had a dream i was king -- i woke up, still king

I spent the entire day in the glorious south bay -- which wasn't entirely glorious, since I should have been writing in the evil city instead of bumming around my old haunts, but it ended on a high note, so I'll take it. I went down to train with Alyssa, of course; I was less sore than I expected from yesterday's brush with yoga, but Alyssa worked to ensure that I will be sore tomorrow. So, training with her in the morning should be fun. After we trained, I did another half hour of cardio while reading the first couple of chapters of "Game of Thrones", which I'm finally trying after hearing great things about the HBO adaptation of it earlier in the summer. So far, I really like it, and if it gets me to do more cardio whilst reading it, that would be a good thing.

After finishing cardio, I showered, changed into clean gym clothes, and hung out in the lobby for an hour reading a story for tonight's writing group and taking care of some other tings while drinking a smoothie (I'm such a yuppie). Then I had a stretching session with Brian (hence the decision to stick around the gym, which I don't usually do), who worked on my hamstrings and calves -- I'm pretty sure he bruised me, but I feel temporarily looser than I usually do, so hopefully that will help.

I finally left the gym and snuck over to my old place of work to kidnap Heather (aka dear respected madam) and take her to Starbucks for a blissful hour of gossiping. I hadn't seen her since before I went to Germany since her family was in town for two weeks right when I got back from my trip, so catching up with her before I go to Iowa next week was imperative. She was in reasonably good form, and I was quite happy to see her even though it was too short for my tastes. After I dropped her off, I grabbed a v. early dinner at Chipotle and worked on their patio for awhile; I had to relocate to another Starbucks to use their free wireless briefly, since I needed to upload a last-minute blog post for the group romance blog I'm part of, but at least I got some stuff done.

The reason I stuck around the south bay was because I had my writing group tonight. I'd taken the unusual (for me) step of sharing something that was still an early draft, with a lot of details still to be figured out -- they read the second chapter of my non-gargoyle top secret young adult project and gave me feedback. It was super helpful to see what they thought was working and what wasn't, and it's all good stuff to keep in mind as I keep pressing forward with the rough draft. Sadly, I'm still a long way from being done, but the idea has me v. excited, and it was good to get some validation that the writing group thought it was cool too. We also discussed a short story about Anglo-Indians, written by our host, which I quite enjoyed, and we all sat around and discussed writing and the industry and life until it was 9:30pm and I needed to get back to the evil city before collapsing.

Meeting with writing groups, whether it's this one or the romance writer community, always makes me feel very excited and eager to get cracking, so I'm a little resentful that I have to drive down to Palo Alto and train in the morning. But I'm keeping my weekend much freer than I did last weekend, so hopefully I'll make some serious progress. Now, though, I should sleep so that I can make it to the gym on time -- goodnight!