Elevator Etiquette

Things I Would Like to Do Today

Take a spoon, cut out the part of my heart that hurts, and throw it away in the trash.

This is the first relationship that ever ended where I feel that ending it is a really, really bad idea. But it takes two people to manage a relationship. Both people have to be willing to fight for it, and grow up together. I can't do it by myself. He's got to meet me halfway, but he's afraid; afraid of me, of himself, of failure, of what it means if we're together. And when you're really terrified, there's a lot you'll sacrifice to fear, and all sorts of ways you'll justify it.

There are a lot of people whose lives are ruled by fear. I know how hard it is to overcome that fear, that lack of faith in one's self, in other people; fear of failure, fear of life, fear of self and self-doubt, fear of change, fear of what other people think of you and your choices, fear of making big decisions, fear of making mistakes. I used to be that person. I fought a long, hard road to be somebody different. I didn't like who I was. I didn't like having a life controlled by my fears.

I'm going to take some time off again from dating, I think. I have a lot of grown-up things I need to accomplish (career(s), house savings, fitness). It's the cutting away that's the hardest. I made the Boyfriend a big part of my life. Now I have to take him out of it again and rebuild it.

Spoon to the heart.

Fall down seven times. Get up eight.

Quote of the Day

As ever:

"Fall down seven times.
Get up eight."

It's how you get through the rough stuff.

Damsels, Reimagined

(click to enlarge)

Holidays With the Hurleys

Our annual Chistmas beachtrip commenced once again this year....



Dad, Mom, and my nephew the Cheetoh-head at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Mmmm cheese.



My sister Jackie-o and the Cheetoh-head.



Great view of Haystack rock from our hotel in Cannon Beach, OR.



My mom, my brother and I pose with our coffees at the Funland gameroom in Seaside.



Don't feed the birds! View from our hotel balcony. I love this hotel.



Cheetoh-head loves this hotel, too. Even when he's not feeding the birds...



My sister, nephew, and brother all pretend they like each other. No small feat!



Cheetoh-head cozies up to the scenery at Camp 18, where we stopped for a great Christmas-eve breakfast. Mmmmmm omelettes.



Christmas morning!



You, too, could get your *second* Nintendo DS at four years old (he broke the one he got last year. Yeah. Spoiled Cheetoh-head).



Snow! We got a rare Chistmas-day snow dusting this year. Cheetoh-head loved it! And I thought it was pretty neat too.



Jackie-o and Cheetoh-head enjoy the snow.



The Hurley kids: youngest, oldest, middle.



The Hurley kids and the Cheetoh-head, kickin' back with the holiday cheer.



Happy holidays to all... and to all a great night.

On a jet plane... With a hipster toy

I'm writing this post from the Dayton airport on my new iPod touch. Hell no - I didn't buy it myself.. I can't even afford to buy beer. Our exec team handed one of these out to all of us at our holiday lunch yesterday. I've never gotten a holiday bomis or gift before. It was incredibly generous and surreal. Sure, I could have used $300 more, but I know my company doesn't have any cash this time of year, either. Let's be thankful for small miracles, yo.

Also, this screen does get annoying to type on, but yo, I can watch youtube videos,check my email, and blog all directly from the airport wifi without pulling pit my bulky laptop. It's pretty slick. Anyway, I'm already delayed into Houston, so it's fixing to be a long night. Nice to have so many different toys available to pass the time.

Wow, I'm really glad this keyboard screen has an automatic spelling correction feature. Oh wow! It moves the cursor wherever I tap my finger in the post - it moved the cursor there! Mmmmm gadgetry.

Ok, I need a drink. Later, peeps.

One For the Road

Quote of the Day

Someone once asked Jean Cocteau, "Suppose your house were on fire and you could remove only one thing. What would you take?"

Cocteau considered, then said, "I would take the fire."

Cutting Out Love

A lot of my fiction deals with characters who try to stifle or completely eliminate strong emotion. This is a theme I come back to quite a lot, as I tend to hate feeling - and especially exhibiting - strong emotion. Especially strong emotional attachment, like love.

As you grow up, you realize that strong emotion - if you're somebody who feels it - is just something you have to come to grips with and learn how to live with. But there are some folks out there doing research that would, in effect, allow us to turn it off.

I find the idea terrifying and fascinating. It's stuff like this that keeps me writing fiction.

That raises the question of whether it is possible to “treat” this romantic state clinically, as can be done with OCD. The parents of any love-besotted teenager might want to know the answer to that. Dr Fisher suggests it might, indeed, be possible to inhibit feelings of romantic love, but only at its early stages. OCD is characterised by low levels of a chemical called serotonin. Drugs such as Prozac work by keeping serotonin hanging around in the brain for longer than normal, so they might stave off romantic feelings. (This also means that people taking anti-depressants may be jeopardising their ability to fall in love.) But once romantic love begins in earnest, it is one of the strongest drives on Earth. Dr Fisher says it seems to be more powerful than hunger. A little serotonin would be unlikely to stifle it.

(warning: there are some very non-chemical "women are this way and men this way" assumptions stated as fact right after this paragraph that are incredibly, incredibly annoying. I love that the chemical stuff is backed up with studies, but "women prefer rich men, naturally" and "men prefer youth over money" is just stated fact. Excuse me while I laugh. Let me tell you how that works in other societies)

As far as innate vs. learned behavior goes, I found this interesting, too: "Rats can be conditioned to prefer particular types of partner—for example by pairing sexual reward with some kind of cue, such as lemon-scented members of the opposite sex."

Or preferring a tall, rich, old man to a skinny young skater boy. Or preferring a big-boobed blond to a geeky lab tech.

We get far more social points, as women, for marrying rich, and far more social points, as men, for marrying Barbie dolls.

Mmmmm lemony.

Just In Case I'm Tempted to Mope Around This Holiday, Some Perspective

Number of queries my agent received this year: Approximately 8,000

Partial manuscripts she requested for review: 49

Full manuscripts requested: 18

Number of new clients signed: 5

One of those five was me.

I think I'm going to take myself out to dinner tonight and just take some time to appreciate that.

My Kind of Valentine's Day Card

One For the Road

Um. Tax Season. Yeah

This morning, I was pushed into our mock store and given the task of assisting in the direction of the training scripts I wrote a couple weeks ago. I got to feed lines, read off-screen dialogue to get scenes moving, check off scenes and setup folks for the next shot, and track what we were filming and what still needed to be done.

It was a humbling and educational experience. The best part was watching people change and morph the scripts as we went in response to the constraints of the shots/resources and based on their actual experience ("She's not going to say return. She's going to say "check."").

It was really clear just then why the dialogue in film scripts is kept so minimal, too. They start waxing on for long paragraphs - particularly when you're not working with pro actors - and people get lost, out of breath, start to sound like Babylon 5 monologuers. I think it really is true: you can have great dialogue and crap actors or bad dialogue and great actors, but not both at once.

The stuff that was short and choppy, that was written with just the right store-appropriate lingo and that the support folks got to have fun with? Yeah, that came out the best.

I learned a lot.

I love my job.

If They Can Only Make the Real Thing Look Even Half This Cool

Then... squeeeeeeeeeee!

This is why I love fans. And mashups. And fanfic.

HBO had better fucking make the series look even half this cool.

For serious.

Merry Christmas

Insurance won't cover my pump.

$2,180 up front, and $281 per month after that.

Oh well, it was a nice idea.

I can't even afford a new mattress for Christmas.

Tra-la

Things I Wonder About

1) It's not the cold I mind so much, it's the dark. I always hit my lowest point during this time of year, and it has a lot to do with all that dark, overcompensating with too much eating (used to be pizza and nachos, now it's cheese-covered broccoli and sausage), too much brooding, and lots of meaningless arty projects and reading. When I get back from the holiday break, it will be getting light again! I always feel better when I get back from holidays with the family, because I know we're coming out of the Long Dark.

2) Is it really worth continuing to write books that nobody reads? How many years should you be writing books nobody reads? I mean, really. And even then, it's not like you're in it for the money. I'm starting to think I might feel *worse* having sold a book for 2K than not selling it at all.

3) Is is possible to have a boyfriend that you never see? I suppose that's a rather redundant questions, since I was in a year-long relationship with somebody I only saw, like, 5 times, and a year-long relationship with someone I only saw, maybe, a grand total of 14 or 15 weekends. It occurs to me that I've spent more time with my current boyfriend - real time - than I did with either of those folks. Sad.

Have I mentioned I'm bad at relationships?

I guess it's possible to be dating, but hard to have a relationship. Though I'm not exactly sure what a relationship would look like anyway. So it's best to just stop thinking about it?

And yet, here I am, stuck without seeing The Boyfriend, properly, all week, and faced with another week seeing him briefly (once), and then another week with the folks where, of course, I won't see him, and here I am, missing him stupidly and hating myself for it. I hate feeling like some kind of weakling woman. Truth is, no matter who it was, no matter the gender, I'd feel stupid and weak for missing them. I hate wanting people around, especially when it's one person in particular. I always feel about eight kinds of stupid, and it feels, always, always - like such an incredible weakness. I want to cut it out of me like a cancer.

I miss him. I miss hanging out with my friend.

And I hate myself for that.

4) The problem with eating so much cheese with my broccoli is that I'm about three more cheese-broccoli encounters away from having to buy new pants. Have I mentioned I can't wait until the Long Dark is lessening? Summer is going to be so lovely. Oh, the bikerides! The jogging! The trips to the park! Oh, the freedom!

5) Can kick-ass heroines really be physically kick ass if they suffer from a physical disability? How do you make a really physically strong, compelling, kick-ass heroine who has, say, no legs, a gimp leg, or, for the sake of argument, something like diabetes? So she can't really get very far without a handful of lifesavers. And why don't we write about more heroines like this? Is it really because it's so hard to imagine (it's not - the idea of a heroine crawling out of her wheelchair scrambling for a gun and popping sombody off comes to mind) or is it because, as SF/F writers, we're much more likely to write stories about people who are physically free? Because so many of us suffer from allergies, disability, poor health, etc? We read to escape our bodies; we game to escape our bodies. Why would we write about broken bodies? Don't most of us write to escape those?

6) Why isn't there a deragatory term for a man who has sex with prostitutes/only has sex he has to pay for? Really, that's pretty much something you'd assume would get the lowliest of losers tag. But then, is it just that a woman's worth is measured in how hot men find her and a man's worth is measured in how many women he can force (or convince - through money, looks, whatever) to fuck him?

And how do we change this perception? What would a society that had as many deragatory terms for johns as we do for prostitutes look like?

7) I didn't end up doing any of the work-writing I figured I'd do this weekend. I didn't have to do it, but I figured I *should* do it. I'll have time to do it in the morning, but for some reason, I feel guilt.

8) I want to buy my own house. I'll be taking steps to finally do this after the holiday. Paying off credit cards is all well and good, but I need savings in case I get laid off in April. And if I don't get laid off - well, it's time to start planning for the future. No one's going to do it for me, and I have to stop hoping that something great is going to happen that will solve all my problems. I would like my writing to start paying off, yes, but I'm starting to push 30 here, and it's time to put some security measures in place in case it's another 10 or 20 years before that actually happens.

9) I miss being around other writers. I miss talking to people about books and writing - not just online, but in person. I miss my friend Jenn. I miss us dissecting books and movies. I miss talking to David about SFWA hijinks and the latest jaunt to some foreign locale. I miss intelligent academic discourse. I miss having people around who I had so much in common with. Sure, I love learning all the new stuff, but most of the time, I feel like I'm trying so hard to learn about all this other stuff, but I've got nobody else around who's interested in what I find most interesting. It's time to hit up the SF book club at The Greene and the writer's group, even if it sucks. There are important parts of me that need some exercising, cause there's a big hole in me without them. It feels so lonely.

10) For serious, that was too much broccoli and cheese.

Headache

I think I'm ready for the holidays to be over.

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.