Reasons to Make Supplemental Income

What you can get for 135K in Portland, OR (price reduced!).

What you can get for 135K in Dayton, OH. Or, if you want something more contemporary. Or something with a bit of land.

Must... write... more... books. And etc.

Fan Art (No, this is not my work!)

Someone has apparently created a pony mod based on Jay Lake's novel, Mainspring.



I've seen a lot of mods inspired by movies and television characters, but I think this is the first I've seen inspired by a book.

Death to Personal Trainers

This was the last day of this quarter's brutal upper body routine with the personal trainers at work. I received relief a couple of weeks ago on the lower body workout (which was primarily walking lunges, squats, and one-legged lunges, all weighted), which made going to the gym bearable (we're now doing drop sets).

Today was my last day of this routine (they change them every 4-6 weeks, depending on how we're performing). I admit that I nearly cried there a couple of times at the beginning, because I fucking hate, fucking hate, fucking hate pushup rows, and knowing this was my last day of them made me hate them even more. And then I hated myself for hating them.

No pain, no gain?

The routine:

Pushup rows: set of 12 with 15 lb weights
Squat thrust jumps: set of 10

Repeat X3

Assisted pullup: set of 12
High knee jumps: set of 15

Repeat X3

Lateral raises with band: set of 15
Jumping jacks: set of 12

Repeat X3

And then:

Tricep extensions with 30lb weight: 12 reps
X3

Bicep curls with 20 lb weight: 12 reps
X3

And finally:

Medicine ball situps: 45 sec
Knee tucks: 45 sec
Plank: 45 sec
Oblique crunches left: 45 sec
Obligue crunches right: 45 sec
X2

It was the first time I wanted to kill my personal trainer.

I'll find out next week what new torturous routine he's cooked up for us for the next 6-week cycle.

2081

Or, Harrison reimagined.

This is one of my favorites. Can't wait to see what they do with it.

Find of the Day

Reel Music, a streaming radio broadcast of movie soundtracks.

I do about 95% of my writing while listening to movie soundtracks. This radio station is full of awesome.

Training

Try half an hour of jogging followed by ten minutes of swimming.

You wouldn't think this would be that bad - I mean, there's a 5 min warmup and cooldown attached to that half hour, so it's really only twenty minutes of jogging, and the swimming is only ten minutes - but, but... I only managed four laps before I started seriously worrying about my sugar. It's been so long since I swam laps that I forgot what an incredibly intense exercise this is. I figured, hey, if I can jog, I can do anything!

Oh no it ain't so.

Turned out my sugar was fine at a respectable 148 after exercise. I had plenty of wiggle room to finish out my set.

This week is mainly a fitness test week for me. How much can I do, how hard can I work, etc. I think I'll be able to knock out the swimming part much more easily next time, knowing that my sugar is on track.

Next week, the miles start counting toward Lothlorien.

Where I Was At Tonight

Toby and Scalzi were reading at the Books & co. at The Greene! (don't worry, somebody else got much better pictures). So it was straight from work to the gym to the reading (these guys make a great couple).

Man, I miss the SF/F crowd.

When's Wiscon, again?

Sometimes Synopses are Awesome

I'd been knocking my head against a plot point here at the end of the book the last couple of days.

Today, in preparation for my big weekend push, I printed out and re-read the synopsis I had to write for Black Desert in order to sell the series.

"Ohhhh," I said aloud, "so *that's* how they do that."

Sometimes you get so tangled up with plot threads at the end of a book that you forget that you did, in fact, figure out a way to write yourself out of them.

Putting it in Simple Terms

Hollywood is not creating female heroes.

"Kameron, why do you write what you write?"

Because I want to live in a world that actually tells the stories of female heroes.

Doc Says...

Man, I'm an overanxious freak every time I'm due for a doctor's appointment.

Turns out I have not, in fact, gained any weight since starting the pump. In fact, I've lost two pounds. And my a1c is 6.1, which she says is a pretty incredible a1c for somebody who just started on a pump (for those keeping track: the target a1c for a diabetic is less than 7.0. A non-diabetic a1c is 6.0 or less). My blood pressure, as usual, is great, reflexes all great, etc. etc. And my doc didn't yell at me for anything (I think my first experience with a diabetes doctor in Chicago has just scarred me for life. Why do I always expect to be yelled at and told I'm doing things wrong when I'm, like, a model t1 diabetic?)

Why do I freak out right before every appointment?

You know one of the big reasons I'm not good at math or budgeting? Because I don't believe in it. I don't believe that's it's an unshakable, inevitable truth, like gravity. I keep waiting for some magic.

After the last two years, dramatic weight loss/weight gain is something I've been overanxious and freaked out about, understandably. I keep waiting for some bizarre, nonesense thing.

But here's the deal, yo: I'm using less insulin on the pump. I'm working out three days a week. In a normal world, that would equal a steady to lowering weight and a very nice a1c.

But, you know, I've never lived in rational land. I'm always preparing and expecting the out of the ordinary.

This is probably why I'm a fantasy writer.

But it makes for a pretty overanxious life.

Quote of the Day

“Community approval isn’t the motive for a hero anyway. It’s the motive for a politician. A hero does the right thing because it’s the right thing.”
- Frank Miller

Science

Are you doing it right?

Every year, I go to Wiscon. If I were to go to one other SF/F convention a year....

... which con should it be?

Line edits, how I loathe theeeeee....

Typo of the day

vile - for - phial

I seemed to be absolutely convinced of this spelling. I wrote it as "vile" four times.

Lazy phrase of the day (used at least four times in forty pages)

"His eyes looked too big."

Seriously?

What I Hate About the End of First Drafts....

... is that during the last 1/4 to 1/5 of the book, I'm focusing mainly on tying up plot threads and loose ends. This takes all the fun out of writing, for me, which is why squeezing out the last 10K of this book holds about as much "fun" for me as the idea of running a marathon.

In the next draft, I'll be adding in all the cool scenery and worldbuilding stuff and cleaning up all the dialogue, but for now it's thread, thread, plotpoint, thread, and hunkering down and getting everything to make sense is just no fun at all!

I'm sure David Lynch feels the same way.

I should just throw in some red curtains, backward talking dream sequences, and have my heroine turn into a blue box at the end.

That'll keep `em guessing.

Wishlist

Somebody needs to make a caffeine-free version of Coke Zero.

Then my life would be complete.

Pump Weight

I go in to see my endo on Tuesday.

It also so happens that the last couple of days, I've noticed that the dreaded pump weight seems to have caught up with me. I'd actually thought I'd avoided this, as it appears to me that I'm using *less* insulin than I did before I switched to the pump. Maybe I really am eating more than I was, pre-pump?

I don't think so, tho.

I do honestly think a matter of better control - and eating too many of the work lunches instead of the lunches I bring from home. I haven't had my latest A1c yet, but my last one was 6.5. Not too shabby. A 6.5 a1c corresponds to an average blood sugar reading of 138. My current average is 122, which would be an a1c of 6.0. Still not as good as my 5.9 (which I got while being, what 5-10 lbs lighter?).

As usual, my concern with the weight gain has more to do with the fact that I can't afford new clothes than it does with the "OMG I'm Fat!" rant.

I've also finally gotten comfortable enough adjusting basal rates that workouts more than twice a week are starting to look less annoying. I'm hoping it's just a matter of getting back into my regular eating and workout schedule.

For the record, though, I did finally stop buying peanut butter. Those flourless peanut butter cookies, paired with all that WoW playing, is when I first started noticing that my jeans weren't fitting as well. I needed to ditch those bad habits and pick up some better ones.

Eternal vigilance sure does get annoying, but when I stop paying attention, I go to seed really quickly.

It's a bitch.

Blue Velvet

The robin in the opening credits of Twin Peaks? It's apparently supposed to symbolize love.

Also, watching Blue Velvet will help you win a lot more rounds of the Kevin Bacon game.

Blue Velvet is a David Lynch murder mystery that came out in 1986. It's set in a small 50s town, where Agent Cooper and Laura Dern get mixed up with a weird drug dealer/kidnapper/psycho (a la Bob of Twin Peaks).

This wasn't a great movie. In fact, it was kind of boring, mainly because I could never figure the main character's motivation out. Agent Cooper is looking slightly younger and just as pretty, but he's not Agent Cooper, just a small town boy whose motivations, again, are just... impossible to figure out. He comes home from college after his father suffers from some weird heart attack/bug bite/neck injury and proceeds to sort of woo Laura Dern (who I just can't stand in any movie. She's incredibly annoying, and she doesn't work this role at all either, even with the little she's given).

Now, truth be told, I ended up with a terrible crush on Agent Cooper while watching Twin Peaks, but in Blue Velvet, he lost a lot of his niceness and intelligence, leaving not much for wanting but a couple of great ass shots and pleasant but brief full frontal. Neither of which were all that exciting, as, again, I couldn't connect with his character in any way (if there was ever a doubt that it's largely a guy's inherent "niceness" that's one of the big factors in my attraction, this was a good example of that. I was terribly keen on Cooper, but when the actor switches roles, I had trouble sustaining interest. This is my big problem with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I was first introduced to him in Bend it Like Beckham, in which he plays the good guy girls' soccer coach. I literally could not sit still in my seat I was so hot over him. In every other thing I've seem him in, he's played a totally creepy, whiny, asshole, and I've just never been able to get all that excited about him again).

In any case, my interest in the hero aside, the dialogue is pretty poor, there's that stunning lack of character motivation, the ending is syrupy sweet in a totally inexplicable way, and most of the movie's weirdness consists of a single bizarre sex scene.

I'd recommend the movie mainly to Twin Peaks fans interested in some of David Lynch's themes and imagery. You can see his interest in small towns, diners, logging towns, red curtains, and that incredible fake looking robin that, in this movie, symbolizes love (which did make that robin in the Twin Peaks credits far more interesting in its fakeness). You see the beginnings of the Agent Cooper character, Bob, and there's even a cameo by another Twin Peaks actor.

Annoyingly, there's also that damsel-in-distress thing going on in this movie, much as it was in Twin Peaks. And there's the black-haired temptress/crazy woman vs. the good/blond woman (and Cooper goes around sleeping with the temptress and the then the blond totally forgives him because really, why not, we couldn't have a happy ending otherwise! And hey, she was technically still dating that Mike guy while romancing Cooper, so all's well that ends well. Hey, it's like that foursome in Twin Peaks - Nadine, Ed, Norma, and Hank!). I'm not sure what the whole madonna/whore thing is about, except maybe it's the only way he can think to give women the same monster/hero battle that he plays up between men. It's annoying and lazy.

It's an interesting artifact movie, but if you're looking for neat, brain-twisting David Lynch weirdness like Mulholland Drive, well, skip this and just go watch Mulholland Drive again.

Have I mentioned that I find Laura Dern totally annoying (maybe it's just that she ruined Inland Empire for me? She comes across as so completely flat and fake and devoid of... anything)?

Ok, I'll stop now.

Quote of the Day

"Stay away from people who belittle you ambitions. Small people always do that. It is the great that know that you too, can become great."
- Mark Twain

Twin Peaks: Final

Dude, that was a silly ending. In no small part because that's what should have happened back at the beginning of the season with the owls, and the end of the season should have been bringing him back.

Srsly.

EDIT: And you know, there's only so many damsels in distress you can take before it just gets old. Not one of them fought back. Heather Graham is a foot taller than that guy, he has no weapon of any kind trained on her, and he's got her with one flimsy hold on her wrist, dragging her through the woods. Seriously? Come on. All she'd have to do is sit down.