Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

6:50 a.m. - in bed. without monkeys.
What the hell is Foundling destroying, and why won't he let me *sleep*?

9:37 a.m. - checking out new writing markets
In the guidelines for the new Fantasybookspot E-zine: "If you send fan-fiction…I will kill you!" Well, that's a good level of candor, and it made me laugh out loud to read it.

9:45 a.m.
Clearly, I'm not yet thinking, um...clearly...this morning. Now is *not* the right day to start doing critiques in hopes of getting an MPC from Critters. I would have to do ten today. Next week, I will do many critiques to boost the next chapter of Vicesteed up in the queue for critique. Hopefully, it will even get a critique (individual chapters, especially when they're not the first ones, are difficult to get critiqued)!

10:50 a.m.
I open a window and kitten comes galloping up so fast that he nearly skids out of control. Cats. High comedy. Excellent company for writers and other people who stay at home alone for long periods of time.

10:54 a.m. - doing first draft edit of "Ice Mother"
"He was a man well-worthy of a second look." Oh, puh-leeze!!! Why did I think I could be a writer again?
( More best/worst lines and other editing sidebars )

Vanity license plate seen: "The Hip"

All I'm saying is, the vehicle's owner better be a belly-dancer.

Shin-splints hurt a fair amount today and yesterday. I am not sure if I have them because I've been walking a lot in not-so-great footgear, or because the last...oh...four or five Tae Soo Do classes have been sparring classes. My fighting style (I really want to put scare-quotes around that, but restrained myself) is kind of shin-block- and kick-heavy. Ah, well. Nuttin' I can do but get some nice gel inserts for my big, black, clompy steel-toed boots. Ooo! And my sneakers, because it's sneaker weather now!


So these are the new, hot, extremely high shoes of summer? The two on the left are not half bad, but the two on the right are hideous. I swear the one on the far right is being worn by a man, too....

This "dating strengths and weaknesses" meme is screwing with my friends page! Every time somebody posts it, it means that all the new posts are showing up at the bottom of the page until it has processed through. Am I known for living like a hermit? I can't decide.

( Speaking of that meme... )

Argh! Whenever I get that little notification that my film is in the process of being developed, I start compulsively checking every ten minutes to find out if the digital images have been posted yet. It's worse this time. The pictures are three rolls of me playing in the orange dress. Taken by the Muse, in the course of about five minutes. Do you understand how fast he was shooting pictures? I'm pretty sure there's one in there of me rearranging my cleavage...and several of me making "Wait! Don't take this picture yet!" faces. I'm waiting in mingled terror (they're going to be awful!) and hope (maybe there'll be a good photo of me!). The girl in the photographs never really reminds me of me.

Heh heh. Sifting through my livejournals. Pondering cutting and adding and nudging and moment of silence (at least one is confirmed RL dead).

Time for bed and pictures still aren't up. Grr.

I take sick-leave for two days and everybody's freaking out about deadlines.... Of course, they do that anyway, but this time I get the feeling that they believe I can fix everything.

I bet accountants practice signing their name in ways illegible to mortal man.

Found out a long time ago that hook-kicks are a terrible idea when wearing jeans with holes in the knees. Straight-leg spin-kicks, though, seem to work just fine. A dog barked tentatively at me from his balcony four stories up as I practiced brown-belt basics in the tiny park behind the building. My toes squish in not-quite-dry grass, and the balls of my feet carve divots out of the ground.

Neurotic Southern woman is still neurotic and completely lacking in self-awareness.

The fridge is a spawning ground for empty paper bags. I knew they had to reproduce somewhere.

Target has safety pins in dark metallic shades of green and purple and blue and red.

Things taken out of my backpack:
1 pocket tape-player with the battery held in by hairband
1 orange hairband
1 old MN Timberwolves game ticket - Minnesota Timberwolves vs Toronto Raptors
1 Victoria's Secret gift certificate, as yet unspent
1 AMC Movie Theatre gift certificate, as yet unspent
1 homemade bookmark made from HR Geiger calendar
1 ghost-print water bottle three-quarters full of water faintly flavored by orange Kool-Aid
1 7" long metallic silver laurel, long separated from the car it belonged to
1 1" long solid appliqué piece of a hand and rose covered in black felt
1 spool of white thread
1 bag small semi-sweet chocolate chips

( After I got home )

Felt very productive and accomplished at work today. This is rare, and to be noted.

Beneath manhole covers, I heard the rushing of melted snow hurrying away. It was a good sound. I was tempted to wear a lightweight coat today to celebrate the onset of spring, but that would have been a Bad Idea.

Got back three rolls of film today. I am Excited. I have Pretty Pictures. (P.S. Stop nagging me to set up a Flickr photostream--I'm on dial-up, and it takes forever for me to load. Which is my way of saying that I've been thinking about it.) Really annoyed with the errant eyelash or whatever that has meant all my photos have a little shadowed swoop in the corner. Think I might have gotten it out last time I changed film, but I've thought that before.

Confirmed that I'm not testing this weekend either. Good: I wasn't ready, and certain of my kicks really suck. Bad: I'm now in a class of my own (as always, and actually how I work best) and behind the others. I'm expected to determine when I'm ready to test and confirm it with the Inst. Though I hide it really well, I'm a perfectionist. The Ice Bitch is hungry because I've starved her for such a long time; I see her behind my eyes when I look in the mirror. She thinks I'm dinner. Conclusion: twenty spin kicks and twenty jump-spin kicks a night until I get it right. Or injure myself horribly by careening into walls because I'm dizzy.

Since I've been working full-time, I haven't been able to write much creatively, and it's making me jittery. Also feeling post-partum loathing of Vicesteed. When I have babies, you'll all watch me very, very closely to make sure I don't drown them in the tub, yes?

Good Things:
+ The last-minute addition to the due-today project was neither as large nor as painful as I had feared. I had it done and QC'd this morning.
+ I went on two ten-minute photography* hunts during my breaks today at work.
+ I seem to be recovered from the stomach flu (knock on wood).
+ I found a (closer!) nice little, somewhat private mini-park area behind work that will be perfect for practicing martial arts material once it's warm out.
+ I'm thinking of going to see Ultraviolet as a reward-for-working/comfort-for-having-been-sick

Found:



* I haven't been doing much with photography, other than a couple of planned photoshoots, lately, because a) it is too toe-killingly cold for me (with my poor tolerance for cold temps) to be outside for very long, which negates wandering around with my manual camera like I was doing in warmer times, and b) my automatic has developed a fine black line that intrudes into every photo that I take with it. I have tried cleaning every surface I can reach, but the line, eet mocks me!

The teakettle appears to still be fully functional, despite its scorched appearance. One thing has changed, though. During its traumatic misadventure, the spout's plastic cap melted slightly. This seems to have made the teakettle's whistle more...penetrating. It is sharper, louder, and has learned a nifty two-tone whistle. I understand that this is its way of saying, "Don't you dare forget me again!" Foundling, on the other hand, thought that it was its way of saying, "I have caught a bird. Come and eat it!" That would be why I found him on top of the stove when the whistle went off. Either that or he really wanted some tea, which I would not put past him...he eats anything else.

Foundling is a very clever kitten who is dextrous with his paws. A couple of days ago, he learned to go fishing. When I'm running late for dinner and need to thaw meat, I usually stick it in the kitchen sink with a weight on top of it and then fill the sink with warm water. The meat was thawing, I was upstairs on the computer, and the Muse was downstairs. Suddenly I heard the Muse laughing hysterically.

I go downstairs. He just points at the kitchen floor, which has a splotch of water on it. Finally, I get him to explain that he walked into the kitchen to find that Foundling had somehow leapt up onto the sink, fished the meat out from under the weight, and carried it to the floor. His paw was barely damp.

If I ever get fish, I'm going to have to have a sturdy lid for the fishbowl.

I'm experimenting with the hair. I've got it in five braid-dreads. I like...I'm just sad my hair isn't quite thick enough to get more braids of the size that I want. That's saying something, 'cause my hair's pretty thick. The braid-dreads were awesome for doing martial arts, though. They are looking considerably more frazzled today. Hmm. If I do a better band base and use some gel, I could probably re-do them every few days and be fine. A satin pillowcase would be going too far....

Uh-oh. That last bit breaks the flow of the narrative. I must relate this to Foundling....

He loves lying on his back and batting at the two front braids. He traps them with his paws and then bites them triumphantly. So far this is the only drawback, unless you theorize that the braid-dreads, or the attitude they engender, were a contributing factor to me getting stopped by the cops last night.

At work, long day of deadlines that can. not. be. met. with any level of quality, and the coding-specific manager having strep. It's ok, though, because she didn't come in to work to infect us. Which is good. The non-infecting part.

Got a message about five hours after I left work with questions from the night shift people. It had been sent about four hours earlier, but I was off doing stuff.

Stuff in question being, going back to the first martial arts class I've been able to make it to in about a month. Yeah--I've lost a lot of flexibility and a fair amount of speed and stamina. The strength, except in my abs, seems to still be there, though, which is weird. It was also far more lowkey than class-after-vacation usually is. For the first bit, he was talking with potential students. Then some asshole rammed his car into the window of the barbershop directly below us, narrowly avoiding squishing chesh and another beginner Tae Soo Do student. The floor shook, the building shuddered, and the instructor was kept busy dealing with things until the end of class, so the assistant instructor taught it. He went a bit easy on us. That could be a complaint, but really, I'm just fine with the first class being slow. The sad bit of it is is that I'm going to be sore tomorrow anyways.