Oop. The new chair and keyboard *barely* fit into the nook. It needs to be about 2 inches wider. When I type, the keyboard thunks on the wall, or on the stair railing. I shall have to get something to pad them (or learn to type less violently, I suppose).
VERY impatient for the monitor arm now!
Windy out. Chanti didn't get walked. Chanti is very sullen about it. Bad human. :P
miles to Lothlorien: 444.5
So far today I have rassled my chair into the house, walked two miles, made some bread, set up my keyboard, discovered I only hit the space bar with my right thumb, and have grown VERY IMPATIENT in the waiting for my monitor arm because this is gonna be SO COOL.
Nrf. It's beautiful out, and 24 degrees, which is certainly warm enough to walk, but there's also a lot of wind blowing, which means it is very likely colder than a titch's wit out there. Nrf. I guess I'll go check the mail and see. If it's as cold as I think it is, Chanti's just going to have to suffer without a walk, because I'm not that noble. :P
Jai, when I met her for coffee, said, "My God! You look just like Jennifer Garner!" I have the coolest friends. :)
Ted and I cleaned most of the kitchen counter off. Then Ted cleaned his entire desk and the computer closet and I'm working on my desk, after which I will remove most of the remaining mess on the kitchen counter to my desk. :P But then I can go through everything and sort out the reciepts for tax stuff, at least.
Ted also wiped one of the random computers we've got sitting around, reinstalled it, and put Word on it, so now all I need is my monitor arm and I will be able to put Nook 2.0 together. I 'spect it'll get here tomorrow.
Do you suppose I can write off dance classes? Under health and wellness, or something?
Getting layers cut into my hair does not make me look like Jennifer Garner.
I don't hate it any more than I did before. I don't like it any more either, but I'll give it a few days and see what I think. Mostly what I think right now is that the shortest layer, which still seems to be a bit angled and is jaw-length, is a lot better than the longer stuff under it.
I'm just not any good at growing my hair long, am I?
We did find me a chair! It took 3 hours and we went to every single office furniture place in town that was open, but we finally found a good, comfortable, chair that I think will do very well. Now all I need is the monitor arm and I can put Nook 2.0 all together!
And, on a completely different note, apropos of nothing except Angie reminded me of it, a story about missed opportunities and defining points on one's life:
When I was 13, my drama class went on a high school trip to New York City. We had a layover in St. Louis, and I was wandering around the airport, bored and tired. During my wanderings, I saw a really cute guy playing a racecar video game, and I thought for some reason that he looked familiar. I went and got a cookie and came back. He was still playing. I hid out behind the AT&T booth and watched him for a while, trying to figure out why he might possibly look familiar, and trying to get up the nerve to go say to him, "Uh, hi, you look familiar, how come?"
Eventually I decided it was just my imagination, because he was really cute and I was sure I'd LIKE to know him, but I was too embarrassed to go say, "Uh, hi." So I went back to the drama group and kept reading my book (David Eddings's MAGICIAN'S GAMBIT).
About twenty minutes later, a girlfriend of mine came rushing over and flopped in the chair beside me and said, "Kirk Cameron is here!"
And I realized that the kid I'd seen *had* been familiar, because I'd seen his picture on my friends' walls (I hadn't ever watched Growing Pains, at that point). I said, "Oh, yeah, I saw him a while ago," and then we all went and mobbed the poor bastard. I kept thinking, "If I had been brave enough, I could have actually had a conversation with this guy, instead of being one of a faceless mob of people clamoring at him." So I promised myself I'd never chicken out like that again.
Fast forward more than a decade. I'm in the Houston airport, standing in line to see if I'm going to make my flight to Florida for the Highlander Clan Cruise. A guy behind me says something, and I go, "! I know that voice!"
I look over my shoulder, and Jim Byrnes is two people behind me. A few minutes later we're both out of line and I'm thinking: if you do not go talk to him, Cate, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life. You know this, because you've already *been* there once.
So I gathered myself and went and said hello, and we talked a couple of minutes. Later that weekend he saw me on the ship and said, "Hi, Cate!", and an entire year later bellowed, "My friend, Catie Murphy!" at me in a room full of crowded people, so talking to him made not just that weekend, but several others through the course of several years.
I will always be a little sad that I didn't nerve myself up to go talk to Kirk Cameron and find out who he was, but I will also always, *always* be glad that I not only learned from making that mistake, but that I had the belly to follow through when the exact same opportunity came up so many years later. It was one of those rare moments in life where you can see a turning point very clearly, and act accordingly. I think that's pretty cool.
During the midst of last night's gaming, after we'd defeated a fire spirit (with, I later discovered, a great deal of help from the GM: at least 3 of our characters should have died, which actually came as something of a relief to me, because I couldn't believe we'd defeated it so easily!), Jean was saying to Arthur, "Maybe we could use one of those things to power your steam-engine ideas instead of using coal."
To which Arthur replied, "Ah, yes, you're suggesting an infernal combustion engine!"
We actually stopped and applauded. :)
There've been a lot of these sorts of posts around today, on my friendslist and whatnot.
I was in our orange Datsun on my way to school. Dad was driving (he worked at the high school that's right across from the junior high) and we were most of the way through town, listening to the news on the radio when it was reported that the Challenger had just exploded on take-off. I almost couldn't breath. Today, nineteen years later, I still get the same gut-wrenching feeling of shock and disbelief. I got out of the car and went to sit in the lobby between the two sets of doors--the school doors didn't open til 8, and I always got to school around 7:30, 'cause high school started earlier and Dad, being a teacher, had to get there fairly early. There were two or three other kids already there. I didn't say anything to them about it because to do so only seemed gratuitious, even though it was horribly important. A few minutes later two more kids who didn't have my reservations came in and blurted, "The space shuttle just exploded!" I remember thinking they sounded excited, not horrified, although I have no idea if that's true or not.
Several years ago, Dad asked if there was a moment in my generation like the Kennedy assassination for my parents' generation. I said, without hesitation, the Challenger explosion.
This is not a good week for the space program.
Good grief. I just got about a hundred more cover flats in the mail. To go with the forty or so I already had. What the heck do you suppose I should do with all these things?
Went to the chiro. Feel much, much better now. Except for being sort of paranoid about going back to Little to write, 'cause I don't want my arm to go all owie again. Feh. :P
miles to Lothlorien: 442.5
I walked out of the house last night and heard a branch snap and was like, "I hear a moose! Where's the moose? Are we going to get trompled?" And I looked all around and didn't see one, so I thought, "Well, maybe I was hearing things," and we went down the walkway and across the driveway, eating a neighbor's tree, was a moose. I felt vindicated. :)
I actually used the treadmill this morning! And while I was examining the tv to figure out how to use it, I discovered the instruction manual, which was in a plastic bag, was accompanied by 2 triple A batteries. Doh. But I walked! 2 whole miles! And watched an episode of Highlander (Brothers in Arms, which is one of my own favorites), though in doing so I determined that I really do need a long-corded headset, because it's just too noisy with the treadmill going to hear most of the lines. There don't seem to be subtitles available, so...headset.
Then I finished writing chapter 25, and my wretched shoulder is all owie. I need to take some aspirin and maybe make a chiro appointment, although. :P I'm getting very, very tired of needing to go to the chiro on a weekly basis. Especially without insurance. :P
Slow words today, 1300 of them or so. End of the book is in sight. Yay. :) Two chapters more, I think, and an epilogue. Of sorts, anyway.
Went and got triple A batteries and the TV/DVD player's remote now works, so I have absolutely no excuse at all for not walking. I don't have a distance set that I'm supposed to walk, just...however far I walk during an episode of Highlander. I like reading the Watcher notes (although on a 13 inch screen, they may be too small to read from 8 feet away) and I usually watch the video commentaries if they've got 'em, so 45 minutes to an hour's worth of walking. 2 or 3 miles, prob'ly. That's not bad.
I did watch one of the episodes tonight, "Homeland," which is the first episode of 4th season. It's also on the Best of Highlander, although I really don't think that structurally it's a very good show. Emotionally, though, it's a winner, and I'm sure that's why people voted it as one of the best.
Oh, look! Comics to read! :)
ytd wordcount: 33,100
miles to Lothlorien: 439
No walking to Rivendell (or Lothlorien) this morning on the treadmill. I did get it set up last night, and the TV, too. But it turned out the TV's remote requires 3a batteries, not 2a batteries, and we have none of those. Which, ok, yes, I am aware there are OTHER WAYS to turn on a tv besides the remote, but given that the idea here is that I walk and not keep leaping off the treadmill to try to fix sound, captioning, etc and whatever, and the controls for the tv are on top of it, and it is currently positioned well above my head, so I literally can't reach them without crawling onto the dryer. So screw it. I'll get batteries today. :P
Official weigh-in today. All week I have thought it was Friday. Today I think it's Tuesday. WTF, over. Anyway. I'm weighing in at 175, which is a 4 pound gain or so over the last few weeks when I haven't been exercising much and have been allowing myself to eat sweets. Sweets are bad. :P I still weigh less than I did at Christmas (by several pounds, actually), but for some reason, man, I'm unhappy about the gain. I mean, I should be phlegmatic because hey, I'm back on no sweets and yadda yadda yadda, but I'm very crabby about it today. :(
It's cold out. 13 degrees. But the sky was (just barely) starting to get light at 8:15, so that's something, at least.
I hoff bought a monitor arm. I hoff bought a monitor. Now all I need is a CHAIR (and maybe a footrest) and Nook 2.0 will be underway.
I hoff written 1200 words and expect to finish the chapter tomorrow. I hope plan intend to forge on after that, for I hoff also made a hair appointment for 3:30pm Saturday afternoon, and since doing SOMETHING with my hair is the reward for finishing the book, I obviously need to finish the book by then.
I hoff walked a mile and a half, but not on the treadmill, which I still need to go set up. Soon, my precious, soon.
But right now I'm going to go watch one of the movies I got for Christmas, 'cause I hoff been at a computer enough today. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 437.5
ytd wordcount: 31,800
I am becoming desperate to do something about my hair. When Deirdre saw me at Christmas she said, "Wow! That's the longest your hair's been since you were eleven!" That's not entirely true; it was longer in college, but it was also curly. This is definitely the longest it's been when it's straight since I was eleven.
It's driving me batshit. I need to do something with it. I am not quite prepared to actually cut it all off yet, and even if I was my hairdresser won't let me. (I have to ask three times, which means on three separate occasions. I'm not entirely sure if the conversation which made her lay down this ultimatum counted as the first time or not.) Obviously, since I could do an end-run around the hairdresser by going to another one (or insisting), I am willing to accept her rules. I am still holding on to this faint hope of doing a really great Rogue costume when I've lost another 30 pounds, and I want to have the hair to do it. So I'm reluctant to cut it short, which is too bad, because I look much better with short hair.
As I've just started swimming again, the usual "Let's dye it an interesting color!" or "Let's bleach the hell out of it!" seems sort of pointless, because dye would just bleach out from the chlorine an bleach would make it dry out and snap off with a little help from the chlorine.
I have almost no skill with hair at all. Like, I can barely braid my own hair. I rarely leave the house so a hairstyle that requires fussing will just make me cut it all off. This is what it currently looks like:
Any suggestions? :P
Stayed up way too late last night and didn't leap out of bed at the crack of dawn, but that's okay. We actually rented a U-Haul to go get the treadmill, and now we have a treadmill in the garage. Sometime today I'll go figure out where to plug it in and I'll set up the DVD player and then, as Jai said, she will NEVER catch me on the road to Mordor! Ahahahahah! Ahem. (I told her she obviously needed to start running. :))
Worked out some plotbunnies with Sarah on her Big Fat Fantasy novel that she's working on (go Sarah!), and in a minute or three I'm going to get breakfast, clean the kitty litter, and oh, get something out for dinner. Not necessarily in that order. I'm going to try writing at my desktop today, 'cause my shoulder's a little ginky. Gink gink.
I tried a 1.5 mile walk yesterday, but we were interrupted by moose and ended up going back the shorter way. Silly moose.
miles to Lothlorien: 436
I have just ordered a $500 keyboard. Shortly, I will buy a wall-mounted monitor arm and a flat screen monitor (although not in that order, because I need to make sure the monitor has the right kind of back so it'll fit in the mounting). Then I will get a new chair and a footrest and bat my eyelashes at Ted to clean up one of the old eMachines and I will entirely rebuild my Book Nook so it is Ergonomically Appropriate for Kits. That's my plan for this weekend.
Which means that at the completion of OPERATION: CARDINAL, after five years, seven books, and many, many partials, Little will be retired as my main writing computer.
WAH!
I think I just hit critical mass with this book. I fi-i-i-i-inally got people moving again and I had a fun scene and then an emotional bit that ended in people pulling guns (you can't beat that!), and I am feeling happy about being able to finish this book now! On to Moscow! Three chapters left! Doom! Betrayal! Romance! More doom! *cheerful*
Marith and I just had a total Dark is Rising geekathon. Life is good. :)
Uhm. Uhm! We went over to Mom and Dad's for dinner last night, 'cause it was Mom's birthday. We had really yummy roast chicken (which Ted carved and which my father admired profusely) and deviled cauliflower which was SO GOOD! and stuffing with chicken gravy and for dessert I made a spice cake which I was very, very happy with. I have found me a good spice cake recipe. :)
And now, thank God, I am back on no sweets. Lent Begins Again!
miles to Lothlorien: 435
ytd wordcount: 30,600 (yay! 30K!)
music: When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back...
Today is my Mommy's birthday! Happy birthday, Mommy! Do you want me to make you a cake? Have you decided what you'd like for your birthday? :)
Jai and I went to see House of Flying Daggers this afternoon. About two minutes before everything went completely to hell, I thought, "Oh, shit! This is going to end badly!" And lo, it did. I mean, of course it did: it's a Chinese movie. They always end badly. (Wonderfully, but badly.) I felt rather silly for not realizing it until ten minutes before the film ended. Of course, Jai said she was completely blindsided by it all ending badly, so at least it wasn't just me. :)
I enjoyed it. Chinese movies have wildly different pacing than American movies, and I get a little impatient with the slow, deliberate set-up, but the flip side is having these amazing scenes where the actors barely change expression yet convey *tremendous* emotional charges, which you rarely get in (at least mainstream) American film.
Sadly, Jai developed a horrible headache during the movie, so we didn't hang out and talk after. (I developed a minor one myself. The sound was awfully loud.) But it was nice to see her, anyway! :)
Didn't do much else today. Printed out O:C and I'm going to read it tomorrow morning and see how much further I can get in writing it after that. Um. Bought the TV/DVD thing yesterday, but we have yet to figure out how to get the treadmill to our house, as it will not fit in either the Jeep or Shaun's truck. Anybody local got a truck we could borrow? (Erm, does anybody local besides Jai and my family *read* this?)
*looks around* Right. Okay. G'night, then. :)
I'll write the San Francisco leg of the adventure next. Maybe even today, depending on how efficient I am with the writing of things I'm actually being paid to write. :)
Gaming was fun, as usual. Melissa and Pat are becoming moderate gaming geeks, and putting genuine thought into their characters and starting to do things like multi-class and generally having a good time with it. Hee hee. :) It's really nice to actually SEE people and hang out and have fun!
And I am currently shirking an opportunity to do it again. Christopher's starting an Eberron game, with a slightly different set of players, and while I think I do want to play, this book is hanging over my head and I need to work on it. So Ted's off doing chargen and hanging out stuff, and in a minute I'm going to go make some words appear on a different computer than this one.
Apparently all the rich food I've eaten the last few days caught up with me last night, for at 4:30 in the morning I leapt out of bed and raced into the bathroom to hurl. There are apparently many people who can vomit all but silently. I am not one of these people; vomiting includes the use of my voicebox. Always has. So poor Ted got to listen to me go HRRRRAAGH! HRRRRRNNNG! for a while last night. Isn't it nice to be married to me? o.o But I felt much better after that, and deci... you know, I was feeling sort of icky much of the day yesterday, now that I think about it. Christopher thought I looked like death warmed over, when he came over for gaming. Maybe I had some kind of little bug. Huh. Anyway, so I decided I really needed the Cleansing of Chlorine this morning, even if I was still pretty exhausted from my 4 A.M. pyrotechnics, and went swimming this morning. Only did a thousand yards, but I thought that was good enough for a pukey girl. :)
Ok, going to go write a bit now, and eventually walk the dog, and then go buy a TV/DVD unit. I know how to have fun!
yards swum: 8200
miles to Lothlorien: 434
ytd wordcount: 28,100
Ok, screw it, doing a fast and dirty writeup of the campaign so far because otherwise I'll never get it done, obviously. More behind the cut tag.
The morning following the party at which we were attacked by zombies, we all got together again, pooled our resources, and learned that Robert, the bad guy, was last seen at a warehouse down on the river. Going down to the river begot us more zombies and a very dramatic escape on Robert's part which brought poor Jean (Christopher) back down to 0 hit points and knocked Ki (Shaun) out with voodoo dust.
I think the third session was one of those where we didn't manage to get our acts together enough to do very much, but--ah, yes, I remember now. There was another soiree of some sort, at which zombies attacked, and despite Tersa (me) having been warned to keep an eye on Jean and Jacqueline (his NPC sister), Jacqueline was kidnapped. We did have some fun stuff where Tersa got ahold of a gun, rolled a 1, and then rolled a hit and managed to shoot a zombie by way of shooting *between* Jean and Ki's shoulder's. Whew. :) We leapt into a carriage and went racing pell-mell after Robert and Jacqueline, who inevitably escaped.
Fourth session, Jean was frothing to go rescue Jacqueline, so we did. As if it was that easy...
We tracked the carriage, ultimately to an alleyway which we discovered a hidden passage under. A stairway inside the passage turned to a slide and Tersa accidentally set Jean a little bit on fire, but he had fire resistance for 3 points and that's all the damage she did, so it was okay. She didn't MEAN to, sheesh!
We thoroughly tied a door shut in order to prevent any zombies coming after us (the GM later assured us that had been completely unnecessary), then snuck around a corner, where Charles promptly got hit by a dart and spent the ENTIRE COMBAT SESSION as a paralyzed meat shield. He was, however, the only one who took any damage at all, so overall we decided that was okay. :)
Around the corner was a room in which there were many zombies, a lizard man, a couple of other things I think, and Robert the bad guy, busy chanting over Jaqueline's prone (and nekkid) form. Ki stole Tersa's knife. Jean went absolutely batshit and shot the hell out of the lizard dude. Chaos reigned. Charles got thumped against the wall. Mia shot everything in sight (zombie after zombie after zombie!). Tersa didn't shoot much of anything, but she did yell a lot. Ki threw Tersa's knife, managing to interrupt Robert's chanting (which was good, 'cause he had to do it for 24 hours straight for his ritual to work) and in the mess Robert made off through a Sekrit Back Door.
Once everything else was dead, Tersa and Mia followed him, finding Tersa's bloody knife ("How'd this get here?!") and a treasure chest full of loot, but no Robert. Jean manfully rescued his sister (actually, Ki did, but we don't want to talk about that, because it makes Jean get real mad!) and we brought her back home, where thankfully she thought it was all a horrible dream.
We made one final stab at finding Robert, which led us to his hotel room, under the door of which a telegram had been slipped. The telegram said: "I want my book back. --The Old Man of Chinatown"
Since we had the book (I don't remember how we got it anymore, but we had it), we thought we'd better go to San Francisco and return it.
And that concludes my very lame writeup of the first leg of the adventure! O.O
So the other night I had this nightmare about URBAN SHAMAN.
I dreamed I got my advance copies and I was reading through it, and there was an entire chapter in which Petite, Jo's 1969 Mustang, had inexplicably turned into some older-era jalopy sort of Jeep thing, complete with the model numbers and all written into the story. And I was reading it in horror, thinking, "...this can't be fixed. This is the printed version of the book. It's already gone to press. I *know* I didn't miss this in rewrites, because Petite was always a Mustang. I *couldn't* have missed this in the rewrites. How did this happen?"
And then there were TWO SECTIONS of the book where the story went away entirely and instead there were about 20 pages each of photographs and sketches on heavier, matte paper, and they all had these sort of vague sentence-long descriptions under them, as if this was how the story was supposed to go and the photos and whatnot sort or represented a pictoral version of it. And I just kept thinking, "...there's no point in talking to my editor about this. It's too late. It can't be fixed. This is how it's going to hit the stores."
I think I might be a little nervous. :)
All right, fine. I can take a hint.
Jai called to ask, quite dubiously, if I was the person who'd wanted the treadmill her mother had decided to give up. I wasn't, but with the offer on the table I decided I should say yes, since I've been bitching interminably about the cold and the slipperiness and the wah wah wah. It will go live in the garage, and I'm going to take some of my mad money and buy one of those little hundred dollar 13" tv/dvd units and I will get up and walk and watch an episode of Highlander five mornings a week. That should last me until the weather clears (and then some, for that matter, since I've also got the Best Of to watch), and then this fall I will get NetFlix and watch Buffy or Angel or something. Or possibly I'll borrow 'em from Deen, but you get the idea.
Then, to make me stop whining, Deborah told me to go for a walk. I did, and it turned out to not be either as cold or as slippery as I thought it probably was, so I decided that I had better get back into the habit of taking the dog for a mid-day walk, but if I'm walking in the mornings I don't have to worry about slogging 2 miles in the cold. I can do 1 or 1.5 and that's fine. And just as Deborah suspected, going for a walk made me feel better.
*mutters vile imprecations*
And I've determined I can swim on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday with relatively little inconvienence, so those will be my swimming days.
Now all I need to do is rebuild my workspace downstairs and I will have nothing to complain about.
(Stop looking at me like that.)
miles to Lothlorien: 432.5
Yesterday was a very nice day. We went out to dinner at our favorite (but increasingly expensive and hence rarely visited) Italian restaurant with Christopher and Young, and Ted ate so much that he was much, much too full to eat any of the German chocolate cake I made for his birthday cake! So we still have a pristine cake sitting downstairs. Ted got good loot for his birthday, including a book called FOOD FOR FIFTY, which deals with scaling recipes up for larger groups of people. He'd really wanted that, so he was v. happy. :) And then he took the gift certificate my parents got him and went to B&N and got a recipe book for h'.. h'... appetizers. O.O That he'd seen that he really wanted, so yah. Good stuff. Very nice day.
*I*, otoh, went to the chiropractor and got crunched in a million places in an attempt to make the tingling in my right ulnar nerve go away (it worked). Because working at my laptop aggravates that particular problem, I didn't write yesterday, and today I'm going to move my chapter in progress to the desktop computer, which has a better keyboard even if overall I don't like writing at the desktop so much because it's connected to the terribly distracting internet. However, with 4ish chapters to go and a pinch in my back waiting to happen, I prefer to err on the side of caution. I shall just have to manfully ignore the internet.
And! Email from Jenn this morning saying she'd read and really enjoyed "Banshee Cries", and that she'd heard back from the new YA editor at Tor and was resubmitting ANGLES there, as everyone is now assuming the original submission has been lost. So! MOVEMENT there, and I am *really* pleased about that!
Arright. Hair-drying, then writing. Zoof.
There's a really terrific meme going on at LJ right now, in which the rules are thus:
1. Reply to this post if you want me to tell you how cool you are!
2. Watch my journal over the next few days for a post about you and why I think you rock.
3. If you like, post these instructions in your journal and give your friends a much needed dose of love and adoration!
It's just so incredibly nice to read down my friends page and see all of these wonderful things being said about people. Just really, really nice.
But today is Ted's birthday, you see, and so I am going to take this meme and apply it to my husband.
Ted rocks because, with no pun intended, he *is* a rock.
Ted is one of the most solid, capable people I have ever met. He cares tremendously about people and things, and wants to keep them safe without wanting to stifle them. He is salt of the earth in the best of ways: make certain people are fed, and fed well, and from there all problems can be solved. "Ted," as Marith once said, "puts more effort into breakfast than most people put into the whole day."
It is my opinion that I must be a complete pain in the ass to live with. I'm constantly focused on worlds that don't exist, I rarely cook, I clean only when the straw breaks the camel's back. Ted not only has got the care and feeding of a Kit down pat, but he generally seems to like it, and if for no other reason, Ted would rock just because of that.
But it's a lot more than just that. When I get stuck somewhere in one of those other worlds and I'm not sure what to do with my story, he listens and offers ideas, never taking offense at the ones I reject, until something sticks and I know what to do next. He not only supports me in my endeavors, but has a sort of low-key casual confidence in my writing that stretches far beyond the bounds of even my own rather significant expectations. He makes dinners most nights and will often make a weekend breakfast. Granted, he too tends to be a camel's back sort of cleaner, but all things considered, that's probably good, or I'd really drive him nuts.
He is consumately silly. Long years of association with me have worn away the edges of his dignity, so that he is willing to let the silliness out in public. I refer you to the Brave Little Snowflakes (followed later by their more fearful brethren, the Significantly Larger Snowflakes, which had obviously been frightened into poofyness by the ravens swooping around), or to the Irresistable Gravitational Pull, which causes one or the other of us to be drawn to the other for a quick smooch.
He did something entirely against his nature after years of struggle, and quit a job that he hated in order to pursue something that he loved. The past three semesters he's maintained a 4.0, has won friends and influenced people in the culinary occupations in this town, has developed a love for good wines and how to use them to enhance meals, and has become a full-out food geek, so that every time he says something anymore I have to ask him what that word means. It is really quite wonderful.
I have ended all of my other memes about why people rock with: and that is why he rocks. But the truth is, in this case, Ted rocks, and that's why I love him.
Happy birthday, sweetie. :)
There. 3551 words today, plus the additional 807 yesterday, making for what's starting to seem like a fairly decent wordcount so far this year. I'm slightly more than halfway done with this chapter, and I think I've got four to go.
Oh dear. And Chrisber has found a build your own tartan website. Oh dear. :)
ytd wordcount: 26,500
1300 words so far this morning, and about 800 more than posted about yesterday, so I'm close to done with chapter 22, which is pretty good for it not yet being 9:30 in the morgle. Taking a breakfast break right now and then back to the grindstone.
I want a ... nevermind. It's been too long since I started writing this post. No, I'll write it anyway.
I want a workstation which involves a comfy mission-style chair like the one in my writing nook. I want this workstation to have a querty keyboard on the arms of the chair, split entirely in two, ASDFG on the left and HJKL: on the right. I want a mouse plate off to the right-hand side. I want a screen that is in some fashion suspended an appropriate number of inches away from my face, so that I do not have to look down or up to see it. I believe this would prevent my right shoulder/ulnar nerve from getting angsty while I type (which it does with a standard laptop keyboard), and would prevent me from hunching forward and sticking my head out, which is just all kinds of bad for my back.
This is what I want. Unfortunately, I am completely incapable of creating such an environment. Sniffle.
Swam a mere 1600 yards last night. Didn't really feel much like swimming, but I went anyway and while I didn't feel splendiferous for it, I felt moderately better for it, at least. I think I shall swim again tonight.
yards swum: 7200
A whole chapter so far today. Break time for a while, then back to the grindstone. And, having reached more than 20K for my YTD wordcount, I have broken out of the Dire Ones, which is always emotionally satisfying. :)
I also hit 250 pages with the manuscript, which means 70-90 more to go. I have this bit I like at the end of this chapter and I hope it'll all work out. :)
Will be VERY glad to be done with the rough draft so I can fix everything. :)
ytd wordcount: 22,100
So I had a great swim today. The girl in the lane next to me was right about my speed, so I was working to keep up with her (and kept thinking, *damn*, but she's really got me on the flip turns), and she started working to stay ahead of me, so we both got a good swim in, and after I was done I said, "Man, you really kicked my butt on the flip turns," and she said, "I was thinking the same thing about you!" *laugh* We had a nice talk about possessiveness of lanes and why don't people swim in lanes of appropriate speed (they are supposed to be, starting on one side or the other, slow medium fast fast medium slow) and there's an Asian guy in a tiny swimsuit who's really fast, and she talked about one time when she'd done about 10 laps against him, and had worked her butt off to keep up, and when she was done he said, "Man, you're really making me work for it today!" So apparently she and I are far from the only ones who do that. *laugh*
Anyway, so I usually swim in the medium lane, because there are people like the Asian guy in the tiny swimsuit who are really genuinely fast, and I don't want to get in their way. But while I was getting out of the pool, I had this sort of random thought: I'm only fast compared to most people.
And then I was like o.O *giggle* Because, well, see! I think I've got a pretty good handle on my capabilities, and I know there are swimmers who are much, much faster than I am. So I really don't think of myself as being a fast swimmer. And I'm not.
Except compared to most people.
o.o
yards swum: 5600
Horrible sleepies. Slogged my way through a chapter, not because the chapter was boring but because I was v. sleepy myself. Obliged to take a nap halfway through the chapter. Hoping right now that Ted comes home in time to bring me to swimming, as promised, because I so need the exercise. It's largely that that's making me sleepy, I think, so I'm hoping that exercise will revitalize me enough to write more afterwards.
It's still cold and slippery out. *sigh* And to add insult, it's windy, too. Poor Chanti keeps spending a couple of hours every afternoon running to the front door every time I move, in hopes that TODAY we'll go for a walk, but I'm such a weenie we haven't. Lousy human. :/
ytd wordcount: 19,500
1250 v. slow words so far today. Borrowed Ted's brain, figured out the widget I needed, and will carry on in a few minutes here after I'm...well. Technically I'm now done with lunch, but I'm taking a few more minutes to hang out and listen to the Smallville soundtrack and geek with Deborah over the lovely brokenness that is the Luthor family. :)
Frozenated. *brr* Ok, I guess I have to go write more. Ted's going over to Christopher's to make up a character for a new game later, but I don't expect I'm going, as I need at least another 1200 words, and I'm not likely to achieve those in the next 45 minutes. Well. I might. But if I'm that spiffy I need to keep going, because 6 weeks to deadline.
(Christ. Better get writing. Bai.)
Managed to see Jai today. Didn't blow her off. Go me. :) We had a nice hour and a half or so of hanging out and talking, and have proposed the novel idea of doing this *weekly*. *gasp*! Plus we're gonna go see House of Flying Daggers as soon as we figure out when we can both make it. :)
Ted and I shopped and Ted got his hairs cut and ... that's about it, really, but it's been a nice day. And if I'm a good Kit I shall get some writing done in a while here.
Exciting life!
Wonders of unending wonders, I have actually sent my passport paperwork. Well. Money for it, actually, since I sent the paperwork ages ago.
Woo. We got some grapes that have a certain kick the them. Woo. My. Woo. *blinkblink* They're good, just, woo.
And I wear my geek hat at a cocky angle, for I have picked up the Smallville soundtrack. :)
And NOW I have put all of DEIRDRE'S stuff in an envelope! If she would only tell me her address, I could PUT IT IN THE MAIL! *gasp*
Elektra is all right. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just (nice!) all right. There was too much introspection ("We don't care about her tortured past, we just want to see her kick ass!", said Ted), but there were some nice bits, and generally, yeah, it was all right. Jennifer Garner's abs are quite amazing. I covet them.
Paying bills now, because I'm a real live wire. :)
Swimming good. 1800 yards today, marginally better than yesterday. If I keep adding 200 yards a workout, in another week or so I'll be at a decent swim. Although, honestly, I'm trying not to overdo it. My back hasn't freaked out yet, but that doesn't mean I'm not paranoid.
No swimming tomorrow. Tomorrow, tap class. Saturday swimming would be good, though. And it's supposed to warm up to the 20s, so I'll probably walk some more. Wretched cold slippery weather.
Going to go feast on the flesh of spaghettis now, and watch Smallville. Tomorrow, a chapter before Elektra, a chapter *after* Elektra, and then gamey goodness. Yes. So mote it be.
ytd yards swum: 3400
2359 words, and I might still write some more later. Not sure yet. My brain's starting to get a little chewy. There are a couple people reading the rough draft for this book, and I'd imagine their brains have gone right out the window, because I'm dropping things and coming up with new things and having unsubstantiated things arrive out of nowhere and, you know, all the rot that goes along with a first draft. I've got pages of notes of things to fix, and some other things that need fixing that I haven't even wrapped my mind around what to do yet, which is to say there are massive consistency problems and I need a hammer to straighten them out. It's all a complete disaster...
...so I guess it must be going reasonably well.
Gah. Writing is hard. Let's go shopping.
ytd wordcount: 17,300
Glee!
I shouldn't have turned the desktop computer on yet this morning, as I haven't written yet, but I had to, 'cause glee! First, the official weigh-in this morning was down another pound, so I've lost 17 pounds since Oct. 7th. And second, I took my second pair of size 14s out of the closet and discovered they were more badly thrashed than I thought they were, so I veeeery nervously tried on the new 12s I got for Christmas, which I hadn't been going to do until I'd lost 20 pounds.
AND THEY FIT! COMFORTABLY!
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
*runs around GLEEFULLY*!
(and now goes to write)
I defied the gods and went...well, swimming, this afternoon. I feel somewhat more like I might be, or at least might have once been, part of the human race. 1600 yards, not a particularly huge amount, but an amount that seemed prudent to me. I shall see, tomorrow, how my back is doing. I hope I will get to go swim again tomorrow.
I am still a-boggle over the new improved fit of my swimsuit (and the new improved reflection in the mirror, for that matter). And, y'know, with any luck, the swimming will help to continue improving it all...
ytd yards swum: 1600
2788 words today despite myself, and I think this is a very sexy chapter. There've been explosions, now there needs to be a little down time of learning more stuff and testing theories, then on to a worldwide chase where three or four factions are after the hero, some sex if I can work it in, some nice crunchy betrayal on someone's part, then more explosions and a deadly fight and we're good. No prollem.
It is way too damn cold out to go walking.
ytd wordcount: 14,900
And then there are mornings like today, when I have eaten too many pieces of pizza in the last couple of days, and, as Ted put it, the Ghost of Pizza Past has come to haunt my tummy. Gah. :/ No writing this morning. Gah, more.
OTOH, Silkie, Research Assistant Extraordinare, has filled my mailbox with links and quotes for all the stuff that I've left notes in the O:C manuscript so far. (I tend to do things like have a character say, "to hell with the people who say an
unexamined life is an empty one" and then follow it up with a note to myself saying GET THE RIGHT QUOTE, because I don't write at the desktop computer so I have no instant internet access while I'm working. Silkie, who reads the roughs at the computer, does, and inevitably sends me all the answers to the notes I leave myself. She equally inevitably fails to grok how incredibly wonderful this is, and in fact often apologizes for being nitpicky. Sheesh. :)) So that's quite wonderful, and makes me feel better even if I'm all oogy.
I was noticing something I thought was peculiar: the earlier I start writing, the more willing I am to continue writing later. If I don't get started til noon or 1, it's a struggle to get my 1100 words, much less more than that. If I get started by 8, which is my preference, I find I'm pretty content to write (with a couple of breaks) until 2 or 3. That seemed really weird to me, although Ted pointed out that it's perfectly reasonable. After all, if you go to a regular 8-5 job, you get to work at 8am and probably have 6 or so hours of good work time in there. If you don't get in to work until noon for some reason, well, shit, half the day is shot, so what's the point in doing anything? I just didn't think it'd translate to writing full time, for some reason. Well. Okay, truth be told I didn't think about it at all, but still. :)
I gotta say, this transition to full time writing is ... odd. I've spent enough hours writing, more or less daily, in the last several years, that it doesn't feel any different. But then I'm done with the writing and I don't have to go do another job, and I keep sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
My tummy has settled down enough to leave me faint from the hunger, so I think I'll eat now.
Now *that's* what I'm talkin' about. 4622 words today. This is the difference between getting up at 7 and getting up at 10, pretty much. Finished chapter 16, wrote all of 17, and I know where to go with 18. I think this'll be about 27 chapters when I'm done.
*Much* better. Much, much better.
ytd wordcount: 12,100
Headachy. Donno why. Well, except I've got a stiff neck, which probably has something to do with it.
1200 words so far this morning. It's the first time in A Coon's Age that I've gotten up before 7, and I'm feeling very slightly morally superior. I haven't quite gotten to the end of ch. 16, although I did get to a place where it /could/ end. Except it's only 9 pages long, so I need to do the next bit of scene in this chapter. I'm pretty sure I know where to end it, although it's not where I thought it was going to end, initially. But then something I didn't really expect happened, and so it's all a little different.
*stares at the manuscript* I'd really like to hit page 200 today. I'm on 189. This is within reach.
Not, however, if I hang out here and babble in my blog all day. :)
All right, I am a better person today than I've been for a week. I wrote AND I walked. 3025 words today, one chapter plus a chunk of another, and I know what I'm doing with the rest of 16, so hooray! That means it should go fairly fast tomorrow, and I should get part or all of 17 done.
AND I get to watch more Smallville tonight, 'cause I did my writing! Ahahahah! :)
ytd wordcount: 7500
miles to Lothlorien: 431
Have gone to the chiro for a crunching of much, uh, crunchiness. Am now going to shower and then write no fewer than 1100 and preferably more like 2500 words.
*looks around* Well. Yes. That's about all I've got to say this morning. Except that Clark Kent on red Kryptonite is very nearly as nice as Duncan MacLeod on a Dark Quickening. :)
(hey! stop throwing things at me! I haven't watched any more Smallville since last night's posting! That was the last episode we watched last night! Ow! Ow! Honest! Ow!)
So Jai calls at a quarter after one, and I'm all like, "Hey, Jai, what's up, what're OH SHIT!"
I was supposed to meet her at 1 for coffee at Title Wave, and I COMPLETELY spaced it. I just, wow, I mean, totally. *Totally* forgot. What a complete dork I am. She let me off the hook and we rescheduled for next Sunday, but man, am I a dork. O.O
And at this point, I'm a dork who doesn't get to watch any more Smallville until I've *seriously* caught up on my writing. Hee hee hee. :)
Ted and I are totally weak in the face of Smallville. It's like our own personal form of green Kryptonite. We watched eight episodes last night, and thank Heavens I didn't check to see how many we had left (only 5), or we'd have been up til 4 in the morning. *laugh*
The last episode we watched was "Stray", which was very AUGH and was the episode inwhich they finally used Five for Fighting's Superman song, and as Image said, it was worth waiting for. They're generally very good about music choices, and this was an excellent one.
Ted's been stabbing himself in the heart over all the Clark/Lana stuff, and now that they're getting into some of the Chloe/Clark stuff, *I'm* stabbing myself in the chest, but it's really Lex I keep squirming and howling over. It's SO DOOMED! I LOVE it, because it's SO DOOMED!
I keep telling my ElfQuest friends that he reminds me of Rayek, except coming from a different place. Rayek drives me absolutely batshit because he's always, always always on this journey where he pulls back from the brink of arrogance and cruelty just far enough that I think, "THIS time he's going to do the right thing!" And then he screws it up again. He *always* screws it up again, and in twenty years of reading ElfQuest I have *yet* to lose faith: I *always* believe that *this* time he's going to get it right, and he NEVER does and I'm ALWAYS horribly disappointed.
Lex, on the other hand, actually appears to be trying really hard to do the right thing (which is in itself wonderfully agonizing!), and you still KNOW that it's ALL GOING TO END IN TEARS! *stabs self in heart repeatedly*! AUGH! *AUGH*! *AUGH*!
(I am enjoying this immensely.)
There was a bit at the beginning of one of the episodes we watched where Clark and Pete were in the locker room, wearing nothing but dangerously low-slung towels, and dear *god* what bodies those two have. *goggly eyes* But apparently on the wall behind them was a Smallville Crow (their school emblem) wearing a red Superman-like cape (this is one of the wonderful things about this show; there are bits like that all *over* the place), and Ted said, "Did you see? Did you see?!?"
And I was like, "See? I'm sorry. See what? I was busy." O.O *giggle*
Now, off to finish season 1, because we are WEAK! *beam*
There is now a note on the URBAN SHAMAN page at Amazon saying "Based on customer purchases, this is the #22 Early Adopter Product in Science Fiction & Fantasy." I don't know exactly what that means (except that apparently presales are going well!), but it can't be a *bad* thing! *beam* Quick! Quick! Go buy more copies! See if we can get it to #1! Let's usurp...
...okay, the first thing on that page that actually looks like it's SF/F is Ursula K. LeGuin's FARTHEST SHORE, which is at #3. :)
Actually, from what I'm told, Amazon ratings and listings are largely meaningless, but dammit, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy this! :)
And they're off! BANSHEE CRIES and HEART OF STONE just went into the mail. Yay!
Now to finish O:C, revise TB, and...that's enough for the moment. There's plenty lots more to do, but small bites. :)
*laugh* A meme stolen from Janne: post the first line of the first posting from the first day of each month of 2004. Okay. :)
January:
Our vacation, in brief: Breic vomited.
February:
This has been a completely awesome day.
March:
G'morning, people. I'm starting a shout-out meme, today.
April:
Good morning, everybody!
May:
It was an insanely productive weekend.
June:
Happy birthday to me!
July:
I'd like to tell you that I enjoyed seeing Spider-Man II, but that would mean I would have had to have actually *seen* it, and I only saw about half of it.
August:
Wow.
September:
500 eye-bleeding words this morning.
October:
So I called the bloody Audi place again, and the woman told me very happily that they'd JUST gotten the speedometer in this very afternoon, all the way from Ireland, and they couldn't put it in today but Monday they could, and it looked like it was going to fit and she sounded very pleased about all of that.
November:
I spent the larger part of yesterday doing copy edits for URBAN SHAMAN.
December:
Jai's putting me to shame.
Boy, that wasn't very interesting, was it? :)
Oh! Rock on! The Young Dubliners will be at Bear Tooth on Feb 3 & 4! We will have to go buy tickets pronto! Excellent! *dances around happily*!
I just put my swimsuit on for the first time in 17 or 20 pounds.
Wow.
I mean, there's still room for improvement, but *wow*. O.O
And in other news, I clearly have got to get up the nerve to call Barak Humphrey, as I got email last night from a random classmate who had seen Barak's name, looked for him on the net, and found a hit, "along with a blogger with a familiar face."
This person went on to say:
Small world we live in. A real live author! Congratulations on being the closest thing to famous from our old neighborhood. I was sure Peter would be the first. But I find no mention of him on the Web.I am married with two kids, working in Anchorage as a pilot. I, too, have rejection letters from publishing syndicates. I am a cartoonist. I thought I had it made when I landed a gig with Northern Pilot Magazine, but after a year, the magazine was sold off and cannibalized.
Who am I?
I got it in one. *smug* Now, granted, while the "old neighborhood" covered the entire North Kenai area, and the old crowd encompassed a lot of people, to my mind it pretty much had to be one of five people, and out of those five, one's dead, I know where two are (and one of those is the afore-mentioned Peter), and the fourth wasn't an artist. That sort of left one, and he was the only one who lived close enough to Barak, who was (is) a few years older than us, for him to have impinged on his consciousness.
Still. Smug. :)
Cheerful me. :)
It is really, really slippery out there. I'd like to walk more, but a mile is all I can do without my back getting hunchy from staring at the ground so much. Exercise is HARD when the weather is stupid!
But it's getting lighter out. 4:15 and the sky is still pink with sunset, instead of being dark already. Yay!
And I have made a superior batch of fudge for the guys at the comic shop.
Life is pretty good. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 429.5
Jai objects to me posting that all of these entries are her fault, so I would like to state unequivocally that this entry is not Jai's fault. :)
Ted and I watched the first four episodes of Smallville last night. Tom Welling is insanely cute, even if I think he's gotten too pretty as he's gotten a little older. But I really *love* Lex. My favorite moment so far has been Lana serving them the wrong kind of coffee and Lex's, "Not even close," which made me laugh out loud twice. :)
Today: back on the writing horse!
miles to Lothlorien: 428.5
Hat pictures, at Jai's request. (Yeah, like I needed an excuse to post hat pictures. :)) These were Christmas hats. I loooves them. *beam*
All right. Jai objects to me being together enough to produce a redesign, but not an update, and so I update.
Christmas was good. We all gathered at Mom and Dad's and opened L00t; Ted got a Kitchen Aid and I got HATS and Deirdre got a goat and Gavin got bagpipes and Mom got an Orlando Bloom calendar (I always give her a calendar; this year it suddenly struck me it'd be REALLY FUNNY to give her a teeny-bopper one) and good knives, and Dad got a derby and Breic got all sorts of things, many of them reading-related, and it was lots of fun.
That afternoon we went over to Gavin's family's house for a while, then came home to cook dinner for Ted's parents, who arrived around 6:30pm. And then we flew to Michigan for a week to visit Ted's Mom's family, who are all extremely nice people. By New Year's Eve, though, even Ted's Mom was ready to be done with the visiting. :) Six days was a loooong time. Three or four would've been more manageable, espeically since there are six sisters and two brothers and we saw them all at least twice, and I think we saw most of the sisters four or five times. :)
They were *incredibly* kind about not making me go shopping with them, and about not minding me writing. I got 8 chapters done; I am 170 pages into the manuscript, exactly halfway through. I believe I have 13 chapters left, and I ought to write the next one of those today. God, is it Wednesday? Argh. Yeah. Must write today.
We got home late late Sunday night/Monday morning, shortly before which I learned I had a new nephew. Yay! *beam* Um. What else? Oh, it's official weigh-in day, and I weigh 173. I have lost 15 pounds in the last 3 months.
The last time I remember weighing this much (I have weighed less since then, but the last time I was aware of my weight at this number) was in 1993/94, after coming back from Ireland. I am very, very happy about this. And I got two size 12 pairs of jeans for Christmas that I'm pretty sure I'd fit into right now--the 14s are loose--but which I'm not planning to put on until I hit 168.
I wonder how slippery it is out there. I'd like to go for a walk. Poor Chanti still doesn't believe we're really home, I don't think: she hasn't been eating. Poor puppy. I bribed her with some peanutbutter last night, and I'm hoping if we go for a walk today it'll get her appetite up, or rather, make her so hungry she *has* to eat.
Okay. I think that's about all I've got to say right now. :)
A few pictures of Seirid Eoin!
I keep trying to scrape my brain together to post more than a sentence or two, but it doesn't seem to be working. Maybe tomorrow.
Okay, and for my 2005 goals:
1. write 400K words of fiction
2. sell 4 books
3. bike from Minas Tirith to Hobbiton (1625 miles)
4. walk halfway to Mt. Doom (658.5 miles)
5. read 104 books
6. lose 30 pounds
Look familiar, don't they? :)
There they are, my 2004 goals. Silly me, I wrote 'em in 2003. No wonder I couldn't find 'em. :)
1. to write 400K words of fiction (accomplished: 304,700)
2. to sell 4 books (accomplished: 3)
3. to bike 1500 miles (accomplished: only a few hundred)
4. to walk 575 miles (accomplished: 540.5)
5. to draw 30 drawings (accomplished: like 3?)
6. to read 104 books (accomplished: 102 (doh!))
7. to lose 30 pounds (accomplished: 15; 20 since Nov. 2003)
Not too shabby. :)
My nephew Seirid Eoin (Sear-id Owen) Gleason was born at 7:41am on New Year's Day!
Deirdre says there'll be pictures of him later today. He was 7.5 pounds, 21 inches, and Breic is apparently taking it all in stride quite well. *beam* Yay!