearing shoes. (Yes yes, I know, hobbits have large feet, but think: hobbits are quite small. Large hobbit feet are v. likely to be only small human feet. In shoes. Suspect conspiracy.)
Hey! Have less than 450 miles to get to Rivendell! Go me!
AUGH. Ted's going to have to work all THIS weekend TOO. AUGH. STUPID STUPID BACKUP SERVERS! *AUGH*!
Well, at least it's stopped snowing. There's 3 inches of snow on the ground, but at least it's no longer coming down. The weather forecast says more snow tomorrow, though. WAH.
Look at me, reduced to talking about the weather. Feh.
I got up at a quarter to seven today. Yeesh.
Miles walked to Rivendell: 6
2 miles today. V. disappointing, for weather was nasty: snowing & blowing. Snow made tickly prickles on my face, v. annoying. Yesterday much nicer, with clear skies & light breeze. Granted, only 35 degrees, but still v. nice, overlooking Hideous Foot Cramp that ended journey.
Have completed 6 of 458 miles. Go me! Am hoping to catch up with Sean AstSamwise Gamgee. Wretched hobbits have head start. Anticipate catching up only in several weeks, if at all.
On positive side, hobbits must walk through snow in bare feet, whereas I have shoes. Go me!
I'm going to be very annoyed if my time stamp still isn't working correctly.
I'm ALSO very annoyed because it's SNOWING. DAMMIT. I don't WANT it to be snowing. I want it to be BEAUTIFUL. And WARM. *stomps around*
I went for a 4 mile walk yesterday. When I got home my stoopid foot cramped up quite horribly. But Angie posted about this Walk to Rivendell thing (basically, walk 458 miles by Dec 17th, when Return of the King opens), which I think is a cool, geeky, fun idea, so I'm going to walk to Rivendell along with Sarah and Angie.
Except it's SNOWING and I don't WANT to walk in the SNOW DAMMIT.
Actually, walking in the snow's really not that bad when it's only a couple of inches, which is what it'll probably be. Just, grrr. I want to be able to BIKE!
Miles walked to Rivendell: 4
Grr. My web hosting service has been extremely poor this month. A lot of down time. I'm not happy.
Ted's backups are apparently being corrupted, so once more, he's stuck at work for all eternity. Grf.
There is a great deal of ranting going on about the war today. Some of it is my ranting. My part of the ranting was inspired by someone asking that a group of people pray for the troops (the person who mentioned it said, "I kept my mouth shut," which is reasonable as she's 1. not particularly religious and 2. not American), is in no way meant as an insult to people who /do/ wish to pray for the troops, and went like this:
I don't object to praying for the troops, although it's not my inclination to pray. I object to the troops being put in danger to liberate a people who aren't eager to be liberated. I object to being lied to repeatedly by my government. I object to a war that was touted as being a 7-days war (did anyone /believe/ that?) being redefined, a week into it, as having no clear end in sight. I object to being defined as a traitor or unpatriotic because I don't support my government's actions.
I object to conflicting news reports and propaganda. I object to not having a clear picture of what's really going on; I object to a media that rolls over for the government, and even more, I object to the yellow-bellied Congress that the American people in all their wisdom have elected. I object to Rumsfeld telling us that it's a war crime for Iraq to show the POWs they've taken on tv, but that it's perfectly fine for the US to do the same thing. I object to the fact that we've violated the basic precept of the Geneva Convention, which states that instituting a war of aggression is the first and most obvious war crime that there is. I object to the fact that Bush is incredibly unlikely to be tried in the world court for that violation.
I object to a /lot/ of things. But wanting people's loved ones to come home safely isn't one of them.
The counting of the words, the counting of the words, high ho the derry-o, the counting of the words! Ok, that totally didn't rhyme, but whatever.
New words written: 798. Old words thrown out: 283. Sarah says I can count them in my YTD amount anyway, since they're entirely new and rewritten and not merely revised, in which case I can add back in the 400ish or so words I wrote Thursday and threw out again. So not quite 1100 today, but close, and the 400 from the other day make up for it (O.O).
ytd wordcount: 119,180 (augh! 120K so! close!)
A link via Population One, where Garrett already said it best: Sometimes, people do amazing things.
Muchas editingas today. (That's Spanish for 'much editing' today.) The first third of Angles is fully edited, now, and I'm giving myself 1/2 credit in wordcount for rewrites. So that's 7000 words of rewrites today. (Too bad the /writing/ part doesn't pile up that fast!)
I've also gotten about 300 words written on Fool's Gold, but I think once more they're all words that need to be thrown out. Right idea, wrong approach, just like ch. 4. That's a real bother, you know? I like getting it right the first time. *laugh* Who doesn't? I'll do an actual wordcount later tonight, after getting my 1100 words in for the day. Or however much I write.
Now, or soon, at least, I'm going swimming.
Poor Ted. He came home after 9 last night, went to bed a little after 10, and got up at 5 to go back to work. :( I know /he/ hasn't had a weekend, but the extra weird thing is I don't feel like I've had one either. I haven't had my Ted around! Wah! I hope he gets the stupid backup problem fixed today. Poor Ted. :(
I've decided that if I ever win an Oscar, I'm just going to steal from previous Oscar-winners speeches. First I will acknowledge, like Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, that it'd really suck not to win, but that winning was really scary. Then, like Kim Basinger, I'd thank everybody I ever met in my entire life. And then, like Adrien Brody, I'd kiss Halle Berry.
I think that'd be good. Yeah. *nodnod* :)
*laugh* Sarah and Angie just called me from The One Party in LA. I have _such_ cool friends. I really, really do. *beam* Thanks, guys. That made my day. *beam*
No more writing today. I'm gonna watch the Oscars. :) I did get a 40-or-so minute walk in, and did crunches and leg lifts and pushups. Sarah and Angie's phone call saved me from doing my last 3 pushups. :)
Woo! Ted might get to come home soon! Yaaaay!
ytd wordcount: 110,700
Poor Ted. He was at work until midnight last night and got up at 7 to go back again today. :( His backups at work exploded and he's been trying for three days to get things working again. Poor Ted. :(
Me, I got 2300 words written this morning, am making bread, have vacuumed the downstairs (not that you can TELL, because the DOG HAIR won't PICK UP) and in a moment I'm going to go clean the kitty litter, because I know how to have *almost* as much fun as Ted does.
I think later I'll go on a walk. If I were really swell, I'd write some more, but I donno if I'm that swell.
Or maybe I won't do any more writing after all. Or swimming, for that matter, because Ted's stuck at work for the rest of his natural life, which is very sad. So I went on a 75 minute walk instead, and that was very nice.
Lucy is sitting on top of my computer monitor glaaaaaring at me. Sheesh. Donno what I did to make her angry, but it musta been something!
I got a package in the mail today from Angie. Angie is very, *very* silly. She sent me a little die-cast roadster car with Rogue painted on the hood (it's very cool!) and a Murphy coat of arms lapel pin, and a Valentine (a little late, but so what?) with Samwise Gamgee on it (aww!) and funniest of all, she'd noticed that the last page of her X-Men notepaper was printed with 'Write Kit' and then had information about the writing pad. But it said 'Write Kit' and so she did! *giggles*
I think I'll go look at the words in a book now, or maybe do a drawing. Or edit more of Angles. Something, anyway. :)
ytd wordcount: 108,400
Win some, lose some. I've gotten about 2500 words written so far today, but didn't go swimming. The latter is 'cause Ted's work exploded and so I was sort of stuck without a ride home, so I stayed home instead, and wrote. And I did, in fact, throw out all 500 words I wrote on Thursday, rewrote the end of ch. 3, and barreled on through ch. 4. I think I'm going to go read a book now, and if I'm extra and particularly cool, I'll both swim and get another chapter written later tonight.
Too bad I'm feeling too wussy to go for a walk. It's /cold/ out, darn it. But beautiful. I may talk myself into walking, anyway. It's only 20. That's not TOO cold... o.O
Oh yeah: I also made banana bread this morning. Yum. :)
Oh, and I waxed eloquent about the Farscape series/season finale over on Pamela Dean's blog, but I'll repeat it here, safely hidden behind a cut tag, although I don't think the spoilers mentioned are really spoilers.
So the series ended with a 'To Be Continued' note.
I suspect that 'To Be Continued' is a lot of things. One, I'm sure it's the way that season 4 was /supposed/ to end, because they thought that they'd have another season to finish the story in.
Two, I think it /was/ a kind of 'screw you' to the SciFi channel, a way of saying, "Look, you yanked us, but we're not going to pretend we were done with this story." (I also think the SciFi channel follow-up tag with the "We'd like to thank the cast and crew and fans of Farscape for 4 great years" was a desperate attempt on the channel's part to make themselves look like they weren't the bad guys. Hah.) (What, me, bitter? Nah.)
Three, I think ending it with 'To Be Continued' is kind of a thank you from the producers and creators to the fans, who have been really gung-ho the last six months, trying to get their show back on the air. I think it's a way of saying "thanks for not giving up on us." I'd like it to mean that they haven't given up, either. :)
I think it's really interesting that they opted to actually end it the way season 4 must've been intended to end, rather than cutting it, oh, forty seconds earlier. ("The curtains close on a kiss, God knows, we can tell the end is near...") They could have effectively resolved the storyline, by cutting it forty seconds sooner. Well: they could have resolved the John/Aeryn storyline, which is the most significant emotional plot point, and while it wouldn't have been a /terribly/ satisfying series finale, it would have felt, to me, as if they'd at least finished it. But they opted not to do that. And I think that's darned interesting.
I'm sure there's a great John Crichton quote about hope that would make a nice ending for this, but I can't think of one, so I'll just say maybe they opted to end that way because John never gives up hope.
Mutter. Going to the chiro. Will still try to see a massage therapist tomorrow, maybe. Hungry right now. Thinking of working on HOUSE OF CARDS for a bit instead of FOOL'S GOLD, but that's just because I'm grumpy with FG, and I haven't even looked at it today. Reading Lawrence Watt-Evans' DRAGON SOCIETY, though, and it's making me think my start to HoC isn't so bad. Fuss. Futher. Dither. Drivel.
And it's *snowing*. And *sticking*. After no snow all winter, NOW it snows? Dammit! I want to go BIKING!
Hn. 500 words tonight, but I think they all suck. Nobel Peace Prize day. I'll keep them til tomorrow and look at them again then, but I think I went about opening this chapter the wrong way and that I'm going to have to delete them all, creating a plethora of anti-words, and start over again. Hnf.
Grumpy. My PHP templates have, for some reason or other, exploded, and none of my not-MT lower pages are working on any of my sites. Grumpy, grumpy grumpy. Given how many problems I've had with this PHP template setup, I should install a new one, but I REALLY don't want to learn another one. It took months for me to wrap my brain around the last one. Sigh. :(
Marith is SO COOL! And *so* silly! *howls of laughter*
I just got a box in the mail. The box has in it bath salts (which smell *wonderful*), a Veggie Tales Silly Song Countdown DVD, and best of *all*, a certificate of the Order of Supreme Looniness (Authors' Division), (like this one) for all the writing I did in February. *helpless laughter* Marith is SO COOL!!! *Thank* you! *beam*
Man. My shoulder's hurting today. I think I need to go see a massage therapist, rather than the chiropractor, because ultimately I think this is a muscle tension problem, rather than a spine alignment problem. Maybe I'll go over to Undo Stress this weekend and see if they can pound some of the pain out of me. Hn. Maybe I should see about getting a haircut, too, since the hair cutting place is right next to the massage place.
Thinks to do today:
1. write 1100 words (i caught up!)
2. go for a 60 minute walk
3. laundry
4. pay bills
2500 yards swum, and um. Oh yes, and I did my 15 minute walk.
And we're at war, oh yay. Apparently they saw Saddam going into a bunker a while ago, and dropped 2000 pounds of artillery on it. I said to Dad, "Why didn't they just drop a Moab?"
I hadn't realized they only had one.
And they used it to bomb Florida.
Okay. I get that it was a test bomb. But does anybody else think that, y'know, last week, with a war coming up this week, somebody might've said, "Hey, let's save this for Iraq. If we don't tell anybody about it, nobody'll know if it's a dud, and if it's not a dud, it'll be real impressive"?
Yes yes yes, shock and awe, I get that too, but again: wouldn't it be rather more shocking and awesome if the Moab blew up in somebody /else's/ country? Nevermind that 1. I don't think the Iraqi people need to be shocked or awed, because I suspect overall they're really not happy about the prospect of getting the hell bombed out of them, and 2. I don't think anything's going to shock or awe Saddam "Meglomaniac" Hussein into quitting his day job.
My point is that if they're planning on using this thing, why not have one available to /drop/ on Saddam's pointy little head when they know where he's gone? Even if it's the first and only one they've got, isn't instituting a regime change what Bush is on about? Get rid of the bad nasty man in power (an excellent idea; America should consider it) and make the world safe for capitalism and wealthy people, I mean, democracy and the common man?
This whole thing pisses me off. Did you know that instituting a war of aggression is the #1 crime in the world War Courts? Raise your hand if you think Shrub is going to face a world court for his actions today.
Know what else pisses me off, while I'm on the topic? There's a Patriot's Rally in town here on Saturday. That doesn't piss me off. What pisses me off is the hijacking of the word patriot. There is absolutely no correlation between patriotism and supporting the actions of the administration. I'm not a particularly patriotic person, although I'd rather live in the USA than any other country in the world, and I believe that overall, we're the good guys, current events nonewithstanding. I support my country, although at the moment I'd like to see it get bitchslapped. I even support our troops, and I have no wish whatsoever to see /them/ bitchslapped. I'd far rather not a single American got hurt. I'd rather not a single Iraqi got hurt, too, but that seems even more unlikely than the former.
But the people crying 'Patriots!' aren't seeing a difference between supporting our troops and supporting our government's actions. Anything less than wholesale, unquestioning support of the President's idiocy is apparently treasonous.
Patriotism is by no means swallowing whole the propaganda fed to us by the government. That very concept would be inconceivable to the men who founded this country. They would argue that it is in fact our patriotic duty to disagree, vocally and endlessly, with our government's actions if we don't support them. Even, in the most extreme cases, to take up arms and overthrow that government. This is an action to take when there is no other recourse, and at this point, we still have one--there is an election in eighteen months, and I'm not /quite/ sure Kaiser Shrub will find an excuse to extend martial law over the land and prevent the election. Those actions--voting, discourse, supporting troops even without supporting the government which orders them--define a patriot. Tossing loaded words around out of fear and anger do not.
"You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Chipper! Writing makes a person chipper. I have managed 1901 words today and finished a chapter, which puts me 3 chapters into this YA novel, FOOL'S GOLD, that I'm working on. It is quite unashamedly inspired by the Elizabeth Smart case; my protagonist has just been removed from a similar situation, and the novel follows the next year of her life. I think the situation is absolutely fascinating psychologically and I'm hoping to do it justice.
In other news, I rearranged my novels page so it's all tidy and, er, arranged, and while doing so, I found that adding in silly things like: HOUSE OF CARDS & HANDS OF FIRE coming later in 2003! and THUNDERBIRD FALLS: coming this fall! makes me really really want to work on those novels. :) Marith says I'm victim to my own advertising. I guess so! :)
ytd wordcount: 105,900
Last night we went to Tony Roma's for dinner, and there was a magician there. It must've been kids' night, or something. Anyway, the magician was wandering around and stopping at different tables and doing tricks, and Ted couldn't stop watching him. The magician came to the table next to us (behind me, but Ted was facing them) and did several tricks, which Ted watched (with a spoon upside-down in his mouth, at one point; he looked like a little kid), and then he did a rope trick where he made 3 pieces of rope of wildly different lengths all the same length. And Ted's eyes just bugged out of his head. It was SO CUTE! Hee hee hee! I have the very cutest husband. *beam*
Um. There was something else I was going to say this morning. Don't really remember what. Oh well.
Thinks to do today:
1. write 1800 words
2. swim
3. go on a 15 minute walk
4. maybe make some cookies
I had a nightmare about baking bread, last night. I'd forgotten to do a whole bunch of the things I was supposed to do (hadn't prepared the yeast, hadn't done this, hadn't done that), and then somehow instead of 8 cups of flour I used 8 cups of salt. *shudder*
Angles is off to Jonathan Schmidt at Starscape Books. Wish it luck! Iiiiiinnnnn other news, got yesterday's 1100 words written and got 400 or something of today's written. I really ought to catch up, but, well, I probably will. And if I don't, I'm still thousands of words ahead for the year anyway, so no big.
ytd wordcount: 104,000
I'm just having a lame week so far, or something. I did write yesterday, but only a little less than 700 words, so I need to catch up this evening. I also /did/ manage both my 15 minute walks (the second being at the UAA gym, where I happen to know I walked a mile because there's a sign that says '9 1/2 laps is 1 mile'), and then I swam a mile. I didn't read and I didn't do my situps or pushups and I didn't do a drawing. OTOH, I did get over an hour of exercise, so I guess that counts for something.
Today I've decided not to worry about the job thing, because I don't think they can fire me for working remotely without reorganizing the department. I'll look this sort of thing up over the next week or so, but I think I'm actually pretty safe.
My darned tummy is upset this morning. Very distressing.
Thinks to do today:
1. 60 minute walk
2. write 1800 words (catchup!)*
3. there is no #3
4. be very, very smug over site redesign
music: Evanescence: Fallen
* Well, I did catch up, but not to yesterday's writing too
Okay, not off to the greatest start this morning, what with...
...what with my HTML lead just now paging me to say that our boss wants to know if either Veronica (the other out-of-office HTMLer) or I would relocate.
How nerve-wracking.
Chanti and I did just take a break to go for a walk. It was only a 10 minute walk, but I give myself 5 minutes of credit for having to wrestle with the dog.
Today was kind of a wash. I got up late after staying up too late arguing politics at my parents' house, and then got overheated while we were shopping and didn't feel good, so I went back to bed and napped for two and a half hours. Then I got up and made a cake, which the dog took a bite of when we went to the store to buy cream cheese to make the frosting with. So I made another cake, and made a 3 layer cake instead of a 2 layer cake, and then, surprisingly, Paul and Robin and Beth came over and helped us eat it, which was pleasant. Less pleasant was how the frosting failed to set up properly, so overall, a very grumpy baking day.
I did, though, go on a 40 minute walk and get 1110 words written. 1100 isn't a lot, but it /is/ my daily quota, so I was satisfied with it.
Tomorrow's schedule, whether I like it or not:
Get up at 6 & exercise, then write.
Shower. Work. Take a walk break during work. 15 minutes.
Lunch.
Work. Take another walk break during work. 15 minutes.
Get done with work. Either write more, or work on a drawing.
Go swim.
Come home. Read a book.
Go to bed.
I write all this down in hopes of making myself actually do it. They (They) say that one of the best ways to achieve goals is to write them down. It makes them more real, or something.
music: Princess Bride soundtrack
ytd wordcount: 102,900
God damned dog took a bite out of the cake I made this afternoon. God damned dog.
Okay. Synopsis finished, first 3 chapters edited for submission, 1900 words of credit for editing, and that's 3793 words for the day. What's even COOLER is that makes over 100K for 2003! That's 1/4th of my way to my yearly writing goal! GO ME!
ytd wordcount: 101,800
*laugh* We just scared the snot out of poor Chantico. We went to check the back roof to see if the wind storm had taken any shingles off, and so since we were at the back of the house, we came in through the back door, which we've never done before. Chanti jumped up with her hackles all raised and said "BOWWORRORRR RROOOOW ROW ROW!" and danced around very unhappily until we reassured her. *laugh*
We went to see The Princess Bride at Bear Tooth. For reasons that are beyond me, they used 15 year old film instead of a DVD, and it was pretty scratchy, and worse, some of the lines got clipped--like, "I'm not left-handed, either!" Which made the entire adult audience groan in dismay. Anyway, it was lots of fun. It was good to see Tori and Jai. And then we went to Best Buy so I could buy the soundtrack on CD, 'cause I didn't have it.
And now to finish the Angles synopsis and move the edits from the hard copy onto the softcopy so I can send them off to this lady. :)
music: The Princess Bride soundtrack
Well, I don't know if I'm going to get more writing than this done today, although I apparently need to finish up the Angles synopsis and ... actually, nevermind, I'm not going to post wordcount right now after all, because I'm clearly going to get more than this done, now that I think about it. Anyway, 1660 words so far today. Another 400, and I'll break 100K for the year! Bwahahah!
Ahem. :)
Poor Shaun woke up all covered in hives today, thanks, we expect, to the mold from wet books at Title Wave. So I gave him an Allegra, which helped, and he went to a clinic and got some more Allegra, and hopefully the mold in the store will settle down fast. Poor Shaun! :(
Off to see The Princess Bride with Jai and Tori and Ted!
Meet my friend SARAH, the PROFESSIONAL WRITER!!!!! Sarah just made a short story sale to Chizine! And I am SOOOOOO PROUD! YAAAAAAY! *beam* *happy, *happy* dances*!
I also just got an email from a woman on the BroadUniverse list who might be interested in looking at Angles for a new (royalty-paying) press. O.O
I'm reading this here book, The Blazing Tree, which has a quote on its cover: "She writes like a dream." I can say with a fair amount of certainty, having gotten a little more than halfway through the book, that what this actually means is, "It'll put you right to sleep."
It's not badly written. There are bits that are absolutely gorgeous. But I just can't get very interested in it.
So I had a dream this morning that I was more or less single-handedly responsible for the last of the Antarctic ice cap melting. We (Ted, my parents, a lot of other people I knew) were in an apparently incredibly well reinforced building with lots of very large windows on Antarctica, and right after the cap finished melting (it was awfully small, in my dream. Like, 12x12), tidal waves started up. The first one brought a bunch of Polynesian people down with it, so we ushered them all into the house where the next waves wouldn't get them, and then we kept having to run out and get more people as they got washed down to Antarctica. After a while the waves stopped and we thought all was well, but then one three times as large as the rest of them came and CRAAASSSSSSSHED over the building, and shook the windows. It was all pretty dramatic.
Then I woke up thinking about this conversation I had with Jai about writing while we were driving down to Kenai, wherein she asked me how writing worked, kind of. And, y'know, there's this whole "voices in my head" explanation, which really isn't accurate, but it's the only way I can explain it. "They're not *voices*," I said to her earnestly. "They're *people*."
And do they go away after you're done with them? Jai wanted to know? And I said, well, kind of. If I start readng, say, URBAN SHAMAN again, Jo kind of wakes up and wants me to tell some more of her stories.
"Ah," Jai says, "so you're schizophrenic."
Well, um, er. Not ... exactly. I don't know. All I know is writers are weird. And I thought I'd share that with you this morning. :)
Sort of low key exercise this morning. I did my situps and pushups and leg lifts, but when I went to do my jumping rope, I tripped over the rope 4 times in the first 10 jumps and got grumpy and quit.
It is still very, *very* windy out. Our thermometer says it's 10 below, and there are 30mph winds. The inside-the-house thermostat has been turned up to 79, and the actual temperature is residing at 69. :/ Although maybe that'll even up now that two of the bedroom doors are open, which they aren't at night. It's warm in the bedrooms.
Oh my gawd. New UK X2 movie posters. Slobber. Drool. Whimper. Oh my gawd.
STARVING.
Hey, the Left Coast Crime Conference is in Monterey next year. Wonder if I could swing going to that. That'd be cool.
There were other things I was going to mention when I started this entry, but that was before lunch and now I've forgotten what I was going to say. :)
Day two of actually getting up and exercising. Yay me! I also figured out why my right index finger knuckle was bruised yesterday. The jumprope has metal um rope attachment to the handle thingies, and when I miss a jump (which I do often) the way I hold the jumprope makes the metal rop attachment to the handle thingies smack into my knuckles. It appears that it only smacks on one side, so I expect that today I'll have bruises on my left index finger knuckle, which is where I got smacked, causing me to realize how I'd gotten bruised yesterday.
I'm too fat to do an on-my-back bicycle with my butt in the air. How appalling. So I'm doing an on my back bicycle without my butt in the air, but ye gods. Did I mention appalling?
I forgot to go to The Full Monty last night. Tonight is a Sisters in Crime meeting at Barnes & Noble that I should go to. The prospect makes me slightly nervous. If there are people out there who are not bothered at all ever by the idea of going into a new situation, I want to bite them. I should go, though, 'cause I expect I'd have fun. Also, there's no Buffy to interfere with it, so I really have no excuse.
Must write today. But first I must shower and eat! *zum*
Jai has a much better writeup of our Saturday road trip than I wrote. :)
Tired and hungry this morning, although I got enough sleep and I just ate. Um. In a meeting now. Got up a little early (a whole half hour, wich means I got up at 7:30 instead of 8 like I've been doing o.O) and exercised. Situps and pushups and leg lifts and stuff like that. And about a minute's worth of jumping rope, after which I'd tripped over the rope enough times that I lost patience. I'll try for thirty seconds longer tomorrow, or something. :) I decided, anyway, that I need to exercise for half an hour every morning before work.
Chanti's sulky and barky because I'm in a meeting. Mumble.
Oh, the other books were ... nevermind, I've forgotten again already. One's the new Steven Barnes book and the other's some pretty standard-looking fantasy fare with a cat and a chick on the cover.
Back in the auld writing saddle. I've gotten about 300 words written on HOUSE OF CARDS, the sequel to HEART OF STONE, and I'm editing ANGLES (don't worry, Silkie, the first line remains unchanged). There's a couple of other things I'm poking at, so over the weekend I've gotten about 600 words written, which isn't a lot, but it's a place to start, anyway.
50K in 31 days: 300 (unfortunately, it's day 9)
ytd wordcount: 98,000
Lil' bookstore accident today; at Fred Meyer, they had signs up in their books section saying 'buy 2, get 1 free' and we found 6 we wanted, but it turned out it was only 1 per customer, so we accidentally bought 5 books and got 1 free instead of buying 2 books and getting 1 free, or buying 4 books and getting 2 free, which was what we were trying for. I said, "But there are two of us!" to the cashier, and she looked apologetic but didn't give us a second book free. Snif.
The books in question were JENNA STARBORN, THE PAPER MAGE, SWORDSWORN or whatever the last Tiger & Del book is, um, the Lawrence Watt-Evans sequel to DRAGON WEATHER, the name of which I can't remember, and two more I can't remember at all right now.
Ted and I went on a walk with Chanti when we came home from shopping. It's quite windy out and Chanti spent a while trying to catch every leaf that blew around. It was cute. :)
Oh, and we went to um. Best Buy. To buy Evanescence, which is a pretty darned good album, overall. A little repetitive but generally pretty good. I like the lead singer's voice.
And Ted finished Heart of Stone and liked it. :)
Now we're going to go drop off the HoS ms at my parents' house and have a piece of cake. Bai! :)
Oh my gosh, so tired suddenly. *laugh* Jai and I drove AAAALLLLLLLLL the way down to Kenai, stopped at her Mom's store to drop off a teapot and teamug that Jai bought as a gift for her, went to Pizza Paradisos, then to Dairy Queen, then came AAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL the way back up to Anchorage. We talked for about six hours straight. It was *wonderful*. Jai showed off her bellydancing costumes, which are keen! And we laughed and laughed and now my throat is sore and my voice is raw, but man, it was really fun. And we made plans to go do stuff this summer, and yeah. It was *fun*!!!
This is the geekiest proposal ever, but awwww how sweet! Via Population: One.
I kind of like this meme, so:
Friday Five:
1. What was the last song you heard?
I don't know, but Captain Crash & the Beauty Queen From Mars (Bon Jovi, Crush), is stuck in my head.
2. What were the last two movies you saw?
Cradle 2 the Grave and um. About Schmidt.
3. What were the last three things you purchased?
Dinner, lunch and ... five dollars of postage.
4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?
Road trip to Kenai for Dairy Queen! Swim, watch Highlander, and finish the book I'm reading.
5. Who are the last five people you talked to?
Ted, Shaun, Shaun's dad, my dad, my mom. Possibly I need to get out more...
Holy cow. DC has just acquired the rights to ElfQuest. Holy cow. I'm astounded! Buh!
Eee! Eee! Anna bleached her hair this time! Eee! Eee! Photo taken in Sept 2002 in Vancouver, offduty. Eee! Eee! *happy dance, happy dance*!
How odd. Comment down there this morning asking if I'd be interested in writing a review for Cradle 2 the Grave for some of the movie websites. Huh. I'll probably do it, of course. :)
This morning's political moment: moveon.org's got a petition they're sending to the UN Security council asking the members to vote against the Iraqi war resolution. They're trying to get 750,000 petitioners to sign and are already past 550,000. So if you're inclined to sign, http://www.moveon.org/emergency/.
Now I have to go see if the puppy's being bad, and find some breakfast. It's beautiful and cold and windy out today.
The puppy was not being bad! And now I have breakfast. And now I think I'll go write a rewview for C2tG. :)
I just took this here Star Trek personality test, which is actually based on the Myers-Briggs test, and which told me:
Myers-Briggs would say that you are an ESFP (Extrovert, Sensor, Feeler, Perceiver). In Star Trek language, you share a basic personality configuration with Kathryn Janeway and Tom Paris.
People like you are warm and social, impulsive, and unpredictable. You have a great zeal for life and are intensely aware of the world around you. You love to play and respond quickly to people who will play with you. You respond well to appeals to common sense and poorly to being judged. Attempts to trap you will make you ready to flee or fight.
You're highly curious and talkative, but also gentle, sensitive and caring. You close down when people fail to provide you with input and you're frustrated with silences. You're most comfortable taking action, particularly in order to help or enjoy the company of others.
Your primary goal in life is freedom to be spontaneous and have fun. Your reward is to enjoy the company of others and know that they enjoy and appreciate you.
Good careers for your type include primary education teacher, starship captain, public relations specialist, tour operator, actor, marine biologist, and starship pilot.
Aside from the shudder at being included in the same category as Janeway, I was deeply amused, since it got me dead to rights. I particularly like You respond well to appeals to common sense and poorly to being judged. *snicker*
So out of the things I intended to accomplish yesterday, I ... watched Buffy. :) Got the bills done this morning, and none of the other items have been much more than vaguely considered. C'est la vie.
Today... I should swim, but I suspect I'll walk instead, because 1. it's a beautiful day, and 2. I haven't quite resigned myself to rearranging my schedule so that I shower in the evenings at the pool instead of showering at home in the morning, and going and soaking my nice clean hair with chlorine seems sort of like a waste of a shower, especially since I showered late this morning. Okay, I'm not making any real sense, but this is my world, so cope.
I need to drink a lot of water. I'm very dehydrated.
Whew. In a fit of something, I sat down and wrote letters to all my Childreach kids today, which is something I should've done a VERY LONG TIME ago, but on this one I'll grant myself better-late-than-never dispensation and move on. Furthermore, Marith, who is extra nifty, decided to sponsor a kid, too, so all around it's been a fine afternoon!
I think my other to-do items for today are go for a walk, finish reading a book, and perhaps write a synopsis for the Skylar book, which I think I might get started on tomorrow. Oh, and watch Buffy, because it's the Anya ep which we missed when it played last fall. Although I donno, might just tape that. And I should balance the checkbook and pay bills. Hrm. That's a longer to-do list than I wanted it to be....
Yay! Heart of Stone made it safely to NYC! Anna will read it as soon as she can. :)
In other news, I think I actually slept too long last night. Can you imagine? I went to sleep exhausted at 10:30pm and woke up at 4:30 and really probably could have gotten up, but c'mon already. So I slept until 7:30 and I'm sorta stiff and sore. Oop.
Um. Well. That's all the news that's fit to print, this morning. Time for breakfast! :)
Fortunately, I /had/ arranged for a ride to the pool, so I swam 2500 yards. I've also done couple of drawings, thanks to Ursula's Art Challenge. Ursula's very cool. I'd like to grow up to be her.
Yet another day of No Writing.
Sleepy me. If I hadn't already arranged for a ride to the pool, I wouldn't go swimming tonight, which is just exactly why I should arrange for a ride to the pool hours before I plan to go. *yawn*
Goals: year to date. Parenthetical statements indicate # achieved in February.
Words written
anticipated: 64,900
actual: 97,400 (62,400)
Miles biked
anticipated: 0
actual: 11.25 (2)
Miles swum
anticipated: 20
actual: 14 (8.5)
Drawings drawn
anticipated: 20
actual: 2 (0)
Books read
anticipated: 20
actual: 15 (5)
Pounds lost
anticipated: 5
actual: +2
Ted and I went to a _movie_ last night. And I didn't _write_. How _amazing_! :)
We went to see Cradle 2 the Grave, which was pretty good up to the pit fight which became gratuitously violent, and after that there were at least a couple more too-gross fight scenes (I'm sorry. In no way is it necessary to show people's arms breaking and bending horribly wrong ways, or to add in the sounds of bones breaking. I like action flicks, and I like well-choreographed fight scenes, but that's just gratuitous and gross.). The plot more or less held together, although one of the basic premises of the story was sort of 'eh, well, ok, if you say so', one of the final fight scenes ended cornily, and really, if you had all those arms dealers in one place at once, wouldn't it occur to you that you'd be doing the world a favor by killing them all?
OTOH, Jet Li kicked a lot of ass, with one hand in his pocket, and that was very cool. And DMX actually turned out to be a reasonably decent actor, or at least in this particular movie, he was. So that's good.
Today, I did the happy dance of having sent HoS off to Tor, and bought some new contacts, and finished up taking care of Sarah's birthday present, aaaaand hung out with my folks, and Ted the Plot Machine Man gave my Mom a plot for the mystery novel she's had a title for for 20 years, so now she has to write it (Ted's thinking of starting a little business: for $20 pre-paid, he'll give you a brief plot concept/story boost based off your 1. title 2. character 3. story concept 4. world concept or 5. all of the above), and bought a Diane Duane book, aaaaand that's about it. I'm going to catch up on sf tv watching tonight, and possibly READ A BOOK. Take *that*, world!