Good heavens! A Starling appeared online tonight! I'd just been thinking about her yesterday, and lo, today she has arrived! Apparently she's got a new job, a new car, a new class schedule, a new cell phone and is thinking of a new horse. Which is typically mad. She seems to be doing quite well, and this is my stand-in for a guest update for her journal. :)
There was no gaming tonight. Christopher evidently had a brain fart and failed to tell us that either there was no gaming or that it was being held elsewhere, so we showed up at Jack's place at 4 and he was staggering around getting ready to go back to work, where he's been for 2 weeks solid and had just come home for a couple of hours' nap. We fed him some cookies and told him he didn't need to apologize (which he was doing profusely) and went home. So no gaming. Instead I've gamed online all night, which has been very nice. And I only read a couple of GNs today, no real books. So there. :)
Oh! But I did get my ear repierced. They ID'd me. Buh. I mean, buh. 31 years old. I didn't get carded when I was 17 and got my ear pierced. I repeat, buh. But I now have 5 ear holes again, so I am pleased! Yay!
Headache. Ow. :P Only finished one book and most of another today, as well as cleaned the kitchen and mopped floors and walked 4 miles. This series I'm reading, by David Zemmel or something like that, is ... I don't like it very much. The characters aren't very likeable and I'm not particularly interested in the world. After reading the first book (actually I think it was the 2nd), I thought, "Well, I'll give another one a try," and some 12 or 18 months later I am, and I feel the same way about it.
The ... annoying? thing is that they're well written enough to keep me going. I don't care very much, but it's not badly written and I'm having a hard time convincing myself that I don't *really* need to finish the books. It's not like the Covenant books, where I really hated Thomas Covenant and kept reading because I'd started the series and felt obliged to finish...
...well, maybe it is, except I don't dislike these nearly as much as the Covenant books. I'm too far into the one I'm reading now to give up, but perhaps if I'm strong I'll skip the other two and read the 2nd two Carol Berg books I've got, which will be much more enjoyable. (Ok, so I went and bought the 3rd Berg book, which is sort of counterproductive toward the goal of clearing out the TBR shelves. Especially since I also got another nonfiction book while I was at it. And two graphic novels. Oops.)
Head still hurts. Gaming tonight will not alleviate that, either. Feh.
OMG. Totally cool. Carl sent me this link and I only just looked at it: artificial ice wall in Fairbanks. SO cool!
miles to Rauros Falls: 31.5
Now this is how a vacation oughta go. Read 2 books (THE MAGICIAN'S GUILD and THE NOVICE, both by Trudi Canavan) and got started on the 3rd in the trilogy (actually, I'm v. disappointed that I didn't get all 3 read today, but I didn't start reading until after noon, so oh well. I'll do better tomorrow!), made bread, walked 4 miles and went to the chiropractor. And cleaned the kitty litter. :) Oh, and I did laundry and read a book last night, too. NINE LAYERS OF SKY, by Liz Williams, which has one of the best sex scenes I've ever read. Two pages. Totally non-graphic. I had to take my polar fleece off when I was done reading it. *fans self* My goodness.
Hm. I should ... there. Fix the lower pages to be more like the main page. :)
Ok. Bedtimeish, now.
miles to Rauros Falls: 27.5
I was going to make this a nice thoughtful sort of post, but I'm too damned sick and tired to write anything that doesn't sound inane. So I'll just celebrate my own damned self without any pretty words.
I have, since October 7th, now lost 20 pounds. That's a pretty significant milestone, and I'm pretty happy about it. Ted said to me last week, "Catie, those pants are falling off your butt!"--and those were the size 12s! And Shaun said, quite tentatively, a couple of days ago, "You look like you've lost some weight," and I said, "I've lost 20 pounds, in fact," and he said, "No way!" He'd been thinking I looked like I lost weight for the last couple of weeks, but thought it'd be rude to say so. I assured him you could always safely tell a woman she looked like she'd lost weight. :)
So I'm at 168 now. This puts me in what I think of as my college weight range, although for at least half of college I was in the 170s. I am very, very pleased with this, and am feeling all the more inspired to keep taking weight off. I've started walking a bit more (although today's not a good example), which is made easier by the fact that it's warming up and walking the coastal trail is always nicer than doing neighborhood circuits or using the treadmill.
You know, I started walking regularly just a little less than two years ago, because I went for a mile-long walk and by the time I was done with it my feet were *killing* me, and I thought that was pretty pathetic. It was a couple of weeks later that I heard about the Walk to Rivendell challenge, which struck me as a fun thing to do, and since then I've walked about 950 trackable miles (I only count deliberate walks as part of my Rivendell mileage, not wandering around the store and stuff). I had to change my eating habits before walking helped me start losing weight, but I can certainly tell the difference now between a few miles of walking a day and not; I can maintain my weight without walking, but I only lose if I start to walk again.
My other major milestone for the day is that I sent off OPERATION: CARDINAL, the first book I've ever written entirely on spec, this afternoon. I find this exciting and alarming and pretty cool. I'm looking forward to getting editorial comments on it, because I'm sure it can be improved, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the story, and there are parts I actively like.
So. A momentous day, in its way, and in celebration I'm going to spend the next seven days *reading*. I have dozens upon dozens of books on my TBR shelves. I'm going to clear out as many of them as I can over the next week, which will be a very enjoyable task indeed. But don't expect to hear a lot from me for the next seven days. :)
miles to Rauros Falls: 23.5
Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.
miles to Rauros Falls: 22.5
Wow. I guess I needed that sleep. I didn't get up until 9:45. Wow. I haven't done that for a while.
Erm. *looks around* Yeah, all right. I don't have anything very interesting to say. Starting to feel better, going to work on this book after I get something to eat, you know. The usual.
Eat. Yes. Food good.
I read a *book*! I feel all amazed! So far this year I've managed to read 3 books and 3 graphic novels. That's pretty pathetic. So I'm taking the next week off from writing to catch up on my reading. Well, as soon as O:C is out the door, anyway, but I worked on it some today and then I really, really wanted to read a book, so I *DID*. HAH! Take THAT! It really feels quite liberating. :)
I also walked 3.5 miles. *waves a little flag*
miles to Rauros Falls 19
I seem to have written up a whole entry and then forgotten to save it. I hate when I do that. Furthermore, I can't remember what I wrote, so it couldn't have been very important.
Must pick Ted's brain to see if he remembers the word that I was going to use for the bad guy organization in this book, because I couldn't remember it so I just made one up. :) And then, we loves search and replace, we do! I already spent an hour this morning trying to come up with a new last name for one of the characters (editor's request) and doing search and replaces on stuff that I know the copy editors will pick up if I don't. Once I get the bad guy organization fixed, then I muz' fix all my notes and the FWOOSH it's off.
Throat hurts. Hacking up goo. But doing better than I have been, by a long shot.
oot! OPERATION: CARDINAL is done! 355 pages and I'm pretty happy with it. I need to go through and fix all the NOTES TO SELF, do a spell check, and then it is OUTTA HERE.
I seem to be having a bowl of popcorn and some orange juice for dinner as my celebration. :)
DONE DEE DONE DONE *DONE*!
I *also* walked 3.5 miles today. Am I cool, or what?
ytd wordcount: 46,400
miles to Rauros Falls: 15.5
Tired. got the necessary chapters revised appropriately. got the next one started. brain gave up eventually, but tomorrow should go reasonably well.
can't really go to bed yet, because my back hurts a great deal if i'm in bed for more than about 8 hours, so unless i plan to get up at 4am, which i do not, i gotta stay up another couple hours. sadly, ran out of law & order reruns (is that even possible?) so the evening of vegging out in front of the tv got shot to hell. sad.
*freezing* cold. got a fuzzy blanket and am hiding under it, which helps some, but man. i'm really ready for this cold to be over with. :p
actually, despite illness (and it's one of those frustrating illnesses where i'm not really sick enough to be useless, just sick enough to feel nasty without lying in bed being justified), it's been a nice day. i got up early and got a fair amount of revising done, and then we wandered over to borders and hither and yon before coming home so i could make cookies before gaming. only it turned out there was no gaming, so Ted came back with the cookies and we brought some over to Christopher and Young and the rest over to Mom & Dad's, where Maggie and her husband Louie are staying. I ate one and it was very nice, but it was also all I needed.
miles to Rauros Falls: 12 (yay! double digits!)
ytd wordcount: 42,400
It is my humble opinion that blowing a silver dollar's worth of thick green snot out of one's nose ought to signal to a body that the end is in sight; the cold is going away. I sincerely hope this is the case.
Which is about all I've got to say this morning. Back to working on the book.
Well, no: thanks for all the encouragement yesterday. :) I did get one chapter completely rewritten before my brain gave out. I need to do that again today. Preferably twice today. We'll see.
This cold is kicking my ass. I am not motivated today, and require encouragement.
I need to get the 3 chapters I have written revised so they work with the new chapter today. I essentially know how to do it. I just am very damned flat and am having a hell of a time pulling my focus together in order *to* do it. It'd be good if I actually wrote another new chapter, but the critical bit is revising these three. So if anybody out there feels like being a cheering section today, I could really use it...
Also, happy birthday to Angie. :)
I have a fair bit of a headache, a sore throat, a large pot of pea soup and a new chapter. Well. Actually, I took aspirin and cold medicine, so the headache and sore throat are receding, but I do have those other two things for sure. Mm. I tell ya. One thing about being sick is it really makes you appreciate soup.
The one thing I *had* to do today was get that chapter written, so I'm feeling pretty pleased. I've now had lunch, and I'm going to walk the dog because I'm such a good person, and then I think I'm feeling up to trying to tackle revising the 3 chapters I have written into something that'll flow with the new chapters.
Goal for later tonight: walking a couple miles on the treadmill. I'm kind of not wanting to do it in the morning right now because I don't want to use up all my energy first thing in the day when I've got writing to do and I'm sick.
oh! today's official weigh-in day. I suspect had I not gone to Mom and Dad's and had an insane amount of deliiiicious fried chicken and biscuits and mmmmm lemon meringue pie for dinner last night I might've weighed in a little lighter today, but as it is, I am officially under 170, which means this weekend I get to go get the second hole in my right ear repieced. Yay!
ytd wordcount: 38,300
3 chapters fairly significantly reshaped with quite a few new words put in, 1 brand new chapter begun (if barely), and my brain has given up on me for now. Shaun, bless his pointy little head, has brought me a hot chocolate, and now I am sitting here vacantly writing this entry.
I am still not well; my throat, which didn't hurt yesterday, hurts today, and my brain feels less sharp than it did yesterday. Of course, I think I took a 90 minute nap around this time yesterday, too, so maybe the sharpness of brain is just dribbling away around 1:15pm. Either way, I think I won't swim tonight, for I fear I mighta pushed it a wee bit too hard yesterday. Not lots too hard, 'cause I'm not totally wiped. Just a little too hard.
I am convinced that it is a day later in the week than it actually is, and I keep being very grateful to find out I'm wrong.
miles to Rauros Falls: 9
I am, as Christopher would say, fresh out of give a shit. I'm not in a bad mood or anything. I just have absolutely no interest in dealing with anybody's drama in any fashion at all right now.
I met my cousin Maggie at the swimming pool! I hadn't seen Maggie in four years (which her mother apparently gave her a hard time about, and she was like, "Every time I come into Anchorage I go out to the Valley to see YOU!"), but fortunately she still looked just like herself, so I was able to recognize her. :) We had an *excellent* swim (she's faster than I am, although I kick faster) and I decided she should move to Anchorage so we could swim together. :) So that was really really cool, and hopefully we'll have dinner with her and her husband and my parents tomorrow night, and that will be excellent too.
The ham and bean soup I made just keeps getting better and better. MmmmMMMmmmm! But I tell you. If there had been sweets in the house today, I would have pigged out. Good thing there weren't any.
yards swum: 10,200
Not dead. In the depths of revisions and more revisions. Pretty much not planning on resurfacing until they're done.
Writing is hard. I'm going swimming.
There. Bunchalotta chapters edited for the day. If I am a wise Kit, I will go back downstairs in a while here and go over the last six chapters and do more in-depth paper edits on them, because by the time I got to them in my first pass I had no brain anymore, so it'd no doubt be good to make a second pass before I move on to trying to get things fixed on the computer. So, yeah. In a while here.
I've added 10 pages to the manuscript so far. Not quite as much as I hoped, but not bad. And some of the stuff that's come out will go back in, in the final chapter/epilogue, so even that's not really losing ground. Just rearranging it.
Ngh. I may have to go watch some Highlander or something. No brain left. No interest in doing much of anything except sitting there slack-jawed and letting something else do the work of entertaining me.
I have the best friends in the world. *beam* Jai just dropped by on her way to lunch to bring me a mug of hot chocolate (*with* a shot of mint, just the way I like it!) as a Valentine's day present 'cause she knew I was sick. *beam* Best friends EVAH!
I'm actually feeling quite a lot better today. Still sick, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. I don't know if it's because I've got enough cold medicine in my system or if I'm on the mend, but I've got more energy and I can think more clearly. I was up to walking this morning (episode: "Timeless". WAUGH!) and I've edited 2.5 chapters and since the next one's going to take a little more work I thought I'd pause to post about how cool Jai is and drink my hot chocolate and then get back to work. :)
The best bit is that I'd been thinking longingly about a hot chocolate and wondering if I had any Hershey's syrup so I could make some for myself. But it wouldn't have had mint in it, so this is vastly superior. *beam*
And *laugh* Laura just sent me to look at this comic. Her email's subject line was, "Cartoon for my favoritest writer" :)
Cheery me!
miles to Rauros Falls: 7
Not bad. 5 chapters edited and 1100 words added. I'll be very pleased indeed if I keep that up over the course of the book; it'll come out to a just about perfect wordcount. And there's more to add, too, but this is the first pass for adding stuff and I'll have to do the second pass while attached to the internet, for ease in research.
Nrgh. I have no brain. I can't put together enough coherent thoughts to make an interesting blog posting. How can I write fiction when my brain is made of snot, but I can't write stream of consciousness?
ytd wordcount: 34,200
Y'know.
I am sick and freezing cold and I have barely enough brain power to focus on doing one thing at a time right now.
And yet, it just struck me (again) that in a moment I'm going to go downstairs and work on a story that came out of my own head that people will be able to buy in a bookstore at the end of the year.
And I thought: *damn*. Do I have the coolest job in the world, or what?!?
Went over to Wendy's booksigning, which seemed to have a pretty steady flow of people through it (yay!) and went over to my parents' to deliver their gym memberships (keys to the house) to them. :) Came home with pea soup and blueberry muffins from Mom, and a ginormous hambone for Chanti, who is deeply enamored of it. :) Stopped and got a hot chocolate to sooth my froat, and bought kleenex and dayquil. Been pretty nice, all around, I'd say.
Oh. And I tried on my red flapper dress that I made for the 1998 Highlander cruise, and it fits me as well or better than it did when I made it. I told Ted he's going to have to bring me out for an expensive dinner soon so I'll have an excuse to wear it once more before I undergrow it. *beam*
Thinks to do for the rest of the day:
1. more laundry
2. book
3. eat some pea soup*
*delayed until tomorrow
I not only defeated entropy this morning, but also a burgeoning head cold, and walked. I'm not really sick yet. I'm just getting there, and feel light-headed and bloorgy. Guess I'll keep up with the vitamin C and hope I don't get hit as hard as Ted did. He's been out all week, poor guy.
We went to see the new Will Smith movie, "Hitch", last night. It was pretty cute. :) I might even go see it again sometime. :)
I can tell this is going to be the kind of illness where I only have enough brain to do one thing at a time. Fortunately, that's a very good kind of illness to have if I'm doing edits on a book, because once I settle in, I don't have enough brain to get distracted. Got some work done this morning and I have to go to a booksigning for one of the RWA ladies here, but I rrreeaaallly don't think I'm going to go game today. I'd rather use my limited mental capacity for the book, and gaming will require me to expend considerably more energy than I feel like I have right now. Ted'll have to NPC Thorn.
All right. The thing I need to do now is go take a shower, so I'm going to turn my tiny brain to that task, and wobble off. *wob wob*
miles to Rauros Falls: 4
I once more defeated entropy and got up and walked this morning, even though I didn't get up til late. Must re-adjust my sleep schedule to earlier hours. And then, THEN! I lifted weights. Go ME! *flexes mightily* So I'm very cheerful this morning, 'cause I've exercised.
Oh. I opened a new bag of cat food this morning. I realize nobody else cares about this, but I want to see how long a bag lasts, and being able to search my website on 'new bag of cat food' will be much easier than, y'know, like, trying to remember. :)
Uhm! Email from Jenn this morning. ANGLES was passed on by one of the houses she sent it to, on the utterly impersonal "not right for our target age group" line. Well, okay, I mean, there's really nothing I can do about *that*. So it's going off to another house, and meantime is still with the new editor at Tor. Everyone think happy purchasing thoughts for it, okay?
*looks around cheerfully* All right. I need to awaken the great slumbering Ted (poor guy is sick), shower, and attack some edits as if they were a hot fudge brownie sundae.
...and maybe eat breakfast. :)
Almost done going through O:C for the first edit pass. I'll be writing tomorrow, I expect. I'll finish up the last chapters tonight. I'm not sure this book has enough plot. I said this to Ted and Dad (neither of whom have read it) and they both looked at me like I was nuts. "Let us," Dad said, "take one of the most famous spy novels of all time, and examine it for plot. I SPY, for example." Long pause. "There you go, then."
Ted says he thinks I'm suffering from not writing a fantasy novel, in which it is necessary to do more world-building, even if it's an urban fantasy, because in a fantasy novel shooting somebody doesn't necessarily mean they're going to fall down, and in a straightforward romantic spy novel, it pretty much does. I donno. I wibble. I mean, spy stories really are usually pretty straight-forward. Protagonist has a mission. Things go wrong while protagonist tries to accomplish that mission. Protagonist ultimately succeeds. Everything else is details. Well, I *do* have that. So I donno. *fuss fuss bother* I'll do my edits and shore up my world and character development some and ... look at it again. Writing is hard. Let's go shopping. :)
Actually, we just did. First time I've been out of the house since Monday morning, except to walk the dog. I desperately need a life. ("You've got one," Dad said. "A writer's life." Well, I need somebody else's!)
So now that we've got our little weight bench set up (and it is indeed little; it's really not even quite wide enough for *me* to do bench press, much less one of the guys), Dad's coming over to use our gym. :) He came over this afternoon to put the carpet we'd taken out of the office down on the garage floor, which actually makes it rather nice. There's even a nice open carpeted space where the weight bench and the treadmill aren't, for doing stretching and situps and stuff. He also shoveled our entire driveway. Ted says he's a hero. :)
I have reached Lothlorien! 462 miles! Since leaving Bag End, I have walked 920 miles. My next goal is Rauros Falls, a measly 389 miles!
But now I have to go let the dog, who is objecting to being left outside in the lovely Lothlorien snow, in. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 462! YAY!
Official weigh-in day. I'm down another pound, which is pretty good considering I haven't exercised much in the last week. I've officially lost 18 pounds at this point. That's pretty good!
I didn't get up to walk this morning, due to being up much too late with a blorty tummy (pizza, eggs and chinese food. I *know* I should not eat these things. But not only do I eat them, I eat them several days in a row and in conjunction and then I pay for it), but later I will take the dog for a walk through the falling snow and we will arrive at Lothlorien! And perhaps tonight I'll walk more on the treadmill, although I wouldn't count on it. :)
Arright. Food and work.
I do not seem to have any pictures of the office Before, at least not furnished. I have this one of it unfurnished (I forgot to take pictures before we got started yesterday, obviously):
In progress:
Finished floor!
And the office resettled:
Lucy has just discovered that she can now sit on top of my scanner and look out the window, so I think she's pleased with the new arrangements now. :)
I have not made it to Lothlorien. I didn't walk yesterday while we were all busy doing the floor. So now I am TWO miles from Lothlorien! Augh! :)
miles to Lothlorien: 460
I'm not sure everybody, once they'd spent six and a half hours laying a new floor in a room, would then spend another hour frantically hooking all the computers back up so they could get back online.
I mean, okay, everybody *I* know would, but I don't know that *everybody* would do that. :)
The floor looks utterly fantastic. We've rearranged the office so we all fit better, and that's great too. Now, though, I'm facing a NAKED EMPTY WALL! so I must do something about that post haste. I could move my Rogue wall hanging over, but really, it's the only inexpensive art I've got, and since it gets direct sunlight where it is, I'd rather something cheap got faded than something with an expensive fram job. So I'll hafta figure out what to put up in here. :)
Oi. Such a headache.
I overcame entropy and walked this morning. Go me. :) Lothlorien is now IN SIGHT, and it's lovely and snowing out, so I'll take the doggy for a walk this arternoon and perhaps, PERHAPS, tomorrow morning I'll arrive in Lothlorien! O.O!
Today we're going to put the hardwood down in this room, so in a while here all the computers will be shut down and the room will be cleared out. That will be very strange. And I must organize all my stuff on my desk and all so that it can be found again when we put stuff back in, and I must edit, so that's what I'm going to do now. :)
miles to Lothlorien: 458
I have gotten my Irish passport! I'm as Irish as the rest of them now! Wow! That was fast! Like 3 weeks from when I finally sent the money for it! Wow! Cool! And my, but I've lost quite a lot of weight since that picture was taken. It's a nice picture, though, even if I'm fat. :) Unlike my American passport, which is a hideous picture in which I'm fat. :) Woot! *dances*!
Also, I have just made an extremely beautiful loaf of bread. It's so pretty it seems a crime to eat it. :)
I have had just a completely excellent weekend. There were the concerts on Thursday and Friday which were lots and lots of fun (my throat is still a little sore from yelling and screaming), and then we went over to Cap'n Jack's for Christopher's Eberron game yesterday, and that was a blast. I'm playing something called a Warforged, which is a essentially a sentient golum. A construct class fighter. And I'm a monk, so I've got flurry of blows and I get two d6 damage attacks every round. I rolled one critical last night and once I rolled max damage, which was 2d6 +8. I totally obliterated that goblin. *beam* It was cool. :) And I'm going to take my next level in Tattooed Monk and get a tattoo of bull strength or breath of fire or something, which I'll be able to activate um, maybe once a day or maybe once per # of tattoos I have, I forget, but anyway, it'll be cool. :) I will be a big ugly futhermucker with tattoos. Hee hee hee. :)
Anyway! So that was lots of fun. Then I stayed up far, far too late last night roleplaying with Sarah, who had a total stroke of genius and wrote a really fantastic scene that still makes me all squishy and happy with delight over how it turned out, so *that* was very cool. And when I woke up this morning for the first time in days I actually felt wakeful. I went and met Jai for coffee at noon-thirty and then Ted and I did our shopping, and we found a pretty cheap weight bench that came with 100 pounds worth of weights, so we bought that. (We discovered a while ago that none of our vehicles actually fit in the garage, so we figured we might as well use it for gym stuff.)
And now the great sleepies have come upon me, so I probably need some food, and maybe I'll make Ted bring me to a movie! Yeah! That's a good plan!
More Young Dubliners last night! To my disappointment, they did the exact same set that they'd done Thursday, but the up side of that was that I semi-knew all the songs, so that was okay. :)
There were no drunk Vikings last night. There was, however, a Jai and a Jack, who both decided to join us. Yay! We all sort of just hung out and listened to the opening act, which was the reggae band again, and they were still pretty decent, and then Jai and I (after taking a bathroom break where a very tall woman with great hair 1. complimented my bodice and 2. mentioned she didn't like using the handicapped stall in that bathroom, because there were wide-ish cracks where the door was hung and she felt like people were staring through them at her) abandoned the guys and went down to the dance floor and jumped around for two hours. :)
The bass player checked me out so obviously, several times, that it made Jai and me laugh until we could hardly stand up (the Red Bodice looked pretty good, I guess). The fiddler continued to be mad, with his leaping and bouncing and waving his bow around to get people to participate. There was a moppet whose parents, for some bewildering reason, saw fit to bring him to a late night rock concert, and he appeared to be *completely* fascinated by the band. The band, amusingly, was equally fascinated by him, but when the mad fiddler paused and knelt down to play a little tune just for him, the kid started crying. *laugh*
About halfway through the concert, Jai leaned over to me and said, "You think they'll still have CDs after the show?" Ahahahah! My evil plan worked! Ahahahah! :) Oh, and hee! We ended up right at the very front and center of the dance floor, up against the stage, so when Keith (the lead guitarist) flipped his guitar picks out into the audience at the end of the set and then the end of the encore, Jai and I both got them. *laugh* And *laugh* I was like, "Oh, I have a guitar pick!" this morning when I put my hand in my jeans pocket, and Ted said, dryly, "You get that from the bass player?" *laughs out loud*
*laughs more* There was a power strip right in front of us, that Jai noticed during one of the last couple of songs. She pointed it out, then mimicked shutting it off, which made me laugh so hard I nearly fell down. Tears in my eyes and everything. I have no idea how much it would've shut off, but oh my god, what an evil idea! Bad Jai! Bad! It was VERY funny!
So we had a really great time. And apparently the boys did too, even if they stayed sitting. :) So I'm really glad Jai and Jack came with us, and I'm glad we went both nights, and yeah! It was good!
miles to Lothlorien: 455
current music: Real World, Young Dubliners
Ok, the varation on the meme theme today is:
List five fictional people -- from television, movies, books, whatever -- that you wanted to be, as a child or an early teen.
1. Menolly
2. Hari-sol
3. Spider-Man
4. Will Stanton
5. Robin Hood (from Disney's movie. Yes. The fox.)
Anyone who knows me at all should find it perfectly obvious that as an adult I wish to grow up to be Rogue.
Although, really, with the possible exception of Harimad, I don't really want to *be* those people. Never did. I just want to participate in their worlds as their friends. Be in the know, as it were (that's why it sucked to be Jonathan in the Buffy universe: he knew what was going on, but he wasn't one of the Scoobies). Is that extra Mary-Sue of me?
So, my own take on the meme:
Name five fictional worlds which you would like to be a part of, as basically yourself. (Note: I figure "basically yourself" allows for any obvious variations on the theme that would allow you to properly fit in to the world you were entering. I'm really thinking, you know, personality, likes and dislikes, all of that, being intact, rather than you suddenly waking up in the X-Universe as Jean Grey. You could be a mutant if you wanted, but you still won't like liver. :))
1. Marvel universe
2. Heinlein's expanded universe
3. Highlander universe
4. ElfQuest
5. ...wow. Choosing a final one is hard. I think I'll go with the Dark is Rising world.
And, just to round things out, since, as we were just discussing on Too, a lot of crushes don't get counted in the kid-version of this meme:
List five fictional people -- from television, movies, books, whatever -- that you have a crush on RIGHT NOW!
1. Methos
2. Spider-Man
3. Wolverine
4. Gambit
5. Jareth
Starting to be functional...
The show didn't get started til 11:30 last night. Well, opening act came on around 10:40, probably, but since it was theoretically supposed to start at 10 (which was when the doors opened, rather than 9:30), well... this happened last time, too, so I wasn't very surprised.
Holy cats. I gotta say, 25 pounds of weight loss (which is I think how much I've lost since the last YD concert up here) really makes a difference on the ol' feet. I wore my granny boots (which FIT, which means my FEET have lost weight) and spent two hours jumping up and down on a concrete floor and my feet do not hurt today. I'm astounded.
The concert was great fun. The fiddle player is mad. Simply mad. There was a *tremendously* drunk Viking (dude. the guy was like 6'4", about three feet wide across the shoulders, with a blond mowhawk, and my *God* he was plastered. He kept falling over onto people. Security nearly threw him and the equally freaky MegaDeth sort of chick with him out. They were with a third guy who looked like a totally normal weightlifter sort. Weird.) who, to the best of my ability to tell, desperately wanted to have the fiddle player's love kittens. It was overly weird. Anyway. Despite the Viking falling over on people, it was a total blast.
They've got a new album coming out on the 15th, and convinced the label to let them bring a bunch of copies up to us, so we've got the new album early! Nanner nanner! (Tersa, you want I should pick you up one?) And they did six or eight songs from the new album, which is apparently the first time they've performed 'em, and I believe they told us not to actually tell anybody this, or "Something dreadful will happen to us," but I'm telling anyway. I don't really think something dreadful will happen to them. :)
I did not managed to get out of bed until 9:30, and it took me a full hour after that to actually start functioning. But I told some people I would take pictures of me, because I have not worn the top I wore last night in about 30 pounds, so here's a couple. First one is from Jamesing in 2000, for weight loss comparisons.
Still not exactly sylph-like, but a big improvement. Plus I really like that headshot. :)
Okay. Um. *looks around* I really need a shower. I am so totally *not* walking today. Except the dog; I'll probably walk the dog, because *God* I'm such a good person. Shower. Book. Anything else?
I am in a constant state of hunger today. This happened to me last time I went off sweets, too. About ten days into it I became ravenous and ate everything in sight for three days.
Oh look, and I started this again last Monday. Right on schedule. *eats some Rice Krispies*
Man. I wanna dress up and be SEXAY for the concert tonight, but it's REALLY DAMNED COLD, and dress-up clothes are in no way warm. And I don't know how warm the theatre will be, either. *fuss* *fret* *sulk* *checks* Ah, hm, I do still have a black silk shirt, so ok. I can wear that over the tank top thingy and I'll be warm enough if it's cold in there, and if it's not I can shuck the shirt. Yay!
No shoes, though. Bah.
Gacked from several people:
List five fictional people -- from television, movies, books, whatever -- that you had* a crush on as a child (or early teens). Then post this on your (Live)journal so other people can be assured that you're as weird as they thought.
1. Spider-Man
2. Batman
3. Strongbow
4. Silk
5. Merriman
*'Had' implies that these crushes are not going strong now that I'm an adult. I should hate to disabuse anyone of the notion, but the truth of the matter is that I still have a desperate crush on Spider-Man, and c'mon. How can you *not* want Batman? He's BATMAN!
Lots of things today!
First: official weigh-in. Back down to 171, which is not 168 which is what I really wanted to be at today, but which is also not 174.5, which is what I was at this time last week. So yay! I shall wear size 12 jeans to the Young Dubliners concert tonight. Yay!
Second: we walked around Costco a bunch last night. That qualifies as my .25 miles, because dammit, I really don't like having .75s hanging out there like that. *squinchy face* Also, it is -4 out right now according to ADN, and I don't know that I'm a good enough person to walk the dog when it's -4 (although she'll probably guilt me into it). Anyway, we now have some very pretty cherry flooring to put down in the upstairs office, which we may have to do this weekend so we can look at it and decide if we like it enough to go buy more flooring for downstairs. (Got any plans for the weekend, Mom?)
Third: Nook 2.0 is finished! It's all space-agey and cool!
Old nook, for comparison:
Nook 2.0:
Hee hee hee!
Um. All right. Time to shower and aspirinate myself (know what seems to be bugging my shoulder? Walking on the treadmill. o.O) and then to work on der book.
miles to Lothlorien: 454
I'm going to have to walk another 2.25 miles tomorrow so I can even out my mileage. Hrmph. :)
Um. Let's see. I've gone through the first 3 chapters of O:C and ended up writing a whole bunch of notes for motivational stuff and when The Truth Will Out later in the book, so that's great. Prepared to cut a bunch of stuff that's going to end up in the epilogue/final chapter. Feeling, at the moment, as if the puddle of drek that is this book might be salvageable. Of course, the first 3 chapters were already the most-edited. So we'll see how I feel after another 6 or 9 chapters tomorrow. :)
Hungry. Headachy. The apple I ate wasn't very good. Sad Kit. But Shaun got wood screws, so hopefully Nook 2.0 will be finished tonight! I've backed up all my writing from Little in preparation for moving it to Nook, and...yah. That's about all I know.
miles to Lothlorien: 451.75
There. I walked 2 (and a quarter!) miles and got dressed. Which is not to say I did my walking naked. That wouldn't be any fun. Today's episode was Double Eagle, which is a very entertaining episode, and though we went and got a headphone extender so I could use my headphones, my headphones are not good enough to make the sound any better than it is otherwise. Next I shall try borrowing Shaun's over-the-head headphones, which generally give me a headache, but possibly 45 minutes of use is not enough to headache me. We'll see. :) It did occur to me that I could just move the treadmill closer to the tv, too. :)
The monitor arm arrived! But it has no wood screws, so we hafta get some before Nook 2.0 can be completed. Snif.
There was a small bug in the bathroom this morning. I murdered it most violently, but in doing so also smashed my middle finger against one of the thumbtacks that holds a wall hanging in there. I hit that rather largish blood vessel that runs right up the back of the middle finger, but didn't break the skin. I now appear to have a squishy, purple third knuckle between the top and middle knuckles. It doesn't really hurt (although it sure as hell did for a minute), but it looks rather dramatically awful. I have another bruise on the same hand where I did the same thing earlier this week. I should be more careful, or something.
My shirts are all starting to look like tents on me.
I made a pb&j and only after I opened the fridge to put the jam away did I notice/remember I bought all that lettuce and tomato so I'd have nice things to put on turkey and cheese sandwiches. Oop. Oh well. Tomorrow.
I'm going to go do something witht this book now. And probably take the dog for a walk, if she looks pathetic enough. It'll have to be pretty pathetic. It's 6 degrees out. :P
I might even keep this design for a while. Still want to fiddle with it and learn to make it fluid, but I likes the colors and stuff. Watcha think?
(And now off to walk, for I got up late and have thus far spent the whole morning trying to get this damned design to work.)
Still no monitor arm. *bounces impatiently* On the positive side, I walked 3.5 miles today (and damn, it am cold out there with that nasty wind) and I watched an episode of Highlander I hadn't seen. It might be the only season 4 ep I hadn't. Guess we'll see.
Now Zilli is mooning me.
miles to Lothlorien: 448
Fuggit. I have written out an outline for how the last chapter or two should go, and I am declaring this book done. There's enough to fix in the previous twenty-five chapters that I have no heart to write the last ones out fully and wrong, so I have my notes and I will now FIX the damned thing and be much, much happier about it all.
I really should've done this a week ago. :)
So! DONE! AND. The ending sets up nicely for a segue into the second book, so HAH. Pleased! Hah! Hah! Hah! :)