ten times out of nine i know you're lying, but nine times out of ten i know you're trying

I'll skip the usual recap of my morning and how I worked but not enough, etc., etc., and get straight to the good stuff. And really, the only good stuff today was that I went to Contraband this afternoon and wrote for a bit, and then I abandoned all pretenses of productivity and had a drink with Tom (aka Tom Foolery, although he's not nineteen anymore, so maybe that nickname should be retired). This, it should not surprise you, turned into three drinks - we hadn't seen each other in forever, but we reconnected at Chandlord's dance event a few weeks ago and actually followed through on our plan to get drinks at talk about writing.

This, of course, should have happened forever ago; we hadn't gotten together to talk shop in a million years, partially because I went through a period of sucking at making plans and partially because he has a fairly high-powered career beyond writing, so neither of us were putting in much effort. But luckily, when we get together it immediately feels like old times. So we met up at Cabin, and we spent a solid 3.5hrs talking about writing, books, dating, life, happiness, heartbreak, corporate america, and much more stuff about storytelling in general. So that was all great for the soul, even if drinking on a somewhat empty stomach was less good for the liver and no good for any hope of productivity tonight.

But I knew how that was going to go down. We eventually parted ways with promises to get together again sooner rather than later (which I intend to make happen). And then, since I was already halfway to my old 'hood, I went to my favorite sushi place, where I gorged on raw fish and happiness.

Then, still slightly too buzzed to get anything done, I took a lyft home, and I spent the rest of the night reading the first section of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy (the first section of the first book, so I still have a long way to go) - it had been recommended to me many times, but Tom was effusive about it today and pushed me over the edge into reading it immediately. It actually reminds me a bit of 'Promise of Blood', which is the first book in that gunpowder mage series I read ages ago - and now I feel like I need to go back and finish that series as well, but reading this book is probably enough for tonight.

But even though my old instincts say to stay up all night and keep reading, I know that I need to get some sleep so I can write tomorrow - wish me luck with that. Goodnight!

shut up and dance with me

Programming note: I intend to blog for the next few days as per usual...but there is a snowstorm bearing down upon us, and there is a chance we will lose power (perhaps for days), which may mean internet disappearance. Also, my phone is working somewhat sporadically and I may not be receiving all texts appropriately - so if you texted me since I've been in Iowa and I haven't responded, pls try again. Thank you for your understanding.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled content!

Today was quite fun, although I should have saved the title of yesterday's post for today, because 'all I really know is I don't want to know' is all too appropriate for recapping a family game of Cards Against Humanity. Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and Drewbaby came down for the day, and we spent it playing games and eating leftovers (and the chili I made yesterday). First up was Balderdash, which we hadn't played in years (decades?) - it involves making up definitions for super obscure words, and then trying to guess the real definition rather than picking someone else's made-up definition instead. Unfortunately, everyone in this group is super smart (well, once we figured out that initialing our cards with 'w's didn't work in this group), so it made for a highly challenging and mentally taxing game. But it was still fun to play it, and I'm glad we dug it out of the games closet after so many years (but I may be biased, since I won both rounds - that's not even a #humblebrag, that's just a #brag).

After we tired of Balderdash, we switched to Cards Against Humanity, and we played that until it was time for the northern branch of the family to go home. As per usual, we learned far too much; it's slightly awkward to play with two sets of parents and their children, and I learned something about my physiological inheritance that should either make me feel #blessed or #nauseated (I'm going with #blessed, but others at the table may feel differently). There was also some discussion of a sex dungeon involving Barry Goldwater campaign buttons that I will never be able to bleach from my mind, but c'est la vie.

sssanyway. After the family left, I downloaded some books to my ipad in preparation for possible power outages, and I've got everything charging, etc. I also drank some tea and watched some fine CBS programming (mostly the news and its dire predictions for snow). And now, I'm going to sleep and hope that tomorrow's winter wonderland is heavy on wonder and light on winter - goodnight!

can't promise tomorrow, but i promise tonight

Most of my day was highly frustrating, but it ended on a totally lovely note. I left the house at 8:45 (after six hours of sleep, which is not enough for my geriatric state), but since it took an hour and a half to drive to Palo Alto in the intermittent rain, I was fifteen minutes late for my training session with Alyssa. She continues to be on a stretching and flexibility kick, and so while we worked out just enough to ensure that I'm sore, we spent the rest of the time doing some truly torturous exercises that are supposed to benefit my flexibility in the long term. The PVC pipe that she used on my shins on Monday bruised my right leg, and my feet got a good workout yesterday from an exercise that involved standing barefoot on a golfball for several minutes yesterday, so today we focused on my back. And the back exercise involved two tennis balls duct taped together so that they fit on either side of my spine, and then slowly rolling my back over the tennis balls to work into my back muscles. It was possibly the most painful thing ever (not really, but you know I like hyperbole), but since my squats and lunges are already looking better as a result of Alyssa's tender ministrations, I can't argue with success. She's going to Vegas next weekend to take another class related to movement exercises, so I expect that the experimentation will continue for awhile, but at least I manage to stay entertained despite the pain.

Post workout, I showered, then went to Sprout for lunch. I might have stayed longer, but the place filled up quickly and people were scavenging my table (I ended up giving it to a girl named Danielle, who randomly walked up just as I was getting up and whom I hadn't seen in ages; she's actually good friends with Jess and John, but I know her because I managed her a lifetime ago). Also, the woman sitting next to me was making agreeing sounds to everything her friend said by emitting some sort of weird high pitched moan, which made for an unpleasant accompaniment to my attempts to brainstorm.

And that's where the afternoon slowly went off course. I went to Stanford after that, with the intention of writing in the library all afternoon, but I couldn't find any parking at all, either in Tresidder or in the new parking garage under Wilbur Field. Then, as I tried to get off campus, I drove straight through a massive horde of people leaving Maples, and since there weren't any traffic control officers when they left, they just kept streaming through the crosswalks at the Galvez stop sign without letting anyone through. I sat there for ten minutes before a cop showed up and stopped them, so at least I escaped before my rage boiled off.

So I decided to run my errand for the day and go to Target, which killed an hour. Then I tried to go to Red Rock Cafe in Mountain View, but after waiting out a sudden downpour in the parking lot, I walked in and found that every single table on both floors was taken. So I got back in my car, found a Starbucks, and took their last free table, where I read the stories for tonight's writing group (more on that in a second). Then I tried my luck with Stanford again, and this time I was successful. It turns out there was a career fair on campus this afternoon, which explains the lack of visitor parking, but I arrived too late to apply for any jobs. Instead, I went to the library and knocked out three pages of Malcolm and Amelia's new opening; not a lot, but since I spent an undue amount of time describing how gorgeous Malcolm is, I felt both productive and strangely dirty.

After writing, I grabbed a quick dinner at the Coho, but yet another stranger ruined yet another cafe experience. This time was worse, though; a guy asked if he could share my table, since everything was full, which is common there, so I said sure. But then he sat across from me and proceeded to stare, giggle to himself, and drink three fountain Cokes in quick succession, without ever attempting to pretend like he was working, checking a phone, whatever. He also had a pink backpack, which I found v. disconcerting. If I were less of a coward I would have asked him if he was alright, since there's a chance he was suicidal instead of homicidal -- but I'm a coward, so when he finished the third coke, I decided it was time to call it a night.

I made it back to my car without having to stab him with my car key, which I counted as a success. Then I met up with my historical fiction writing group; this meeting was at Christine's apartment, which is in Palo Alto and quite close to Joanie's Cafe (yay). There were only four of us tonight, but we had a great discussion. I was particularly interested in Chris's piece, since she's writing a screenplay and I've never really read screenplays before. We wrapped up around nine, but I stayed for twenty minutes after that because she had a book she wanted to loan me. And because I stayed, we actually got to know each other a little bit beyond the writing; it's funny how you can join these groups, go to each others' houses, and know next to nothing about the people you're interacting with. It turns out that she isn't working right now either, so hopefully we'll get lunch together or something in the v. near future.

Finally, happily, I drove home, and I'm so excited that I don't have to drive anywhere at all tomorrow. I think I'll hang out in my neighborhood and keep pressing forward with Malcolm and Amelia's story. The Blue Angels are in town for Fleet Week, so perhaps I'll sit on the roof if it's nice out and write while warplanes fly overhead -- sounds romantic, right? Goodnight!

she'll bring out the best and the worst you can be

I got quite a bit done today - no writing, alas, but enough other stuff to feel productive. I dragged myself out of bed and over to the gym, where Alyssa attempted to destroy me. Luckily, I've recovered from last week's attempted murder, and I don't think I'll be as sore tomorrow as I was last Wednesday, so that's a good thing. After I escaped our hour together, happy to be alive, I took a shower, changed into a shirt I'd pulled from the back of my closet, and went to Joanie's Cafe for lunch. I surprised the waiter by asking to see a menu; I always order the Mexican scramble, which is clearly what he expected me to do, but instead I ended up getting a Cobb salad. I'm trying out this eating regimen that Alyssa's fellow trainer recommended (see last night's post if you didn't read it), and it feels quite odd and vaguely illicit -- for starters, bacon is encouraged, not forbidden, which is pretty freaking awesome. So, a salad with chicken, boiled egg, bacon, bleu cheese, avocado and dressing was perfectly fine, rather than a disaster in a bowl. And, it was really yummy, so lunch was definitely a +1 for this new regime.

After lunch, I came home, did two loads of laundry (so that I no longer have to wear things from the back of my closet with jeans that I'm pretty sure are dirty), sorted out my desk, and planned my meals for the next few days. Then, I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on steak, bacon, cheese, butter -- basically, all the things that haven't been in my fridge in awhile. For supper, I steamed an artichoke (delish -- why do I never do this?) and cooked a steak, and ate while reading two stories for the writing group that met tonight.

The writing group was really fun; five of us showed up, and we spent a couple of hours discussing writing in general and the stories that a couple of people shared. Oddly, one of the women who shared a story didn't show up tonight, so we discussed it without her. Unfortunately, since we had more questions than answers about what was going on in the story, her absence didn't really help. But, the woman who hosted had written a great couple of chapters for the book she's writing about colonial India, so that was fun.

As usual, I left the group totally inspired to write, so I'm going to prioritize writing tomorrow afternoon. I was distracted enough today that I didn't obsess too much about the book thing, and I'm going to try to maintain that distracted stance tomorrow, but hopefully I'll be able to focus on Ellie and Nick's story for a few hours. And now, I think I shall go to bed so that I can get up and fry myself some bacon in the morning. Goodnight!

vamos viver a vida

Dear Alan (aka Walter's dad) - Walter says hi!

For all the rest of you - today was a lovely day. As you can probably guess from my unusual intro, Walter is in town for a surprise guest appearance, and I spent the entire day with him. He arrived at my place around 10:30am; unfortunately, I had an appointment at eleven that I couldn't cancel, but I came home directly thereafter and we went to Joanie's Cafe, where we had delicious breakfast-for-lunch and began the long and arduous process of catching up. Then, we proceeded to Whole Foods to buy potatoes for tonight's dinner; when I decided on the spur of the moment to make strawberry shortcake, we then went to Safeway to buy Bisquick, since Bisquick is too much of an abomination to be carried by Whole Foods.

After the grocery stores, we went to downtown Mountain View and hung out at Verde drinking pearl milk teas; Walter took the adventurous route by ordering something different, which is always dangerous there, and ended up drinking something that tasted like sour salted plums (mmm). For the first time in many moons, I made myself laugh so hard that I started crying - for some reason, this happens frequently when I'm around Walter, but since I hadn't seen him in ages, I've typically been more controlled than that. This happened twice more over the course of the day, so hopefully I'll be able to get command of myself again once he leaves.

Anyway, we came back to my place, sat around the living room, talked, and drank more tea. Sometime around 6:30, I began preparing for the evening's festivities - I decided to serve leftovers for dinner, since I still had enough boeuf bourguignon to feed an army, but I made fresh mashed potatoes and also made shortcakes and cut up strawberries. John and Jess arrived around 7:30, not knowing who the surprise special guest was; Walter happened to be in the bathroom when they arrived, and the reaction was even better than I expected, because when he came out of the bathroom, I heard Jess say, "Who are you?!" She has only met him a couple of times before, and in her defense it was quite dark in the hall as he stepped out, but this was certainly a strange reaction to the surprise guest of honor.

However, the evening progressed wonderfully, and we voted to remove Chandlord from Blood of Lincoln and replace her with Walter. She should not be hurt by this; my own residents stripped me of my title of golden goddess and gave the golden god title to Walter instead, so I see Walter's winning as not just expected, but inevitable. However, as he is returning to San Diego tomorrow, I think Chandlord is still in by default, since Blood of Lincoln cannot sustain itself with only three people.

Anyway, dinnertime was awesome; the boeuf bourguignon was fantastic, if I do say so myself, and I don't feel bad about serving leftovers because it was twice as good today as it was on Tuesday. More importantly, though, we had a wonderfully ridiculous time, culminating in some quality time looking up words in the Oxford Historical Thesaurus (which is actually amazingly fun if you're a complete dork, and pretty much the hit of the party - particularly after we discovered that 'raccooning' can mean to 'raccoon about', as though wandering like a raccoon in the dark; this resulted in us turning off the lights in the kitchen and then Jess going completely crazy while the rest of us couldn't stop laughing. Also, to be 'wampish' is to wave/toss one's arms about, which is pretty much all I do while telling stories, so apparently it's an integral part of who I am).

John and Jess eventually left because they have 'work' or some shit. After they left, Walter quite stoically said that he was willing to collage/brainstorm with me so that I could work on the plot for the next book, but I decided not to put him through that; instead, we watched "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which we had both seen many times, but had not seen recently. It was well worth the rewatch, and I'm eager to jump into my shamelessly lazy few weeks of movie watching and book reading as soon as I'm done with this synopsis. Now, though, I should probably sleep; Walter and I will likely eat something tomorrow morning and then he will take off, at which point my little week-long vacation ends and the fight to figure out the next book begins in earnest. Goodnight!