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nano: halfway mark + gym, tv, & life
I’m supposed to be at 45K on Project One for November. I’m at 29K and have to revise again, but after two days of grim effort I may actually have a plot now, which should help. :P Technically I guess I still really only need 4K a day to make goal by the end of the month, but IDK if I’ll get there.
I haven’t gone back to Project Two yet. Project Three is underway in terms of layout. Waiting on the cover art for it, which is going to be AMAZING and I can’t wait to show it to you. (You all wanted a new CE Murphy book for the holidays, right?) I haven’t gotten any farther on Project Four, either, although I should do a bit more of it tonight, maybe. It’s kind of fun. Realistically I’m not going to get to Project Five this month, but that’s okay. REDEEMER, having been assigned Project number Six, will get delivered instead, and that’s…yeah. Very important.
Meanwhile I still have a cold, or, I think, have a second one that landed right on top of the first, so in many ways the fact that I’m doing anything at all is admirable. I’ve even gone to the gym twice this week, although in both cases I did my “lie on the floor” workout, which I could obviously do at home but don’t. I guess the important part about going to the gym is there’s nothing else to do there but exercise, and also one vaguely supposes people might eye you, if you just lie on the floor for twenty minutes without moving. (I don’t actually think they do. I don’t think most people pay much attention to what other people are doing at the gym. But one might be able to use the idea of it for motivation.)
The “lie on the floor” workout is actually a fairly decent little Pilates For People Who Aren’t Fit Enough To Do Beginner Pilates (aka Pilates For Weenies) that I’ve worked up. If I had any kind of video editing skills I might try to do a video of it for people, although that supposes anybody would want to use a tubby lady’s workout video instead of a slim fit lady’s workout video. (IDK, sometimes I think that’d be less depressing. Although I also suppose there are probably *many* exercise videos out there featuring women who are not slim and fit. I just haven’t looked for them.) Anyway. I’m tired.
I love STAR TREK: DISCOVERY and am howling in agony over there being a mid-season break. It’s on Netflix! I’m not supposed to have to WAIT for it! I also love THE GIFTED, although I’ve only seen the first 3 episodes, I think. But it hit the ground running, and it has *BLINK*! And she’s PERFECT! *flails*! And I continue to love SUPERGIRL and I wish I was writing LEGENDS OF TOMORROW because I feel I could navigate the border between absurd and stupid better than they’re doing. It’s amazing how unimpressed I am with the bad guy featured thus far on THE FLASH, but I will be here until the end for Michael Emerson as !EvilFinch on ARROW because OMG!EVILFINCH. And I just started watching THE GOOD PLACE, which I have it on good authority will eventually be an incandescent spot in my life but which is so far merely cute and amusing.
That was a lot of TV to report on. IDK what else I’ve got, in the general life department. I’m terrible at meditating. I read Carol Berg’s DUST & LIGHT / ASH & SILVER duology and they were amazing. Book two made me clutch my heart and gasp out loud in horror. It was very dramatic. :) I’ve got a GGK book that’s been on the shelf forever as my next should-read, but I always fall into a pit of despair when I read him because I can’t do what he does and so I try not to read his books while I’m actively writing (which is why I’m so far behind, sigh). Oh, and I picked up a SF thing that looked appealing and about 95% of it is, but it’s written in a deliberately noir way (which was part of the appeal) up to and including really kind of painful sexism, which I suspect is purposeful because it’s So Noir, but it’s also…I stopped reading it a few days ago and I don’t really think I’m going to pick it up again, so. *sigh*
Anyway, time to study Irish now. (It’s going very badly indeed. :))
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i got nothin’. or too much.
I keep doing things and not having time to blog about them. Or not thinking to. Or thinking to but deciding sleep is better. Or that making pear jam is better.
(It turns out making pear jam is a GREAT idea.)
yeah, so the thing is that I have, like, a ton of jam-making posts to do, except they’re all just pictures of jam in the process and that starts seeming boring and…anyway, I made crabapple jelly that’s perfectly gorgeous and I made…in fact I made 4 kinds of jam last Sunday. Pear, blackberry, peach, and crabapple. Jelly. I made crabapple jam the next morning. It’s very tasty.
I made spiced pear jam from a friend’s recipe before that, and it’s GORGEOUS, omg. And we got a pressure cooker so I can make and preserve applesauce, which doesn’t keep well unless pressure cooked. And we’re having an Apple And Pear Picking Party (although I think it’ll be primarily apples by then, as most of the pears seem to be coming down) in mid-October but we have So Many Apples. Mmm. Applesauce, tho. And perhaps cider. Mmm.
God, it’s nearly October. I have so much work to do. I wish I could give up sleep for 3 months and get caught up. Not that I’d get caught up, but I’d be closer.
I…dang. What was I going to say. Something about work. Nope, dunno what. We watched s3 Killjoys and didn’t expect that ending. We each expected something different from each other but neither of us expected that. :) Went to American Made, which was pretty good although not nearly the comedy it was billed as. I’ve probably seen some other things too, although the television has not been on much at ALL lately so I might be wrong. We liked the first two episodes of Star Trek: Discovery althouogh I also do not like the thing that happened that many other people also did not like. The Klingons were fine, though. (In fact, it looked to me like every House was distinctive in feature style, which I thought was cool.)
There was a long terrifying saga about my captain’s chair keyboard stopping working and the quest to fix it, but it’s fixed now and typing it all up seems like too much work. I’m really relieved it’s working now, though.
I re-read THE BLUE SWORD, which, 34 years on from my first reading of it, remains one of my very favourite books. I will always wish there were more Damar books.
I’ve gone to the gym a couple times this week. All my parts are tired.
Yeah. That’s it. All and nothing. ♥
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oh, is it 2017?
I see I’ve managed to get ten days into the new year without posting. In my defense, I’ve been writing, which is a nice change of pace. In fact, I seem to have been taken by an Attack Book, so I’m going to run with it to the end and see how that goes.
We’ve finished watching season 3 of Miss Fisher, and were horrified to find that it was only 8 episodes long! Which we found out when the 8th episode ended and Netflix flipped to “what would you like to watch next”. We shrieked in horror and have been flailing about ever since.
What a wonderful show. I want to cut my hair into a bob and do a million pushups so I have arms like hers and wear fabulous clothes. I don’t necessarily need to solve murders, but flirting outrageously with Nathan Page sounds pretty good. What a great show. What great costumes. *flails* :)
Other than that, I’ve read a couple books so far this year, which is off to a good start. I haven’t started doing anything amazingly fitness-oriented, like losing the 10 pounds I’ve regained or even, y’know, some pushups. I seem to have no willpower when it comes to sweets, and I know the answer to a lack of willpower is “do not put temptation in your grasp” but I keep doing it anyway.
I haven’t started doing more art, or coloring, or studying a language. I haven’t begun listening to more music (and you’d think that one would be easy). There are, to quote a certain modestly popular musical of the day, a million things I haven’t done.
But just you wait.
Just you wait.
:)
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ST:TOS: Man Trap & Charlie X
At the beginning of July all the Star Trek episodes became available on Netflix. I let out a squee heard ’round the world (it was, too, thanks to Twitter), because I’ve been wanting to watch it with Indy; I was a little younger than he was when I watched pretty well the entire original series (the, er, only series, at that point), and I think it’s a pretty great age to be introduced to Trek.
The non-Kirk pilot is not included, and the episodes are presented by air date rather than production date, which is…pretty clearly not ideal, but I’m not dedicated enough (especially since I’m watching with Indy) to hop around and watch them in production order.
So the story starts in media res with the pretty awful and yet in moments brilliant “The Man Trap,” where a salt-desperate alien able to take on the form of anybody that someone thinks strongly enough about kills several Enterprise crewmen in an attempt to survive. There are sexual politics at once embarrassing and not too horrible for their time, but the thing I liked most was how sympathetically, in the end, the alien was presented: she was the last of her species, not *bad*, but trying to survive. And there’s a straight-up amazing moment when she transforms into McCoy, and Deforest Kelly’s body language flawlessly mimics the actress playing the alien’s. My hat is off, sir.
The alien’s real, monstrous form, once revealed, was sufficiently scary to Indy that he told me he didn’t want to watch any more of that show, and (before he was in any danger of going to sleep) that he had had a bad dream about it. Fortunately, we’d bought a dreamcatcher for him while in North Carolina, so I put that up and all was well.
This morning he asked quite eagerly if we were going to watch more of Star Trak tonight. :)
So tonight we watched the second (aired) episode, “Charlie X,” and hot damn, people, Captain James T Kirk gives a straight-up lesson in consent to the teenage guest star in that episode:
Kirk: It’s not a one-way street, how you feel & that’s all. It’s how she feels, too. If she feels anything for you at all, you’ll know it. There are a million things in this universe you can have & a million things you can’t. It’s no fun facing that, but it’s the way things are.
I knew, in fact, that Kirk was generally a lot more progressive & outspoken about womens’ rights than his reductive image has made him. But the SECOND EPISODE. That was awesome. Also awesome is that I paused it there to ask Indy what had happened:
Me: Does he like that girl?
Indy: Yeah.
Me: Does she like him?
Indy: No.
Me: So what does that mean?
Indy: He should leave her alone!Leaving me w/this cross sense of
1. My 6 year old gets this, &
2. Aren’t geeks supposed to admire/emulate Kirk? HERE’S A NUMBER TAKE A CLUEAnyway, aside from excellent unexpected consent lessons, “Charlie X” is a really, *really* good episode. It’s chock full of behavioural lessons and impossible quandaries both for the crew and the guest star, and yeah, wow, that one knocked it right out of the park. (It was written by a woman, DC Fontana, and now I’m really looking forward to seeing more of her episodes.)
(Kirk’s costume changed almost every time he left the room and came back again. I noticed it, pointed it out to Indy, and Indy noticed it after that. :) But wow, the remastered colors! Some of those shirts really ARE green! And oh my, the dramatic lights falling across the eyes in key and tense moments… ♥ :))
(Also, oh, my, yes, Uhura really does flirt with Spock from the outset! I love it!)
(And the crew IS multi-ethnic! And there are women wearing pants! And…! ♥!!!!)
Indy is looking forward to watching the next eposide tomorrow. ♥!
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shannara livetweet, eps 2-3
o no i’m watching more #shannarachronicles
i might have to livetweet it again
i don’t know if i can resist*SQUEAL* ARE WE GONNA HAVE THE KING OF THE SILVER RIVER
OMG I’D FORGOTTEN HOW MUCH I LOVED THAT SCENE, THE WRITING, OMG
lol “what happened to eyes up here” <3 wil ok i might like you. oh good wet hair elf ears, mmm-bop boy.
it really is *very* pretty. mostly good costuming. look it’s him with the face again! i like faces.
mmm-bop look how well my hair dries naturally mmm-bop oh oh oh
i had a terrible thought about #shannarachronicles
if it keeps going the thing will happen with allanon and that will be awful
manu bennett nooooo
#waugh
mmm-bop last king of shannara
mmm-bop listen to me
mmm-bop she’s the hero
mmm-bop don’t look at me
funny, i don’t remember the elcryss having AN ACTUAL DOOR IN ITi love the colors. i know it’s just super saturated, but, well, i like that.
amberle looks like rose byrne’s little sister
“you have to believe me”
“because i have really big brown eyes”
#bedroomeyes #blinkblinkblink
i really did always think her name was pronounced ‘amberelle’, though
mmm-bop here comes my girlfriend
mmm-bop she doesn’t look good
mmm-bop she’s got a seed
mmm-bop let’s save the world
john rhys davies is the only one who knows what’s going on here
well him & allanon but allanon’s not gonna get all emotional about it, is he, because allanon
pricky elf prince: is a prick
patrick dempsey elf prince: is a sweetie
ok if that’s not john cho who is it
OOP SIGNIFICANT HAND HOLDING yep yep yep mmm-bop
question from the reading audience: perhaps a silly question.. I grew up on the books.. is this worth the watch?
i too grew up on the books. the show’s a train wreck. i’m 4 episodes in & not gonna quit. take that as you will :)
OOH GIRL ELF ROMANCE GOIN’ ON HERE, MM HMM, MM HMM
ooo more moments between doe-eyed elf boy & hanson, prince of shannara mmm-bop if you know what i mean
oh it’s gary young, who apparently looks a great deal like an age-makeuped-john-cho.
i actually genuinely like eritrea. she’s splendid. OOH SMOOCHIES DOE EYED ELF BOY WILL BE SO DISAPPOINTED & SO AM I
…i don’t remember that happening either. #LOL! “i’ll never call you short tips again” *shrieks laughing*
woo, go doe-eyed elf boy! srsly, tho, i don’t remember you existing at all…
oh look amberle has been given sting. i mean, uh, Totally Not Sting. (actually shea had sting, didn’t he, it’s been so long)
god, manu bennett. the skater boi haircut is Just Wrong for allanon, but god, manu bennett.
DOE EYED ELF BOY YOU ARE SO PRETTY
come growl at me any time, manu bennett. dear lord. (allanon is tall & narrow, isn’t he? don’t care. manu bennett is perfect.)
yes, doe eyed elf boy, throw yourself at hanson, prince of #shannara mmm-bop
#lol eretria you go girl
elf prince dempsey does not approve of your schemes
oh no we’re all caught up! what will happen with hanson, prince of #shannara, & the doe-eyed elf boy!? will allanon growl again? & what about the tantalizing elf lady clinch?! tune in next time for catie’s livetweeting of the #shannarachronicles!
