"there are some things i keep sacred...my middle name. who i sleep with. and what kind of hand moisturizer i use."

The Olympics are coming up (triple yay), and I should be reading up on the summer stars - but this article on Johnny Weir and Evan Lysacek in the New York Times caught my eye. I have been completely remiss in keeping up with figure skating the past couple of years, so I've missed out on their rivalry, but this article made me super-psyched for Vancouver in 2010. It boils down to a skater whose weight is described as 'avian' (he's 125 pounds!) facing off against a guy who doesn't shave before competitions and would like to see figure skating in the X Games on a half-pipe. It's like 'Blades of Glory', but real! Now if only Apolo Anton Ohno could beat those South Koreans in every short track speed skating event in 2010, I would be a happy camper - but I'm not stupid enough to bet on it, even though I love that guy.

I'll quickly recap the last two days, since I'm sure you're dying of curiosity. Yesterday started on an inauspicious note when Aunt Becky woke me up by coming in and jumping on me. Thankfully I'm pretty immune to such torment, so I went back to sleep for a couple of hours - but my family's behavior indicates that I will probably never grow up. Then, we went into town for a church dinner - that's lunch to you non-midwesterners. The food was only okay - the women who have typically done the cooking are now at least 10-15 years past their solid cooking abilities, and so everything seemed a little less tasty than in years past.

I also had a fifteen minute conversation with someone from my high school class. It was good to see that she seems happy, even if she was the one who wrote the 'senior prophecy' page in our final yearbook. All of the other prophecies were moderately nice - but mine claimed that ten years past graduation I would have 'dropped out of Stanford, moved to Mexico, married a goat farmer, and raised four kids while living barefoot in our barn'. Rather bitchy thing to write, but I guess I'm over it. Since my ten-year reunion is a year away, I'd better get busy!

I spent the rest of last night and all of this morning/afternoon editing and rewriting the first chapter of my romance novel. I wanted to submit it to a contest sponsored by the San Diego chapter of Romance Writers of America - by submitting the first 25 pages, I could get feedback from the contest judges. And, if I miraculously happen to final, it would be judged by an editor at one of the main publishing houses. I mostly entered in order to get some feedback from people who don't know me at all, and so that I can see how I stack up when compared to other unpublished manuscripts out there. I mailed it today with fifteen minutes to spare - then came home to an email saying that the conference deadline had been extended by a week. Damn.

Nothing else has really happened; Craig did a great skit about Bono and the Edge in honor of St. Patrick's Day, but since I gush about everything he says, that's not really noteworthy. I read a romance novel tonight in the name of 'research', and I was surprisingly annoyed by it. Maybe I'm analyzing plots too much because I'm struggling with my own, but I thought that this plot was completely unbelievable. The heroine is kidnapped twice in three days (and gets married between the kidnappings), the hero is tormented by every stereotypical demon in the romance world (petty/spoiled mother causing a hatred of all wealthy/titled aristocrats, suicidal father, strong need for revenge due to someone's massive embezzlement leading to his family's financial ruin, extreme fear of dark enclosed spaces due to a bad experience in a massacre at the prisoner-of-war camp he was incarcerated in during the War of 1812). Add to this that they had only ever seen each other three times before the girl's first kidnapping, and he immediately decides that he's willing to go off and rescue her while marrying her to save her from ruin. And, they'd only been married a week before they decide they're in love, at which point the book essentially ends. Ugh. I thought my storyline was too rushed, but this is ridiculous.

So, I think I might go to Des Moines either tomorrow or Wednesday to renew my supply of romance novels. They say you can't be a writer unless you are a reader too, which is all the excuse I need :)