Somewhere around 900 words this morning I caught a cold, and by 1500 words I had to take some cold medicine, which has resulted in a very floaty head. I can’t tell if it’s now wearing off, causing my head to be newly floaty, or … that’s probably it, but man. Woogh.
Uh. Man. Having a hard time focusing. Took about 3 hours to get the first thousand words this morning, which was just awful. I seriously wanted to give up and just crawl into bed, which would have been extremely counterproductive. But now I think (I hope and pray) I’ve gotten through the sloggy bit and can charge on. Ended up with 5100 words after it all, so…well, thank God. :) Oh, and I hit 475 pages. *tired laugh* Yesterday
I checked today. I do in fact, as I believed, use the left shift key almost exclusively. I couldn’t find anything I used the right one for in the several sentences I Typed Like This To See Which Shift Key I Used While Making Up Words Like Zuggaboo To Check Letters I Don’t Use That Much Because I Couldn’t Think of Alpha Beta Carrot or whatever it is. :) But to make up for it, I only hit the spacebar with my right thumb. :)
wow. teh tired, teh tired.
Ted and I finished watching season 1 of Tru Calling, and are pre-emptively disappointed it got cancelled in season 2, because the season finale pretty much rocked, and set up a great antagonistic dynamic for Tru. We really enjoyed it. And we bought season 5 Smallville and accidentally watched the entire first DVD last night. Last night? Night before? Night before, I think. Ted worked last night. The days, they are blurring.
ok, i got nothin’ else. :)
miles to Isengard: 309
ytd wordcount: 348,400 (wow)
475 pages?! That’s, like… 125,000 words for a novel! Is this all for one book or are you writing for a series?
Alex Out.
I am myself a nine-fingered typist (I learned from A System that my big sister was allegedly using, and The System declared that there was no use for the left thumb, and lo, it was so), tho’ this may possibly change if I ever get my yearned-for Maltron keyboard, where proper usage may demand double-thumbing on the separate spacebars. But I do cross-shift automatically, depending on where the shifty character is, and can’t really imagine why one wouldn’t (unless, of course, one was a heretic who had not signed up to The System).
Tired. Yes. I am sitting here in my bathrobe, with water in my ears, and just spent a full five seconds trying to remember if I’d had my bath or not. I shall blame it grandly on Teh Sickness, and take the cat to bed.
PS – I’m sorry, I am Teh Stupid (blame it on Teh Sickness, quick!) – but what is its meaning, this Miles to Isengard metric that clearly means so much? I understand and celebrate your ytd wordcount (wow indeed), but Isengard defeats me. ‘Specially as you seem to be going backwards.
I have broken touch typing in that I almost never use the right shift key, and I almost never hit the space bar with my left thumb. :)
Did you, by any chance, learn to type in a typing class on a manual typewriter? :)
My own work keyboard is totally split: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/evolution.htm (photos of mine, and my captain’s chair, are, um, here: http://photos.mizkit.com/haus/haus_014 (that and the next couple). It was when I started using that keyboard that I discovered I only hit the spacebar with my right thumb. :)
And I did learn to counter-shift when I learned to type, but as some point, probably a very long time ago, I ceased doing that. I suspect it has something to do with the pinched nerve in my back, which is aggravated by use of the right pinky (it’s the ulnar nerve that’s pinched). Probably when it started to hurt to use the right shift, I stopped doing it. But it could go back before then. No idea. :)
Er, tat was me. Apparently I wasn’t logged in.
*laughs* The year Return of the King came out, some people started up a challenge to walk to Rivendell from Hobbiton as a thing to help encourage fitness. I’d just started walking for exercise, and it appealed to me, so I did that and then walked the rest of the way to Mount Doom, which is like 1700 miles or something. Once I got to Mount Doom I bounced back to the point where the party split up, and I’m currently doing Merry and Pippin’s journey from Rauros Falls to Isengard. I’ll probably do Gandalf and Merry’s trip from Isengard to Minis Tirith next, and then I have to reboot to either Isengard or Rauros to do somebody else’s leg of the journey. I plan to eventually walk all the journeys taken, including the road home, in the LotR & The Hobbit. :)
There are details about the walk and the whole project and mileage and stuff at http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/
The reason the number is going backward is that I thought it was intuitive to record how many miles I’ve walked, not how many miles I have left. So I’ve walked, what, 309 miles to(ward) Isengard. Every few months somebody asks me why that number is going backward, so apparently it’s only intuitive to me, but there you have it. :)
It’s pushing 125K right now, yeah, and it’ll probably be close to 150K when it’s done. It’s the first book in a series.
Ooh – that is a very cool workstation. No desk, though, no clutter – where do you put Things? How do you have Things, with nowhere to put them? (Okay, I guess that’s the point, but – coffee! Wine! Cat! Books! Paper! Where does it all go…?
Damn, how did I never hear about this? I do walk lots, and I do like metrics… Sigh.
Re the going backwards thing: yup, I guess intuitive only to you, but hey. Intuition should be personal.
Well, my actual current workstation has a desk for the monitor (as this house is a rental, and I don’t especially like putting holes in the walls of rentals), but much of the idea was in fact to *not* be able to pile crap around me. I do paper edits at the kitchen table, usually, or on the couch in the living room, so the general workspace is uncluttered. And the cat goes on my lap, obviously (see userpic)! I do love my setup, though. :) (she says, as she tries hard to avoid it, as should be clear by the fact that i’m answering LJ comments instead of, y’know, *working*…)
Offhand, I’d guess you haven’t heard of it because you’re not a female geek trying to lose weight, which seems to be the demographic for the Eowyn Challenge. :) But it is way cool, and for some reason it’s really clicked for me, so I’ve continued to do it. I think the sum total of mileage in the books is something around 5 or 7K, so I’ve got a loooong way to go before I’m done walking Middle Earth. :)
I guess it’d make more sense to people who aren’t me if I used ‘miles toward Isengard’, or whatever, but that doesn’t sound as nice to my ear. And it’s my record, so plthtbt on how other people do it. :)