My mother never said "If you think too hard, you'll hurt yourself."

So I was just sitting at the computer trying to come up with a short story idea for an anthology, and apparently thinking hard is enough to pop a rib or two out of place. I'm back from the chiropractor now (my regular visit was this morning…), undoubtedly bruised (apparently I have strong muscles that require adjustments to be near violent to actually work) with orders to ice my shoulder for 45 minutes.

No writing. No sewing. No computer work. Sit and ice.

Well, fine then. My writing has been sucking like a 2-ton sucky thing anyway.

Just can't find the words

Ever have one of those days (or several days) where you're afraid to say something or write something because every time you do, your words/intent are misconstrued? Or, I suppose, they're coming out wrong (because you're not blaming the other people for not understanding).

Problem is, I need to deal with certain things today; I can't put them off. Which means everything is going to take 9 times as long as I agonize over every word and phrase to make sure I'm saying what I really mean to be saying.

Sigh. Wish me luck!

Thursday 13: Thirteen Favorite Things

(I’m going to skip the blindingly obvious, like, say, Ken, and my cats, and Styx.)

1. The lace-edged Post-It Notes I keep in my purse.
   
2. Otters.
   
3. PG Tipps tea. It’s my daily tea, so it must be my favorite. The rose tea from the Huntington Library is my favorite “special” tea, and I just got my hands on Glengettie, a Welsh tea (!) (despite the name), and ohmigods is it good! It would be my daily tea if it weren’t a wee bit pricey in comparison to PG Tipps (which, as an import, isn’t exactly cheap-like-Liptons).
   
4. Cheese. A good stinky bleu (I love Trader Joe’s ), a slightly runny Brie, a sharp biting cheddar, a salty mizithra, creamycreamycheeseycreamy cheese… Bring ‘em on!
   
5. Rose-scented anything.
   
6. The sound of running water: a brook, a fountain…
   
7. Pre-Raphaelite artwork.
   
8. The microwave, the rice/veg steamer, and the George Foreman grill. Without those, I’d probably starve to death.
   
9. ICanHasCheezburger.com
   
10. The nesting pair of red-tailed hawks that lives in the high trees by the 1904 church about two blocks away.
    
11. My friends all over the world. I squee every time I get a comment in my journal, or an e-mail, or a phone call….
    
12. Silk.
    
13. Reuben sandwiches. I make ‘em with pastrami or turkey, low-fat Swiss, low-fat Thousand Island dressing, rye (natch), and mounds of sauerkraut, on the aforementioned George Foreman grill. Yum!
    

If you can't laugh, what's the point?

Morgana and Brian came over tonight to watch last week’s episode of Eureka, which they’d forgotten to record and thus had asked me not to delete off the DVR. They then watched the most recent episode, and after I finished talking to Ken (who finally had a U-Haul and was about to drive the rest of the way to Oregon, after many annoyances and further delays), I watched the latter half with them. I’d watched only 40 minutes of it up ‘til then anyway.

If you’re concerned about spoilers, don’t read the next few paragraphs. Skip to the next section.

Dammit! Stupid show! I’m so not happy that they killed off Nathan. (Although, as Morgana said, it’s a time paradox, and you never know…) If they’d done it last season when he was still just a jerk, fine. But he and Jack had a great conflict banter, and he wasn’t a bad guy, even if his ego barely fit in the building. (Oh, his reaction when Jack asked him that…to raise his eyes and gauge whether the building really was big enough. So sardonic. Loved it.)

My favorite interchange between them was, I think, in the first season, when Nathan wouldn’t even say Jack’s name. Jack walked in and Nathan said, “Sheriff.” And Jack replied, “Scientist.” Hee!

But here’s the thing. With Nathan out of the way, once Allison gets over her grief, there’s nothing standing between her and Jack. And that’s not interesting anymore. Love triangles are monumentally more interesting.

So I’m just going to hope for a time paradox tweak.

~ ~ ~

I’m sorry to have been such a slacker about rambling here. I hate not keeping up with things, because it makes the days slip by even faster… Sometimes I’m talking to Ken and I can’t really remember what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing lots of stuff, but it all blurs together and just fails to be interesting. Even doing a talk at LARA with two other writers, and going out to lunch with a few ladies afterwards. Or lunch with my trainer (Katrina) and my training partner (Jen) (Katrina’s no longer working for the gym, and it’s ugly, and…ugh.) Let’s face it, errands and cat litter scooping and doing dishes just aren’t scintillating conversation. And it’s hard to talk about writing, even with other writers sometimes.

And then I think of other perfect moments. Of doing a full moon ritual with Morgana and Brian and Caterine and Eleanor and Janet, because Morgana was teaching Eleanor and Janet her Wicca 101 class and it was, after all, the full moon. It’s so…so…so uplifting to see their reactions, to know that even if this isn’t the path they eventually follow, they’ll have a broader, more open outlook. And it was so wonderful to spend the day with Caterine (I took her out for sushi, and we talked for hours); I wish she hadn’t had to move just far enough away that it’s not easy to see her, but not really that hard, either, even with gas prices what they are.

I worked out with Jen on Tuesday, and it was the first time I’d been to the gym since coming back from RWA Nationals. I’m grumpy at the gym in general for forcing Katrina out, but so far I haven’t found a decent option to change to (I’ve got one more gym to check out), so I guess I’m here for the count. Jen and I are looking at maybe doing the online training program Katrina offers.

My massage therapist makes me laugh and I make her laugh, and she gives me insight into what it’s like to be cute and single and navigating through a world full of clueless men (not that all men are clueless, mind you. But we agree that many are just as insecure as women are.). All while helping put me back together. I still hurt. But not as much as I used to. We take our successes where we find them.

~ ~ ~

And then there’s the writing. But more about that later. Now it’s time to curl up in bed with a good book, and then sleep…

Because I really should start getting to bed earlier in preparation for my godawful disgustingly early flight this coming Tuesday. Bleargh.

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Currently Reading: The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, Jennifer Crusie, Eileen Dreyer, Anne Stuart
Lately Listened To: Hannah Fury, various
Recently Watched: Eureka

...aaaand then you lose a little more

Ken's in Washington, headed back to Oregon.

And the clutch just went on the bike.

Bloody hell.  :-(

You win some, you lose some, but you always learn something in the process

Ken was on a 7-day motorcycle last week, one that took him all over the continental US (there was a bonus location in Alaska, but I don’t think anyone tried for it). He left on a Thursday from Nebraska, and around midnight that night called to tell me that he’d be at Pink’s the next day at 1:30 p.m., and could I meet him there? Well, duh? Given that I hadn’t seen him since July 2, there was no question. Driving 4.5 hours total (abysmal Friday LA traffic) was worth 1.5 hours to stand in a loooong line and eat a hot dog with my beloved. (I had a Rosie O’Donnell Long Island Dog—mustard, onions, chili, and sauerkraut*—yum!)

Of course, to actually get Pink’s as a bonus point, he had to have a hot dog at another deli…in New York City.

Yeah, it’s that crazy.

Anyway, the longest rally he’s done so far has been 3 days, I think, so this one was a challenge, one he’d been looking forward to. His ultimate goal is the Iron Butt Rally: essentially 11,000 miles in 11 days (yeah…), and this was a step in proving he could do a real mult-day rally.

He was doing great. A few hiccups that he recovered from (misreading the Martha’s Vineyard ferry schedule, oversleeping by 4 hours), but overall, he had a good sense that he was going to make a podium finish.

Three hours from the end, the rear drive on the bike failed.

Now, with the LT (which he used to ride) this was a know problem, although BMW won’t cop to that. Note that two of his LTs had rear drive failures. They swore, however, that the GT (his bike since last year) didn’t have the same problem. Hah.

The folks in charge of the rally tallied his points, and had he made it in, he would’ve been the clear winner by a buttload of points.

So, yeah.

All things told, Ken’s pretty pragmatic about it. He learned a hell of a lot, including the fact that he could survive a multi-day rally, much less nail one. And the way things worked out, a hell of a lot of people know how things sussed out, too.

And at CCR in a few weeks, he’ll be having a wee talk with a BMW rep. :-)

But can I say that I’m beyond way proud of him?

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*because a girl’s gotta have her veggies, don’tcha know