one mockup down. I'm not at all convinced it's /right/, but eh. We'll see. For now, I will go do a rough draft of a panel.
40 minutes later: Boy do I suck. ;)
Ok, suckfully, I need to do some work today. Even MORE suckfully, Ted's goddamned work called at four thirty this morning and /he's/ been at work /since/ then. Fuckers.
So the work I have to do today is to make mockups. I don't particularly wish to do this, but I have to, so I'm thinking I'll set up a little reward system for myself. I have like five mockups to do, I think. For each mockup I get done, I can draw a rough (no doubt very very very VERY rough) draft of a panel for the first Chance issue. This will not be the I'm-trying-to-pitch-it-to-Marvel version. This will be the Catie Needs Practice Drawing version.
Ok, so off I go to .. actually, to get some water. Then to do a mockup.
Performance reviews at work. El yucko.
Anything else? Oh yeah. I biked 20.6 miles last night, go me! Averaging 12.8mph, which I was prettypleased with, especially since it was windy as HELL. I'd been wondering on my ride on Wednesday what I could do to make myself work harder as I biked, and I figured it out--instead of keeping my odometer on the mileage, if I keep it on the average mph, I seem to work hard to keep that MPH up. The first 6 miles or something of the ride (which were pretty flat, the way I went last night) I averaged 13mph and then I spent the rest of the ride (which was much hillier) trying to get back to the 13mph average. So that's the way to make myself work harder, it seems.
miles to Mordor:
Catie: 283.6
Laura: 98
Dave: 287.3
Here, Rod. Taken at the end of last month:
Despite appearances, I am not missing my right eye. :)
*helpless laughter*
This morning Jai sent me a photograph with no ID, and a subject line that said 'So do you know who this is?'
Well, yes, of course, I recognized him instantly; it was Rodney, my high school Twuuu Wuuuuv, and I wrote back and said 'oh my god', because he is goatee-d and heavier and looks like a country singer star in the photo, and then there was much giggling, and then the girl who'd sent it to Jai apparently told Rod that she'd sent it to Jai and then Rod wanted to know who else Jai'd sent it to and Jai said, "I've regressed to jr high!" as she emailed to ask if I wanted her to tell him she'd sent it to me and did I want her to give him my email address if he wrote her to ask who she'd sent it to and if he asked for it.
*starts laughing all over again*
So I of course asked her for his address if she had it and said yes to tell him she'd sent it to me and to send him my address if he asked and then I went 'my GOD, it IS junior high!'
Except I guess it's really high school, since these are old high school relationships that are getting dug up.
*more helpless laughter*
Help! Help! My brain has been eaten by high school! Heeeeelp! *howls*
Just stuff, today. My back was all achy and awful yesterday and it's still stiff today (a combination, maybe, of an 8 mile hike Saturday and then sleeping very badly Monday night) and it occurred to me last night that while I like to push myself, that it might be a better idea to do the 50K ride on Sunday instead of the 100K ride, because I /know/ I can do the 50K ride and once again, it seems more clever to ensure I'll be able to bike all summer than to be macho for one day.
Um. I think that's all, for now.
Some Chance updates. It's now way, way later than I meant to to be up, so I'm going to bed. Nini.
REEEEEEjection-junction, what's your function?
Got rejected by Jim's agent. I suppose I'll start an envelope of rejections from agents, too, since I've got an envelope of rejections from publishing houses going already.
Well, that was fast, anyway.
New agent, move down!
V. tired me. V. v. tired. We picked Mom & Dad up at the airport last night, and t here wasn't really a lot of sleeping around that.
I thought I had an 8:30am meeting, but I can't find it.
Guess I'll get some food.
Very very VERY pleased me! 3410 words written today, and CITY OF HEROES, the first Chance script, finished! I wrote fourteen pages of script today. Ye gods. Let me say that again: ye gods. And once more for good measure: ye gods!
ytd wordcount: 139,760
My feet hurt, but I walked 2.5 miles and now I have walked 101.2 miles to Rivendell!
Uh. I was going to say... oh. I was going to say that I got a message from 100megs, my hosting company, and they said I'd used up over 80% of my bandwidth for the month of May, so if mizkit.com suddenly freezes up over the next few days, that's why. I'm trusting that it won't.
Ucky day out! I was going to go for a 30 mile bike ride, and I should /still/ go, but man, it's ucky out! It's grey and very very windy, although not particularly /cold/, and... well, lazy me. I kept hoping the wind would die down, but it really hasn't.
I've spent most of the day writing, instead. I've gotten 8 pages written on the Chance script, and have 6 left, and this fills me with a mixture of delight and panic. 22 pages of comic script is both a Whole Hell Of A Lot, and Not Very Damned Much At All. 6 pages is very much the same sort of thing. :)
Yesterday was very very busy. I didn't get up til late-ish and then we went shopping, and shopping some more, and then some more, and bought a lawn mower and a bunch of lawn-care stuff and came home and I went on a 15.4 mile bike ride, and, um. Ok, that didn't sound very busy, but it was, honest!
Oh! And I got spiffy new sunglasses! I sat on mine when Jai and I were out walking (thus ensuring that the sun shone for the rest of the day in Girdwood), and several years ago for my birthday Ted said I could have a pair of real (re: expensive) sunglasses, but we'd never found any I liked, and yesterday I couldn't find any /cheap/ ones that I liked, and we found a pair of 'spensive ones, so that was my birthday present, along with the plane ticket to Writer's Weekend this year. They've got sky-blue frames and lenses that slide in and out for different lighting effects. :)
I should at the very, very least, go for a walk, if I'm not going biking, so that I can break 100 miles on my journey to Rivendell.
Maybe tomorrow won't be so windy...
miles to Mordor: 247.7
So *after* I got home from walking yesterday... well, for a while I sat around and stared vacantly, because I was so out of it, and then ... er. What /did/ we do? We watched While You Were Sleeping, which still makes me laugh out loud even though I've seen it a billion times, and we had dinner at Bear Tooth, I think, and while we were watching the movie it began POURING rain, and so after the movie was over I had to put the dogs out so they could go to the bathroom before bed, and Annie, who is old and smart, didn't /want/ to go out into the rain, but I made her anyway, and Chanti, who is young and dumb, REALLY wanted to go out into the rain -- and then she stood as close to the door as the chain would let her, with her ears all flopped down and the most utterly miserable expression possible on her face. Ted and I laughed so hard we couldn't stand up. :)
Oh yes. I've remembered what it was I was /supposed/ to write about. I knew I would, if I typed long enough. :)
Emily called, fresh from the Common Rotation/They Might Be Giants concert, to make a report. I, in turn, am reporting to you, my avid readers.
She arrived at the theatre a little early, and wandered around a bit, and then someone came out and began putting out Common Rotation merchandise, so she went over and said to him, "Are you Matt?" and he said, "No, I'm Justin, but I'm part of the family!" (Matt, the manager, is Adam, one of the lead singer's, brother; evidently Justin also fits into the mix somehow.) Emily said, "I'm Emily!" and then left him alone.
Justin went back to report that Emily from Alaska was there, and apparently the band could talk of nothing else before the concert. They were very, VERY excited to have a fan from Alaska!
The concert, Emily said, was great. They were the opening act for TMBG, and nobody knew who they were except her and one other guy who'd made his very own Common Rotation t-shirt, but she said that she could /see/ the audience falling in love with them, and during the break between CR and TMBG, they sold out of their 2nd CD (Big Fear) and sold so much stuff in general that Justin, who was supposed to be keeping a tally, couldn't. So Emily was extremely delighted for them. :)
She had an invitation from Matt to come backstage and meet the band (because she's from ALASKA!) and so she did, and found Matt, and said, once again, "Are you Matt?" and he allowed as how he was, and she said, "I'm Emily!" and he got very excited, and grabbed Eric, who is 1. the other lead singer and 2. writes most of their songs, who was VERY excited and who swept his arms open to give her a hug and then looked alarmed and blurted, "Can I hug you?"
Well, duh. :) And then he apparently immediately wanted to know where in Alaska they could come play, and was very excited and intent about it, and she got to meet the rest of the band, and they all basically said as long as they had a place to sleep, they'd come play in Alaska. I was like, "We have a living room..." :)
So my mission, should I choose to accept it, is apparently to go hook CR up with Koots and Bear Tooth and the Fly By Night Club so they can come up and spend a week or something performing. I'm thinkin' we should try to get Urban Family Dog up here with them and call it a Californian Invasion. I'd go for Ghost in the Machine, too, but I haven't actually /heard/ them, so I donno how good they are. :)
But anyway, so Emily had a hell of a good time, and will be seeing them in concert again on June 1, or something like that. :)
EIGHT MILE WALK!
So yesterday Jai came by and picked me up and we drove out to Girdwood (after some delays, like discovering the road over to Jai's daughter's dance studio was being worked on and so there were detours before we could pick up her recital costume, and then there was the stopping for the mocha and hot chocolate, but then there was the driving out to Girdwood!
We got up to the Alyeska Prince Hotel, which is where the volkswalk was supposed tos tart, and we went to the front desk, and we said, "Do you know anything about this volkswalk?" and they said, "Um," and sent us upstairs to see if the bike shop knew anything about it, and the bike shop said, "Um," and so we said, "Ok, we'll just do a different hike," and then Jai noticed the Summer Activities Lady, whom we were relieved to see, because clearly if she wasn't there, there could be no summer! Jai took to calling her the Summer Fairy. :)
The Summer Fairy was on a rather long phone call. When she got off the phone, she told us with great enthusiasm that she had left her (apparently fairly new) boyfriend at (her) home alone for the first time, and he'd called her to cheer her up and say hi while she was at work.
Unfortunately, the way he did this was to say, "Hi, it's me, I don't want you to panic, because the fire department's already gone..."
After rather a lot of time of establishing that he was indeed screwing with her, she told him that the way to cheer a person up was *not* to call them at their job 40 miles away and tell them their house was on fire. She said, "Tell me the kitchen is sparkling clean. Tell me the garage has been cleared out. Do *not* tell me my house is on fire!"
Eventually we established that she also didn't know anything about this volkswalk thing, which offended her sense of propriety. She did give us a map of sorts which indicated a 3 mile hike, the Winner Creek trail, which we suspected might be the volkswalk, and we took the map and went out hiking.
At *some* point, either at the front desk or at the early part of the trail, we saw another map which had a green loop delineated, and we said to each other, "We'll go up to the point where the loop goes from a dotted line to a solid line, and we'll see if we want to go on (which looked slightly longer) or go back."
So! Off we went! The first mile or so of the trail was packed gravel and then heavy 1x12 boards laid down over streams and very muddy spots, and so we balanced along the boards and stepped off the board paths when runners came along (we hates runners, we do! especially 5'10" blonde skinny ones!) and then we saw a PORCUPINE. Climbing a TREE! That was very cool. And we clambered over roots and we complained about walking up mountainsides and we stopped and panted every once in a while and generally had a very fine time.
And then we reached a Fork In The Road. To the right, there were Cabin Ruins down the trail. To the left, there was the Winner Creek Gorge. what there wasn't, and should've been, was a sign indicating how far it was to the Cabin Ruins, but we headed that way anyway. After a while we turned around and came back, because we couldn't find them and we didn't know how far it would be and our map didn't have anything beyond the entrance of the Winner Creek trail, so it was no actual use, although later we found another map and we suspect that basically the Cabin Ruins were probably about two hundred yards beyond where we'd gone. Hnf. Well. Oh well.
It was okay, because then we went on the other fork and /it/ lead down to a big wide footbridge which we sat down on and watched the water rush beneath us as we talked, and then after we'd taken a little break we got up again and went the rest of the way down the trail, and found -- well! First we found a door to Elfland. There was a tall stone with moss and earth on top of it, just sort of sheered out of the hillside, and Jai said, "I love that rock!" and then she said, "It's a door to fairyland!" And by God, she was right, too. It even had been worn away so that you could curl your fingers around the front of the stone, like you could pull it open. But neither of us knew how to say, "Friend" in Elvish, and we didn't think of "Open Sesame!" and so we had to continue on our way without visiting Faery.
And then we found a bridge over trouble waters, man. We were going along and the water got louder and louder and I said, "That sounds like a waterfall," and a couple of twists further on, indeed, there /was/ a waterfall! A stunning, amazing waterfall that had dug pools into the stone, and the pools boiled and bubbled like icy jacuzzis, the water all crystal blue and foamy. It was *so* gorgeous -- and we hadn't brought a camera. Must go again! So we climbed down the gorge some and peeked into the pools and then we climbed back up the gorge and followed the trail to The Tram.
The Tram, which was the point on the green-loop map where the trail went from a dotted line to a solid line, turned out to be a 3-rope deelie which supported a harness in which you were to PULL YOURSELF OVER THE GORGE.
*!*
I mean, I swear, it looked like a movie set, or something. This isn't something I'd ever come across in real life. Furthermore, it didn't actually have the /harness/, so we're left standing there on the EDGE OF A HUGE GORGE, staring down at the water and at this pully setup and going, "No. Frelling. WAY."
We went back the way we'd come. O.O
By that time we were pretty tired, and were starting to be pretty giggly. We admired scenery on our way back, most especially a very large broken off tree-trunk which twisted, causing Jai to say, "Ooh, twisty," and then she thought she sounded *very* vacant, and so she said, "Twisty!" even *more* dizzily, and that made us laugh very hard indeed.
And we saw the porcupine again, climbing a different tree, and a spruce hen walked along the path with us for a while, and finally we staggered back to the hotel, and went to ask the Summer Fairy what the hell the deal with the tram was. It turned out that yeah, there was supposed to be a carriage, and also that she thought but didn't know for sure that the trail on the other side of the big wide footbridge continued off to Places Unknown, and having gotten that information from her, we went away and ate pizza and then went home and collapsed.
Well, no, at least, /I/ didn't collapse, but this is quite long enough for one entry so I'll write more about the rest of the day later after we get back from shopping. :)
miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 98.7 (100 *so* *close*!)
Jai: 87.1
*Oh*! The fires that've been making the skies all hazy are in *Russia*! That explains why there's been no smoke to smell. Wow!
I only did a 2.5 mile bike ride last night, because my tummy got all blorty and icky. But then I got better and we went to dinner-and-movie at Bear Tooth and saw Daredevil. Again. That was the 4th time for me. :) Fortunately, it wasn't the fourth time in a /week/. :)
That's all I know today!
No, it isn't: Litho sent me a pencil drawing and a colored version of the same sketch of Chance, and it's very, *very* cool. Ehehe!
miles to Mordor: 232.3
Wow, I'm in a really good mood this morning.
There must be a fire going on around here somewhere; the last two days, the light's been orange. It doesn't smell like smoke, but it's hazy and, well, orange. It was actually kind of nice for biking last night, because it was really warm but the amount of direct sunlight was cut down, so there wasn't so much squinting and stuff.
So I did a 15 mile ride last night, and boy, if I think I'm going to bike 62 miles in ten days, I've got to bike every day for the next 10 days and I've got to do the Kincaid hill, because I had to stop last night while I was doing it! I haven't done it in a couple of weeks, maybe more (lazy me!) but it was SOOOOOO nice out last night that when I went biking I thought I'd go all the way up to Kincaid, and then wussy me had to stop on the hill. Hnf. I'll try it again tonight. :)
Aberdeen is all caught up on Buffy. She said, "...! ! ...!" and waved her hands around. :)
*I* am *not* all caught up on writing. Got 619 words written yesterday, which is, well, more than 50% of what I was supposed to do, but Deen wants to go out to dinner tonight, so odds of getting more written today are fairly low, especially as I have Actual Work To Do. I may have to get up v. early tomorrow and get some writing done.
Starving. Meow. Meow. Meow.
ytd wordcount: 136,350
miles to Mordor:
Catie: 229.8
Laura: 34
Dave: 241.9
miles to Rivendell:
Laura: 126
Ben: 109
Heather: 74
Jai: 79.1
Shoka: 88.1
Ok, smug me. I have finished the rough draft for the Chance script; what I finally did was start with page 22 and work my way backwards, filling in what I needed to have in there between pages 9 and 22. It worked. Go *me*. Now I have to write the actual /script/ from that, but I have the guts of the thing in my hands now. Yay! The rest should be comparatively easy.
I *also* called Grandma, who sounds wonderful. She asked about my book and about Ted and about the house and we had a nice ten minute talk before I told her she had to go walk with Aunt Mable so that she could get her balance and so they'd let her out from the PT hospital next Tuesday. :) I must call her again on Monday. :)
So, just checking--
Do I know any artists who do superhero-style artwork? Jim Lee/Andy Kubert/Ian Churchhill style art, rather than Joe Madureira/Chris Bacalo/manga style art. I'm not sure that I do, but /if/ I do and you might be interested in pursuing this Marvel Epic thing with me, let me know, eh?
Note: nobody is as good as Jim Lee. I don't expect that. Just, y'know. If you do that style artwork. :)
Marvel is starting to take submissions for its Epic line tomorrow. Personal goal: finish the Chance script by Monday so it can be sent out Tuesday morning. Finishing it earlier would be okay too.
Got Photoshop 7 in the mail yesterday, yay. Let's see, what else.
I *must* call my grandma this afternoon.
Well, that didn't suck.
That's pretty much all I've got to say. It wasn't great, but it was pretty good.
In other news, Jai and I went for a nice 4 mile walk this afternoon with Chantico, and she (Chantico) was very good, so I'm pleased with her. It was hot out!
And we went for ice cream after Buffy, and Keith who's the great guy who works at Baskin-Robbins, whom we hadn't seen for several months, noticed and admired my hair. Go Keith. :)
miles to Rivendell: 90.7
ytd wordcount: 135,731
Whee. Package off to the EEA, another letter written to send out next week, and, well, that's really about all I know. It's very very nice out. There are birds twittering all over the place. Some of them zoomed by the window, nearly causing Lucy to launch herself off the computer monitor and into the window. She went *TWITCH*!
Waiting to hear from Jai whether we're going walking this afternoon or not. I'll probably go bike riding if not, but maybe after Buffy I'll take Chanti out for a walk, or something. She really loves going for walks.
This is a less than scintillating journaling day.
Ok, I feel slightly less lame now. I've sent out, er, well, packaged up, anyway, the S&3 for US to send out to the Ethan Ellenberg Agency, and... they claim a 4-6 week turnaround on their site, although that's under 'international submissions', so I don't know if that's for everything or, well, not. So theoretically I'll hear from them around the beginning of July.
Theoretically I'll hear from the Donald Maass agency early next week.
God knows when I'll hear from Tor.
This is all very nerve-wracking.
:)
A little dead in the brain today. Too many meetings and weird projects coming up. Trying to wrap my mind around them. I feel like I'm trying to grab at warm wriggly eels. Slip slip slip.
A second letter-to-an-agent ready to go this morning. I need to get a little more aggressive about this, but if I manage a letter a week, that's not bad. I ... nope, no brain. More later.
Busy evening. Took a 40 minute nap because, well, 5am rising time, blah. Then wrote 2340 words (but who's counting?) and futzed around, even considered going to bed. However, then I put the dogs out and it was insanely beautiful out, so I got my stuff together and went on a bike ride after all. 13 miles. Cool. :)
ytd wordcount: 134,500
miles to Mordor: 214.5
AUGH! There's a writer's conference in Homer the last week of June, which is the same week I have a big fat deadline. AUGH! *froth, rattle*
I have a birthday coming up. On my birthday, I'm going to be participating in the Diabetes Tour de Cure fundraiser bike ride. I'm doing the 100K ride.
If you're the sort of person who might be thinking about getting me a birthday present, I'm of the opinion that a donation to my ride would be an excellent present. :)
Oh, and I weighed myself yesterday. I've lost 4 pounds since the middle of April. *waves a little flag*
Yesterday was our 6th wedding anniversary! We had a busy day. I got up late and had waffles what my wonderful husband made (and they were oh my god good, too) and we went shopping and then we came home and I brought Chanti for a walk (2.5 miles; oh, my aching, aching feet) and in a fit of something came home and did a bunch of raking while Ted was heroic and cleaned the kitty litter and vaccumed. There is an astounding amount of dog hair in this house. All that took until only a quarter to two, so after eating something and taking a v. long shower, I was forced to get my writing for the day done.
Then Ted and I went to Simon & Seafort's and ate WAY TOO MUCH FOOD. Way too much REALLY GOOD food. Then, like bloated warthogs, we dragged ourselves to the movie theatre and watched Down With Love, which was amazingly bad. As a homage to the Doris Day/Rock Hudson films, which is what it was supposed to be, it was a great success, but as a watchable movie, wow, it was a disaster. It was just awful. Bad bad bad. Don't go see this movie. :)
Came home, watched X-Men: Evolution (anybody know when that's coming out on DVD? I want it!), and in a fit of wisdom, went to bed early.
Got up at 5am and swam 2500 yards.
Go me. :)
miles to Rivendell: 86.7
ytd wordcount: 132,160
miles to Mordor: 201.5
Grr. 100megs was doing something and I couldn't get in to my cgi-bin to make a posting. Grumble. Mutter. :P Anyway.
V. busy day today. Got up at 7am and let the dogs out before writing 1770 or something like that words, then had french toast for breakfast and went to West High to buy a swim pass, which, yay, is a 30-day swim pass, not actually a *monthly* one, so I didn't have to buy a $50 2 week pass. The nice man even gave me a few days prorated, too, because they'll be closed over Memorial Day weekend.
Then I went and did the 10K volkswalk, which was *really* nice and a lot of fun. 6.2 miles. That's quite a lot of walking. I really do have to figure out what I'm doing wrong with my head, because while I'm good for 4 or 5 miles, my neck and shoulders begin to hurt quite a lot as I walk. I think I'm partially doing the Malone Hunch, and partially perhaps holding my head too still, which sounds really dumb. What else are you supposed to do with your head when you're walking? Anyway, it hurts a lot and I need to figure out how to make it stop. I wonder if the chiropractor would have any useful advice.
Then I came home and because apparently I hadn't done enough exercise, I went on an 11.5 mile bike ride. I probably would've done the whole 22.75 mile ride on the coastal trail if I'd had a second water bottle, but I didn't, so, well, I didn't. Tomorrow I'll put the other water bottle holder on my recumbent.
When I came home I thought I'd work on my shelves, and I cleared out the leathers and the bikes and the everything from the garage and found which shelves I'd finished and which ones I hadn't and I went and dug Ted's sander out of its box and looked around for an extension cord... and then I discovered that the stupid sander didn't come with any sandpaper, so I couldn't do any work on my shelves after all. Feh.
So I took a bath and finished reading The Whim of the Dragon instead. It made me want to talk like the people in the Secret Country, although I don't quote Shakespeare as glibly as either the Secret people, or the children who go there. Also, after reading Pamela Dean's blog for several months and now re-reading TSC books, she sure does sound like herself.
Yah. Okay. Bed now. G'night, folks.
Oh, wait:
miles to Rivendell: 84.2
Going walking in a bit here, but I wanted to finally update my wordcount:
ytd wordcount: 130,810
Apparently I wrote a posting this morning and then forgot to post it before I used the window for something else. Sigh.
We're dogsitting Annie, my parents' dog, while my parents are in New Mexico for a week. Annie is an old dog who doesn't want to be bothered by children; Chanti is a new dog who wants to play with everybody. They're going to drive me completely batshit. Hopefully they'll get used to one another quickly enough to not make me entirely crazy.
I did, though, call West High and find out that their lap swim hours are 5:30-7am, which is very reasonable. I have to figure out where to go to buy a month pass, now. Something to do with the municipality; I'm hoping they'll be open tomorrow. I'll call and find out.
Mom and Dad bought a nifty Toshiba digital camera and brought it over last night for me to play with. I've kind of got camera envy now, 'cause it's nicer than mine. :)
Okay, what I want to know is how to get a Matrix body in 6 months without the benefit of a personal trainer breathing down your neck that whole time.
Stinky puppy. I suspect the rawhide bone she finally deigned to chew up last night is the cause of stinkiness. Maybe no more rawhides for her.
We went on another walk this morning. 2.5 miles. Not as early as I'd planned, as I didn't get up til a quarter to seven, but at least we went! And I'm hoping the weather stays as nice as it is right now, so I can bike tonight. Well, I could bike even if it isn't nice, but it'd be a lot more pleasant to do so in the sunshine.
That's really the sum total of what I know this morning.
Miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 78
Dave: 211.4 (Dave is going to Mordor) (and probably back again.)
Heather: 64.5
Jai: 71.1
Shoka: 69.5
Did I mention drawing boys is *hard*?
Chanti and I went on a 3 mile walk this evening, and Chanti was *very* well behaved. I was very proud of her and very pleased with her. There were *all* *sorts* of people out, but she didn't panic hardly at all, even when some stupid person who didn't have their big dog on a leash came along and the big dog came rushing over. She sure gets startled as hell when somebody comes up behind us, though. Still, she was *very* good.
Um. No brain, so I guess I'll just report Rivendell miles and call it a night:
Catie: 75.5
Laura: 106 (woo Laura! blew past 100!)
Ben: 93.5
Wow. Shaun's parents took us out to dinner last night, and let me tell you, that was worth missing the SinC meeting for. Wow. We went to Sullivan's, which is a steak house up here, and they do everything a la carte, which means they literally gave us each a large plate with nothing but a hunk of meat in the middle of it. Several of us ordered side dishes, which came literally in side dishes, which none of us expected, and which were all large enough to serve several people. We hadn't know that, so, well, now we do for the next time we go there. I ordered broccoli hollandaise or however that's spelled, and while I didn't like the sauce, the broccoli was insanely good. Oh, and I had a filet mignon, too, which was excellent. I think Ted and Sandra had filet, too, and I forget what Gary had, but man, it was all really good. And then there were Insane Desserts. Shaun had cheesecake that was to die for, Ted and I shared a chocolate brownie thing that was crisp on top and melty on bottom and had ice cream, and Gary and Sandra shared a creme brule as big as my head.
Came home, watched Buffy, which ... wasn't a bad episode; in fact, as an episode in general I liked it more than at least half this season, but as a penultimate... blah. I'm clearly not going to get what I was hoping for as a series resolution, and I'm not at all convinced they're going to end it in any even vaguely satisfying fashion.
The plumber is here. There are weird noises happening in my pipes now. Water beginning to run. The walls are gurgling! Apparently he fixed the broken bit already, but we have to see if the boiler seals are going to contract and break from being exposed to cold water. He says if we're lucky, they won't. o.O
All-hands meeting now!
Well, that was exciting.
I went down to the garage to get my bike to go biking, and I found a leak between our water heater and our furnace, instead. I immediately went AGH and called Ted, who said he'd come home, and meantime I fiddled around with it and inevitably made the leak worse and couldn't figure out which thing to turn to turn the water off and so I called the 'call this number if something goes wrong' people and while they were trying to troubleshoot over the phone Ted drove up and he, at least, figured out how to turn the water to that pipe off, and so now the call this number if something goes wrong people will be coming at 8:15 in the morning to fix our leaky furnace/water heater/whatever.
Then I went on a 10 mile bike ride. I saw 3-5 moose and a HAWK! That was cool.
miles to Minas Morgul:
Catie: 190
Laura: 10
Wow. Cheesesteak from Burger Stop: pretty good. Reheated cheesesteak from Burger Stop: *insanely* good. Wow!
Unfortunately, tonight's SinC meeting is for all practical purposes the last one until September. Fnrt.
Determining who might be a good agent to send your stuff to is hard. I just thought I'd mention that.
Ow. My back is really very sore this morning. Muscle sore, not bone sore. I don't exactly know why. I expect it's either from spending half an hour picking up dog poop yesterday afternoon, or from walking the dog and trying to haul her into line yesterday/this morning.
Speaking of which, walked 2.5 miles this morning. It made me grumpy, though, because Chanti was being a dork.
Not going to the SinC meeting tonight after all. Shaun's parents want to take us all out to dinner, so, well. Dinner instead.
Miles to Rivendell:
Catie: 72.5
Jai: 67.1
Shoka: 60
Heather: 59.7
Dave: 202.2
Things I've learned today: boys are hard to draw!
Got ANGLES out for the RMFW contest and MD out for the WW contest. Sent a query letter to the Donald Maass Literary Agency to see if they'd like to represent me. Worked on the above drawing 'cause I couldn't work on the Chance drawing because my good inking pens have disappeared and I need to buy new ones. Luckily, I have this gift certificate to the art store... :)
Um. Things I need to do over the next few days include:
1. work on (finish) the mermaid for Ellen
2. work on the Chance script
3. write Childreach letters
4. buy good inking pens
5. GO TO THE SinC MEETING, DARN IT! 7pm Tuesday!
6. ... there is no #6. Or maybe there is no spoon.
Also got ANGLES put together to send to the RMFW contest. Going to the PO later to put 'em in the mail. In the meantime, I am v. sleepy!
MANIFEST DESTINY for the Writer's Weekend Contest is in the... well. The envelope, anyway, if not the actual mail. I'm thinking of submitting ANGLES, too.
It has not been a writeful month. Hell, it hasn't been a writeful several months, at this point. I think FOOL'S GOLD sucks and I can't figure out what to do about it; writing my outline ... didn't help. I have no momentum, no ... *oomph* behind it. I'm not actually a real fan of putting aside projects because they're not working, although I did put aside 7&9 earlier this year. That's not because it wasn't working, though; it just hadn't percolated enough. I mean, it *wasn't* working, but I know the /reason/ it wasn't working is that I didn't have a firm enough grasp on the world setting.
It's possible that the reason I feel FG isn't working is because I don't feel like I've got the ... emotional depth in writing that I feel like I need for the story. I feel like I'm too far away from the guts of the thing, and I'm not sure how to get /in/ to the guts.
Nf.
This, among other things, is why I'd like to get an MFA. I'd like to spend some time with a teacher (teachers) and learn more about the craft of writing.
I meant to write yesterday, but clearly I didn't get around to it.
Busy day. Got up early and did shopping, then had breakfast and then spent a few hours in the kitchen making chocolate gelato (which certainly didn't freeze in the few hours I had it in the freezer; I'll check it again sometime today) and a custard-filled lemon cake, which turned out v. nicely indeed. Then Ted moved into the kitchen to make lasagna, and very suspiciously trusted Emeril's statement that you didn't *have* to pre-cook the lasagna noodles, which made him (Ted, not Emeril) Very Nervous Indeed. He was quite convinced the noodles weren't cooked after the lasagna had been in the oven two hours, so I went down and sank a knife through the lasagna in several places and assured him they *were* cooked, and he looked somewhat suspicious and nervous and grouchy, but when the lasagna turned out to be brilliant later on he was reassured. And it sure made prep time a lot shorter, he said.
While he was doing that, I worked on my new obsession project, Take A Chance.
Then Mom and Dad, and Shaun's parents, who are in town for several days, came over for dinner and we all ate whole bunches of yummy food. :) It was a really nice evening.
Theeeeeen I came upstairs and worked on MANIFEST DESTINY to send to the Writer's Weekend contest and after that collapsed in bed, because it had been a very long day.
Got up this morning, although not at the crack of dawn, or even 6am, which was when my alarm was set for, and Chantico and I went on a 2.5 mile walk. Chanti was very good and I'm very pleased with her. :)
Miles to Rivendell: 70
Well, I haven't exactly accomplished what I meant to accomplish today, but I've gotten a lot done. I stared despondently at FG and was entirely uninspired. I'm not writing it right, but I don't know what I'm doing /wrong/, and I'm stalling out. Yuck. So after a while of grumy staring and not achieving anything, I thought I'd go vaccum, so that at least I'd get /something/ done today.
I got the upstairs and the stairs vacuumed and emptied a couple of garbages and then that was as much fun as I could stand. So I thought maybe I'd work on my bookshelves, and went into the garage.
The garage was, as it has been for some months, a disaster. Too much of a disaster to be able to work on my shelves, because everything was everywhere and in the way.
So I cleaned the garage. It's a pity I didn't take a before picture, but suffice it to say that everything was piled in the middle of the garage, and now it is not:
Then I finished vacuuming.
Then we went to Burger Cache for lunch, where Tommy the owner asked me if there'd been enough Rogue in X2 for me, and how many times had I seen it. I nodded and held up 2 fingers (I was eating) and he grinned and said he'd seen it twice too.
Thence to get cat food and incidentally a new collar and leash for Chantico, thence ice cream, thence home again to look for my Blaine's Art Store certificate, for I wanted to go buy some comic book layout sheets, but Blaine's didn't have any, so I went to Bosco's and got some and also got a very nifty CD of visual references for comic artists (check it out at BuddyScalera.com) and now I'm home again and I think I'll go draw for a while. o.o
Pretty nice evening. Ted got off work a bit early to go pick up his new glasses, which look very nice, and came home and so we vroomed over to the Dimond Center and watched Bend it Like Beckham, which was very enjoyable, and then came home and Ted grilled steaks and then I went for a walk. It wasn't the 5 mile walk I had intended, because I didn't leave the house until 9, and I didn't want to be out until nearly 11, so instead I concentrated on Walking Briskly. This is all Jai's fault. :)
I Walked Briskly for a mile, which I did in about 16:30, I think (I don't have a seconds-hand on my, er, cellphone, which is what I use to time myself) and then I slowed down to more my regular pace and did another quarter mile. Then I Walked Briskly for a mile coming /back/, and I think that one came out at about 16 minutes. Since my goal is 15 minutes, and I'd been doing 20 minute miles (the best I'd done at all, I think, was the most recent walk with Jai, when we did 18ish minute miles), I'm pretty pleased with 16.5 and 16 minute miles. :)
I yam also all hot and sweaty. :)
Miles to Rivendell:
Jai: 63.1
Catie: 67.5
Laura: 90 (speedy Laura!)
Ben: 72.5
Despite what have seemed to be my best efforts in the other direction for the last week, I am apparently down 2.5 pounds since mid-April. This isn't a huge amount of weight, but it's a lot better than being /up/ 2.5 pounds since mid-April. So I'm getting back on the bandwagon, or whatever, and going to try harder about eating right and exercising again. Tonight I'll go on a 5 mile walk, even if it is icky and rainy out. I probably won't melt. :)
Oh, I watched Buffy last night. This week's episode didn't suck as badly as the last several have. I do hope we get to see some (DELETE DELETE DELETE) corpse soon.
"I feel people should wear bathing suits more often. Then they might get to the gym more." -- Pamela Anderson
Y'know, she might have a point. :)
Head exploding. Well, no, but aching, anyway. Meeting that was at 10am Monday got postponed to 2:30 Tuesday got postponed til 11:30 Wednesday got postponed til 8am today got postponed to 10:30 today, sigh. Finally met. Now my head hurts.
That is practically all I have to report this morning. I'm hoping Ted will want to go out to lunch.
Today was a v. fine day.
I spent some more time poking around trying to find PANEL ONE for less than $50, to no avail, and after a while I thought, "You know, I bet the Nat Gertler who wrote this is the Nat Gertler who wrote some of ElfQuest a while back and whom I met several years ago at a signing up here in Anchorage." Okay, I didn't think it that clearly, but for the benefit of you, my gentle reader, I'm spelling it out.
So I went and looked up Nat Gertler on the internet, and Lo, it /was/ the Nat Gertler who wrote etc etc etc. Furthermore, among the things he had on his website was an example comic book script.
Well! If I couldn't find PANEL ONE, at least I'd found this! So I emailed him and first went on at great length about having met him in a scenario which I imagined he would not remember (I was wearing a jeans jacket with Strongbow painted on the sleeve, and he (Nat, not Strongbow) had just finished writing a story in which people literally wore their interests on their sleeve, and so the jacket made an impression) and then (I bet you'd forgotten that this sentence had a point besides the jacket story) I said I hadn't been able to find PANEL ONE but I'd found his site and it was cool to have found the script and very useful and that sort of thing.
He emailed back like five minutes later with a URL for PANEL ONE (right here, if you want a copy yourself) and the admission that he vaguely remembered the jacket but not the "delightful-I'm-sure person inside the jacket" *giggle* and talked a bit about why he'd done PANEL ONE and so it was really a very fine conversation. So of course I've ordered PANEL ONE now and am hopping around impatiently waiting for it to arrive. Judging from what I feel I learned just from the one script Nat had on his site, I think this is going to be a very good investment. :)
I also got letters (one yesterday and one today) from the Childreach girls I'm sponsoring in Ethiopia, which is surprisingly exciting and interesting to me. Sometime soon I'm going to put together a page for them here on my site. This weekend I'll write back to them. I need to get a photo of myself and get some prints made to send them.
Jai and I went for a 4 mile walk in the lovely sunny late afternoon and talked and talked and talked, which was a lot of fun, although now across the back of my neck between my shoulders is quite sore. I think I'm going to make a chiro appointment and see if he can, I donno, reshape my upper spine, or something. For those of you keeping track at home, my screwed-up lower back is doing MUCH better. Yay!
I am not doing very well on the eating well thing this month. I need to be better about that.
Hm. It seemed like there were some other good things to write about, too, but that's all I can think of right now.
miles to Rivendell:
Heather: 57.7
Dave: 170.5
Jai: 59.1 (less than 400 miles to go! go Jai!)
Catie: 65
Laura: 81.5 (not counting biked miles as of today)
A v. fine day indeed.
So I was talking back and forth with Carl, and I said I'd thought of biking to Mordor, but I didn't know how far it was and I'd been too lazy to look it up, so he went and got this information from a friend of his:
"From Minas Morgul to Hobbiton is 327 leagues (981 miles) as the crow flies. The actual distance on the ground between the two would be somewhat longer, and in the case of the Black Riders extended by the fact of various detours and such. If you have UNFINISHED TALES, one of the stories in there has a very detailed account of the Black Riders' movements and activities prior to the beginning of FOTR."
So! I shall bike to Minas Morgul, and take the crow's route, a 981 mile journey! Hee hee hee! Thank you, Carl! *beam*
Wisdom being the better part of valor, or something, I started taking Allegra again today. I've been getting progressively more nose-runny the last few days, although not so much that I can't breathe or that I'm wheezing, but I'm not actually sure there's any brilliance in waiting til that point before starting to take the allergy medicines, so now I'm all drugged up. Must remember to drink a lot of water, 'cause Allegra dehydrates me.
Marvel Comics is starting their Epic line again, as an independent work-for-hire. I'm thinkin' of submitting stuff to it, when they open for submissions. As a writer, since I'm not anywhere near cool enough to submit as an artist.
So I went to see if I could buy Panel One, which is a book on writing comic book scripts, and instead I accidentally bought Drawing Cutting Edge Comics, which of course makes me fully aware of how entirely inadequate an artist I am. But maybe it'll help me when I work on the Chance thingy. Which I have 3 pages scripted for now!
I biked 13 miles last night. If I could find the # of miles from the Shire, I'd keep track of Biking To Mordor.
Speaking of which, miles to Rivendell:
Heather: 55.7
Dave: 162.5
Jai: 55.1
Shoka: 53
Stupid brain. Does anybody have any brilliant suggestions on how to make oneself actually get out of /bed/ when the alarm goes off at 6? Yah, I know, Trip just gets up, but that's unnatural.
Ok, so if I subtract the biked miles (137 miles biked in April divided by 4), I'm at 61 miles walked to Rivendell. Still less than 400 to go, that's something, anyway. Need to get up tomorrow and write. Er. Walk. Write, too, but I meant walk.
I believe I'm going to apply to Goddard College's low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program.
Not feeling much like blogging atm. Thinking of removing my biked miles from my Rivendell walk 'cause somehow it feels like cheating. Went to see The Two Towers again on Saturday night, which was fun except we were both *way* too tired.
Talking with Christi about site design made me kinda start thinking of working on a comic-book sort of thing to .. well. see, I like this current X design, but I have this dream that sometime I could do my own 'comic book covers' with a new cover on a monthly basis as the background for the site. But I'm not really a good enough artist. She said I oughta do it anyway, and I thought about it some, and then I talked to Sarah some and we said hey, we oughta try going ahead and writing/drawing a comic as a project to train ourselves to draw the same characters consistently and stuff like that. So we're gonna try that (individually, not together). I'm going to do a superhero kinda thingy. It probably won't be very good. I'll post when I've got the site running for it, though.
Miles to Rivendell:
Heather: 52.7 (YAY! you broke 50 miles!)
Dave: 156.5 (ye gods and little fishies)
Catie: 95
50K in 30 days: 2075
ytd wordcount: 126,700
Some non-spoilery comments:
Nightcrawler *completely* won me over.
Boy, Hugh Jackman sure does have nice long legs.
PETER WINGFIELD. PETER WINGFIELD. PETER WINGFIELD. (Honestly, except when he was actually on screen, I forgot about him.)
If Halle Berry really, as reported, thinks her part was too small in this movie, she's a twit.
Pyro, despite the trailers, doesn't /really/ look like Wil Wheaton.
My fanboy husband assures me that in fact it is /my/ fault that we went to the movie at midnight, because he hadn't /thought/ of going to the midnight show until I asked.
So okay. I can live with that burden. :)
Oh my god, I'm tired. *cackle*
Okay, so the problem with saying to your fanboy husband, "So are we going to a midnight showing?" is that your fanboy husband will look indecisive for about fifteen seconds and then say, "YES!" and then you will find yourself posting at two thirty in the morning to say...
...that kicked ass.
50K in 30 days: 1325
ytd wordcount: 125,950
ytd miles biked: 167
miles to Rivendell: 90
Sarah's miles to Rivendell: 13
Oh, oh, I have a Plan for working on being able to walk a half marathon in June. Next week, I will walk 4 miles twice ('cause I know I can do that, so it's a good number to start with) and 5 miles once.
Then the week after that I'll walk 5 miles twice and 6 miles once. And then 7 twice and 8 once and so on up to the week of the race, where I should be at about 10 miles. That's not quite enough, but, well, that's all the numbers of weeks I have. And if, y'know, it turns out I'm a total wuss at the end of May and I haven't worked my way up to 8 miles, I'll just do the 5 mile fun run/walk part, or something. :)
Ye gods and little fishes. Did you know there's approximately 324523987 zillion walks, ranging from semi-organized to very organized, up here, both seasonal and year-round? There's the Anchorage Volkssports Club, which does walks and bike rides and a zillion other things, and then there're races (none of which I could possibly *run* in, but maybe I could walk in them) and all kinds of things listed here.
I think I'm going to do this walk next Friday evening. And there's a Walk to Whittier through the tunnel on June 14. And the Midnight Sun Run on the solstice, which I'm sure I can't do a marathon of, but maybe if I walk every day, or almost every day between now and then, I could do a half marathon. And maybe the Alyeska 5K 'Fun Run' on July 5 that kicks off the Girdwood Forest Fair stuff. And and and! O.O
Anchorage.net is my new hero. :)
Tired. I /did/ get up this morning, although not as early as planned, and did a 2 mile walk. Tomorrow I'll try to get up 5 minutes earlier...
Of course, that will make it 5 more minutes of wakefullness before I get to see X2! Augh! :)
Silkie says I may start my 50K in 30 days over again today because it's a new month, but I better get on the ball. (She didn't say that part.)
I'm hungry, need to shower, need to pee, need to put the dog out, and am stuck in a meeting. Bah.
Goals: year to date. Parenthetical statements indicate # achieved in April.
Words written
anticipated: 132,000
achieved: 124,630 (4380)
Miles biked
anticipated: 250
achieved: 148.5 (137.25)
Miles swum
anticipated: 40
achieved: 17.8 (0)
Drawings drawn
anticipated: 33
achieved: 4.5 (.5)
Books read
anticipated: 35
achieved: 31 (6)
Pounds lost
anticipated: 10
achieved: +4 (-1)
