Getting in Shape

Late last year several of my writer friends had debut books releasing soon and were getting ready to promote the books and themselves. I wondered what I'd do in their place, wondered how I'd promote myself and how I'd react to needing to do so. I'm shy and unsure of myself, after all.

But, I realized, if I really want to be a professional writer, I have to do certain things despite being shy. And one of those things is to gain more self-confidence. The easiest way for me to feel more confident is to know I look good.

So in December I started walking almost every single night, two miles at minimum. I started to feel the health benefits almost immediately, which made it easy to keep up. At some point I bought a pair of five-pound hand weights and started doing arm exercises too. And I added sit-ups to the mix--not every night, but I try. I started with five sit-ups, increased to ten sit-ups after a week or two, increased to fifteen, and so on. I'm up to fifty sit-ups now. Yeah, me, the girl who this time last year was worried about my health because I was in such bad shape.

I haven't lost all that much weight by the scale, but I can tell a huge difference in my body. I've gone down two pants sizes. I feel better. I hike a lot and every night when I walk, I try to run at least short distances. And yeah, I've got a lot more confidence.

Has it helped my writing? Not directly (although it's nice to know I probably won't keel over at the computer). But when it's time, when I have to get out there and get loud about myself, I'll be ready. And I will have some damn cute clothes, too.

Google Hates Me

I was going to talk about my day yesterday, which involved a five-mile hike, the planting of many flowers and tomatoes, the scattering of my mother's ashes, and my nearly fatal tumble down some steps (okay, not nearly fatal; I just skinned one knee slightly and bruised my lip). But then Blogger pulled the thing where I have to upgrade to their NEW AND IMPROVED YEAH RIGHT interface.

Why? Why why why? Gmail just got a new interface too, and I hate it for the same reasons I hate the new Blogger one: I can't read it properly. My work computer (not that I ever, ever use my work computer for anything but work; this is merely hypothetical) is very old and can't display the new interfaces correctly. On my home computer, the fields in the new interfaces are so washed out I have trouble even seeing them, much less reading them. On my laptop, the new interfaces are too spread out for me to read comfortably on the small screen.

In other words, it's BROKEN when the old versions weren't broken at all. I am now directing waves of hate at Google, who of course runs Gmail and Blogger and obviously doesn't have enough to do.

For those of you who are interested in seeing lots of pretty pictures of my hike, I've started a new blog just for my hiking stuff called Hiking Hot.

The difference a week makes

On March 25, last Sunday, I went on a long (4.5 hour) hike through Clear Creek. It was a lovely, sunny day and I took lots of pictures. This afternoon, once the daily storms had moved off, I hiked up to Observation Point for my end-of-the-month photo of the view, and took lots more pictures as I went along.

Well, I thought it was green last week. But look at these pictures, the first taken last week, the second taken today:


And no, I didn't monkey with the filters or shop anything. Spring is just exploding all over the place. This was the warmest March on record and very nearly the wettest. We've had storms almost every night, daily temperatures consistently between 70 and 85 degrees every single day. I'm not complaining, because it's been awesome, but it does make me worry about the summer. I think it's going to be very, very hot by July.

But in the meantime, it's just gorgeous out there.

It's a pergola!

I have a weird work schedule anyway, but this week it was even weirder than usual--but that's good, because it meant that I got off work on Friday at 10:30am and then had the whole weekend free! Friday was chilly and rainy, so I went and saw a movie (John Carter of Mars, or whatever it's called; it was fun).

Saturday dawned beautifully sunny and warm, so I opened a gallon of exterior semi-gloss white paint and decided it was time to paint the front railing. So I did. It was honestly a perfect spring morning: birds singing, sun beaming, a light breeze fluttering my hair, people walking by with their dogs calling greetings to me. By the time I'd finished painting the railing, it had dried, so I went back and did a second coat.


So then I went around and painted part of the back porch, but didn't do all of it because I decided it was time to paint the pergola.

I didn't know what a pergola was until we bought this house. It's a open trellis that doesn't have a roof, and of course the house has one. It's old and needs repair and/or replacement of many of the beams, and it badly needed painting. So I got out the stepladder and got to work.

I started painting the railing at about 9:15 am. By the time I ran out of paint while working on the pergola, it was a quarter until two. I took a shower, changed clothes, and went back out and washed and waxed my car. Because apparently I get my energy from the sun like flowers do. And I mowed the front lawn (badly).

I finished painting the pergola today and finished the first coat on the back porch, which looks very nice but will have to wait for its second coat at least a week because it's going to rain rain rain all week long. I also repainted the white adirondack chairs in the front of the house. And I have a sunburn, a strained muscle in my arm, a full-body crick in my neck, and so much paint left on my skin I look like I have leprosy. But by god the house looks great!

More pictures, including a bonus Jekyll pic:

The pergola. Disregard the clutter underneath it, which I need to rearrange (and some of it goes on the back porch but is not on it currently while the paint dries).

The back of the pergola, by the garage:

The back porch. Once the second coat is on and dry, the red chairs go back on the porch:

And finally, Jekyll the cat who wishes I would play with him instead of painting constantly:

Chasing the sunset

When I got off work today, it was sunny and nearly 70 degrees. I was frantic to get out to Clear Creek, but there were Cat Issues. By the time everything was settled, it was 6:30 pm. The sun was going down and the temperature was dropping.

I went out to Clear Creek anyway. I needed to walk off my agitation, and I wanted to get another shot from Observation Point--I figure if I take one photo from the same spot at the end of each month, by the end of the year I'll have a nifty photo montage. Tomorrow I have to work late and Wednesday it's supposed to rain (plus I have to await the new cat).

I don't know how long the hike to Observation Point is--not long, probably, but it's very much uphill. It was getting dark and the sky above the river was already turning gold and orange with sunset. I went as fast as I could, wheezing and panting and sweating, and it got darker and darker and the sunset peaked and started to fade.

Finally I staggered up one last slope and the log pavilion at Observation Point was ahead of me, silhouetted against the western sky like one of Rivendell's outbuildings. I made it to the bench and collapsed.

The view was just gorgeous. I'd forgotten that they light up the dam at night; and the sky gleamed pewter in the river. I took a bunch of pictures, but my hands were shaking so much that they were all pretty blurry. The one above is the only decent one of the bunch.

I went slower on my way back, enjoying the walk (especially since it was mostly downhill). The sky still held some light and a crescent moon was high in the sky. That particular trail is picked out in many places with pale stones washed down from the hillside, so I never had to worry about losing my way in the dark; the stones shone faintly like starlight at my feet. It's been a long, long time since I hiked in the dark. I'd forgotten how different it feels from daytime.

I got back to the car at 7:30, and I can't have gone much more than two miles an hour overall, so I guess I probably only hiked about two miles--maybe less, since I spent some time trying to get a decent picture. Still, it was a good workout and a perfect way to cool down from a frustrating day.

Clear Creek in January

During the awful month last summer that I stayed in the hospital with Mom, I yearned for Clear Creek--less because I wanted to get outside in the July sun (although that was part of it), mostly because having the freedom to jaunt off to go hiking would mean a return to Life Before. But nothing returned to normal.

Now I have the freedom to go wherever I like. It's not the way I wanted to get that freedom, but it's what I have now and I might as well use it. So although it's cold today, I took my new little (cheap-ass) camera to Clear Creek after work. Here are some pictures.

Here's a big tree with huge buttressed roots. I'm not sure what kind of tree--ash?--but you can see how big it is by my shadow at the bottom.





This is an overexposed photo since the sun was in my face but I was standing in the shade, and I love the effect. It shows an impressive vine twining through winter trees, the kind of vine we call "grapevine" locally although it has nothing to do with grapes. If you can find one hanging down at just the right height, they're the best swings ever.




And this is the view from observation point, my destination today. I sat on the bench and looked at the dam and the river far below me, and thought about how much Mom liked to walk along the river, and how last summer--before her stroke and the hospital and everything else--we took a picnic to the river. It was a perfect day, hot but breezy, and when we left with the picnic basket swinging empty in my hand, we ran into a wedding at the river's edge and stayed to watch the couple kiss.

Summer will be here again soon.

Off the grid, man

Frequently I complain, usually on Twitter, about our lawnmower. It is--was, rather--one of those gas-powered push mowers that you have to hold the little bar or lever up while you mow or the engine shuts down.

It finally died the other day. Mom decided to buy a new one, but we talked it over first. We both agreed to try one of those old-fashioned hand mowers, the kind almost everyone had when I was a kid.

Well, I love it. It's light, maneuverable, and requires no gas. I just push it along and it goes whirr and cuts the grass--and does a much better job than our old mower. We're lucky in that our yard, though large, is relatively smooth; there aren't many little hillocks or tuffets to navigate. It's so fun to use I want to mow every day.

So here's to trying something old and finding it works just fine! But don't expect me to go back to typewriters.

(If you haven't already, don't forget to enter my contest!)

Sunburned Days

Dawn yesterday on Folly Beach, South Carolina. Mom took that picture, but I was with her. We left a few hours later, and now we're home.

The beach was amazing and awesome and wonderful. We all had a great time and got sunburned. Thursday night I stayed up with my brother, sister-in-law, oldest nephew, and a cousin and his wife to play D&D; I didn't get to bed until about 1am, and was woken at 4am when Mom, my sister-in-law's mother, and an aunt got up to watch the royal wedding. I didn't want to watch the wedding and couldn't get back to sleep since I was sleeping on a pull-out couch on the upstairs balcony right above the TV, so I went outside and walked three or four miles along the beach. When I left it was dark and the crescent moon was shining on the wet sand. By the time I got back, the sun was well up.

It was hard to leave, but I was glad to get home to my garden and my own bed. I just wish I didn't have to *groan* get up early tomorrow and go to work.

Not entirely to my surprise, I did not do any writing while I was gone. I still haven't finished Bloodhound.

Here's our beach house; in the foreground is the sand turtle with a castle on its back that we made on Thursday, that was still there on Saturday when we left.

I have a sword!

My awesome and wonderful Aunt Barbara came by this afternoon and GAVE me her old fencing foil and facemask! And she gave me a very laid-back lesson (because Barbara is always laid-back) on how to stand and stuff, and made me feel A) 1,000 pounds heavy, and B) clumsy in comparison to her nimbleness. Barbara actually won fencing tournaments when she was in college. She says she used to wear old ripped-up jeans with duct tape over the rips. She's so cool.

So now I have to lose weight (trust me on this--I didn't put the pictures up of me looking humongous for a reason) and join a fencing group--either the one at the college where I work, or hopefully one that's a little closer.

And I have a sword!

The Coca-Cola Man

I know, I know--just shut up about Clear Creek already! Sorry. I just wanted to share with everyone that A) it doesn't count as being lost if I know which direction I should be going, and B) I hit the trail today at noon exactly (I know because Sound & Spirit had just come on the radio when I parked and I was annoyed that I was going to miss it) and didn't get back to my car until 4:30 pm. My feet hurt.

While I was hiking up the last muddy trail to the top of the ridge, I kept myself going by pretending that at the top I'd find a man with one of those taco-cart thingies, only instead of tacos it would be full of cokes in old-fashioned glass bottles, packed in ice. And he'd be giving them away. I'd reach the top of the ridge and he'd say, "You look like you could use an ice cold Coca-Cola. Sit down on that stump there and rest while you drink it." Then he'd pop the cap off with that marvelous little shhhht sound, and I'd rest and drink the coke and listen to the Coca-Cola Man talk about all the places he'd been and the marvelous things he'd seen. He wouldn't expect me to keep up my end of the conversation, and when I finished the coke, he'd offer me another.

Of course there was no Coca-Cola Man waiting at the top of the ridge, but I had some iced tea in the car left over from lunch. It was warm, of course, but I drank it anyway. And then I stopped by the store on the way home and got a canned coke, and slammed it back in about five minutes. I needed it.

The Cemetery at Clear Creek

I took a bunch of pictures at Clear Creek yesterday, mostly of the old cemetery I found a week or two ago. I was going to post one here and stick the rest on my old LJ (which I no longer use), but apparently you can't upload pictures to LJ anymore unless you give them some cash--sorry, "upgrade your account."

So here are just a few pictures:

This one's a handcarved gravestone. I don't know if you can see it well enough to see that the N's are all backwards, but I found it sort of poignant.

I spent half an hour or so exploring the graveyard, which is off a dirt road that's still drivable, although I wouldn't want to take my car up it. From a little marker I found, there used to be a church on the spot in the late 19th and early 20th century. I didn't see any gravestones later than 1931, although a few of the older stones have been replaced with new ones and one or two even had some faded plastic flowers decorating them.

We've had rain for a solid week, and the lower trails are soggy. At one point the trail crosses Clear Creek, but the creek is so high that the stepping stones were almost covered. I took my boots and socks off and waded across, and then walked barefoot for a while--watching out that I didn't step on anything that might object, like the millipede in this picture. That's about as close as I want my bare foot (or any part of me) to get to a millipede. I do not like things with that many legs.

And lastly, here's a picture of the trail at the top of the ridge. I didn't shop it at all--it really is this green here.

I love East Tennessee.

Pictures of Clear Creek

I borrowed my mom's camera and got a few shots of Clear Creek when I went out hiking this afternoon after work. I won't post too many, but I wanted to share what I get to experience ANY DAY I LIKE, because I am SO LUCKY to live here.

Above is Clear Creek itself, taken from the little bridge next to the parking lot. A lot of people just come here to let their kids play in the creek and have a picnic lunch nearby.

I stopped here because I saw the hugest king snake I've ever seen in my whole life, but sadly I couldn't get a picture of it before it slithered away. I would swear it was four feet long, but let's assume I was overestimating due to its being moving and me being shocked at the size of a snake the length of oh, I don't know, a VW Beetle, and we'll say it was maybe three feet long. Anyway, I took a picture of the slope I'd just struggled up, but I don't think you can really tell how steep it was. It was darn steep, believe me. And I wasn't even at the top of the ridge at that point. I only had to rest once on the way up, although I do admit I was puffing like a steam engine.

And here's six people on horses. I am very jealous of these people, whoever they are. This picture was taken at the top of the ridge, on a track used by rangers, which is why it looks more like a wagon track than a trail.

After that, I started down the White Pine trail, which I typically refer to as the Squashed Frog trail since the first time I hiked it, I almost stepped in a very large, very dead frog. That sort of thing stays with you. White Pine trail comes down off the ridge on its other side, then loops around and meets Clear Creek again, whereupon it turns into Lower Clear Creek Trail. It gets greener and greener as it goes along, with wild oats and periwinkle blooming by the sides of the trail.

I think the road to Rivendell looks sort of like this.

Small Dramas

I went out to Clear Creek this afternoon, of course, since it was sunny and warm and I was sick of sitting in front of the computer. I found a big stripey bird feather (from a goose, maybe?) and explored a new trail. And I witnessed a strange event in miniature.

I had stopped to listen to a tock-tock-tock sound, to try and decide if a bird was making it or a frog, when I noticed the rustle of leaves just off the trail. I thought maybe the wind was moving them, but when I crouched down I saw a snake heaving about under the leaves. It was just a slim little snake, not sure what kind except it wasn't a garter snake or a copperhead or a rattlesnake. I thought it might be finishing up shedding its skin. Then I saw a whiskery mouse nose poke out of the leaves, and the snake slithered off with its tail crooked up, and some very obvious mouse bites on the tail. The mouse disappeared the other way, only the rustle and slight movement of leaves to show where it was.

I wonder if the snake and the mouse met in the musty, shadowy, beetle-filled world beneath the leaves and the snake tried to eat the mouse, who fought back. Or maybe the mouse saw the snake, assumed it was going to attack, and decided to attack it first. I'll never know.

Also today, I sold my Twitter serial story, "Unicorn Chase," to Thaumatrope! It's 41 tweets long and the editor said it will likely be posted throughout July. The word count all told is about 1,000 words, but it sure took a lot more effort than an ordinary flash story. It was an interesting challenge, but I don't know that I'd want to do it again.

I found a four-leafed clover today too. I used to find them constantly, without trying--I'd just be walking along and see one. I never thought anything of it; it's just pattern recognition, right? But then I stopped finding them. I bet I hadn't found one in 15 years, and then this afternoon I was walking along and boom, there was a four-leafed clover. I stuck it into The Magic of Oz to press it.

And...the time travel story rewrite is DONE. I had to finish it today because the editor emailed me and asked how it was going. So I got all nervous and wrote him back and said it's going great, it's a much better story, I just want to do another editing pass and I'll send it to you tomorrow! And then I had to, you know, sit down and write it. I don't know if it's all that good, but it's sure a lot better than the last version. I changed it so completely that literally only a few sentences are the same. Oh, and the new title is "The Neverstone," which I'm rather proud of. Now I just hope the editor likes it.

Plot bunnies and bats

It was such a warm, sunny day when I got off work that I went out hiking above the dam. I don't think I'd ever been there before, even though it's not far from Clear Creek.

The narrow road that goes down to the trailhead was lined for a good quarter of a mile with parked cars and I was all excited, thinking that I'd found a really good, challenging trail and these were all hardcore hikers. Then I saw the trail, which was the width of a sidewalk and almost perfectly level.

So I decided to set off on a little narrow trail I noticed heading up another hill, up through a field of kudzu vines just starting to come back to life for spring, which meant it was all sunny there because the trees were dead. For about ten minutes I was all alone and happy on my trail, and then it plunged abruptly down a near-cliff. I edged along the narrow, muddy trail with a few hundred feet between my boots and the river far below.

The trail led to a cave entrance, which was cool. I stuck my head in to look at the cavern just inside, which was unfortunately decorated with graffiti and beer bottles, and then kept going since the trail continued. Around the next rock outcrop was another entrance to the same cave, and then I edged around more dripping rocks--and there was another cave mouth WITH A HUGE IRON GATE ACROSS IT.

Plot bunnies were everywhere! What was lurking in that cave that had to be kept in with a gate that HAD NO DOOR? As it happens, there was a sign up, so I know. Gray bats, a federally protected species that are easily disturbed by, say, idiots getting drunk and spraying rude things about people's sisters in their caves.

The trail ended there, so I retraced my steps and discovered a very narrow trail heading straight up to the hilltop. This appealed to me since I wasn't looking forward to slithering back the way I'd come, only it turned out that it wasn't so much a trail as a potential fall. I clambered up it somehow, grabbing at tree trunks and vines and roots and rocks, trying to keep from stepping on any rare plants. I know I'll sound hysterical, but it really is the truth that if I'd fallen at that point, I would have died. I looked down once and saw, a few feet from where my boots were sliding out from under me while I clung to a sapling dogwood, a very pretty patch of wildflowers--trillium, ferns, and a delicate columbine with one flower--and below them, thirty or forty feet of empty air. Then rocks.

Finally I made it to the top of the hill. And then I went back and strolled along that 3.2 mile loop trail with every other person in East Tennessee, or so it seemed. I took the loop backwards from everyone else and I must have passed more than a hundred people, I swear, including old ladies with purses, couples with dogs, a woman with fancy photography equipment, entire extended family groups with backpacks and walking sticks like they were hiking the Alps, and--no lie--two nuns in full habits.

So yeah, that's it for the dam. I'm going back to Clear Creek.

I should feel guilty about watching bad movies

I saw that new movie "Knowing" today. Oh my gawd, so very, very awful. I don't even want to talk about it, it's so bad.

I reread Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon yesterday. I have a paperback version, but they were offering it as a free Sony download so I downloaded it last weekend and read it on my reader. It's a good book, although I did catch myself skimming all the battle preparations and also the battles. Also I felt guilty the whole time I was reading it that I wasn't reading a book I'd never read before, which is a stupid thing to waste perfectly good guilt on.

For instance, I should be feeling guilty about NOT WRITING A WORD for days. My productivity has bottomed out. But then, I seem to do this periodically--I'll write like a fiend for several months, then crash to a complete halt and do rereads and revisions while my brain rests.

I got out to Clear Creek this afternoon for a while--and the awesome thing I've noticed is that I'm no longer sore the next day, even after hiking one of the trails that goes more or less straight up the side of the ridge. While I was out today, I tried to think through Little Sparrow a little more. I think it's resisting me because it's just not quite ready to write.

Hiking

The weather turned glorious this weekend, too glorious to stay inside. Yesterday afternoon and this afternoon both I went out to Clear Creek and did some hiking on the watershed trails, several miles both days, up steep ridges where the wind blows constantly through the treetops. I am so very, very sore now, and I have a huge purple bruise on my right leg where I tripped and fell on a root, but I had a great time. I love hiking. I love the silence, the solitude, the exercise, the time to think without any distractions at all.

Mostly I thought about my new writing project. I was going to get back in to Charmed Circle, but I just can't whip up the enthusiasm right now. I need something totally new. I decided to revisit the world I invented for The Price of Justice (formerly Hilda and Justice), and I've been turning ideas over for a few days now. I have the two main characters figured out, and I know more or less what they want and a little bit about what they're going to do. One of the things they're going to do is walk from the town of Simminee Soo to the as-yet-unnamed capitol city of the as-yet-unnamed country, following a river upstream through mountainous countryside. So I guess you could say my hiking was actually a research trip.

I still haven't finished the time travel story. I am flat out embarrassed about this. So okay, no work on the new project until I finish the time travel story! I mean, it's almost finished--basically I just have to write the denouement, but I've lost all interest in it. I will finish it tomorrow, and then I'll have all the fun of worldbuilding and idea-coming-up-withing for the new project.