I took myself on a walk this morning and reached Minas Tirith for the third time, thus completing the outward leg of the hobbits’ journeys there and back again. Next I’m backtracking (magic reset button, I don’t have to walk back) to Rauros Falls, and taking the trip from there to Isengard with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, a journey of 484 miles. This is good. I’ve been typing “miles to Minas Tirith” for nearly nine hundred miles now, and my fingers will be pleased (if confused) to get to type “Isengard” for a while. :)

So I’ve walked 517 miles since January 4th, which is by far the most I’ve walked in such a short period of time over the last several years. I’ve mostly been managing around 500ish miles a year, with a total of…3229 miles around Middle Earth since April 2003. I need to figure out how to check my pedometer, though, ’cause Mom thinks it’s under-counting the distances, which is very possible, ’cause it’s counting them at right about 20 minute miles and I think I walk about 17.5 minute miles, or possibly a bit faster.

Now I will go shower, and then write a lot. :)

miles to Minas Tirith: 517

currently: accomplished

Ten years ago, in April 1998, Trip mentioned keeping a list of books he’d read, an idea inspired by (ultimately) by Chrisber’s 9th grade librarian. I thought it sounded like a good idea. The 10th is actually the official Start Date for my booklist, but I figure that 1. I’ll forget on the actual date, and 2. I’m not likely to finish more than the one book I’m reading right now (REVELATION SPACE, Alistair Reynolds) between now and then anyway.

I just looked. In the last 10 years, I’ve read 903 books and graphic novels, plus a handful of others I’ve forgotten to record (I know I’ve forgotten a few because a couple times I’ve gone to look up the original read-date on something I know I’ve read, but it’s not on the list).

Probably because I’m profoundly abnormal, I actually find that number a little depressing. It’s not even a hundred books a year, which I feel is really the absolute minimum I should be reading. Of course, I suppose I’ve got 9 months of 1998 recorded, and only the first 3 months of 2008, so maybe I can pull up my average by the end of the year.

Hm, while I’m doing metrics, I started my Eowyn Challenge in April of 2003, and have walked 2953.9 miles around Middle Earth in the years since.

currently: tired

I got a pedometer for Christmas, and today I read the instructions (gasp!) and got it working. It’s rather nifty, with a stopwatch, a calorie counter (which I think runs high, but that’s ok, I don’t imagine I’ll use that aspect much anyway), a clock, and, of course, the step-counter, which appears to count pretty accurately. According to it, I walked 3.6 miles on what is my more or less usual route, which sounds about right according to the rate of speed at which I generally walk. I wanna get up to a pretty regular 5 mile a day walk, but I haven’t been walking much at all lately, so that’s a decent place to start.

And I wrote a couple thousand words, in an effort to reach 10% of the book tomorrow. There’s no particular reason for tomorrow to be the 10% day, except I want it to be, and if I get to 10% tomorrow it seems *reasonable* that I might make it to 25K by a week Friday. That would begin to feel like I was getting something accomplished.

I should go through email tonight and respond to the last couple of days’ worth of artist submissions, but man, that sounds like work.

ytd wordcount: 12,200
miles to Minas Tirith: 13.6

currently: restless

Whoops. Forgot to write down my miles the last couple days. Must do that, or I’ll start losing track of where I am. And it’s *beeoofeetul* today. Maybe I Chanti and I will go on an unusually long walk. And then instead of getting any work done I’ll collapse like a collapsy thing all day.

No. Must get things done. Bedroom, bathroom. Those would be Major Accomplishments.

Still like the nuke it from orbit option, though…

music: Love Bites, Def Leppard
miles to Mount DOOOOOOOM: 56

I have just reached Rauros Falls, in my Eowyn Challenge walk! I’m now on the last leg of Frodo and Sam’s journey, which is from Rauros Falls to Mount Doom, a 470 mile trek.

I have walked 1310 (easily recordable) miles since April 2003.

When I’ve reached Mount Doom, I have to decide if I’m going to reboot back to Rauros Falls, which is where everybody split up, and follow individual tracks to different places, or … what. :) I think I’ll probably do that, but since I can’t imagine getting to Mount Doom this year, it’s not something I have to think too hard about right now. :)

I’ve also just decided to break my bike journey from Minas Tirith back to Hobbiton into the 3 legs of the journey the Eowyn Challenge site has set out, because otherwise it’s just too depressing. It’s much more cheery to be 365 miles into the 535 mile trip from Minas Tirith to Isengard than 365 miles into the 1625 mile trip all the way straight through to Hobbiton.

I’m really getting a lot of mileage (no pun intended!) from this Middle Earth walking stuff. I’m not even a Tolkien fan, so I haven’t got a clue why it’s so satisfying, but it certainly is. I expect I’ll do all the walks they’ve got, in time. That would be a total of, let’s see. 7,816 miles. I’ve got a long way to go. :)

miles to Rauros Falls: 389! Yay!
miles to Mount Doom: 1

Nice weekend. Walked on the treadmill because it was pouring rain yesterday and again this morning because I have a phone call with Harlequin sometime this morning and I didn’t know what time I’d be, so I wanted to walk early so I wouldn’t totally miss my walk. Turns out it’s at 9, so I wouldn’t have missed walking time anyway, but it’s good to have walked. Besides, I had to watch the second of the Dark Quickening episodes. :)

miles to Rauros Falls: 62.5

The sun came out and the wind warmed up yesterday, so I did walk more. Except it turned out there was a puddle approximately the size and depth of Lake Superior at the end of Wendy Way, so instead of walking the coastal trail like I’ve been doing I was obliged to wander the neighborhood rather than risk drowning in the Ginormous Puddle.

Emily sent me this DVD of this funny 70s British tv show called “Two’s Company”, which is about an American writer and her British butler. I’ve watched the first couple of episodes, which made me laugh enough that Ted wondered the heck I was watching. :)

I need to go to the post office and send cover flats and, um, Other Good Stuff later today. But I think I may get out of the house and do a bit of shopping first. Because, you know, I didn’t do enough with the whole new-shirts-buying thing a couple days ago. o.O

I had nightmares from about 5am onward (first I dreamed I joined the Marines. WT*F*!? Then I dreamed I’d died and come back from the dead and didn’t know it but was re-experiencing it), so I got up at 7:30, because yeegh. But the magnificent thing about getting up at 7:30 is that I’ve gotten half a chapter written and some walking done already this morning, so I can goof off for a while before going back to the grindstone.

miles to Rauros Falls: 56

Nothing to see here, move along, move along. Nothing to see here. Move along.

miles to Rauros Falls: 22.5

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!

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