No Country For Old Men

Disappointing for those of us who really like the good (or at least the "better") folks to live, but a thrilling, bloody, suspenseful, incredibly well-acted and wonderfully scripted little movie. It's a darker, grittier, smarter version of Unforgiven.

Also: blood and guns and assasins and drug deals gone wrong!

Great performances all around; smart, tough, engaging characters (again, if you're not going to give me films focusing on female heroines, then the least you can fucking do is write female characters that Don't Suck. This film succeeds there).

A film to watch, but not something you're going to buy and keep around for comfort food.

Presents for You!

I got this from Karen Meisner.

I will send a gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here on my blog.

I don’t know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days (likely sooner than later). This may end up being almost anything (but probably books or pony mods, depending on your preference. OK, really, it could be anything).

The only thing you have to do in return is “pay it forward” by making a similar agreement on your own blog/journal.

Snapshots from the Writing Life

Snapshots from the life of a tech-writer-working-for-health-insurance (who also happens to be a freelance-fiction-author-working-to-pay-off-credit-card-debt-and-maintain-sanity):

5:35 am: Wake up, test sugar and check email. Take 15 u Lantus shot and breakfast bolus. Shots always come first thing.

5:35-5:50am: morning free weights and situps routine. I don't wake up properly until I do this.

5:50-6:05am: Make today's lunch, brew coffee, and defrost 1 cup blueberries for breakfast. Yup, same thing every morning. Keeps my sugar regulated.

6:05-6:20am: Eat breakfast, drink coffee, catch up on blogs, reply to email.

6:20-6:40am: Shower, brush teeth, etc.

6:40-7:10am: Dress, pack up gym clothes and etc., do hair, wash dishes (if I don't do dishes now, there will be a huge pile when I get home. The roomies do not own a dishwasher. *I* am the dishwasher)

7:10am: depart the house and go wait for the bus. Catch up on any midnight text messages from The Boyfriend and reply with something snarky.

7:40am: arrive at work.

7:40-8:00am: Make coffee, check intranet portal and email, put out any fires from the night before.

8:00-8:20am: First of the IT guys arrives. Bitch, catch up on gossip, discuss any fires from the night before.

8:20-12:00pm: "Work" of various sorts. Mostly organizing intranet stories, formatting and editing SOPs, playing Gold Miner and Turret Wars, writing 800-1000 words of Black Desert and surfing the internet if things are slow, writing up at least one emergency last-minute "OMG we needed this two weeks ago!" project, and throwing things at the hardware guys in the other room.

12:00-1:00pm: Lunch. Sugar test and shoot. Again, usually pretty standard cause of the sugar issue. Low-carb wrap, spinach salad, string cheese, almonds.

1:00-5:00pm: Meetings, retooling people's emails, uploading documents to the library, posting and replying to franchisee questions in the Forum, getting into arguments about politics and call routing systems with the other IT folks, texting The Boyfriend to see what his schedule is for the day and if we're going out for burgers or movies. If we are, the schedule below is all off. If not, the rest of the day goes like this:

5:00-5:45pm: Waiting for the bus and on the bus, either to the gym or home, depending on my mood. Twice a week to the gym, three times a week, back home, but I don't yet have set days.

5:45-6:30 or 7:00pm: Working out, either at home or at the gym. Sugar test and correction if necessary. 30-40 minutes of that is cardio while watching a Netflix video. If at the gym, I also do about 15-20 min worth of weights. After working out, catch up on text messages from The Boyfriend and reply with something snarky.

7:00-8:00pm: If at the gym, I'm getting dressed and commuting back home. If I'm at home, I'm making dinner and catching up on dishes and blogs. Test and shoot insulin before dinner, natch. If at home, catch up with Steph about her day or field snarky comments from the Old Man.

8:00-9:30pm: Finishing up whatever scheduled work on Black Desert that I didn't get done during the day. Catch up on blogs if I was at the gym, dinner if I was at the gym. Watch Netflix video, read, work on my French, work on pony mods.

9:30-10:00pm: Get ready for bed. If I haven't been reading, I'm certainly reading now, or just sitting in bed thinking about all the stuff I have to do tomorrow, angsting about various things, wishing I was having sex, and plotting through the next day's work on Black Desert.

10:00pm: Send a text message to The Boyfriend telling him that if he's still at work, it's time for him to go home.

10:01pm: The Boyfriend texts back that he's leaving work.

11:00pm: The Boyfriend texts me saying that no, really, he's really leaving work now.

12:30am: Text message from The Boyfriend about how he just did something really cool in Halo, nearly got pulled over/hit a racoon/got into an accident or how some piece of hardware just exploded. I am not likely to wake up and read any of this until I'm at the bus stop the next morning.

1:00am (twice a week or so): Nighttime sugar test and correction. I set my cell phone alarm and test for these if I've eaten something non-standard for dinner (that is, something with more than 30 grams of carbs - my sugar tends to rise alarmingly overnight when I do this).

And, now that I've written all that down, it looks incredibly regimented. To be honest, it is, but not in a bad way. I have no problem doing other things when stuff comes up, but this is the standard I default to when there's nothing else going on, and you know - it's kinda nice to have a set default. I do a lot better with a routine, especially now that I'm diabetic.

I also tend to get a hell of a lot more done.