God's War Back Cover Blurb

If you're working on writing up queries or synposes, I've found it sorta fun and helpful to write up one of those "back cover" blurbs that you see on the back of books as practice. Writers tend to be huge readers, which means we've all read about a million of these.

Not only is it fun to imagine that your books will actually have one of these written about it sometime, it's also a really helpful warmup for writing synopses (which I hate).

Here's one I wrote up for fun for God's War a while back:
_____________________________________________________

Nyx had already been to Hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference...

In the bloody wastes of Nasheen, a centuries-old holy war rages.

Fueled by Tirhani arms dealers, organic technicians, brawling mullahs, and swarms of magician-trained locusts, the origins of the war are shady and complex. It’s taken a bloody mix of mercenaries, bounty hunters, rogues, pirates and bel dames to enforce it.

Today, a godless woman may end it.

Bounty hunter Nyxnissa so Dasheen left God and her dead brothers at the front. Now she works the border cities cutting heads off terrorists for cash.

But when a dubious deal between her government and an alien gene pirate goes bad, Nyx’s crooked reputation makes her the preferred tool for the rogue’s recovery. The stuff inside this bounty’s head could end the war… but at what price?

Nyx is about to find out.

__________________________________________________

Man, I'm a fan girl.

Got Agent?

Speaking of agentry, my buddy Colleen Lindsay is now a new agent for Fine Print Literary Management.

Got novel?

She's looking for brand spanking new clients in fantasy, science fiction, pop culture, graphic novels, and maybe more. Check out her submission guidelines for details.

Colleen is bloody awesome, and she's the one who initially recommended I send God's War to Del Rey and got the whole thing started. She's been in the biz for ages, and specializes in publicity, so know that you'll have a great book lover and rampant publicist on your side.

If I hadn't already signed with Jackson last year, I would have signed on and taken a chance with Colleen without a blink this year. She knows her shit, and she's got a lit agency behind her to help her learn the nitty-gritty of agentry.

So, checkout the guidelines and send her a query if it looks like your stuff's a good fit!

Cheers

Tomorrow's always better, people.

Steph's work is taking them all out bowling next Friday, and since the Old Man has no interest, she's taking me to be her bowling partner! Whooo hooo!

That's three weeks of bowling in a row! (I have another bowling date on Saturday)And this one's free! Also, free beer and pizza! (because trust me, I deserve it, people!)

All that bowling is good for the ass. I'm telling you, though, my ass is really gonna have to start shaping up.

Today, at our work workout session, we added lunges to our sets and increased all our weights. Not just lunges in place, but across the gym. I'm not a weakling, mind, but I could barely get down the stairs afterward. It occurred to me that having a personal trainer is a lot like having an agent. That is, it's having somebody who can do/think about a piece of a process for you so you don't have to think about and you can actually concentrate on your work. Sure, you must be *aware* of that process, but you don't have to take up all your time worrying about it.

I don't have to remember how much weight I lifted last time or when I need to increase it or what exercise is next. They keep track of that and tell me and mix up the exercises every four weeks to make sure we're getting different types of workouts that keep us seeing results. I don't have to make up routines. About all I need to do is, you know, the actual work, and maybe count my own reps.

I could get used to this free personal trainer stuff.

Tasty, tasty work benefits.

The Return of the Overdraft

One of the things I discovered when I got my free credit report is that I had a student loan payment that was 120 days late.

I found this rather confusing, since I didn't remember receiving any kind of notice that this payment was due. I deferred all of my student loans back when I was unemployed, and two of the three of them duly resumed sending me statements after six months. Why this one didn't, I don't know, and in my hazy financially lazy mind, I figured they'd just granted me a 12-month reprieve instead of a 6 month, and never followed up.

My bad, yes. I'm financially retarded. I'm working on it.

I owed them $248 in overdue back payments.

I looked over the money I had in the bank, and according to my fuzzy math, I could pay them this and still stay in budget. I could make up the difference by paying less toward my CC payments next month (not paying the loan further injures my credit score).

But, once again, my lazy, imprecise "well, that's about right" math didn't work, and I overdrafted again for the first time since I started my new budget.

The real killer about the student loan payment is that it's another $64 I have to pull out of my budget somewhere. I'm honestly not sure from where. I can cancel the Netflix and maybe - maybe - take $40 out of my food budget and pay $10 less a month toward my old medical bills, but... well. I have to keep paying those huge payments to my credit card debt every month if I ever want to see the sun again, which means that money has to come out of things that are nice, but unneccessary. And no, I don't want to pull it out of my $100 fun budget.

That $100 fun budget is killing me as it is. Chopping that to $50? I wouldn't make it. What's that, a movie once a month and a couple Chipotle runs? No bowling, no coffee dates, no buying pants or socks when I need them. No occasional coke or peanuts or avocados.

I can barely do it as is right now.

I hate money.

Today

I did absolutely nothing useful today. Seriously: nothing. I'm not sure how I so effectively did nothing.

Also, now that I've gotten used to working out every day, I can seriously notice the deleterious results when I don't.

Ug.

Deleterious. That's an excellent word. I haven't used that one in awhile.

Anyhow: no news is good news?

Things Not to Do Even During a Snow Day at Home

Eat four sugar-free pecan cookies and coolwhip an hour after eating a carbolicious pancake for lunch that had raspberries and more of the aforementioned coolwhip.

You will get a sugar headache and find it difficult to concentrate for the next hour or so (no, these headaches make no sense. When I test my sugar, I'm at 122, which is a perfectly decent number. I don't know why my body does this when I have too many carbs at once sometimes).

Mmmmm diabetes!

Homemade Samoas... (my favorite Girlscout cookie! At a fraction of the cost!)

OMG the goodness!



I'm already concocting ways to make these more diabetic friendly. They will never be diabetic friendly, but at least I can make them *more* diabetic friendly, people....

Taking a Swim in Devil's Pool

I wanna go!

Rugby canceled tonight. They're sending us home from work at noon.

There's seriously not a lot of snow out there. I lived in Chicago for four years, and the city didn't stop for 4 inches, people. Oh well.

Home at noon!

Mmmmmm

Sweet library goodness.

More for Today

It appears I'm just going to keep filling up my social calendar until I explode and can't take it anymore.

I realize I'm doing it to distract myself. It's working, and keeping me focused on improvement instead of wallowing.

But... but, well.

In other news, I ate some pizza today at work. It was divine. I'm paying for it now with loose numbers, but hey. It was divine.

Anyhow, dates and rugby and bowling oh my this week!

I've started keeping a Google calendar to keep track.

Oh, the ridiculousity.

1099

Got an official 1099 from Hartwell for my Year's Best SF sale. That was quite nice, actually. Most short sales don't send you 1099s.

I honestly couldn't remember if I'd made $75 or $100 for it.

Yes, all you dewy-eyed young writers out there: making a Year's Best Sale will net you an incredible $100!!

Want to know how much I made writing just 500 more words the year before?

$4,000

Seriously (and yes, I made that money 10% talent, 80% pure luck through a writing colleague who was looking for writers. No, I don't know what the other 10% was. Math is hard).

I don't know why it never occurred to me before this year to turn to corp writing. No experience in it, maybe? I couldn't find a way to position myself for a cushy corp writing job. The one I fell into this year, again, was 80% luck.

Right place, right time, just like relationships.

There's writing work to be done that'll actually pay you for it. Why fiction doesn't?

Go figure.

Writing & Money

Scalzi has a great post up about writing and money.

Everything he says here is basically stuff my roommates have been telling me. You know, they of my same age who have a house, two cars, no credit card debt, and IRAs.

I wouldn't take back any of the shit I did in my early 20s. They were awesome experiences. Looking at it, though, I would have managed my Chicago job money a lot better. I blew loads and loads of money on books that I have since given away and/or never read and going out to eat twice or three times or more a week; blew loads on coffee, of all things (at one point I was spending, I think, nearly $200 a month in books and coffee).

Going on trips is one thing; blowing money on food, coffee, and books you'll never read is quite another. I also very nearly slaughtered myself the year before I got sick by nearly passing on the "free" health insurance I was getting through my company. I mean, hey, I'd get nearly $80 a month back if I chose to opt-out, and you know, I never got sick, so why not?

Yeah, seriously, in December when we were renewing, I seriously thought about opting out. In May I got a 30K hospital bill, all but 7K of which was paid for by my insurance company.

It's not worth opting out.

In some ways, looking back at everything that's happened the last few years, me getting sick is the best thing that could have happened for me, financially. Why, you ask, when health costs are so high?

Because it's forcing me to keep my day job no matter what kind of advance I get for ANY book EVER.

I spent much of my early 20s just spending money like water, figuring I would pay off the debts with my first 10K or 20K book advance. After that, I'm sure I would have quit my day job with the next Great Advance as my career improved, but that's always been my goal: make enough money writing full time to make it my day job. Give up the 8-5 grind.

But.

But, well... It's something I can never do now. I pull my own weight in every relationship I get into. "Quitting" just isn't an option, even if I were to ever have a spouse that had benefits (which would also require me to get married. It would take a pretty fucking amazing person to convince me to marry them. I have yet to meet this person. So).

So I work for my own benefits. I make more as a technical writer than a lot of freelance writers who write fiction exclusively make, and I have great health insurance.

Living alone in a garret and bleeding all over your pages while slowly starving to death or dying of consumption sounds a lot more romantic than it actually is. I lived something close to that in South Africa, and though it's fun for a year, it's not the kind of life I want to build.

I want to be financially secure and successful. That means every penny I make right now is going toward debt. And it fucking sucks. All I want to do is go to Chipotle and buy some expensive cheese and go to the movies all the time and some shows downtown. As it is, bowling is something I can do maybe twice a month and about the only sort of dates I can afford these days are coffee dates and maybe some evenings spent watching Netflix.

And that's how it's going to be for the next couple of years. Because you know what? I'm tired of being poor. I'm tired of being uncertain, and being poor doesn't make you a better or worse writer than anyone else. Starving for my art just isn't all that cool.

Like Scalzi said, writing is a job - my day job, in fact, and my weekend passion - and I treat it like a job.

I'm inordinately lucky to be able to do a job from 8-5 that I love and get paid for it. Not everybody's that lucky. If you're going to be a writer who makes an actual living wage, though, this is a nice way to do it.

I like my living wage, my downtime for freelance writing, and I'm currently looking for other freelancing opportunities to help with aforementioned debts and bowling money.

Being poor isn't any fun. Not going to Chipotle isn't fun either, but it beats being poor.

Church-going in Ohio

The roommates have been looking for a church here in Ohio, and though I figured it would be too liberal-hippie for them, I told them I was looking into the local Unitarian church just north of here. I figured it would get us all out of the house, and it would get me socializing at a place I could feel comfortable talking about ideas of faith, history, and religion in.

Overall, it was a good experience for me. It was the first time I went to a church and didn't feel like I was some kind of imposter. I don't generally feel welcome and comfortable at churches. They spend a lot of time saying, "here's what we are and what we believe, and if you don't believe this, you aren't welcome" Or, "if you don't believe this, we'll make you believe it, because we'll use fear and coercion to convince you, because your lack of belief makes us uncomfortable."

This church was more about talking about faith and religions and ideas thrown around in other churches, questioning those, looking at different texts (including the Bible). It was focused on faith and love and acceptance more than stony religion, and I appreciated that.

It was funny, though, afterward, talking to the roommates about it. They thought the church was nice and enjoyed the experience, but didn't feel at home there.

The Old Man put it in just the right way. He said, "It seems to be the kind of church where people go who feel like outsiders, who feel like they never fit anywhere else. And you know what? That's not a part of my experience. I don't share that."

Which makes perfect sense, really. A straight white Christian guy comfortable with his family and faith growing up in a society that largely preaches the same values of faith and family and is geared toward making straight white Christian guys successful wouldn't share that experience.

But me? With my "mostly" straightness, queer-friendly thoughts and ideas, discomfort with the idea of a fire-and-brimstone God that hates the very people he's supposed to have created, never feeling that religious certainty or comfort in what I'm doing, what I think, what I believe, because the things I think and believe aren't really scripted... well, for me, it was the first time I actually walked into a church that didn't make me want to run screaming from it.

I appreciate a minister who says, "here's what I think, but I don't expect it to be what you think. Let's talk about it."

That's a pretty cool idea, and something I'm drawn to.

I don't like being preached at, and I don't like folks who preach hate or intolerance. "Hate the sin but not the sinner," is a stupid, hypocritical piece of garbage. If the sin you hate is "teh gay," I'm sorry to say, you also hate the person. Because like it our not, our fears, our desires, our passions, are also intrinsic parts of who we are. You can't take one away without changing the whole. You can't tell me that a love between people that makes them both better and stronger and more whole is somehow bad. Why don't we encourage people to be better for the sheer joy of being better, of having love in their lives, instead of using fear and coercion? A society that uses fear and coercion to control its people isn't a society I want to promote.

I believe in loving and respecting people and helping in whatever way you can. I get uncomfortable in places telling me what I should think, or believe, especially if it means believing that otherwise good and decent people are so hated by God because they question Jesus's true paternity or don't believe in the Trinity are going to hell. At the same time, I like the idea of a community where you can explore faith and religion in an open, accepting environment.

That sort of environment is a faith and belief system all its own, of course. And it's certainly a place I'll feel more comfortable.

Steph and the Old Man will be looking into other churches in the area, but I think I'll be going back to this one at least a few more times. It challenges me to think; it gives me a safe space in Dayton, where I often feel like a total freak (I always feel far more comfortable in places where same-sex couples feel safe enough to hold hands or put their arms around one another in public. It's like my whole body just relaxes, like, "Oh, OK, it's safe here to be different. I don't have to play by a script").

In conservative Dayton, it's a breath of fresh air, and something I think I need right now, you know. Finding some people who won't freak out if they find out you one dated a woman you cared very much for once, you vote democrat, you believe in social justice, social programs, and equality, and you don't feel welcome in a mainstream religious establishment.

It's nice to go somewhere I can just take a deep breath in and not worry about being "outed" as... well, as whatever it is I am.

Outed for being me, I guess.

Who Would Have Thought?

Went bowling with the not-boyfriend for a couple of hours. Good times were had. This morning, I awoke to find that, damn, my ass hurts.

I didn't expect bowling to result in a sore ass. Sore wrist, maybe, sore arm.

Sore ass?

It was totally innocent bowling, I promise!

Yes, Yes, I Know: More Rollerderby, Less Boyfriend

I'll get there.

Rugby's rescheduled for Tuesday, as Dayton public transit sucks, and getting home from downtown at 10pm was near impossible. Rugby folks will help me set up a ride home for the Tuesday practice instead.

Date

Huh.

That was a very nice date.

Now I really need to finish my novel.

Rugby

Thursday, 8pm.

It's a date!

Dayton Has a Women's Rugby Team

Oh yes indeed it does.

One of my workday workout companions suggested this, actually, after watching me doing my assisted pull-ups yesterday. She mentioned Dayton had a team, and I said I was interested. She has a friend who coaches, and said they're always welcoming new folks, even those without rugby experience.

I checked out the website and asked them for more info. Wouldn't that be a blast?

Quote of the Evening

Was clicking through some shows tonight while finishing up my Greek yogurt, and happened upon Dr. 90210, in which a porn star was having her third breast augmentation surgery because the first two had been screwed up.

While the doctor pressed and cupped these enormous bubble breasts protruding from her tube-shaped boyish body, he said, "See, by tightening up this here they'll look much more natural, but still sexy."

That's right, ladies, this doctor is so talented he can make unnatural breasts look natural... but still sexy. Newsflash: unnatural breasts are the only kind we're supposed to find attractive anymore.

When she came out from under the anathestic, she contorted her face into a grimace of pain and began to sob because it hurt so much.

Please stop doing this to yourselves.

If this is the future, I want my money back.

Things That Make You Go "Hm"

"...and their women"!!!

Forgetting

Today's xkcd

Because Life is Short

I did 50 minutes of cardio on a *Sunday.*

I have two low-cost coffee dates set up for this week (because life is better when we socialize, people). I don't like to think of this as me dating again. I am merely socializing. We'll see what happens as a result.

I lost 6 lbs, for some odd reason (lack of cheese, probably).

According to my (highly fuzzy) math, I should get back $947 on my tax return this year. I'm not holding my breath. Me and math don't get along very well.

Would be lovely, tho. Oh yes it would.

Don't Buy a Tablet PC, Buy a Wii

The more I hang out with the IT guys at work, the more I love cheap hacks.

Indeed We Do

I let this little old woman go ahead of me at Trader Joe's today, because she only had two items, and it seemed silly for this frail little woman to stand there behind me with her pack of tuna curry and soy sauce while I bought my $35 in groceries.

She thanked me for allowing her to go ahead and offered me the counter space to set my basket down on.

"Oh no," I said, "it's not that heavy. I work out." I laughed. "I'm pretty strong."

She smiled, then looked me up and down and said, "Oh yes, you do look very strong. A strong woman. Yes." She paused, then said more softly, "We need more of those."

Indeed we do.

Well, it Was Bound to Happen

I had dreams last night that I was spending money. Vasts amounts of fun money, far over budget, in particular, on food and books. In particular, sugar-free chocolate.

Read books from your cell phone (or your iTouch)

For free. Though there isn't exactly much selection at the moment.

Things That Make You Go "OMG"

I was doing some random googling tonight, and wondered what would happen if folks only had my first name and location. Would they discover my TRUE IDENTITY?

According to Google, no. Cause there is apparently ANOTHER KAMERON IN DAYTON. And you all thought MySpace pages weren't good for anything. Look at how perfectly my identity is hidden! She's even 28, like me! Only she is not rhino-sized, and her boyfriend appears to be very tall, or perhaps she is just very short.

In any case, her profile ensures that I come up way down at the end of the page.

Excellent.

Things Will Get Better!

Oh yes, they will.

The Epic Battle Continues

My Credit History at a Glance

Was able to view my credit history for free online via a couple of sites, which is something I've been meaning to do as a part of my whole "Get my finances together" resolution. This was actually a very humbling experience.

Mmmmm credit excess.

The good news is I've only got one late credit card payment from back in `06 and two late student loan payments. Everything else I pay on time, for whatever that's worth.

I've got one credit card that's carried between 3-5K for the last two YEARS (yes, I've budgeted to get this taken care of over the NEXT two YEARS. Yes, this is why Credit Cards are EVIL).

But for something really terrifying, have a look at the balance history on my big CC, in chronological order:

01/2006 $1,337
02/2006 $2,800
03/2006 $2,554
04/2006 $2,068
05/2006 $1,882 - got sick with diabetes
06/2006 $2,538
07/2006 $2,981
08/2006 $2,056
09/2006 $2,597
10/2006 $3,782 - uncovered hospital bills came due
11/2006 $5,231
12/2006 $5,821 - got laid off and lost health insurance
01/2007 $6,560
02/2007 $7,051
03/2007 $7,214 - moved to Dayton
04/2007 $7,308 - went to Spain
05/2007 $7,619
06/2007 $9,014 - still no health insurance
07/2007 $9,609 - advised employer to hire me b/c of med costs
08/2007 $10,323 - employed/finally got health insurance
09/2007 $11,282 - went to Switzerland/started dating locally
10/2007 $12,068
11/2007 $12,791 - new insurance co problems
12/2007 $13,972 – initiated new budget to control debt
01/2008 $13,805

I can't tell you how depressed I was with this card balance back when it was $1500. I kept thinking, "Oh, I'll NEVER pay this BACK."

I've resolved not to have anymore years like 2006/2007 ever again.

Seriously, layoffs and chronic illness and moving and dating of any kind (local or international) is not a good idea.

One more reason to give up dating! Yay!

I can't wait to be done with this debt.

I Have All My W-2's Now!

Which means now I get to find out if I really CAN afford to go to Wiscon.

Rambo: Fourth Blood

(click to view the depressing stats counts)

Quote of the Day

"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave."
- Mohandas Gandhi

Note to Self

No day is a good day to decide to give up coffee.

Oh no.

Ring Pistol

Because really, you could put an eye out.

Web Pirates

Thought for the Day

Tomorrow will be better.

Always is.

Quote of the Day

"I take life with a grain of salt, a wedge of lime, and a shot of tequila."
- unknown

Things Needing Fixing

Now that I've successfully grooved into a great new workout schedule and created a new internal communications plan at work at that I'm implementing, it's time to fix my REAL writing schedule, cause I can tell you right now that Black Desert ain't going to be done by March.

Fucking personal life, always getting in the way.

New goal: Fix writing schedule. While retaining the awesomeness that is my work and workout schedules.

When I grow up, I want to be able to juggle health, both types of writing, and a real, live personal life, for long periods of time. That would just be so fun.

A chick's gotta have goals.

An Open Reader Poll

Q: Should Kameron go on a date Friday night?

Yes/No

Please post your response in the comments section below (please show your work).

One For the Road

In Which the Protagonist Heads to Bed Early

Too much working. Too much working out.

Too much time tonight to sit around and think.

I'll get to bed early while I'm ahead. Rested muscles means more lifting at the gym tomorrow.

Reasons I Can't Wait Until Payday

Because the next payday is the 1st of February, which means I will once again have $100 in "fun money."

1/3 of which I have already decided to spend on pants.

This is the exciting writing life, yo.

My First Bench Press!

The two other women in my workday workout group didn't show up today, so I got a Kameron-friendly workout from one of our work personal trainers, K.

She hauled me back into the free weights area, and I bench pressed for the first time!

The bar itself is 45 lbs, so she started me with that just to verify that I could, you know, lift it with ease. She increased the weight by 5lbs on each bar until we got to 65. By then, I was probably too worn out to push weight increments of much more, but next time... I want to start at 70, yo!

As we moved on to free weights, one of the guys in the gym lumbered up and said, "You know, if you ladies are serious about lifting weights, you should use higher and higher increments. You know, 8 pounds, then 10pounds, maybe even a couple reps with 20, you know, til you tire out. Women don't have testoserone, so you don't bulk up. You'll just get these real lean muscles."

Imagine, when I grow up, I might even be able to lift a 20lb free weight!

I did understand the weight training routine he was referencing... though he got it wrong. It actually works in reverse of the way he said it. You start with the heaviest weight you can lift, do it to failure, then notch down your weights, doing each successively smaller weight to failure. It's called a Drop Set. This will build muscle faster, but could also result in overtraining. There are pros and cons. I suppose you could try this in reverse the way he believed you should (with his 20 years of personal training experience, I'm sure), but if you do 20 lbs to failure, you probably aren't going to be able to lift 25 and do them to failure immediately afterwards.

Anyway. Math is hard, and I'm just a girl.

K. was much nicer than I was going to be.

What I wanted to say was, first: "Women don't have any testoserone, huh? I wonder where my wicked sex drives comes from, then."

And:

"If I wanted your advice, I would ask. I, however, am no foreigner to free weights, thanks. Even though I'm just a girl."

K. has 15 years of personal training experience and a BA in Exercise Science or something. She merely said, "Thank you."

As we headed out of the weight area to work on the assisted pull-up machine she said, "Don't you just love it when random guys in the gym give you unsolicited advice?"

"We're just girls," I said. "It happens every time you walk over to the boys' half of the gym. And then they wonder why more women don't lift weights."

Honestly, do you think guys give other guys unsolicited advice in the weights room? Maybe they do, and I just never noticed because I don't spend enough time there. But I'd bet women get way more unsolicited advice than men do. Women have pride too, you know. And many of us even have an idea of what we're doing. If we're not doing it the way you want us to do it, it's probably for a reason. You don't know what our goals are. You don't know what our backgrounds are. Some of us have 15 years of personal training experience. Some of us can kick you in the head.

Thanks, tho, buddy.

Anyway:

My first bench press!

Awesome!

Be Advised

5 Scariest Insects in the World

No shit, man.

New PM Workout Routine

So, for some time now I've been trying to come up with a regular evening lower-body routine to match my morning upper-body free weights routine. My morning one works great. Years of habit make kicking off my day with a quick 15 minutes of weights as natural to me as breakfast and a shower.

But I needed something I can get into at night that's as quick, simple, and effective.

Well, it appears I may have found it. And if this doesn't kick your ass, then you're in far better shape than I. I can alter the number of sets to make this a quick 10 or 15 minutes at the end of the day. Again, if my morning/evening sets go much longer than that, I tend to avoid them. An hour workout during my weekday is fine, but get me at the beginning or end of the day, and it better be fast and require very little complex thought.

We'll see if I can work this one in each evening. So far, it's proved to be fun and functional, just like my 20 minutes of easy, post-pancakes cardio on the weekends.

Fun, easy, and functional makes it much more likely this will become a part of my daily routine.

Quote of the Day

"I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work." - Thomas Edison

12 Ways to Eat Diabetic-Friendly On a Budget

Most food budget tips will tell you to stock up on cheap fillers like rice, potatoes, pasta and canned beans and soups. The canned beans might not be so bad, but if you're a fickle diabetic like me, you want to stick to a low carb diet. This reduces the amount of insulin you take every day, improves your numbers, and ultimately, results in a consistent weight and clear head.

One of the biggest obstacles to figuring out a doable budget for me was creating a reasonable food budget without the help of the handy rice and pasta fillers that Steph and the Old Man are able to use. It's been a brutal learning period.

Here's some tips I've come up with for how to eat low-carb on a budget:

1) Buy cheap vegetables. Forget those pre-cut bags of broccoli and cauliflower. Cabbage is 50 cents a head (prob'ly cheaper in other places), and it's really filling. There are also a million ways to cook it. It's a poor person's food. People have been creative. Carrots and frozen peas are some other great low-cost filler vegetables (brussels sprouts aren't bad either, but they aren't the cheapest thing on the block).

2) Buy your meat in bulk. Go to Sam's Club or Costco, if you can, and buy those big packs of chicken breasts for stewing meat. Divide them up into individual bags when you get home and freeze them. Take them out the night before to defrost for your chicken stir fry the next night. No more pre-cooked meats. You'll thank yourself later when you're making an offer on that new house.

3) Breakfast doesn't have to be a full-out affair. I was used to the eggs and bacon routine from my Atkins days, so when I got diagnosed, I just ported that over. But it ended up taking up too much time, and bacon (even turkey bacon) isn't exactly cheap. Plus, I could only stomach it with cheese and mixed veggies, and that meant going through more cheese every week than my pocket was comfortable with. I buy frozen blueberries in bulk and defrost a cup of those, dust them in Splenda, and eat them in the morning while I'm catching up on blogs.

4) What about that Splenda? Buy it in bulk, too. It always feels like a major expense, though I don't go through a lot of it. When I buy it in bulk, I'm spending maybe $5.99 a month on it. Buying it at the store means I'm spending $7.99-8.99. This may not sound like a huge difference, but that's 2 or 3 iTunes songs you get to download every month now, or a pair of socks (I have learned how to mend my socks. I like iTunes more than I like buying new socks).

5) Low carb tortillas are a must. They're expensive: $2.99 for a pack of 8. But they do replace all of your bread products, and with that 90-per calorie count and 9-per carb count, you just can't beat them. I buy Tam-x-ico's Low Carb Tortillas. I buy two packages per week. That's a whopping $6 on bread products, but if you think about it, I'm not buying bread, pitas, bagels, chips, crackers or any other type of snack food of a similar variety. So $6 a week on bread products really isn't that bad.

6) Speaking of tortillas, since this is your only bread product, you're going to want to get creative with them. Use them for sandwich wraps for lunch, grilled wraps for dinner, fajitas, nachos or chips (cut them up and fry them or bake them in your toaster oven), quesadillas, and etc. Get your $6 worth.

7) Yogurt is great... just choose the right kind. There's a great low-carb yogurt called Fage that has like 9 carbs a serving, and a very reasonable calorie count. You can use this as an additional breakfast item, add it to your whole-wheat pancakes, or mix it with frozen berries and Splenda for a great sweet treat. Thing is, Fage is a tad on the expensive size. For just over a dollar less, you can buy Trader Joe's Greek Yogurt. Fewer carbs (6 per serving), and cheaper price. It's your best bet. Like the Fage, opt for the 0% fat version. They taste exactly the same as the full fat, but have something ridiculous like 1/3 to 1/4 of the calories.

8) And, what about berries? The highest cost item on my food bill every week was fresh berries. What can I say? I was addicted. Don't buy them fresh unless it's the time of year where they're in season, and it's cheaper to buy fresh than frozen. Otherwise, buy your low carb blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries frozen. Seriously. You'll save loads.

9) Watch the cheese. This is my biggest weakness. It's the best no-carb snack on the planet! Stick to low-fat string cheese (in my opinion, it tastes better than full fat) and some kind of extra sharp cheddar cheese for your sandwiches, fajiitas, and the like. If you must, you can buy feta or blue cheese for your salads, but at $3-$4 a week, it's not always a worthwhile expense for me. Some weeks, I'd rather buy socks.

10) Don't shop hungry. Yeah, yeah, you've heard this before as a great stupid "weight loss" tip, but let's think about where it's really hitting you: your budget. Nothing looks better than $4 packages of pecans and $5 cheese and spinach pre-made quesadillas when I'm shopping hungry, and the urge to add "just one more thing because I'm so cool!" to the basket quickly becomes $20 worth of "just one more thing"s.

11) Only buy thing's you'll eat. This might sound obvious, too, but if you're buying three packages of spinach a week for your lunch salads and only using 2 and throwing out the other one, that's $1.99 in the hole. You could have bought some SnapPea Crisps or a dark chocolate bar instead. If you only drink half a gallon of milk a week, don't buy a gallon. Unless it's something you're buying in bulk and freezing, only buy what you're going to use that week. Waste not.

12) No incidentals. No magazines, no books, no string, no plants, no random greeting cards. You can buy these things out of your fun budget when you're out on a different trip, to have fun. Make grocery shopping about grocery shopping. If the budgets are separate (for me, my fun budget and grocery budget are very much separate), then separate them in your head. Piling things on and figuring you'll sort out the costs later means no headache now, but a nasty realization later when you sit down with the recipes and realize you blew half your monthly fun budget on a Bob Greene book, an Oprah magazine, some notebook paper, and a handful of pens.

If I stick absolutely to my "rules" every week, I still probably spend $70-80 a week on groceries (this also includes toiletries - razors, face wash, soap and the like). This might still sound really high to people used to living on rice and pasta. The best I ever did on groceries was $50 a week... eight years ago. I did that by drastically reducing my food intake (two eggs and mixed veggies separated into two portions: one portion for breakfast, one for lunch, and mixed veggies, brown rice and sausage for dinner. String cheese to snack on. That's it. It was wicked tight, and not the funnest thing I've ever done).

$70-80 a week will be annoying, but comfortable. You'll still get snacks and a variety of sugar-friendly food, and you won't have to go without soap.

Finding Your Motivation

What drives you?

Not just to get up in the morning (I must work to pay for my roof, my food, to survive), but what drives you to do more than just survive? To push into the unknown, to take a risk?

I used to fear relationships and commitment in the same way people fear death. It's why I stayed single so long after high school, and one of the reasons (besides my crazy sickness) that caused much of the trouble in the two relationships I had after coming out of my post-highschool dating hiatus. I was terrified of getting close to people, of getting into anything serious, of not having an escape route, of showing weakness, of relying on somebody who was, by definition, unreliable. After all, anyone who wasn't me was unreliable.

That was all about to change.

I'd been in a relationship for three years in high school, lived with the guy for six months, turned him down - twice - when he asked me to marry him. And in that relationship, my first taste of what it was "relationships" were supposed to be, I became everything I hated.

I became a weak-willed, screaming, miserable wreck. I hated myself. I wanted to kill myself. I was a depressed, hysterical ball of self-hatred. I was terrified of everything. Terrified of my boyfriend, terrified of change, terrified of failing even more than I'd already failed. I took fistfuls of my waitressing tip money and watched "Titanic" in the theaters, over and over, wishing I could be that brave to just break away from everything - all of the promises, the expectations. I should have had everything I wanted. I should have been happy. But this wasn't the life I wanted. This wasn't who I wanted to be, and I didn't know how to change it. Change felt terrifying. Failure was terrifying.

But this, this life, was worse.

I made the connection somewhere in my head that it was my reliance on my boyfriend, it was this weak, sobbing, scary relationship that had caused me to become this way, and that if I avoided getting too close, avoided relying on somebody else, if I relied only on my own strength, then I'd never become that person again.

When I was asked to shed this idea in later relationships, it was like asking me to kill myself. It was like asking me to pull out the vital clockwork inside of myself that had built me into this strong, brave person who took risks and put a backpack on her back and just went. Oh, what a brave person I'd become! Moving on when things got too stale, too comfortable. Moving on because I believed with every taut fiber in my body that if I got too comfortable, if I got stale, I'd become that weak, groveling, sniveling piece of shit I had been.

I just had to keep moving. I had to cut people out of my life, and keep moving.

Jenn told me this was a shit-ass crazy way to live my life, but it's all I had. I had no driving force to replace it. Taking this belief away from me would be like cutting off my leg and telling me to walk. I wouldn't know how. I'd have to learn everything all over again.

One of the brutal experiences of my eighteen months of supreme craziness was realizing how easy it was to die. Was coming to the understanding of how much easier it was for me to die, on a daily basis, than everybody else. My death was just a little bit closer.

I should be dead already.

I made some crazy decisions based on that near-death experience. Some crazy decisions and then... some other crazier ones.

I was thinking about past relationships, past loves, and remembering an ex who really hated himself, drove himself to do stuff with this ragged internal monologue of self-hate, and I thought, God, how can you use self-hate as such a powerful motivator? How could I be with someone so full of self-hate?

And then I remembered that that's how I used to be. That's what drove me. Self-hate. Fear. Hate at the person I used to be. Fear of becoming that person again. Fear of giving it all up, of throwing up my hands and crying and saying, "That's all I could do." Not fear of never accomplishing anything, but fear of never even trying.

I don't mind failure.

What I mind is the not trying.

With the self-hate gone, with that terror-motivation gone, I realized... Yeah. With that gone, I was finally able to let go and love people, and start planning for futures; futures with other people in my life besides, well, me. For the first time, I allowed my heart to be broken. Really broken. Not hurt. Not bruised. I opened myself up that way. And it sucked, and it made me feel weak and stupid. I hated it.

But it wasn't the end of the world. Far from it.

So if I wasn't being driven by self-hate anymore, what was driving me? Something had to keep me going. There's something else that pushes me to make a better career for myself, to keep pounding out books, to develop a kick-ass workout plan to get the buffness I want, to budget, to build a life. Where does that motivation come from? Not just to imagine that life, but to build it? I could just sit around delivering the bare minimum at work, bumming off my roommates until they kicked me out, renting forever, blaming others for my problems, racking up more credit card debt, building one-sided relationships, going to be early, giving up on workouts, cause really, why bother? Who cares?

I care. And I care enough to use everything in my power to build the life I want.

Where does it come from?

From almost dying. From seeing how easily everything just... stops. You just go to sleep. And you don't wake up. That's it.

There's no great mystery, no second chances, no pie in the sky, no ghostly light, nobody's hand in the dark. You just go to sleep. You're done.

This is all you've got.

The realization of how precious this is, how close we all are to just stopping... It really pulled me up short this year. It make me realize how much I still want to do. I remind myself every day that I'm living on borrowed time. Time even more precious than before, because it's like getting a second chance. A second chance to live, to create, to love, to build, to do.

In death, everything stops.

If death is about stopping, then living is about going. Pushing. Moving forward.
It's not just other people who are unreliable anymore. My own body betrayed me. I'm unreliable, too. We're all taking a risk. We're all afraid. All of us have hearts that can be broken. That's the risk we take. Every day.

We're all afraid.

But my desire to live, to really LIVE, trumps all those fears. All those risks.

Living is all we've got.

The Sarah Conner Chronicles

"Pack the guns. I'll make pancakes."

I mean, really, it couldn't get much cooler than that.

It took me some time to warm up to this one. The woman who plays Sarah is that chick from The 300, so though she's not as kick-ass as I'd like her to be, I have faith that she'll warm up as things go along. She's got a strong face and a good presence. I think she'll find her groove soon enough (yes, a lot of that is that I'd like her to be physically more powerful looking than she is now. +20 lbs and some muscles, OK, people? This is Sarah Conner. I'll give you the teenager terminator, but give me my buff, scary, kick-ass heroine too, OK?).

Summer Glau was perfectly cast as the awkward terminator; she creates just the right dissonance in her performance between high-school chick and scary Other. It's a good performance. Like Heady's, I think it'll get better as it goes on.

The kid? Yeah, well, hopefully he'll get a backbone and some fucking sense as things go on. You need to have somebody strong enough to stand next to these women, and thus far, he's underwhelming.

You'd also think that with so many folks recognizing Sarah, she'd, like, get a fucking hair cut and dye job, tho, don't you think?

I'm just sayin'. I'm not gonna handwave that one much longer.

You also gotta love all the guns and violence and the wacky space travel and rebels-from-the-future thing. Throwing in a huge cast of rebels and terminators should also make things really interesting. I like the idea of creating a far-future army in the past to fight the creation of their own future.

Making this movie "fix" the crap that was movie 3 was brilliant also. I was hoping they'd do that. Who fucking kills Sarah Conner?

Puleeez.

We'll definately be watching the others.

Dubai

Where your $3.50 a gallon goes...

Quote of the Day

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."
- D.H. Lawrence

Today's (Other) Song, Stuck On Repeat

I just bought both of these on iTunes. Since I was out of fun money for the month, I decided I would go without blue cheese on my salad this week in order to pay for it.

Want something, swap something.

I hate budgets.

The Wolfgang Press - "A Girl Like You"

You go to sleep
I want to sail in your head
And when you speak
You know you've got to make sense

You want to say
That it's me you know best
I say a girl like you
She was born to be blessed

My hands are yours
And you can take them from me
And take my mouth
I have nothing to say

You want to fly
To some other place
I say a girl like
She was born to be kissed
Born to be kissed

One thousand times
And your mother too
One thousand times

You're gonna say
You say you want to be free
But when you fall
You wanna fall back to me

You want to fly
And there's no disgrace
I say a girl like you
She was born to be blessed

My hands are yours
Cause I don't know how to pray
Take my mouth
I have nothing to say

I lift my heart
Up to a higher place
Up to a girl like you
Who was born to be kissed
Born to be kissed

One thousand times
And your sisters too
One thousand times
A girl like you

One thousand times
And your mother too
One thousand times
And your sisters too

One thousand times
And a girl like you
One thousand times
One thousand times

Because I saw you
Because I saw you

Today's Song, Stuck on Repeat

The Wolfgang Press - "People Say"

People say it's easy living in the light
Never see the hard times, never see the fight
Simple when it's slow but only if it's right
I only see the good times everytime
And now I've seen the whole, I'm ready to believe
And now I've seen the proof, I'm ready to concede
The same amount of hope is here upon my back
People say they know

People say they think
But they don't
And they they say they will
But they won't
People say they think
But they don't
That's all mine

Stepping into black and living in the light
Living isn't easy but life it does divide
Thinking of having babies is won't seem right
You're going to have a hard time everytime

And we're holding up the seeds like we're holding up the flame
Fearing that the women won't breed another name
Never tear apart what you're reaching to achieve
People say they know

People say they think
But they don't
And they they say they will
But they won't
People say they think
But they don't
That's all mine

Staring into black whilst living in the light
Living isn't easy but life it does divide
Charlie Manson said that everything is right
And Charlie Manson knows

People say they think
But they don't
And they they say they will
But they won't
People say they think
But they don't
That's all mine

And God's War Isn't "Marketable"...

... Then market it as "literary" spec fiction, yo.

The sight of 30 determined girls, many in headscarves, sparring and shadow-boxing, is extraordinary in Kabul. Women in burkas stalk the streets outside huddled against icy winds.

The teenage boxers, none of whom is older than 18, are part of a new generation which has grown up with only dim memories of Taleban rule and its stifling repression of women. They are ambitious, and can see nothing strange about women boxers.


Seriously, after writing the boxing stuff in God's War, this was kind of eerie to read.

Another Kind of Mod

Someday, I will be able to afford to put together my own gaming computer. And on that day, my friends, my modding skillz will finally be appreciated by pony aficionados and gamer geeks alike.

Lo, on that day...

Workah Workah

I've spent this week getting out of the last of my ennui. I've been trying to figure out what direction I want to push all of my energy into, and with the upshot my writing and career is sort of headed in right now, I decided to push all this extra energy into those directions.

Physically, I'm really healthy right now and feeling pretty fantastic. As said, I've got a lot of mental and physical energy, and no real firm place to put it. So.

With this strict budget of mine, and the one-year-for-a-car, two-years-for-a-house goals, I need to start putting more energy into getting to a place, careerwise, that I'd like to be. That is, finding ways to improve what I do, increase what I make, and certainly make more money freelancing (fiction and Other).

So I finally firmed up that decision this week. I have some ideas for work, and I've started putting together some corporate communication plans, building new projects for myself, and I'll do a couple meetings with some folks next week to talk about some corp marketing stuff and see where everyone is so I can figure out the best place to put myself.

The thing with working without any real supervisor is that I have to sort of anticipate what folks need and build it. If I want something bigger, I need to build it. I need to show I'm up to that. It's a fun place to cut my marketing and com teeth. I want to work toward that house. This is where I need to push this.

Even if I get cut after season, these are great skills I can transfer to other places. Showing what I can develop, build, and implement will look great on the old resume.

There's a huge shift I need to take, personally, to really move all my energies over there. I'm still sort of all over the board. But I did finally make the decision this week about what I feel is the most important thing right now, the best place to put displaced energy.

So making that decision, tough as it is, felt good, at least.

I'm in a good place.

I know where my heart is.

Thoughts

Should I sign up my pony mods for the Wiscon art show?

I'm wondering if people would actually pay for any of these, you think? I don't want to take up space that'd be better suited to more talented artists. It's a tough room.

Been thinking about it.

Sugar Sugar

I always forget that meatloaf is not, in fact, made entirely of meat.

Blast.

I Like You!

A Glimpse Inside the Head of a Schizophrenic

A taste of what it's like inside the head of a schizophrenic (Travis, don't watch this one. Seriously).

One For the Road

Temporary Insanity

Just crazy.

It's in the Walk

One of the details I put into GW was a nod to the fact that Rhys, my magician, was good at reading people. He knew a bel dame (a bounty hunter/draft dodger police type of person) just by looking at them.

Trouble with this "detail" was, I used that whole "Well, he just KNEW" language. Which looks like (and, let's face it, IS) a handwave. It bugged me again with this scene in Black Desert where he does a deal with three women he pegs as being authentic bel dames. "He just KNEW."

But what did he know? How did he know? Well, something about they way they stood, the way they walked, something, something....

And now I have a better idea on how to properly detail that something.

Check out this great writerly guide to police body language.

Sugar Blues

I've been really depressed the last couple of afternoons. Yesterday, I chalked this up as just overall blues, though I remember thinking it was incredibly strange that my sugar number after working out for over an hour was at 219. Where had that number come from? It meant I'd been riding a lot higher than that before exercise, but my pre-lunch number had been normal.

I'd been having some trouble with my insulin pen. I'd dial in a test unit and depress the plunger in the open air to make sure the syringe was clear (I usually do this before each dose now to make sure there's no blockage. I've had too many underdosage issues because of this), and not having any insulin come out after one, two, five dials. Once I had to dial in ten units of insulin and spray it out just to get it clear. I changed out my needles a couple of times, thinking somehow the insulin had gotten gummed up or something (anything's possible).

Today, growling through my "I want to poke out my eyes with spoons" and "maybe I should just kill myself" depression-induced litany, I went to Chipotle to use my birthday gift certificate and tested, once again, at 219.

Even without working out (depression has a habit of stealing motivation, which is why diabetics probably have to have their sugar under control before starting any kind of new routine or mental enterprise, which is sort of a catch 22, cause working out also helps your sugar, but depression caused by ass-unhappy sugar saps your energy in a big way), I should have only been at about 150, 170 tops.

So I dialed in my 6 unit bolus and plugged it in, and when I depressed the end of the pen, it just felt... weird. I wasn't getting any resistance, the way you'd get when you're injecting, you know, fluid into fat.

Then I went to dial in the 10 units of basal for the 219 number... and that's when I took a good look at the clear tubing of the pen plunger mechanism.

There's a screw-like piece of plastic that should be flush against the plunger that depresses it evenly when you dial it in. But in this pen, the plastic plunger had somehow gotten skewed at a nearly 90 degree angle, so when I depressed the plunger, I was getting a very low pressure "squirt" response from the insulin in the pen.



Meaning I wasn't getting even close to my full dose of insulin.

Dammit, man.

I came home and threw out the old pen and started up a new one. Easy fix, you know, but... I hate, hate HATE sugar-induced depression (granted, it wouldn't have been as bad if I wasn't low already, but I can do a better job fighting it off when I can think clearly).

Spending my afternoons wanted to tear people's heads off and claw out my eyes and weeping into my cornflakes just fucking kills me. It took a lot of effort to bleed through that last night, and now I get to set my 1am sugar-testing alarm, because I have no idea how much of that dinner insulin actually got injected into my system (I just tested at 298. I should be closer to 180 2 hours after dinner. Took a four unit correction, will test again at 1am).

It's shit like this that makes diabetes annoying. I'm really fucking thankful that I have some degree of control over my moods and of how hard this thing hits me, but leveling out, staying there, living the best you can with this fucking disorder, is a lot of hard fucking work.

Too many spoons. Too much mental energy, some days. Not just to keep it in my head, but to keep my head actually processing things optimally.

Keep on truckin'.

More Reasons to Hate Math

Because when you follow the rules, it actually works.

Sat down with what I had in the bank, what I'm getting paid Friday, and wrote out the next round of bills.

I had exactly $210 leftover for groceries for the next two weeks. About $30 more than is in the budget for said groceries. Until I realized I could take the Feb. rent payment out of my Feb 1st check, I thought I had completely hosed up my budget completely, and here I was, already in the hole again! I wouldn't be able to make the $900 a month in credit card payments that I need in order to be solvent in two years!

I was already failing!

Oh, wait.

Ah, yes, math. Hrm.

Math.

Never my strong suit.

But then, I'm not good at plot either, and it doesn't mean I just gave up and went, "Well, I can't write plot!"

I started working my ass off to learn how to plot.

Money is no different.

That's the idea, anyway.

Today's Fitness Regimen

Morning: 15 min free weights and 10 pushups

Afternoon (with health & wellness group & trainer at work): 30 min cardo & upper body weights work (machines and dumbbells)

Evening: 20 minutes cardio (I was depressed when I came home - it's a good way to lift mood) and 10 pushups.

For tonight: French, copywriting work, UT2K4

Tra-la

The StumbleUpon KISS OF DEATH

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

One of Those Days...

...when you feel like you're absolutely worth nothing, and what little worth you have must be measured in the width of your ass.

You know what the tragedy is? I like the way I look. I really do. I think I'm strong and attractive and have moments of incredible sexiness. I think I'm smart and funny and fun and I love making people laugh. During the health and wellness session at work today, I thought about how bizarre it was that I can lift more weight and have better endurance than a lot of other women of any age. I like being fit and strong and powerful; I like being big and intimidating. I like being able to hit things and have them fall over. I like being tough.

And it's frustrating, you know, to realize that that freaks some people out. It's not even that it doesn't do it for them, it's just that they feel like it shouldn't, so they freak out, and I go on being tough and kicking ass and they run off looking for salvation and companionship in a more socially acceptable package. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind. It's just sort of dumb. It doesn't make sense unless you're looking to live the life you think other people think you want. And I turned off that road ten years ago. That was a miserable fucking road.

The issue now is that I've gotten used to a bed partner and an extra toothbrush, and it was a silly, silly thing for me to get used to. I need to be smarter than that. Silly pirate.

Getting my own place next year will help a little more with that. Being smart in other areas of my life will help me be smarter in my personal life.

I need to remember that the only person who decides my worth is me.

I threw out the toothbrush.

It was a sorry waste of a toothbrush.

Writing for SEO

Mmmmmm copywriting to improve SEO. Tasty tasty skills building.

Challenging and annoying all at once!

Stuff that Creeps Me Out

Does it really bug anybody else when men refer to women as "females"?

Why do guys do this? I'd like to think it's because they're including "women and girls" in their description, so "females" is supposed to mean "all female-gendered persons in particular," but I don't go around saying, "I haven't been with many males," or "Some males really like back rubs" or "Males enjoy gardening."

It makes it sound like the men - "males" - in question are just dogs.

Recommended Reading

The Copywriter's Handbook, by Robert Bly.

As noted, I write just about everything at my job, from intranet news to forum Q&A to magazine blurbs to policy documents to press releases. And this book shows you how to write, well, just about everything.

So it's a good fit.

I love the versatility of this little book. What it's helped me with a lot, in particular, is writing marketing and ad copy. I took a crash-course in script writing when I wrote up copy for some training videos (and realized there's a reason you keep your sentences so short in script writing). The marketing and ad work has been largely crash-course, too.

This book at least lets me understand what all the gauges me. And mayb softens the landing.

I'd been writing brochures and proposals at work already, but there's some great advice in here. I think a lot of my writing is intuitive - I can fake average writing because I have a decent ear for it, so you throw something at me and I produce something workable. But if I want to be any *good* at all the stuff I'm doing, that takes some more work on my part. Give me tens years of a job like this one, and I'll be able to write this stuff like breathing. As it is, I sit and think a lot about what I'm doing, what I'm trying to say, who I'm saying it to, and looking at how other people are saying it. I've done research on our competitors and watched how they sell themselves and their brand(s).

I don't know why it didn't occur to me before to do industry research (come on, Good Job 101). I think I've been so hopped up with worry about whether or not I'll have a job after season that I'm not sure how comfortable I should get. It's a lot of work to do for a job that's fly-by-night.

But then, everything is a risk. You put time into things you believe in. If they don't pan out, it's easy to say all that time was wasted. I sure as hell know it FEELS wasted when you get shitcanned... but I guess everything I learn now is stuff I can put toward the next thing and the next.

Because of the health insurance issue, it's not like I still harbor this realistic fantasy that I'll make it as a freelance writer in the future. To some extent, having a chronic illness sort of forced me to pay more attention to having an actual career instead of gambling it all on being the next JK Rowling.

Not that I wouldn't mind making some ridiculous amount of book money, mind (and not that that isn't my ultimate goal. Mmmm money!). I just realize that I'll need to be working for the vast majority of my life even if I do make vast amounts of book money.

I suppose that's good for me.

Builds character.

Makes me a more well-rounded individual.

Um.

Ah well.

Some Thoughts on Internet Dating

Really, if I want to meet anybody worth my while, I need to get a car. The great thing about being smack right between Cincinnati and Columbus is that civilization is, indeed, just there over the horizon. The drawback is, you don't live there.

All the good ones are an hour away, dammit.

Well, there's a spring project for me.

Until then: way behind on Black Desert.

I do need to keep my priorities straight.

More Sugar-Busting Tips

20 minutes on the elliptical on weekend mornings, after pancakes. Pancakes have been killing my sugar more than usual lately, but 20 easy-going minutes while channel surfing on Sat and Sunday was enough to keep me nice and stable (70-80) from noon to seven.

Yum.

In the Name of the King

OMG THAT WAS THE WORST MOVIE EVER IT WAS EVEN WORSE THAN THE SCORPION KING AND HALF THE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE HAD NO IDEA WHY ME AND STEPH AND THE OLD MAN WERE LAUGHING AND LAUGHING AND LAUGHING OMG THAT WAS FUCKING HORRIBLE FULL STOP OMG HAHA HAAHHA A AHAHAHA IM SO GLAD WE DIDNT PAY ACTUAL MONEY TO GET IN OMG THAT WAS SO BAD.

The writer seemed to be confused about whether the folks in his world worshipped a "God" or "gods." He was confused about when it was day and when it was night. Also, those were some of the most botoxed, siliconed peasant women I've ever seen. And really, could these actors phone in their dialogue any more unconvincingly?

Come on, people, this isn't BloodRayne. YOU CAN DO IT.

Steph, the Old Man, and I giggled through the entire thing. When that Sorbinski chick suited up in plate armor for no particular plot-specific reason, Steph and I both lost it, and the guy two seats away was like, "WHY ARE THEY LAUGHING????"

OMG

Other folks laughed, sure, like when a botoxed, plasticy-faced Burt Reynolds shows up at King, but nobody appreciated the pure, shitty grotesquerie that was bad dialogue, bad costuming, bad actors, bad direction, bad cinematography, and just plain badness that was this movie.

IT WAS WORSE THAN THE SCORPION KING.

I never thought I'd say that.

I worked very hard not to invite the not-Boyfriend out with us tonight - he dropped me at Red Robin's after we were done shooting - and I suppose it was just as well, cause I bumped into some folks from work. It's my fault. I talk too loud. C and M, the IT "team lead" and our Spanish translator, respectively, were walking out of the same movie, which was ironic, because I was thinking there at the end that I would have to tell C on Monday not to see this show.

"I KNEW I heard your voice," he said, as we approached.

Yes. Yes, that was me.

Loud and laughing. And quite proud of it.

Dinner, however, was fantastic. I decided I would spend insulin points tonight, and ate hamburger con queso and GARLIC PARMESAN FRIES and yes, I took 11 units of insulin at dinner, came home, tested at 244 four hours later, and just took another 6 units and set my alarm for 1am so I can correct again then in case it wasn't enough.

See, this is why I don't eat high-carb food often. It requires me to spend the next ten hours fixing it, and the next two or three days leveling off again as a result of the spike.

But, you know: it's my birthday.

AND THOSE GARLIC FRIES OH THEY WERE GOOD.

Sucked not bringing along the not-Boyfriend. Sucked. Took every ounce of willpower I had not to invite him along, and Steph and the Old Man were shocked I didn't break down and bring him. But if he wants it to be "just friends" then we need to hang out like "just friends." No matter how much it hurts right now.

I need to keep that place in my heart for a real boyfriend, not a "not-Boyfriend."

But it sucks, yo. Really, really sucks. Because I've got that hole in my heart again. It was like I said to him when we started dating, this stupidly cheesy thing, "There was this hole in my heart I didn't realize was there until I met you, because now my heart is full." Isn't that total cheese? But man, so stupidly true.

Blah. The good news is that as time goes on, I'll go back to not noticing that anything's missing again. You get up. You go on. The alternative is to cry all over your shoes and give up, and what's the fun in that?

We all need time. I'm a better person now than I was a year ago.

Still, you know: it's no use loving someone who doesn't love you.

So, yeah: chin up, young person.

Life goes on.

And tonight, there's UT2K4.

Diabetes & Inflammation

I remember being stunned and frustrated when I was diagnosed that not even the medical establishment knew what it was that really caused or triggered type 1 diabetes. I was irritated that nobody could tell me why I'd been sick for nearly a year before finally going under, and why I couldn't get an explanation that made any sense.

Well, you can't get a good explanation - or a good cure - until people figure out what the hell's going on. Which they're still doing.

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.....

Dr. Dosch had concluded in a 1999 paper that there were surprising similarities between diabetes and multiple sclerosis, a central nervous system disease. His interest was also piqued by the presence around the insulin-producing islets of an "enormous" number of nerves, pain neurons primarily used to signal the brain that tissue has been damaged.

Suspecting a link between the nerves and diabetes, he and Dr. Salter used an old experimental trick -- injecting capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot chili peppers, to kill the pancreatic sensory nerves in mice that had an equivalent of Type 1 diabetes.

Ways to Spend a Birthday

Woke up this morning and went into the kitchen to kick off the Saturday morning pancakes. To my surprise, I found my birthday present from the roomies on the kitchen table:

$30 Chipotle gift certificate!!!!!

OH MY CHIPOTLE MONEY!!!!

OH YES.

Now I'm heading out to the wilds of Middletown to go shooting with the not-Boyfriend, as his request (happy birthday to me - he also paid for the ammo). I printed off some paper targets last night, so I'll post my best one later.

If we get back at a reasonable hour, the roomies and I will then head off to go to dinner and a show.

Not a bad way to spend an age-related holiday.

Reasons to Get Up in the Morning

Had a dream last night that I got a check in the mail for $32,000.

Made me want to stay in bed a little longer so I could soak up the good from that alternate world.

Until then, I'm out of fun money for the month. Dinner last night was sausages and cabbage. It's a good thing I like sausages and cabbage.

Seriously, though, when I pay off these credit cards - even if I don't get a raise in the next two years - I'll have a thousand dollars a month in "extra" money.

Hello mortgage payment.

This is what I keep reminding myself.

Cheese and junk or mortgage payment?

Must. Be. Strong.

Flawless Victory!

Some nights you need to be useful and read and write and be all self-empowering and stuff.

And some nights you just need to spend a couple hours plyaingUT2K4 blowing the shit out of stuff.

That was deeply satisfying.

Hot Damn

Sometimes I write so well, I impress myself. heh heh

Seriously, I never thought I'd be write advertising and marketing copy to save my life. And now that I'm doing it... well, my learning curve sometimes impresses even me.

Just thought I'd share that.

Results of My Fitness Test

The results of my health & wellness fitness test came in today at work. The numbers each had little "Average, Normal, Excellent" comments next to them. Here are the comments:

Blood Pressure: Normal

Cardiovascular Fitness: Excellent

Muscular Strength & Endurance: Excellent

Abdominal curl-up: Above Average

Push-Ups: Well-Above Average/Excellent

Flexibility: Excellent

Body Composition (weight & body fat percentage): Well Below Average

hahah ahah aa hahh hahahhahhahaha ah ahahhaha ahhaahhaaa

I know how to get fit. I feel better when I'm fit. Getting thin, though... I'm miserable when I'm thin. Or just dying.

I don't eat bread, donuts, pasta, sweets, potato chips, potatoes, pizza, or fries. I've recently given up snacking on my expensive cheeses and pecans. This leaves me frozen raspberries, Greek yogurt, peanuts, and the occasional dark chocolate bar. I already work out an hour a day, five days a week. Pushing it more than that is going to get ridiculous.

I can tell you exactly what I'd need to excise from my diet in order to improve my "body composition."

Avocados, the walnuts on my salad, the crumbled blue cheese on my salad, switch out my 70 calorie salad dressing to 30 calorie dressing, and take the sour cream off everything.

You know what?

Not worth it.

We'll see what happens now that I'm not allowed to eat out and snack anymore because of my budget restrictions. I'm not going to ditch anymore foods from my diet, or I'll just end up undernourished, bitchy, and anemic.

And next time, I'll do 50 push-ups instead of 40. Just for shits and giggles.

I can be 180 lbs. I'm just not sure what it's worth to me, if I can already do 40 push-ups in a minute.

Cheese and avocados make me happy.

It's not like I have a lot left.

Quote of the Evening

Me: Am I really that scary?

Not-Boyfriend: Have you ever seen yourself shoot a gun?

Quote of the Day

"If you’ve made the wrong decision, accept it and change it. Don’t let ego stand in the way of good sense."
- Mridu Khullar

My Life as Tina the Tech Writer

Bacon Love

Wrap yourself in bacon!

Because you can.

"You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills... Girls only want boyfriends who have great SKILLS."

The not-Boyfriend hacked my computer some months ago so that the "Start" menu read differently. He sent me an un-hack last week that would revert it back to saying "Start," but I thought that was pretty lame (also, I liked what it read, but after this week, I figured it might be easier on my heart if I changed it).

I mean, I *liked* having a customizable "Start" screen. So instead of running the unhack, I did a little poking around and found out how to hack my own Start menu.

Which I then did.

Cause I'm cool like that.



Now that I know it works, I'll probably switch it around to something else, but that's a good test run. I think I'll change the one on my home computer to "Nyx."

I mean, that's the computer's name, after all.

I'm such a dork.

Man, I Feel Buff This Morning

I guess those 40 pushups will do that...

Getting regular workouts - 30-60 min a day - is really kicking my ass, too. My sugar's way better (waking up at 72 or 69 [which is a little lower than I'd like, actually, but after being awake a half hour, it's back to 90] instead of 145).

And, of course, I physically feel better.

I hate forcing the workouts for such a long time, every day, but after a while it does get easier. Not more fun, maybe, but easier. Routine.

Routine is the only way I get anything done.

Health & Wellness: Surprise!

Our health & wellness program at work officially starts next week, so to prep for that, we did optional fitness assessments with our health & wellness folks today.

As expected, I have a high BMI and I'm still comfortably over 200 lbs. My body fat percentage is also average-to-high at 26-31% (the readout I thought I saw was 31%, but the calculator I just used calculates me at 26%).

Despite or because of these numbers, our two fitness trainers were a little stunned at how well I did on my one-minute timed tests. 40 pushups (yes, real ones. She counted 40, but I only count 38 cause the last two were lame) and 50 situps. My flexibility was apparently the best of the whole lot of folks who came before me (they only have two more assessments to go). My blood pressure came out higher than it does at the doctor's, but it's still well within the healthy range (138/72. My last one at the doc was 110/64 or something ridiculous like that). My resting heartrate also came out at 88, but I think he did it wrong because when we did the post step-test heartrate, it came up at 76, lower than my resting heartrate. Must have just been nerves.

When I finished the last part of it, the flexibility bit, R., our male trainer, watched me blow past his flexibility record and said, "What's your regular workout routine again? Wow."

On the one hand, I think some of the shock had to do with the assumption that plump people (particularly when you say "diabetes") aren't fit, on the other hand, from the sound of things, I just did pretty well straight up in general compared to other folks in the office, which is always surprising, even if I do workout a lot.

Wednesday we get our gym tour of the YMCA across the street, and our workouts start Monday. Mine's 1-2:30pm. The nice thing about a midday workout Monday and Weds is that it means I don't have to stay late at the gym those nights. I can get straight home, so my only late days will be Tues, Thurs and the Fridays I feel like going.

Frees up some time.

Which means... more time for writing!

Get Your Shit Together

So I was on the phone with my not-Boyfriend last night, and, to put it bluntly, I kicked his ass. You can only put up with so much emo whining before you just crack.

You know what, everybody?

Life is hard.

Really fucking hard.

Getting what you want out of life?

Even fucking harder.

I have had a shitty couple of years. Let's be honest. I got a chronic illness that cost me 30K and 4 days in the hospital and takes up a staggering amount of time, money and energy to manage on a daily basis (not to mention self-control, discipline, and plain fucking hard work). I've been in four relationships, two of which ended in smoking ruin, been dumped twice (three times, actually, two people). I was laid off from my cushy but (let's face it) dull Chicago job, blew through my 401(K), fucked up my friendship with my best friend, rang up 17K in credit card debt (16, 17, 18? Really, who can keep track?), and had books rejected by agents and publishers across the board.

And you know what? I could have chosen to deal with any and all of these things: chronic illness, job loss, fucked relationship(s), the usual rejection, with giving up. With hiding under my bed and feeling sorry for myself. I could have denied the whole chronic illness thing and continued to subsist primarily on carbs and sob into my brown sugar oatmeal in the morning and run around wacked-shit crazy because my sugar levels were all over the fucking board, running around with crazy depression and weepiness and tell everybody "poor me! Poor me!"

Fuck that shit.

Why the hell would I choose to hide under my bed and cry all the time? What's the point in that? What does it accomplish? Lying around feeling sorry for myself doesn't change the situation.

I hate that I have to work my ass off just to feel "normal" now. I need an hour of exercise a day and a low-carb lifestyle to feel my best. And just to keep that up takes not just willpower, but fucking work. I have to adjust all my insulin levels and correct for lows and test all the time, because sugar's easier to manage if you have a set routine - sugar's always easier to manage when I'm sedentary, cause then I'm not having lows all the time and feeling like I want to rip people's heads off and unable to concentrate at work for 20 minutes while I even out again.

Ridiculous.

Instead, to be at my best, I have to go through a calibration phase every time I mix up my routine. So for the first week of a new workout routine I'm adjusting my sugar. Oh, sure, it gets easier once you have the new formula down, but the reason I like routine - eating and exercise - is because it's just so much fucking work to change it up. And I still have to change it up sometimes. And it sucks.

Also, having a fucking budget sucks. It really sucks. It sucks that I have to cut out all the fucking cheap-ass food (because it is, of course, full of carbs) but can't splurge on expensive cheese - the only stuff I can eat totally guilt free that I adore! - because, again, it's fucking expensive. it really sucks. It sucks to live on fajitas and spinach salad. It sucks not going out to eat all the time and buying diet cherry coke. I hate it.

But what I hate more than ANYTHING, more than any of this fucking WORK, is being a fucking loser. Is falling down and not getting the fuck up again. Everybody gets to whine and bitch and moan sometimes, you know? But when you're done bitching, you get the fuck up. You take it a step at a time. You figure out what you want and you start to build it, one block at a time.

You get your health together first, because if you're mentally wacky, you can't do shit. And that's pretty fucking hard, too. Not everybody has health insurance or people in their lives to love and support them through the hard shit. It's called fucking privilege, to have health insurance and a support network. So if you've got it, shut the fuck up and stop bitching and get your fucking shit together.

Get your shit together, not-Boyfriend.

24 Hours of Daylight

People would often ask me what 20 hours of daylight looked like in Fairbanks, or 20 hours of darkness.

Well, it's a lot like this 24-hours of daylight, only the sun does actually dip beneath the horizon for those four or five hours during the Fairbanksan summer.

One For the Road

Save Yourself

Artist here.

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy in Botswana is 33.

Damn.

Budgets

Wow, I hate budgets. I hate not getting what I want. I hate living like a lower middle class person instead of an upper middle class person. I hate having to think about money.

Grocery shopping is like fucking pulling teeth. I have to say no all the time, me, who's been getting by in life by saying "yes" to all the adventures and the risk taking and the traveling and the wacky relationships.

"No," now to what I want and desire but do not need is a fucking kick in the ass.

I hate growing up.

Steph and I were at the grocery store talking to the checkout clerk who said, "Oh, you're roommates? We've been having a lot of girls coming in today who are roommates! Oh, well, I guess you're not girls. You're ladies!"

Sweet gawd.

Ladies.

And I used to wish somebody would start calling me "ma'am" and showing me some respect when I was 15.

Thing is, I wouldn't go back to being 15 for just about anything, unless I knew everything then that I know now. I've worked really fucking hard to get where I am. Growing into it, now, making everything else work... well, that does imply that I'm more lady than girl, for fucking sure.

Being a girl was fun. Being a girl got me here.

But letting go of that break-neck freedom, that not-knowing, that not-caring, yeah, that's the part that sucks.

Being a tech writer, paying my own way, owning my own place? Well, you don't get something for nothing. You have to make a trade. I'm trading credit-card poverty and junk accumulation for an IRA and a yard of my own.

Looking at it that way, it's not a bad trade.

But fucking hard to get there.