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Ye gods. Spidey got a new scanner. Look what he scanned as a test and sent:

I bought 18 X2 tickets but was one-upped by the cashier next to mine who said she'd sold 55 at once. Snif. We checked, though: it wasn't for the same show. Whew. :)

Biked 13 miles.

Wrote 330 words.

Ate a free ice cream cone.

Miles to Rivendell:
Heather: 46.5 (almost to fifty! c'mon, Heather!)
Catie: 85.5
Dave: 129.5

50K in 30 days: 1640
ytd wordcount: 124,630

Evolution of a stripe:

Stage one: pin everything but the bleachy bits back unattractively; Stage two: Walrus tusks:

Stage three: wet head! and Stage four: Stripe!

Happy geek. :)

Oh yeah, and for my own personal further use: I used L'oreal Feria Extra Bleach Blonde for this.

Man. I *utterly* didn't hear my alarm this morning. Ted said it went off and that I turned it off, but man.

Going to re-do my bangs today. And, um. That's all I know.

Gosh. I'm heretic! :)

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

But I'm a heretic who biked 13 miles tonight, making my miles to Rivendell: 82.25.

Buffy only sucked some, this week. That's better than the last new episode.

Ok, done with sweating, going to bed.

Starving. Plus full of bad dreams about Zilli going missing again. And I was lazy or lame or something this morning and didn't get up for a walk and it's beautiful and I'm wanting a do-over again. And lots of household grumpiness over the state of car insurance. And Sarah's S&3s to Tor were rejected, so all in all a dismal morning.

A flaw in the design of the new bike is that I seem to slip forward at the hips, and pushing myself back upright has put a bruise on my spine from where the strap/bar intersects. I'm going to straighten the seat up a little more tonight and see if that helps.

The good news, though, is I got the hang of hills, at least, and managed every hill on the trail yesterday, including the giant half mile hill at Kincaid Park. That involved a lot of me thinking, "Push, push, push, push," and gasping for air, but I did it.

I'm going to get some food, which will at least alleviate the starving grumpies.

You know that 19.5 mile bike ride I did yesterday? I just did it again today, only this time with the odometer. Turns out it's actually a hair under 23 miles, not merely 19.5. I biked it in less than 2 hours today, too. I am VERY pleased!

Fuck. I was pleased. Lucy and Chantico just destroyed my Sentinal series Rogue and Gambit. There went three hundred and fifty dollars. Fuck.

Bbblbt. Trying to refinance the Jeep, because it's got an appalling interest rate thanks to our piss-poor credit last year, but we've had a year of on-time payments and have cleaned up the rest of the stuff haunting us, at least so far as we can determine, and so we thought we'd see if we could get a lower interest rate loan. Anyway, so I called the credit union that's holding our loan and failed to be able to talk to someone who can help me, which is v. annoying. I left a message, but still. V. annoying.

Hm. Speaking of calling people I should call the candy people and tell them which samples we liked.

Okay, that's done and it was kinda fun. Hee hee hee.

Ok, now for car insurance. Ah, the joy of money. ("Money! I hate, loathe and despise money!" "You also spend it." Name that movie.)

Not dead! Not even sore after doing a 19.5 mile bike ride yesterday, either, in fact. Go me. :) But also not much to report, except Heather's miles to Rivendell, which now stand at 43.7. Almost to 50 miles! Yay Heather!

Well! What a day I had today!

I got up and did some laundry and we went shopping and I called the bike shop to ask if they rented recumbent bikes and they said no and we went to lunch and then we thought we'd go by the bike shop to look at the recumbents anyway and so we did and I said to the nice woman whose name is I think Vicki that I was interested in a recumbent bike and I probably wanted a compact-long wheel base and that was about all I knew.

So she dragged out a low-end recumbent bike (low-end in price) and I pedaled it around the parking lot a little and I went 'woo. this could be cool' and then I said to her, "Well, the thing that I'd really like to do is arrange to rent this for a day or something, because it's an entirely different kind of bicycle and I don't want to buy one without having gone on a decent ride." She said, "I'll have to talk to my manager."

A few minutes later the manager came out and basically said, "Okay!" He said usual rentals were $20 but since this was an expensive bike (he usually rents low-end mountain bikes) he was going to charge me $30 for a day, which I thought was fine. And a $200 deposit which didn't get run or anything, just a credit card impression. And if I decided to buy the bike, then the $30 would count towards the purchase. And he agreed that to really get a feel for those bikes, you had to take it out on a longer ride.

I filled out the rental paperwork and the manager said he'd never had anybody ask to rent a recumbent before, and a couple of other people who worked there said things like, "Wow, that's a first, and I've been here three years!" Which I just think is quite strange, because recumbents are very different from regular bikes, so why /wouldn't/ you ask to test-ride it if you were interested? Doing figure-8s in the parking lot isn't at all like a real bike ride. Pretty weird.

So I rented the bike and brought it home and went on a 19.5 mile bike ride -- the entire coastal trail, plus the .75 miles to the trail and home. And I coulda gone another 15 miles. It was AWESOME! Very smooth ride, and neither my wrists nor my shoulder nor my back nor my butt hurt! It's a very *different* ride--Ted says it's more like a motorcycle than a bike, 'cause you really *lean* into turns--and it has a dreadful turn radius (but it stops on a dime) and boy, let me tell you, if you lose momentum going up a hill, you're screwed. I had to walk up sections of all the big hills, but I'm sure I'll figure out the mechanics of it. It was pretty funny, as it was. Wobbling all over trying to maintain momentum and still be able to push up the hill and not fall over. *giggle* But ooooh, it was *fun*. I hit the 5 mile mark and I was like, "Wow, that was a fast five miles!" and by the time I got up to Kincaid Park I was going, "The *only* way to fly!"

So when I got home we went and bought the bike. :) It's an EZ-1 Lite, or something like that, with a steel frame, so it's pretty heavy, and it cost $650 + another $50 for the odometer and the toeclips I had put on it. And that's a cheap bike, for a recumbent. They had an extremely spiffy Cannondale there that cost two grand. o.O But I'm very pleased with my new bike! Hee hee hee!

The manager said that he'd rented out recumbents for next weekend to two more people who'd overheard me asking and who wanted to give them a try. So, hah! I have started a trend!

Ted's just come back from a trial run on it, himself, and HE really likes the bike, too! The seat slides back very easily, so it'll be easy for both of us to use it. I usually go biking right after work, and he won't really have time until after his martial arts classes to bike, so sharing it shouldn't be a problem at all, and if he uses it enough, we'll get him one of his own!

Hm. I seem to have gotten some sunburn. Which was very foolish, because I /bought/ sunblock today. I just forgot to put it on before I went on my ride. Oop. :)

Miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 72.25
Heather: 41.7
Dave: 119.5 (go DAVE!)
Ted: 6.25

Tired! Got up this morning and cleaned my desk, which very much needed it, then cleaned the desk that I'd piled all the junk I took off my desk on, and then Jai came over and we went for a walk (walking with someone else is a lot more fun than walking alone!) and then we came back and Ted made us French toast and I started some laundry, and then Dad came over and we scanned about fifty old Murphy family photos (some of them dating back nearly a century) and now I want to get out of the house before I go insane from sitting at the computer for two or three hours on such a beautiful day.

miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 63.5
Jai: 48.1

Jai called up around 5 this evening and asked if I wanted to go for a walk, despite us having walking plans for tomorrow morning, because it is beeeeooooooooteeful out, and so I said sure! So she came over and we went for a 4 mile walk, which didn't /technically/ go faster than usual (although it may have by as much as about 6 or 7 minutes, judging from the clock I looked at on the way out and when we came back in), but it /seemed/ much faster than usual. V. enjoyable. I now have less than 400 miles to go, to reach Rivendell! 398.5 miles to go!

Tomorrow, will arrive at Farmer Maggoty's, and steal some carrots! Or not, because am not all that fond of carrots. Have not seen Sean As Samwise Gamgee on trail, either. Suspect must pick up pace. If lucky, will at least catch him at Rivendell itself. Perhaps should speak with hegemony about detaining him once he arrives....

Miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 59.5
Jai: 44.1
Heather: 37
Dave: 95.5

Amusing name fu:

Not a lot to report this morning. I didn't get up early to walk, which is a pity, because it seems to be beautiful out, but it's too late for a do-over, so I'll just have to go biking and or walking tonight.

Other people, however, have walked, run, biked and generally moved on towards Rivendell:

Dave: 91.5
Shoka: 39.6

Productive evening! I biked 12 miles and saw a flock of about 130 swans out on the mud flats, digging for food. It was *amazing*. There were just dozens upon *dozens* of them. I stopped and got off my bike and gaped at them. It was really neat. *beam*

And then I came home and I WROTE. FINALLY. 1300 words to finish ch. 7. 15K for the story so far, and I anticipate about 44K more to finish the book. I intend to finish by May 24. Dot iz zer plan.

50K in 30 days: 1309
ytd wordcount: 124,300
miles to Rivendell: 55.5

Ooh! Oooh! I get to keep track of Sarah's miles, too.

Sarah's miles to Rivendell: 12

ZILLI HAS BEEN FOUND!!!

I went around this morning giving out OYL business cards (because they were the only kind I had that had our home number on them) to everybody in the neighborhood who was home, and just a little while ago someone called and said they thought they'd found my cat hiding under their tree. And I went over and crawled under the tree and indeed there was my cat, who was very scared and wouldn't come to me, so I went to get some tuna, and Zilli apparently ran after me (as Silkie said: No, I'm not coming to you, nope, I'm staying here...wait! Where are you going? Don't leave me!) and so when I came back with the tuna I had to find him again. He'd run into somebody else's back yard, and then he ran under their RV, so I had to kind of climb under it but after a couple of minutes he came close enough to lick my fingers and then I scooped him up and he's OKAY and he's SAFE and I'm so relieved I could cry. I didn't want to lose Zilli. His little kitty feets are all dirty and he's scared but he's okay. I'm so *awfully* glad I handed out those cards. WAH.

Zilli is missing. :(

Got up at 6am and went for a walk! So did Ted! So did Chantico! Yay for us! So there are *lots* of miles to Rivendell to report this morning!

But nothing else at all. :)

Miles to Rivendell:
Ted: 5
Catie: 52.5
Heather: 34
Dave: 86.5 (showoff)
Jai: 40.1

FINALLY. Some WRITING got done. I did the timeline for FOOL'S GOLD and have hit 11 major plot points/significant moments, which I think will be 2-3 chapters each, so I think I've got myself a book. Now all I have to do is write it. No prollem! :)

Biked 15 miles this evening. It was a /gorgeous/ night and a great ride. Very content with that. And that's 3.8 miles towards my walk to Rivendell, too, which is nice. Oh, and Ted went rollerblading with his new rollerblades! Yay Ted!

Got v. nice feedback from Ellen on my mermaid drawing. She likes the foreshortening, which I am VERY VERY GRATEFUL FOR, because I spent literally hours and probably twenty attempts at drawing that damned hand before I finally got it right. Still lots of work to do on it, but she approves of the general direction. :)

Bed now. Tired Kit.

Miles to Rivendell:
Jai: 36.4
Ted: 2
Catie: 49.5

Let's see. I'm working on the rough draft of a mermaid drawing for Ellen's mermaid coloring book, which hopefully she'll like. Um. Also: decided not to do the Lung Association bike ride would be the better part of valor, because my back is still not 100% and I would rather be able to ride 10 miles a day all summer than 120 miles in 2 days and not be able to do ANYTHING for the rest of the summer. :/

Jai was forced to cancel on our walk this afternoon, so, speaking of 10 miles a day, I'm going biking, because it's beautiful beautiful beautiful out. And... that's about it. I've actually had work to do all week, which is rather disconcerting. And I *still* haven't written a damned thing. Gnrgh. Must Get Act Together.

But first, biking! :)

I have apparently lost a whole pound since the 15th (when, although I didn't report it, I did weigh myself, and hadn't lost any weight). A pound isn't very much, but I'm grasping at straws here, so bear with me. :)

Man. I tell you. I gotta find a way to release the tension in my shoulders. I just got back from a 2.5 mile walk, and it basically hurts to look down, because my shoulders and neck and upper back are so damned tight. I'm seriously considering starting going to a massage therapist or something. This is insane.

Dave (Heather's husband) has volunteered to run to Rivendell and back again, if we think that would make us feel better. We think it will. :) Go Dave! :)

Miles to Rivendell:
Heather: 32
Catie: 45.75

Nothing much to report this morning, except I did bring Mom the books I was going to, thanks everybody who reminded me. You can stop now. :)

And people's miles to Rivendell:

Heather: 29
Jai: 32.7
Shoka: 32.1

Anybody else want me to keep track? :)

Shoos! I got shoos!

They are not nifty girl-looking New Balance shoes, though. The one pair of New Balance walking shoes that they had that came in wides fit *beautifully* around the very boxy front of my foot, and then had a perfectly nasty sharp curved bit that hit the inside of my foot just behind the arch. I can't imagine that tha...

Uh. Well. I was about to say I couldn't imagine that the nasty sharp curved bit wouldn't poke *everybody* in the foot quite horribly, and I didn't know why they made them that way, because who would buy them?

Except I have incredibly overdeveloped muscles just behind the arch on my feet from years of dancing. They're miniscule compared to what they /used/ to be, but they're still incredibly overdeveloped compared to most people's feet. The first time Ted /noticed/ this (after several years of marriage) he said, "AAAH! I married a mutant!" (or words to that effect) and spent a while staring from my feet to his feet in abject horror. So, in fact, probably the New Balance shoes *would* fit other people just fine. Hnf!

Anyway, I ended up with some sort of orange and black and tan men's walking shoes which Ted and Shaun think are quite nifty and which I think are rather ugly, but very utilitarian. Mom thought they were pretty ugly (but very utilitarian) too, so clearly they're well-designed for the gender for which they're intended and not so well designed for the gender which purchased them this evening. However, they *fit*, and I think they'll be good walking shoes, and I kept the receipt in case they turn out to be horrible.

Shoos!

Remind me to bring some books over to Mom when I go to get my keys.

Weekend!

We went up to Fairbanks to visit Ted's parents, and to say g'bye to his brother, who is about to transfer overseas for his job, which is for um. The military PX but I forget what it's called. Anyway, he's a manager sort and he put in for an overseas job and now he's going! So we thought we'd go see him before he left. :)

It was a very very quiet weekend. I watched a couple of movies (Die Hard, Ocean's 11) and read 5 books. So that was very nice. :) And we had a very yummy Easter dinner, and I ate way too many M&Ms.

Heather's husband Dave is also walking to Rivendell with us. Except Dave's a runner, so, as Heather said, "He was that blue-and-white streak we saw go by us!" So I'll be keeping track of his miles too. I think maybe we should make Dave run to Mordor. The rest of us will just go to Rivendell. o.o Anyway, he started counting miles as of the Sunday before Heather did, which was... Heather started the 9th, so Dave started the 6th.

Ted, who is Better Than Me, got up at 5:40 to exercise this morning. I didn't manage to get up until 6:30. I did, though, do a 2.5 mile walk, and I'm, er, well, sort of still working on doing my exercises, which is not the *best* way to do them, but at least I'm doing them. :)

Today, 50K in 30 days starts.

Dave's miles to Rivendell: 78.5
Catie's miles to Rivendell: 43.25
Heather's miles to Rivendell: 27

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Forget the flying cars: *this* is the future! Link via Trip.

Dear Amazon:

I am returning this product. Reason: cat is defective. Lacks tail.

V. dehydrated this morning. Walked 5 miles last night, more than expected; thought was going on 4.5ish mile walk. Realized as hit final .5 mile marker on trail that 4 miles from, er, well, not starting point, but from point at which I knew how many miles were involved, was only fractionally beyond said .5 mile marker, and, well, still had .5 miles to go. Plus had walked .5ish miles before arriving at point at which I knew how many miles it was between X and Y.

Furthermore, then was callously abandoned by husband, who threw Jeep into reverse and drove away as I approached vehicle. V. upsetting. So tromped after him unhappily, and made up any distance which might have been lacking in 5 mile walk.

(Husband, incidentally, was not intending callous abandonment, but did not know where trailhead was, & remembered map which would indicate location to him. Unfortunately remembered this when I was 25 feet away from Jeep & drove off w/o seeing me.)

Feet hurt v. much now, although not as much as last night. Might not have been so bad if last half mile+ had not been all up stupid hill.

Kept eyes peeled for Ringwraiths, Elves. Saw neither, despite nasty fibbing milepost thing which claimed elves would be at mile 37. Did see moose. Perhaps elves disguised as moose?

Feet hurt. Thirsty. Cranky. Hungry.

Suppose could take aspirin, drink water, eat. Would alleviate most of aforementioned problems...

miles to Rivendell: 40.75

Heather's miles to Rivendell: 17.5 (so! close!)

I didn't walk last night. Instead, we went to see Bulletproof Monk, which was great fun. I love Chow Yun Fat. He's just so cool.

We did have a very nice dinner Saturday night. Ted made chicken parmesan and Mom came over and that was nice. So the weekend wasn't a total loss. I was just grumpy a lot.

I just called the Alaska Student Loan people and found out that 1. my, and therefore presumably Ted's, Alaska Student Loans have been consolidated under their new consolidation program and the new payment schedule (which actually I imagine won't change at all) and the new payment amounts will be set sometime in the next couple days, so that's very cool, and 2. that the state is planning on going around buying up federal loans and consolidating them this fall, too, so p'raps we can get in under that, too. That would be very VERY cool.

It's not snowing anymore, at least. I think I'll ask Ted to drop me off at Woronzof Point and I'll go for a longer walk tonight. It's more fun to walk in just one direction than to have to turn around and come back, I think.

More about Burger Stop. When we saw the two lovelies with the grunt, I also ordered a sandwich I didn't like very much. The cook, who is presumably the Tommy of "Tommy's Burger Stop & Po-Boy Shoppe", which is the name of the place, peeked out at me once to make sure our meals were okay (Ted was really enjoying his, at least), and I gave him (Tommy) a thumbs-up. Ted wanted to know if the cook was flirting with me again (the first time we went in, I was wearing my jeans jacket, which has several Rogue pins on it, and Tommy looked at it and says, not quite certainly, "Phoenix?" and I said, "Rogue!" and he went 'oh, of course' and then the second time we came in he said something else to me) and I said yeah, he was, and Ted (who used to be a short-order cook) said, "You gotta watch out for those cook-types." Hee hee. Anyway, after a while Tommy came out to actually check to see if the food was okay (which made Ted say, "That's a cook after my own heart,") and we said yes of course it was, very good, but then I threw the other half of my sandwich out, because I /didn't/ like it all that much, and I was trying to be very sneaky about throwing it out, because he's /such/ a nice guy I didn't want to be obvious about tossing the food he made me and on our way out Ted said, "He would've made you a new sandwich, you know, if you'd said you didn't like it." And I said, "I know, that's why I didn't want him to know I didn't like it. It wasn't so bad that..." And Ted said, "That you wanted to hurt his feelings." Which was exactly right. :)

I kinda want to go in there with my camera and see if I can get some pictures of him back there cooking, and do a drawing. The cafe is full of eclectic artwork, and their first anniversary is this Sunday, and I thought it might be a kind of nifty anniversary thing to drop off. Not that I could get it done by Sunday, but it seems like it'd be a fun little thing to do.

I've been a little light on the entries lately. I've been grumpy.

Some random observations: we went to dinner the other night at Burger Stop, and saw a stunning woman with a stunning 3 or 4 year old daughter, whom we both admired. Then the utterly less than stunning Army mechanic who was with these two lookers came in, which left us, well, stunned. I mean, she was way outta his league. Just goes to show ya, I guess.

I had a really pretty piss-poor weekend. I tried watching the director's cut of Kate & Leopold, which let me not recommend to you, because it makes Meg Ryan, whom I already wish would get her goddamned bangs out of her eyes and stop bugging her eyes out, /completely/ unsympathetic, and then even more infuriatingly, the fucking DVD was scratched and I couldn't even *watch* the fucking thing. I ended up going to bed at like 9pm because everybody else was in the computer room and I could not *stand* the idea of spending another goddamned minute in there. It was *not* a good night.

I was equally pissy Saturday and I don't even remember why. More stupid things. It just hasn't been a great week.

Have seen no elves on road to Rivendell. Did see fat man on bicycle who looked suspiciously like S. Claus. Have seen several old men (in their 70s) pedalling coastal trail, looking like they were having fun. Snowing & raining today. Walking this afternoon v. likely to suck.

Heather's miles to Rivendell: 15.5

Very very very .not. happy with Buffy.

miles to Rivendell: 35.75

The best line about the French *ever*, via Garrett:

"It's not true that the French are ungrateful for what the Americans did in WW2. In fact they're so inspired by the American example that they plan to wait two years until they personally are attacked, then join the coalition and pretend the war against Saddam was all their idea."

In other news, I didn't do any of the things yesterday that I was going to do, so they're still all on my list of Thinks To Do today.

Ok, so I've gotten pretty much nothing done today. Bah.

miles to Rivendell: 33.25

Any second now I'm going to get it together and ... be together.

Thinks to do today:

1. clean stinky kitty litter
2. write frelling FG timeline
3. write 1700 words
4. go biking
5. do exercises
6. dig out MD synopsis to retype it *mutter*
7. clean desk

Heather's miles to Rivendell: 12.5

It's raining. I sulk. *sulk sulk sulk*

Ted and I had a busy morning! We went shopping and bought, er. Eggs, oatmeal and some yeast. And we went several places trying to find knee and wrist guards for Ted, for he purchased a pair of rollerblades yesterday, but nobody up here carries them in XL, and Ted is a big guy. So now he's looking online for them.

We stopped at REI, and while they had no rollerblade gear, they did have a nice salesman named Ben who told me some useful things about bicycles and gave me a bike catalog to take home and look at, so I'm pleased with Ben. :)

We wandered through Bailey's, which is one of the furniture stores up here, but we didn't find any living room furniture which spoke to us.

I have not done one /lick/ of writing. I did walk 2.5 miles, though. That's something. Not something like writing, but something.

miles to Rivendell: 31

Thick fingers this morning. Exercise and breakfast accomplished, if nothing else. I walked 4 miles this morning (go me!) and my feet didn't hurt at all! That's new and exciting for me!

There were many, /many/ people out this morning. There's a Team in Training for a lukemia fundraiser and there were about twelve million of them out, and then a herd of bikers went by me, and there were some random runners, and a couple of walkers like myself. They were all skinnier than I am. This is the part I really hate about exercising, is the bit where you've been doing it for, y'know, several days _in a row_, and yet somehow you haven't lost forty pounds. Intellectually I realize it takes longer than four days, but emotionally it's very down-getting.

yesterday, I biked 14 miles. It was a lovely day for a bike ride, and oh! I saw a BEAR! He was a scaredy-bear, and ran off into the woods when I appeared (there was another biker yelling and waving his arms about in an attempt to get the bear off the trail, but it wasn't until there were two of us that he, the bear, not the biker, turned heel and ran). He (again, the bear, not the biker) looked all fat and sleek with very shiny black fur. I don't think it was a hard winter for the bears. :)

This morning I saw a moose, although that was so practically out my front door I'm not sure it counts as wildlife viewing on my walk, and then there was a bald eagle sitting at the top of a tree overlooking the bluff, looking regal. When I turned around and came back, there was a magpie sitting not on the tree next to the eagle's, but the next one over from /that/, in just the same position, as if to say: I'm with *him*. Hee hee hee.

Ted wants to go get rollerblades today. I want to go look at road/touring/whatever bikes. I'm also going to work on the timeline for FOOL'S GOLD and start a 50K in 30 days tomorrow. I was going to start Thursday, but, um, I didn't. I did get 500 words written yesterday, though. That's something, at least. :)

All right. I'm going to go get in the shower and, um. Well. Shower. And then work on writing stuff. And possibly take some aspirin, as I'm all headachy.

miles to Rivendell: 28.5
ytd wordcount: 123,000

Doesn't this photo of Orlando Bloom just kind of make you want to pin him down and lick him?

I went on a little 1.5 mile walk tonight, and I *ran*. Several steps in a *row*. Three *times*.

Now I'm sort of waiting to see if my back goes out. I've done my exercises and so far I'm okay, but man, talk about paranoid. We'll see, I guess.

miles to Rivendell: 21

Biked 12 miles yesterday. Today I'm going to go for an actual walk instead of biking, because I have Bike Butt From Heck. Ow. Plus my quads hurt.

My grandma's in the hospital, possibly with pneumonia. :(

miles to Rivendell: 19.5 (slept v. well in green hill country at 18 miles, the first milestone!)
Heather's miles to Rivendell: 5.5

Dad's on his way down to Seattle to see my grandmother, who has had a cold for the last week and who has developed a bit of a rattle in her chest. If people wanted to sort of send good thoughts her way, that'd be nice.

My Mom's got this very cool oval-shaped peace pendant necklace. I coveted it when I was a teenager. Actually, I still covet it. Apparently my sister also coveted it. Mom's been wearing it lately, and is therefore smug that she didn't give it to either of us.

Anyway, it seemed like a pretty good idea, wearing a peace symbol, so I dug mine, which is merely round and not nearly so cool, out of its resting place and found a chain for it, and put it on. All the cool kids are doing it.

Man, I slept for like nine thousand hours. Very, /very/ tired me. Perhaps eventually I'll stop being so fat and thus stop being so tired. Anyway, one might guess this morning wasn't such a bright and early perky sort of morning as yesterday. I did wake up around 6:30 again, but I lacked the enthusiasm to get out of bed. :)

My friend Heather who hasn't got a blog is starting the Walk to Rivendell, too, and I'm going to keep track of her miles for her. Yay Heather! Hee hee hee.

Ok, the only problem with this haircut is that to admire its full glory, it sort of has to hang in my face and tickle my nose. There will not be a lot of admiring its full glory, because, well, that's really annoying. :)

Hm. Well, what with it being only 8:15 in the morning and me having only gotten up 45 minutes ago, there's nothing much else to say right now.

Heather's miles to Rivendell: 3

9.25 mile bike ride tonight, and I've made an Executive Decision: this weekend, I'm going to go to a bike shop and rent another bike, maybe a recumbant, to test out. A 9 mile bike ride left me with numb fingers and a sore spot under my right shoulderblade and a sort of distressingly thick spot in my lower back (it doesn't hurt, it just feels ... thick) and I've decided I'm not going to spend a whole summer biking like that. I don't know if I'll ultimately rebuild the mountain bike I've got into a touring bike or if I'll buy a touring bike or what, but I'm going to spend a few weekends testing out other types of bikes and see what I like. I don't know if I want to sacrifice my mountain bike to a hybrid or not, but, well. I donno. I don't do /that/ much trail biking. I'll have to think about it. But I'm going to start testing out other bikes, because bah. This is no good!

I decided that every 4 miles of biking equals 1 mile of walking, so:

miles to Rivendell: 16.5

Not yet 9am and I've already showered, made bread, done 90 crunches, had breakfast, and been made to laugh very very much by Jai's journal. A good start to the day!

miles walked to Rivendell: 13.5

Have fallen v. far behind Jai. Am determined to catch up, preferably by thinking, 'WALK REAL SLOW, JAI' with such intensity that her footsteps tread more slowly until she is walking as if through treacle. If this plan does not work, will be forced to walk faster/longer myself. Seems like wretched idea. Am hoping intense thought scenario will work.

Met half-blind but friendly (is there any other kind?) golden retriever on trail today. Should try to remember camera to take pictures of mountains/inlet on daily or semi-daily basis. Of course, would help if /walked/ on daily or semi-daily basis. O Well.

Oh oh oh, Chantico did a funny thing last night! She was being a pain in the ass and bouncing around and getting in everybody's face while we were sitting around talking after dinner, so I said to her, "Where's your ball? If you get me your ball, I'll put peanutbutter in it."

And she looked at me for a moment, and then she turned around and picked up her /bone/, which I /also/ put peanutbutter on, and gave /it/ to me! Funny, clever puppy! hee hee hee!

Also, I got my hair cut!

Dinner turned out very well. The cake was very yummy. It was nice to see Mom and Dad. And I'm very tired. G'night!

Bah. My day has been all thrown off by daylight savings. I didn't change my clock last night, so I got out of bed at 8:30, which felt a little late anyway, but once I got showered and all I realized it was now /ten/, not nine, and now everything feels all cramped and crowded. Grumble. I'm making corn beef & cabbage for dinner (we were going to make it at St. Patrick's Day, but Mom made it then, so I'm making it now!) and this cake for dessert, and I was going to do this all in this orderly one at a time fashion, but instead I'm doing everything at once, which isn't REALLY a problem, but it doesn't really leave time for writing or biking or walking or any of the other -ing things I wanted to do, although we did at least get the shopping done and I have an entire box of heavy-weight paper for submissions, now, and so I'm working on getting MD put together to send to the Writer's Weekend contest, so that's something, anyway.

West High's Les Miserables production was /wonderful/! Dad and I had a magnificent time! We agreed that the director had them over-singing, but /wow/, she just got everything they /had/ out of them. It was /wonderful/. We both thought that the boy who played the Bishop should have been cast as someone else, because he had a really magnificent voice, but we disagreed on who he should be cast as: I thought he should've been cast as Javert, and Dad thought he should've been cast as Jean Valjean.

We both also thought they probably needed more vocal warmups before the show, because they got a lot stronger, vocally, as the show progressed, and we thought it was less nerves than it was a lack of proper warm-up.

Marius was just wonderful--I was especially nervous about him, 'cause he's got my favorite song in Les Miz (Empty Chairs at Empty Tables), so I didn't want him to blow it, but pretty much the first time he opened his mouth to sing I was pretty sure he'd nail it, and he basically did. Lovely tenor voice. And Jean Valjean just did *wonderfully* with 'Bring Him Home'. Very, *very* good. And Eponine had a great voice, although she overacted an awful lot, completely upstaging Cosette and Marius in their first song together (I'm /sure/ she was directed that way), and Cosette was, well, she was quite the soprano. Actually, she was really very good. It's just that sopranos are practically always incomprehensible in stage shows, even if you know the music, and I /do/ know the music. She had a lovely voice. I just couldn't understand half of what she sang. :)

The Innkeeper and his Wife were grand, especially the wife, who just reaaallllly could deliver a line. They were lots of fun, just like they're supposed to be. And the boy who leads the revolution whose name I forget was vocally off a lot, but when he was on he was very good (same with Javert, I thought), and he did a splendid job. It was just a really great show! I'm so glad we went! I wish they were playing another weekend, because I'd go again!

All right. I thought I might get more writing done today, but I'm not going to, so I'll put down the day's total at 2200 words and call it good.

Ted and I went and spent some of his overtime money today. We bought a DVD/VCR combo because our VCR is failing and, er, we thought it would be nifty. O.O And Ted got a new computer game. Then we went and looked at guitars, but I have to give my guitar teacher a call and see if the kind they have in right now is okay to buy instead of the Yamaha he suggested originally.

We also dropped by my parents' house to lend my Mom some books. Aaand tonight I'm going to go see West High's production of Les Miz with my Dad.

ytd wordcount: 122,450

Thank God for test readers. *laugh* I've been struggling with FOOL'S GOLD and the pacing of it--I want the story to take place over a year, and I've never written a book that takes place over that long a period of time, so I've been bogging down in the wrong sorts of details. And consequently getting really bored and tired with it, which is not a good sign.

_But_. I just spent a few minutes talking with Silkie, who is one of the people who test reads (and makes mournful pathetic eyes every day for a new chapter, which is really actually very encouraging) and she not only confirmed the pacing problem but gave me a suggestion for a book to re-read to look at the pacing, because it too takes place over a year (THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER) and now I'm going to write out a timeline of what's /really/ important and what months those things happen in, and work from /that/ level instead of on this day to day level I'm getting stuck in.

She's also pointed out insufficient conflict between some of the characteres, which although I was aware of it, obviously needs to be re-written. So I'll probably go back before I go on, but man. Test readers help a lot. O.O

All I have to say today is 1. I hate Ted's horrible nasty work, and 2. I keep hoping *today* will be the day that there's email from Anna saying she wants to buy my book, but it keeps not being that day. Siiigh.

Goodness. I googled for 'cut turquoise -jewlery' and came up with this. And then if you really needed to know, the next photo answered the question of religion. Work safe. More or less.

Goodness. o.o

Oops. I had a little ebay accident. :) I went to leave feedback for the guy I bought the TMNT soundtrack (on CD! yay!) from, and then since I was there anyway, I checked to see if there was a Gambit mini bust available, and there was, with a $55 buy-it-now, which was only $5 more than the original selling price, so, er. Little ebay accident. There goes my allowance for the week. Oop. :)

music: TMNT soundtrack (eheheheh! :))

Ooh! It's supposed to be almost 40 today! I think I shall fling myself at my husband's mercy and get him to bring me over to the bike shop at lunch so I can get a new ear-covering headband thing and maybe another pair of fingered biking gloves so I can GO BIKING TONIGHT! (I can't find my headband or gloves, and with having moved, there's just no way to figure out where they might be in the garage, so. Rampant consumerism.)

Ow. Hiccups.

A small goodness is that we got our applications to get our Alaska student loans refinanced put in the mail yesterday (yesterday being the first day it was possible to get the applications), so hopefully we'll get that and we'll be able to nail a BIG FAT INTEREST RATE DROP (from up to 9% down to 5.8%) and that'll do wonders for our finances. That'd rock.

A much larger goodness is that Ted's work is no longer strangling him to death, and he's been able to come home early the last couple of days and he's catching up on his sleep and starting to feel more human. Yay!

And wretched Iago has given me an idea for another paranormal romance book/series. Nf! :)

Ahahahaha. I have learned how to make MTInclude do my evil bidding. More or less. The real trick will be seeing if I can trick it into playing the part of an actual template system. I may be able to. I also may not, but, well, we'll see. o.o

Goals: year to date. Parenthetical statements indicate # achieved in March.

Words written
anticipated: 99,000
achieved: 120,250 (22,850)

Miles biked
anticipated: 0
achieved: 11.25

Miles swum
anticipated: 30
achieved: 17.8 (3.8)

Drawings drawn
anticipated: 30
achieved: 4 (2)

Books read
anticipated: 30
achieved: 25 (10)

Pounds lost
anticipated: 7.5
achieved: +5 (+3)

Well. Let's take a look at our goals achieved at a quarterly level.

Obviously I kick ass in the writing department, am not too much of an embarrassment in the reading department, and have been doing all right, if not brilliantly, in the swimming department. Biking doesn't really gear up until a little later this month, when it /warms/ up (it's 16 right now. I am just not noble enough to go biking in 16 degree weather.), so that's fine.

Drawing... well, I'd like to be doing better. I ought to set aside two hours a week just to work on drawings. That'd help.

But it's clearly the weight loss department where I'm going to need to get medieval on my own ass. I've been noticing lately a similar effect from sugar on my body as from caffiene or alcohol--if I eat sugary stuff late in the evening, when I go to bed my heartrate is annoyingly accelarated, which makes sleeping hard. So:

Rule #1: no sugar after 6pm.
Rule #2 (which I've made before but am going to actually stick to now o.o): no sugar-sweets (cookies, candy, whatever) before having 'natural' sweets (apples, applesauce, peaches). I have to earn sugar-sweets.
Rule #3: Exercise. Actually, I really haven't been that bad about exercising, because I've been walking a lot, but I need to make a more concerted effort. I need to find my dumbbells, too.

I'm going to check back in on the weight thing in 2 weeks. I'm aiming for a 2 pound weight loss by the 15th.