break the crack

Today was lovely - I did very little, and saw more people than I usually do (four! six if you count the waitresses at the cafe I usually go to for breakfast!), so it was a total win.

Well, it was also a loss; the Iowa State game didn't turn out as I would have wished. I got up around 8:30, messed around online, and eventually went to have brunch, where I sat at the bar and watched the end of the first half while catching up with the waitresses and exchanging texts with Adit about our mutually beloved Fred Hoiberg. Then, I came home and watched the second half, which made me sad (and also made me wonder whether I shouldn't watch, since they lose when I watch, even though clearly that level of coincidence is too stupid to make any decisions off of).

By the time I'd recovered from the game, I was running late for my main plan of the day - so I hastily showered, attempted to make myself look cute (or rather, put together an outfit that let me keep wearing my awesome new yellow loafers), and rushed out to meet up with Lauren (aka Subz) for an excursion to Clement Street. I know, no one ever goes to Clement Street (except for, like, the other half of the city that lives in the Richmond). But Lauren had asked me where I'd gotten the blue Mason-jar soap dispenser for my bathroom, and the answer was from a woman at a Fort Mason craft fair who has a small store at 6th and Clement (Foggy Notion). So, we went together and did as much damage as is possible to do in a small store in ten minutes. Then we spent a glorious hour in the sun, catching up and chatting about life and work and leadership and other fun Sunday afternoon topics.

We had to hustle back to the car when we realized I was about to get a parking ticket (I've still never gotten a parking ticket in all my years in SF...knock on wood), and then I came home, watched the Kansas game, painted my toenails, and talked to my parents (they're theoretically good, although in practice Iowa State had just lost and it was snowing, so I don't think they were having a great anniversary weekend). Then I had a chat with some romance writers for this workshop we're giving at RT. Then Terry came home from LA, so I caught up with her. Rather than ordering in supper, which I was tempted to do, I threw together whatever I could make from the dregs of my fridge/pantry, which resulted in a weird chili-like substance with hamburger, white cannellini beans, diced tomatoes, and green chiles. It was aight, but it won't win any awards.

But what *does* win an award is Family Time (tm). Adit got one step closer in his everlasting war with Vidya to beat her in my labeling scheme, since he's perpetually about 15 posts behind her in terms of number of appearances on zee blog. She's in India for the month, so he really should have capitalized, but he hasn't and I'm about to go out of town, so he may be doomed to stay the underdog. He and Priyanka came over at 8:30 for some family time, and the four of us watched the end of the Duke/Creighton game (and the final destruction of my bracket, since I had Creighton winning). We also had a v. family-time style moment when Adit found my old Xanga blog (remember that thing? it shut down in 2003) and read some passages and grilled me on whatever silly/strange angst/drama was going on ten years ago.

And then we all watched '60 Minutes', which was particularly good tonight - it featured the Pussy Riot case (yay for Russia being totally crazy - their official government spokesman basically said 'we know the world hates us for Pussy Riot and it's hurt our economy, but it would be more dangerous for us to look weak, so we have to imprison them'), the awful story of some guy whose life was derailed in high school when he ended up in prison for a rape he didn't commit and is now trying to make it onto a pro football team, and some ridiculous fluff piece that could have ended in us watching Anderson Cooper getting eaten by an alligator. There are apparently people who go out in Botswana and swim with Nile crocodiles, which are incredibly dangerous and not particularly friendly, and Priyanka summed it up when she said that this is stuff only white people would do. Ha.

Family time ended at ten, and then I messed around on zee internet for a bit before realizing I needed to go to bed immediately. And immediately has arrived...wish me luck with this 'job' thing I have to go to tomorrow. Goodnight!

to prove it i put it in a song

Hello. I realized today that perhaps my blog is not upbeat enough, since two different people asked me if I'm okay and if everything is all right because my blog is making me sound v. stressed and not particularly happy. Ha. And the answer is...I think I'm happy? But I launched my book too fast in an effort to take advantage of that Nook promo, which threw off my whole month, and trying to launch a book that I wasn't prepared to launch + get trained up in a job that I had not planned on having three months ago was a bit wearing, to say the least.

So, I think where I'm at is that I'm happy with how the book turned out and I'm happy with how my writing career has gone so far. Simultaneously, I am finding my new job interesting, and it may be something that I could be passionate about for a v. long time. These are all v. good things. But the lurking worry under all of that is that a) if I'm passionate about my job, it's easy for me to relapse into my old bad workaholic habits, and I need to find a way to stay centered and balanced, etc., since it took me a long time to get to even a baseline level of comfort with not being a workaholic. And b) I'm still v. passionate about my writing, which means that the temptation is to spend every non-dayjob moment working on the next book, which would be all well and good except c) I'm worried that I'm becoming a not-so-great friend (since I have emails stretching back months that I haven't answered) and am going to wake up in twenty years with fifty published novels attempting to fill the hole in my heart where meaningful relationships should have been.

What I'm trying to say is that if my blog sounds vaguely weird and not so enthused, fear not. I'm happy with the moment...perhaps I'm just borrowing trouble by thinking about how all of this plays into the future. But I'm sure I'll figure it out. And perhaps I'll figure it out before I give myself another ulcer, but we shall see.

When I wasn't shredding my stomach lining, however, today was lovely! I slept in, which was awesome, and then cleaned my room and showered before heading over to Morning Due for some quality time with my notebook. I am brainstorming new series ideas, and I came up with a bunch of ideas, some more valid than others - hopefully I can spend some more time on that task in the next couple of weeks. Then I met up with Katrina, whom I hadn't seen in decades; we grabbed coffee and sat in Alamo Square, which was gorgeous for an hour and then turned ridiculously foggy and cold. So I abandoned her and drove home, where it was still sunny, and so I wandered down Union Street for awhile. I got a new sim card for my new Nexus 4 phone, since my old phone was on its last legs (and accidentally called my parents in the middle of the night last night - oops), and then hit up Sephora for some makeup therapy.

I was going to have dinner at the bar at Nettie's Crab Shack on my way home, but they are closed for the week for vacation (I swear that place is a front for something - the food is probably my favorite on Union Street, but they never seem to be full, and who can afford to close a restaurant for vacation for a week?). So, I had a burger and a glass of wine at Roam, then came home and talked to [censored]. Then, I was going to do some marketing-type tasks, but I was feeling too tired to concentrate, so I started reading this book Lauren had recommended to me ("How Remarkable Women Lead"). So far so good, although I didn't love the rambling intro - we'll see what I think when I am a few more chapters in. But now, I really should sleep; I'd planned to go to sleep two hours ago, but I suppose going to bed at midnight is respectable. Goodnight!

make me come alive

Happy anniversary to my parents! I assume they are still happy to be married to each other. Also, while they had to go to a visitation tonight (boo), the Cyclones won (yay), so I assume they had a good anniversary.

I celebrated by wearing my new Iowa pendant, which I utterly adore - it's lucite, in the shape of Iowa, and makes me look like a total hipster. Granted, most people don't seem to know that it's Iowa; they just think it's a chunk of glass. How can you not know what shape Iowa is? I think I know every state shape, although I'll grant that Wyoming and Colorado would be impossible to tell apart in lucite shape format. And Iowa is just so lovely, with its two straight borders and its two river borders.

sssanyway, I'm rambling, because I decided to try to avoid starting my blog post with any reference of how tired or overworked I am. Ha. Today was good, though; I worked from home, which meant I could sleep until 8:30 and still start working at nine. I had a couple of calls, did some massive spreadsheet work, sent some emails, and took a break around 11:30 to run to the grocery store and get some food and coffee, since working from home is hard when there's no food in the house. I threw in the towel around five, though, and took a quick shower before walking down to Chestnut Street for dinner at Mezes (a Mediterranean place I'd been to once before).

The dinner plan was to meet up with several people from my team at work, since one of the girls suggested that those of us who live in the city go to an improv show together and we decided to grab dinner beforehand. So, four of us met up and discussed life over Greek food and a couple of bottles of wine, which was a lovely pre-improv interlude. Then, we went to Fort Mason and enjoyed a couple of hours of improv. It wasn't as good as the long-form improv I saw last year with Lauren/Terry/Nathan, but it was still really funny, and I should think to go more often since it's so close to me. Afterward, people wanted dessert, so we walked back to Union Street (conveniently only a couple of blocks from my apartment) and had dessert at American Cupcake, which I've walked by many times before and always ignored. My ice cream was good, and I heard good reports about the cupcakes, but the place still felt like too much of a scene to me. Clearly I am old.

Now, though, I must sleep; I have a million things to do, but I want to spend some quality time writing and socializing and not looking at screens this weekend, so we'll see how that goes. Goodnight!

just say yes

Another day, another endless reacquaintance with the Microsoft office suite. Yes, I should be using the Google online office products instead. However, when my skills at PowerPoint are rusty and my skills at Google Presentations are even rustier, and I have to get something out immediately, I'll take the enemy over the friend. Yes, I make bad life decisions based solely on current expediency - don't we all?

Anyway, I slept until seven, which was blissful (how sad is it that seven is blissful now? the 'me' from three months ago is sobbing hysterically in the darkest reaches of my heart right now), and actually had time to dry my hair and put on makeup and a dress and everything before catching the shuttle. I slogged on a spreadsheet all the way to work, then slogged some more, then spent what should have been my lunch break having a quick call with my agent (nothing to report, although we were discussing plans for the next year - it all went well, but I have a lot of writing to do...). Since I didn't actually have lunch, I suddenly realized at two p.m. that I was about to die if I didn't put away the spreadsheet and eat, so I grabbed a v. belated lunch in one of the cafes while continuing to work on powerpoint. I sent the first draft to my manager, had a quick chat with Heather (aka dear respected madam), and then got feedback back...but there wasn't time to incorporate it before I left, since I had dinner plans with the friendship renewal crew.

It was a bigger group than usual; it's rare that it's more than four, but Lizzie is in town for the week, and Sarah was able to make it for the first time in awhile, so Joann, Jane, Tolu and I had two more people than usual. We went to Fiesta (my fave) and had a v. lovely time catching up. Then, I drove Sarah back to the evil city with me (lovely, since a) I adore her and b) it kept me from falling asleep), dropped her off, and came home, where I stared at my laptop and tried to remember how to do the things I needed to do to finish this blasted deck (that part of me that is sobbing hysterically in the darkest reaches of my heart is also sad that when I say 'deck' now, it's more likely to reference a powerpoint presentation than a pirate ship).

But I'm all done, and the thing has been sent to the appropriate parties, and I'm going to go to bed before the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins. Actually, I'm predicting no wailing and gnashing other than my own, since I have no doubt they'll just ask me to dig up more info and make more slides, and I can do that in the morning. Goodnight!

turn and run when all i needed was the truth

I spent too many hours staring at a screen today. I made it to my nine a.m. meeting without incident, and since that meeting was a two-hour training-type thing where laptops weren't allowed, I at least got a break then (although I not-so-surreptitiously checked my phone too many times). But after that, the fun began - two different meetings with my boss, and the rest of the day spent slogging over spreadsheets until my eyes bled. I caught a shuttle around 6:30, made it home by 7:40, and ate some beef dish that I'd ordered from Munchery on Monday - and it was totally delish (Cuban beef with black beans), so I think I'm going to have to do this again next week.

After supper, I was theoretically going to take a break and not look at screens...but instead, I made a mug of chai, put some Craig on in the background, and slogged on personal stuff for the last three hours. This included starting a Kobo account and putting my books up there, which was surprisingly straightforward - they should be live in the next three days. I'm still beyond woefully behind on email, and my to-do list is still cringe-inducing (or stroke-inducing), but I'm slowly, slowly starting to feel like the end of this particular tunnel is in sight. I'm sure I will feel differently after I take a week off, since I'll be out of town for a week for Puerto Rico/Vegas...but I can keep pretending for now.

And now, I must sleep - I'm predicting more spreadsheets in my future tomorrow, so resting my eyes is imperative. Goodnight!

guaranteed to blow your mind

If yesterday was all work and no play, today was mostly the opposite. Granted, I got to work early - not early enough, as it turns out, since my boss made the bold move of emailing me at 7:30 to ask if I could stand in for him at a 9am meeting. Luckily, I was leaving my apartment then, but since it took an hour and twenty minutes to get to work, I didn't have time to grab breakfast before the meeting. First world problems, I know. So I sat through the meeting, ate some string cheese and a granola bar, sped to another meeting, came back and slogged for forty-five minutes, and then had lunch with the recruiter who got me in the door, which was lovely. Then I worked for another hour before packing it in and going bowling with our team as an offsite. It wasn't really an offsite, since there's a bowling alley on campus, but it was still fun even if I'm not a very good bowler.

Post bowling, I caught a shuttle home and walked in the door at six p.m., which was exactly the time I promised Terry I would be home. I took care of some stuff around the house, including opening a package of jewelry I'd ordered from fab.com (point a: having a job is dangerous; point b: I'm a hipster, if my jewelry tastes are any indication). My taste is impeccable, if I do say so myself. Or at least it's impeccable if you like lucite pendants in the shape of the state of Iowa, or earrings made out of typewriter strikers (mine have the letter 's' on them so I can wear them as both my real self and my romance alter ego), or an awesome silver cuff bracelet engraved with a map of the London Underground. Hot.

Eventually, though, Terry and I went to Des Amis for steak and wine to celebrate (belatedly) my third book coming out. It was so very anticlimactic when it came out, since it sort of released three weeks before I had intended for it to, and so I never really had time to celebrate it or appreciate that I was done. Sadness. But it is kind of shocking to me that I've written three books, and it was nice to acknowledge it. So we drank wine and talked about work and recounted our favorite romance novels ever, etc., and it was all v. nice. And now I really should go to bed; I expect traffic will suck tomorrow since it looks like it will be raining, and since I have another nine a.m. meeting I really need to get out the door sooner. Goodnight!

i want your love and i want your revenge

My work day was totally brutal - I managed to get on a shuttle at 7:30, was in the office by 8:30, grabbed some breakfast, and then slogged until 4:30 with only a lunch break to talk to an aspiring writer about how I accomplished what I've accomplished so far. And when I say I slogged, I actually mean I slogged - eyes glazed over, barely able to hear anything around me slogging, without even really stopping to check my email or do anything else. I ran out the door to catch the 4:45 shuttle, and then I continued slogging all the way to the city. I know, so industrious.

But when I got home, I vowed not to open my laptop until it was time to blog. I didn't quite succeed in not checking my addictive little phone screens (even more dangerous now that I have a work phone and a personal phone), but I didn't open my laptop or do anything else screen-related. Instead, I tidied up the kitchen, read the copy of Romance Writers Report (the RWA monthly magazine) that showed up today (which I never read - I have a whole pile of them that I've been meaning to get through), and ate supper. I tried this new delivery startup, Munchery, which coordinates across a bunch of chefs to deliver tasty/local/organic meals, and it worked perfectly - food showed up as scheduled and was way better (and more meaty/gluten-free) than I can get with standard takeout. I thought the sauce on the dish I had tonight was a bit too salty, but I may think that because I have a feeling the Goog is trying to cut our salt intake and I'm probably less salt-acclimated than I was two months ago. But if I had cooked tonight, it would have been tuna salad instead of beef/potatoes/broccolini, and the meal only cost $13 (an abomination in Iowa, but cheap in SF), so I'm definitely going to use them again (maybe all the time).

Post munching, I spent a couple of quality hours nursing a cup of tea and thinking some more about Alex and Prudence - I made several pages of notes, and came up with some ridiculous theories and ideas that I'm sure will end up getting cut. I also considered my serialization idea that I came up with last night and am still debating whether anyone would read a serial and whether I can write it fast enough/good enough/funny enough to sustain it. Decisions, decisions. But spending some quiet time writing tonight rather than continuing to hunch over my keyboard was definitely a good idea, even if I'm still stressing over the story. Goodnight!

mama said knock you out

After what was, in most respects, a fairly shitty weekend, I am suddenly in an excellent mood (perhaps even clothed in immense power, to quote my favorite movie trailer line from 'Lincoln', a film I never bothered to see). Not that there was any good reason why my weekend was shitty; I'm sure my red-wine hangover yesterday morning didn't help matters, since it destroyed my Saturday. But I was in a pretty foul mood for the past two days, and tried to avoid people so that I wouldn't get all snappish with them (a plan that mostly worked, unless you have to live with me). I think I was in a foul mood because I'm trying to plot out my writing goals and work goals and ALL THE GOALS for the next year and I can't quite do it because I don't quite know what my day job is and I also don't quite know whether my writing goals should continue as is (write a novel every nine months), or attempt to speed up (write a novel every six months), or go into overdrive (write a novel every six to nine months, plus some serialized stuff in between). And I can't decide the writing goals until I know the day job goals. And then I worry about becoming my old workaholic self, which only differed from my new workaholic self in that my new self was working for me and no one was paying for the health insurance necessary to deal with my workaholic-induced ulcers. Ha.

sssanyway, with all that uncertainty around goals, and with all my brooding over feeling trapped and settled and old, I was overdue for a couple of days of surly hermitville. However, I attempted to drag myself out of my surly mood today, and I walked down to Fort Mason to write for a couple of hours. I didn't write any fiction, but I did write several pages of notes about Prudence, and I felt like I made some real progress. Unfortunately, that progress led me straight to the realization that I need to do a lot of research for this story, so perhaps I need to spend the next month reading about the antiquities collecting world in Britain 1800-1820 (if any of you know of any resources on this, which I'm sure you don't, let me know). But writing made me feel better, and walking in the sun helped as well, so yay to that.

When I got home, I messed around with Photoshop some more (Prudence's cover is almost done!), then talked to the parents. Then I grabbed a burger down the street before coming home and talking to Terry for awhile, since I was in just enough of a better mood that I wouldn't inadvertently stab her in the face with my surliness. Then I came upstairs, messed around a bit more, and was struck with a sudden and blinding flash of insight about the whole Muses series...and so I spent an hour and a half brainstorming it. Let's just say that it involves serialization and Ferguson/Ellie's twin sisters...but I'm not going to say anything more than that because there's a good chance it won't happen because I may not be able to write the serial plan + Prudence's book in the next nine months (although I would love to try). Right now, though, I should probably sleep so that my subconscious can finally come out and scream at me that I need to focus on what I can do now, not add to my ridiculously Puritanical sense of guilt by piling more tasks on my to-do list that I can never accomplish. We all know the Puritan is going to win, but I can at least let my subconscious try to talk me into being a little more realistic. Goodnight!

try to stay away but you can't forget

My Friday took a strange left turn, which I should have expected, but it somehow blindsided me. I worked from home today, which was glorious; saving three hours of bus time is always welcome, and since I had no meetings that required my physical presence, it was a good day to work from home. Of course, the bad part of this was that my complex shut of water for ~4hrs in the middle of the day, but it was still better to live sans water than it was to take the bus.

I was quite productive from home, if I do say so myself, but I cut out at five to meet Terry at a bar full of old people and watch the ISU/Kansas game. It did not end as I had hoped, and because it didn't end as I had hoped, I had a steak and three glasses of wine. Properly inebriated, I berated Terry over her bedding choices, then went over to John and Jess's, where they were having some people over for dinner and game-playing. I didn't partake of any of the dinner, since I was beyond full of steak, but I did partake of wine (of course). The game was 'The Resistance', which is like mafia, and it was quite fun even if people mostly weren't paying attention. Anthony and Dormain were there, as were Barbara and her boyfriend (I hadn't seen Barbara in years, but it was good to see her again), and Adit and Priyanka (and Priyanka's sister) showed up at some point. This was bad for me, since Adit knew I was a spy (aka mafia) both times, but luckily he left and I was able to pursue my nefarious schemes. I stayed over there until one, and when it became clear that I wasn't going to convince anyone to go to a bar (probably a good call), I came home.

And now I must sleep; I want to write tomorrow, since I'm itching to work on Alex and Prudence, but I don't know whether it will be some desultory brainstorming or an all-day write-fest at Stanford library. We shall see, we shall see. Goodnight!

fallen empires

I'm kind of annoyed with myself that I'm not more interesting. That's of course not the real issue. The real issue is, perhaps, that I'm chafing against having commitments, even though I like having paychecks. And I'm feeling antsy about Alex and Prudence, even though it's unlikely that I would have started writing their story yet even if I didn't have a job. And I'm feeling antsy about my job, and wanting to accomplish all the millions of things I want to accomplish there, even though I know that ambition at work is inversely correlated to the amount of time I'll have to do my own thing.

I suppose that I'm feeling that vague sense of unease that I always feel when I suddenly feel like I've walked myself into a trap. Not that I'm trapped - and, if I'm trapped, I'm trapped in the most gilded of cages. But I'm committed to this job, and I'm committed to writing the next x books in this series, and I'm committed to my apartment because SF has gotten too expensive to move elsewhere. And all this commitment makes me want to blow everything up, chop off my hair, and go off the grid. But I won't, which I guess means that I'm growing up...which is another weight to add to the list of reasons why I want to blow everything up.

sssanyway. I worked all day, although it wasn't that brutal because I took my 8:30 meeting from home and then caught a 9:30 shuttle. I spent the day slogging, caught a 6:30pm shuttle, was home by 7:30, and had a burger and a glass of wine with Terry. Then I came home and was going to write in my journal, but instead redid the blue cover for the paperback version of MARQUESS, since I decided that using pink on the spine was too hard to read and I wanted to make it white (but had failed to save the correct version of Photoshop with editable text layers, so I had to recreate the whole thing). And now, I should sleep; I have to slog tomorrow, and I want to write this weekend, and I need to do all these things without going off the grid. Goodnight!

i can't go for that, no, no can do

If I want to avoid having to run to catch the shuttle, as I did this morning, I need to go to bed immediately. This morning didn't really matter; I was trying to catch the 7:25, but could have just as easily waited for the 7:35 with no harm done. But I have a meeting tomorrow morning that I would like to make it to, and that requires catching one earlier than either of those...which, given how much I like to sleep and how much I hate to wake up, could be a challenge.

Anyway, I slogged all day today in a v. serious and dedicated fashion, although I took a break to have lunch with Can (and the walk to and from helped to clear my head, even if my moccasins aren't made for a lot of trudging after running to catch the shuttle in them). I caught an early-ish shuttle, but I worked all the way back and then had a conference call from eight to nine - it's almost like I'm up to my old tricks! But the rest of the week looks a little more forgiving, which is good since I have grand plans to write this weekend.

Now, though, I must sleep, and dream up a way to be wildly successful at both my day jobs while still having time to socialize and sleep and occasionally do some laundry. Goodnight!

films about ghosts

I'm quite tired, but I can't tell whether it's a) daylight saving, b) residual post-bronchitis lethargy, c) stress from returning to the man, d) stress from publishing a book, e) the shuttle lifestyle, f) eating mostly low-carb, g) some combination of the above, which would actually be rather understandable, now that I've quantified it. I got ready with a lot of haste this morning, and managed to catch a shuttle thirty-five minutes after I got out of bed, which is a feat I don't want to repeat tomorrow. I got to work before nine, so I spent half an hour in a cafe eating breakfast and brainstorming Alex and Prudence - perhaps getting up early and writing before work (or at work, but before work hours) is the way to go. Of course, we've all heard me say I plan to get up early before and it never happens, but we shall see.

The rest of the day was a pretty brutal slog, with a break to have lunch with John. I left the office at 5:25 with plans to work on the shuttle, but the traffic was too stop-and-go to work without getting sick, and the guy in the seat beside me was annoying me, so I dozed off instead. When I got home, I had dinner with Terry; a steak and a glass of wine went a long way to cure what ails me. Then I came home, did the two work-related things that I really needed to get done tonight, and am going to pack it in right now so that I can get up at a decent hour tomorrow and get cracking again. Yes, I realize this post sounds like all the posts I used to write when I worked for the man. No, I don't want to hear it. Goodnight!

i dream i never know anyone at the party and i'm always the host

I had intended to go to bed an hour ago (yes, I realize that's the opposite of what usually happens during the transition to daylight saving time), but I ended up brainstorming Alex and Prudence for an hour, so I'll take it. I'm so far away from knowing how that book is going to turn out; Ellie was almost fully developed in my head before I started writing, and so it in some ways felt easy (even though it was not an easy book to write for a whole host of reasons). Then again, I just remembered that I had absolutely no clue at all about Nick's character, since he'd never been in any of the other books - at least Alex and Prudence have both been around for the last three books, so I have some vague slivers of character to go on. I'm trying not to freak out about this book and spend some time doing my due diligence on the plot, but as we all know, I'm not always good at being kind to myself and giving myself time to relax, so this plan is not going very well right now.

However, today was good; I made it into the office before nine, grabbed breakfast in an attempt to wake myself up, and slogged for several hours (with a break to have lunch with the team, yay). Then, I got an ergonomic evaluation, which seems like a silly thing to spend time on, but given that I'm so short, nothing ever fits the way it should. So, they're setting me up with a new desk chair, and the facilities people are going to lower my desk and install a keyboard tray, and it's all going to be smashing (and less strain-inducing for my shoulders). Since the ergonomics lab is in the same building where I catch my shuttle, I went straight home after that (carrying the keyboard and mouse they gave me, so it probably looked like I was making off with company property, but I'm taking it back in the morning). When I got here, it was still light out (lovely!), and I spent some quality time cleaning the kitchen before making eggs with peppers and chorizo for supper. Terry got home around then, so we hung out for a bit before I ran out to take care of an errand before bedtime.

And now that you're all caught up on the useless minutiae of my day, I should sleep. I made a list of everything I have to do tomorrow/this week, and it is daunting - but there's a lot more on the work list, which is actually a good thing since it means I'm getting ramped up and more engaged (or something). Goodnight!

bittersweet symphony

This weekend has involved more hanging out than my last several weeks put together (unless you count Tahoe, I suppose, but since I got bronchitis directly after that I've sort of forgotten that lovely interlude). Today was almost entirely hanging out, which I didn't exactly anticipate, but I think I'm glad for my sanity that I just leaned in and seized the day (do you think Sheryl wants us to lean in to our social lives too?).

The day started with sleeping until almost eleven, which was v. necessary. Then, I did some desultory grooming, etc., and Terry and I went over to the general Dolores Park area to grab lunch at one of my favorite cafes before going to a birthday party. The cafe was great, and I definitely had a pang of missing my previously carefree cafe lifestyle (even if these cafes are ones I have to pay for, where the cafes I eat in now are all free and mostly excellent). Post-cafe, we went to the park for Dan's birthday party. It was, quite ridiculously, set up in the midst of Bear Fest (or some such named event). If you're not in the know (because you haven't lived in SF or you didn't spend six months getting paid to review porn ads), you can read more about bears on wikipedia - suffice it to say they have nothing to do with ursine mammals and everything to do with large, hairy gay men, many of whom seem to enjoy being shirtless and growing beards and occasionally wearing leather. Dan had apparently gotten there and staked out an area in the park well before the bears showed up, but they set up all around us in an effort to seize the territory, and we refused to leave, so there was a cautious, if frosty, standoff for the rest of the afternoon.

But the party was delightful, even if I did see some dude (not a bear) lying on the ground and peeing into the grass (luckily for him, he was peeing downhill, but I didn't appreciate the visual, particularly since I saw it right as I was calling my mother to tell her that I wasn't dead even though I hadn't called at my usual hour). We hung out for several hours drinking wine and scotch, and I made some new friends (shocking, I know), and it was a perfect day to be in the park. Terry left at some point, as did John and Jess, but I went back to Dan's house (two blocks away) and played Cards Against Humanity for a little bit.

Sadly, I had to bounce, and I made it over to Adit and Priyanka's in time to have dinner with them at Nopalito. Dinner was tasty, and the company was delightful, even if it did remind me that I had dream last night that I had gone to work at Facebook and was trying to find a sweatshirt in the FB onsite store so that I could fit in there. Heh. They were v. kind and drove me home, which was lovely since I would have had to take a cab instead, so my day ended on a v. lovely note. And now, properly rejuvenated by a weekend of extroversion, I'm going to return to my introversion and try to get massive amounts of stuff done this week - wish me luck. Goodnight!

it's all been a pack of lies

I'm too tired to blog coherently, and I wish I could have gone to bed hours ago, so bear with me. I spent most of today being moderately relaxed; I say 'moderately' because even though I sat on the couch to be relaxed, I spent most of that time looking up research books for Alex and Prudence's story, and writing a newsletter to my fans announcing that the first two books in the series are only sale for only $0.99 for a limited time. Yay!

Eventually, though, I had to stop pretending to be relaxing and get ready for a dinner party. So, I took a bubble bath (lovely - why don't I take them more than once every six months), dried my hair, put on some makeup, and drove to the hated east by to have a birthday dinner for Heather (aka dear respected madam). One of her friends through it, and it was totally lovely - the decorations were great, the decor was amazing, and the food was delicious. But it's also clear to me that I'm becoming more of an introvert as I age - I had a great time, but I'm definitely glad to be home. Goodnight!

your words are empty air

I'm super sleepy; while I was able to sleep later than I might have since I worked from home today, I still got up at eight, and that was about two hours earlier than I wanted to get up considering that I read two books last night. It also may not help that I had two drinks with Terry, but let's pretend that has nothing to do with it. I spent the day slogging, with a lunch break to grab some sustenance down the street since I no longer keep any food in the house. Sometime in mid/late afternoon, I ran out to get my brows waxed and my bangs trimmed, and then I came home and worked until fiveish. Then, I hung out with Terry; she got back from Austin/SXSW yesterday, so we had much to catch up on. We did so over dinner at the fish place down the street, which was as tasty and wonderful as always. And then, I came home, procrastinated for two hours, and am now going to go to sleep.

As for tomorrow, I should have made plans to get up early and go to my romance meeting, but I have decided firmly that the proper course of action is to sleep in, wallow in my freshly remade bed, ignore all other pretensions towards work, and either read a book or walk down to the water and brainstorm Alex and Prudence. I know, Alex and Prudence sound like work. But at this point, after a month of not really writing anything, it sounds rather glorious to struggle with a story again rather than spending ten hours messing around with Photoshop or taking care of marketing activities. Goodnight!

lose sight of the ground and you throw her out

I'm thoroughly wrecked...which I suppose it to be expected, since I worked a full eight-hour day and also read two full-length romance novels to finish judging this contest. Ha. The first one was terrible, and I got through in it approximately three hours (one hour on the shuttle and two hours at dinner, not caring who saw me reading a paranormal romance with a not-very-subtle cover). Post-dinner, I drove home, took about ten minutes off, and then read the second one straight through in approximately four hours. That one, I must say, was excellent - I definitely saved the best of my batch for last, which was good since I needed a superhuman effort to get through this without just throwing in the towel and going to sleep. But it's done and my scores are submitted, so I can go to bed with a clear conscience.

And now, to sleep. I have plans this weekend, one of which is my monthly romance writer meeting - but I find myself very loath to go, since it would require getting up at 7:30 a.m. (my enemy), and then either staying in Berkeley all day or driving home and then turning around to drive back for a birthday dinner Saturday night. I want to see my romance buddies, but then again, it would be nice to curl up with a book that I'm not required to judge, or do some scribbling on the gargoyles or Alex and Prudence, or hit up Sephora for some palliative cosmetics, or really anything that isn't officially on either my out-of-control work to-do list or my out-of-control personal to-do list. Decisions, decisions. Goodnight!

it's the song that burns

Today was quite busy; I had to be at work by nine for a meeting (the horror), and then I slogged hard and fast so that I could skip out at 11:45 to see my CPA. Sadly, I thought I had to leave at 11:45, when really I was supposed to be there at 11:45 - but I realized it on the way out the door and called ahead, so she ordered my entree for me so that we wouldn't have to wait during the lunch rush. Also luckily, I'm only ten minutes away, so I wasn't that late, but it was still embarrassing. Then I went back to the office and totally overloaded on sugar; I haven't been eating much sugary stuff recently, but I made the ill-advised choice of getting an earl grey milk tea from Verde since I hadn't had one in forever, and then someone on the team was celebrating something and there were amazing cupcakes from Kara's Cupcakes - and the girl who picked them up got me a gluten-free one, which was impossible to resist even though I think all that sugar gave me a smashing headache afterward.

So, I slogged the rest of the afternoon, grabbed an early shuttle, and made it home in under an hour - it's a new record. Once home, I took out the trash, did some delicate-cycle laundry, took care of tings, made myself an open-faced sandwich (which sounds so much more classy than just saying I had tuna salad with Miracle Whip on toast), and read a romance novel for the contest I'm judging. I'm supposed to be done tomorrow and I still have two books left, so I'm not sure how that will happen - but at least one of the two is definitely a stinker, given the first two chapters that I've already read, so I plan to skim it on the way to work tomorrow and see whether it manages to suck me in or whether my initial assessment is correct. If I manage to stick to that plan, I can read the other tomorrow night and be done with it. I'm slowly reaching the tail end of this crazy book-launch period, so I'm hoping that with some quality mix of work and relaxation this weekend I can emerge on the other side slightly saner and more ready to focus on the next phase of all my projects. Yay, I guess. Goodnight!

like the future was supposed to be

I need to go to bed right away if I'm going to make it to work as early as I'd like to tomorrow. Today was good, though, even if I did spend every non-work/non-social moment reconciling receipts. I went to work (and did receipts all the way in), slogged quickly and efficiently all day so that I could take a break and have a nice old-school lunch with people who were at the Goog ten years ago (!), and left a little before six to have dinner with Heather (aka dear respected madam). Then, I came home, thought about going to bed immediately, and instead virtuously finished processing all my receipts. I really need to start doing a better job with receipts than just dumping them in a file (or labeling them 'taxes' in one of my five email accounts). But that's a task for another day - right now, I need to sleep. Goodnight!

i was born under a wandering star

Sorry (not sorry) for not blogging last night - I hit the wall really hard, and I couldn't bear the idea of opening my laptop. Yesterday was lovely, up to a point; I woke up after only six hours of sleep to have brunch with Lauren (aka Subz) and Terry at a place near Lauren's house. The food was delish (I had an open omelette with pulled pork and salsa), and the company even moreso, but the wait was quite long (although we were able to fortify ourselves with lattes from down the street). After brunch, I came home, did a couple of hours of work, took Terry to the airport, came home and called my parents, and then hit the wall. I'm so sick of staring at screens and troubleshooting technical issues and slogging through an endless to-do list, and it doesn't help that those descriptions apply to both my writing and zee day job right now. So, I took last night off. And that means I stared at the wall, took a nap, watched an hour and a half of nothing and more nothing on YouTube (on my phone - I was too lazy to find my laptop or one of my other five devices), and then went to be.

But I also spent an hour or so daydreaming of gargoyles - I got all my old gargoyle notebooks out and read through some notes, since that book is purely fun and entertainment right now, not something I must do. I spent some more time brainstorming today, and on the way home from work I read part of 'Plague: A Very Short Introduction' (yes, this is my idea of a break). Work itself was good; I got a lot of sleep last night, worked from home for a couple of hours, and then drove down in time for lunch so that I could have my car down there this week, which is a system that seems to work well for me. I left the office around six, got home around seven, made some tuna salad (so glamorous), tried to procrastinate for a bit, and then sorted three months' worth of mail and started organizing my receipts for my taxes. Boo. At least I watched some "Project Runway" while working on that inglorious task. Now, though, I'm going to go to bed rather than slog - I'm trying to be a bit more even-keeled this week so that I don't reach the weekend reeling in a state of utter exhaustion. Goodnight!

how many times can i break til i shatter

I stayed up way, way too late, but I suppose that was to be expected given how much I wanted to get done today. I woke up sometime after nine, showered, dressed up in something relatively cute (in an effort to remember that I had work to do), and ate some leftover steak from last night's dinner. Then, I slogged for eight hours to create the print version of Marquess. Needless to say, this task was mindnumbingly tedious. I took a break sometime to run to the store and grab some gluten free bread so that I could make peanut butter toast, and cream so that I could make coffee (and I seemed to have perfected the French press, after reading a couple of articles that strongly recommended weighing the beans and going for a precise bean:water ratio - this was the best coffee I've made at home, even if I don't have an expensive burr grinder like they say I need). But the day was divided between creating the interior of the book in InDesign (which is not as simple as just copying and pasting from word, if you want everything to look great and you don't want to have page numbers on pages with chapter headings, etc.), and creating the cover image in Photoshop (my cover designer gave me a significant discount because I said I would do the fonts myself, but this meant I also had to figure out how to do the spine).

In some ways, my strong self-confidence in my ability to figure out anything is a curse; it makes me too likely to sign up for stuff, such as saying that I could do the back cover design when I barely know Photoshop. But I think it turned out okay - we'll find out when I get the proof in a couple of days. Then, I created another stupid cover for the book, based on the original red cover that my first cover artist did, so that a few staunch supporters of the original cover can get a covert copy of that book to match the first two, even though they're going to have to break the habit at some point since there will not be a matching cover for Prudence and Alex. But even though that other cover was designed already, the back cover copy changed significantly enough that I had to do a hacking type fix on the jpg (where hacking implies usage of an ax, not l33t programming skillz).

Needless to say, by 6:30 I was just as bored with myself as you are now. But I got all the files uploaded to CreateSpace, so that was a major task off my plate. Next up is redoing the print covers for Heiress and Scotsmen so everything matches and no one buys the old covers in the future...but that's a task that can wait until I see the proof for Marquess and know whether I created a gem or a travesty.

At 6:30, though, I threw in the towel, and Terry and I walked down to Chestnut Street (home of the biggest scene in this neighborhood) to grab dinner. I suggested Delarosa, so we put our names in there, were told it would be forty-five minutes, and decided to grab wine down the street while we waited. But we were only halfway through our first glasses (including an awesome zinfandel for me, since zin continues to have a moment with me) when Delarosa called and said our table was ready. Crazy. So we went back, had inferior second glasses of wine, but had excellent food - we split the eggplant burrata, the polenta, the meatballs, and an awesome pork dish. We'd also ordered a salad, but that was clearly too much, and they boxed it for us without either of us ever touching it. I also broke down and had some bread, which was amazingly good - not sure whether it was good because it was truly good or because I can't remember the last time I had real bread, but either way, it was worth the punishment I have surely earned. When we got home, I immediately abandoned Terry and read another book for the contest I'm judging - it was better than any I've read so far, by one of the authors I used to read pretty regularly, but I always thought her plots were kind of slow and this one was way slow for the number of pages she used. Still, at least I enjoyed it. And now I must go to bed - with the print book out of the way, I can devote all of tomorrow to another fun topic (organizing a year's worth of receipts for my taxes). Goodnight!

roll a new love over

Today was long, but lovely. I was definitely dragging this morning; I had intended to catch the 7:15 shuttle, but ended up on the 7:35 shuttle, sans caffeine because I forgot to set up my teamaker last night. But traffic was great, and I looked respectable since I wore a v. Frenchish nautical-like skirt and top, and I blow-dried my hair, which has been increasingly rare. So, I rolled into the office at 8:45, grabbed breakfast, and slogged all day, with a nice break to have lunch with Heather (aka dear respected madam), Alaska Matt, his wife Alaska Kia, and their baby (Cali Ollie? not sure if he qualifies as Alaskan, despite his birthright). I also paused to have a v. long argument with someone about ebook discovery - not an important argument, since we were discussing hypotheticals, but one that riled me up nonetheless, since I like to get riled up about nonsense. Sadly, while my passion and industry expertise are high, my patience and new-hire credibility are low, so I'm going to have to keep engaging in this delicate balancing act between stating my opinions and biting my tongue until I've earned some respect and can unleash the beast (may God have mercy on their souls).

sssanyway, I left work shortly after five and made my slow, treacherous journey across the surface streets of the peninsula to meet up for dinner with Terry and her family in Palo Alto. Her parents are in town to see a student production of 'Othello' that her youngest brother is directing at Stanford, and since she and her other brother were going with them to see the play, they invited me to join them. I firmly and unwaveringly declined to see the play, but I joined them for dinner, which was lovely (both for the company and for the ribeye). Then, I drove home, checked my email, ignored my email as per usual, and read one of the books that I needed to judge this weekend. Verdict: decent characters and kept me engaged, but the writing was fairly poor and the conflict was underdeveloped to the point of being nonsensical. But I finished it and half-enjoyed it, so it wasn't a bad way to spend a few hours.

Now, though, I must sleep - I must do all the things this weekend, but I think ten hours of sleep is necessary first. Goodnight!

the bleeding love, the silent escape

I'm full-on exhausted...so much for taking it easy this week. But I slogged a full day at work, and slogged for a couple of hours before work to test the new epub/kindle files for Heiress and Scotsmen on all my devices, and start formatting the print version of Marquess since I'm woefully behind on that and want to get it in processing this weekend. Blergh. I'm 97% happy with my decision to self-publish, but the other 3% is a mixture of annoyance/regret that no editor loved me enough to buy me (yes, my self-worth is inextricably linked to what I've written), plus the exhaustion that comes from having to do all the hours and hours and days and weeks of work to create the whole reading experience rather than just writing the damn book and being done with it. I'm actually really good at the packaging aspect, and I'm pretty efficient at it...but I'm totally exhausted from it too. I'm hoping that I'll be done with all these stupid little tasks in the next few days so that I can focus on Alex and Prudence...

...but then I realized that I had blocked off this weekend in my head to a) read five books that I have to judge for a contest AND b) do my taxes AND c) format the print version of Marquess AND d) take a break. Hahahahahahahaha.

sssanyway. Today was brutal, since I slogged nonstop, then tried to catch a bus home, which was delayed ten minutes for mechanical issues. Since I think it was the same bus (or at least same time) as the bus that broke down on me earlier this week, there was no way in hell I was getting on it. So, I went to In-and-Out and had a protein-style double-double, which was slightly restorative. Then I worked at work for an hour. Then I tried to catch another bus, which was also ten minutes late, and which took well over an hour to get me home since traffic sucked.

By the time I arrived, I was in no mood to look at a screen, so I talked to Terry briefly, and then read a Christmas novella (not my usual cup of tea, but I have to judge it for that contest, and I actually really enjoyed it). And now I must sleep so that I can get up and do all of this again tomorrow - goodnight!

she's walking on fire

I should have gone to bed two hours ago, but sleeping for an hour on the shuttle gave me a second wind, which I put to good use reformatting my first two books. Since my attempt last night ended in utter failure, I started from scratch and formatted both books myself so that I can make changes whenever my heart desires going forward - and it looks like this attempt was far more successful. I need to check them on my devices just to be sure, which I will do tomorrow, but i'm glad that task is done.

The rest of my day was not noteworthy. I made it to the 7:50 shuttle, got to the office by nine, grabbed breakfast, and slogged all day (with a break to have lunch with Amy Mac, one of my coworkers from ye olden days). Then, I had dinner with Terry at Fiesta del Mar, since she was down in MTV for some work stuff, and it was extremely tasty, as always. Rather than drive back with a full belly, I dropped my car off at work and took the shuttle home (and took the aforementioned nap), and then spent the last three hours staring intently at my computer and formatting my books. And now, I must sleep; I need to slog more tomorrow, and getting up is going to be brutal if I don't go to bed immediately. Goodnight!

you live for the fight when that's all that you got

I must go to bed immediately - today was mostly positive, since I got to the office early, got a lot done, and had lunch with Becky and Christine in Palo Alto, but it took a strongly negative turn after I left the office. I left at five, thinking I'd get home and get some stuff done...but then the bus broke down halfway to the city, and we had to wait over half an hour to get picked up by another bus, which was already half-full. Luckily, I got one of the last available seats, leaving behind the poor fools who didn't get seats; unluckily, it was in the very back row, wedged in between two dudes, which was both extremely uncomfortable and mildly carsickness-inducing. I read for a little bit just to take my mind off my discomfort, but I had to stop as we approached the city. So, two hours after I left work, I was exceedingly glad to make it home.

Once I got home, though, there was no time for a break; I have so much to do, and so little time, and so I worked on covers and ebook formatting until now. I wanted to change HEIRESS and SCOTSMEN slightly to have updated buy links and to add the new cover plus excerpts of my other books, but since I paid someone to format those books, the source code isn't something that I can easily edit on my own. In fact, while those dudes are supposedly the tops in the industry and were recently bought out by another epublishing group, I'm rather unimpressed with their code. So, after spending two hours on it tonight, and after all of my attempts to load the new files onto my many and varied devices failed, I decided that I'm going to reformat HEIRESS and SCOTSMEN from scratch so that I can control the files going forward. This is good in the long run, but annoying in the short run, and I don't have time to do it tonight. Instead, I must go to bed so that I can get up in the morning and do all of this again (hopefully without the bus breakdown, since I might shank someone if that happens again). Goodnight!

up on the hill across the blue lake

I have absolutely nothing of importance to say (do I ever?) - I slept a lot, woke up, drove to work, slogged all day (while trying not to fall asleep at my desk), and took the shuttle home. Then I ate some leftover thai food, contemplated my to-do list, and instead looked up pictures of dresses from last night's Oscars. And now I'm going to crawl into bed and write in my journal for a bit; I used to journal pretty consistently, but it's been years since I was in the habit, and I'm feeling the urge tonight. Maybe I'm feeling the urge because I haven't written any fiction in a couple of weeks either - I'm itching to get started on Prudence, but I need to wrap up the last bits of work on formatting and promoting Nick and Ellie first. Blergh. But sleeping tonight is probably a better idea than staying up until four a.m. toying with photoshop, given that I wrote "SLEEP AND DON'T GET PNEUMONIA" on my to-do list. Sage advice, Sara. Goodnight!

fugue in some key or another

I shouldn't have left the house today. I should have stayed holed up, sleeping and coughing and working and coughing, and tried to rest in anticipation of going back to work tomorrow. Instead, I was lured out by that usual siren's call...Adit hit me up to see if I wanted to grab lunch, and I of course said yes because I was itching to leave the house and pretend that I'm all better. He had heard that I was sick, and since he wasn't feeling well himself, he suggested soup. But when I met up with him around 12:30, it turned out three more people were coming (including the lovely Katrina, so that was great), and the place we went to refused to seat us after we stood there for awhile, so we had to drive to another place, and then walk around some more, and then eat Vietnamese rice noodles (which were v. tasty, but not enough to rejuvenate my lungs). Then Katrina parted ways with us, and we walked even more to get superfluous ice cream before I got a ride back to my car.

The upshot is that I'm still glad I went out, and it was great to hang out and have some fun and take a break and etc., etc. - but even though I feel leagues better than I felt last week, I'm still pathetically weak and need to keep from pushing myself. So I got home at 3:30, called my parents, and then spent the rest of the night watching Oscars stuff with Terry - which was fun, but was not one of the hundred things on my to-do list I should have done tonight. C'est la vie. I was going to get up and go to work super early tomorrow and get a head start on catching up, but now that I realized how ridiculously stupid that idea is, I'm going to sleep until 7:45 and plan to roll into the office by ten (which is when the rest of my team gets there anyway). And maybe someday I'll stop whining about bronchitis, but it's not tonight. Goodnight!

to everything, turn, turn, turn

On a whim, I checked my blog for last February to see what I was up to and whether I've made any progress. And I discovered that, this time last year, I was in the midst of a mad scramble to get HEIRESS up and marketed everywhere after the Nook promo ended, while simultaneously recovering from a terrible cold/losing my voice after going to LA for a reader event. This was preceded, ten days earlier, by getting drunk with Adit and having to abandon my car after staying out with him until four in the morning (a night that involved karaoke, but ended with a drunken trip to Sparky's diner rather than cheese and egg sandwiches at his house). Clearly my Februaries follow a distinct pattern, and clearly I haven't learned from it.

sssanyway. I tried to pretend that I felt great today. I got up, showered, dried my hair (until I was too fatigued to keep drying), and put on a dress, thinking that putting on a dress instead of pajamas would trick myself into feeling well. Then, I went down the street to have breakfast, but the walk winded me (which it shouldn't, since I walked approximately a block), and I only ate half my breakfast instead of the 90% I can usually consume. Then I came home and chained myself to my desk. And, actually, I got through a lot of stuff that I had needed to do for awhile - I made a comprehensive list, then did all the things that only take five minutes and/or don't require actual thought. I also reimmersed myself in twitter, which, contrary to popular belief, isn't just procrastination for me - if I'm careful not to spend hours reading other people's updates, it's actually a great way for me to interact with authors and readers and (hopefully) promote my books. Yes, I feel like a douche for even saying that.

Around five, I bounded downstairs with all sorts of grand intentions of walking to the mailbox and grabbing coffee at Starbucks and taking out the trash and making chili for dinner...and then realized that bounding down the stairs had sapped all my energy. So, instead, I made tea, sat on the couch, and ordered Thai food. Clearly my albuterol and my codeine-laced cough syrup is making me feel better when I'm conserving energy, but I need to be careful for the next few days. I spent the evening messing around online, trying to read a book that I despised, and throwing it aside to read a quick novella by one of my favorite authors (verdict: I don't like novellas, which is challenging since I want to write a few - if there are any novellas you like, let me know, because I need to figure out whether I can do this successfully). And now, I should sleep and hope that I can do a few things tomorrow that require a bit more thought. Or, at least, hope that I can climb the stairs without running out of breath. Or, at least, hope that I won't be such a freaking drama queen. Goodnight!

mercy

The world ends not with a bang, but with bronchitis. I suppose it was inevitable that my heart and mind and even my ulcer-producing stomach would be eager to carry on with my war-on-all-fronts mentality, but that my lungs would reveal themselves to be, as they always have been, weak little traitors. Stupid lungs.

Needless to say, I did not go to work today. While my congestion is getting better (I think I only used half a box of kleenexes today, rather than a box and a half), my breath is getting more ragged, and despite sleeping for eleven hours last night I was too exhausted to contemplate dragging myself into the office, and too mentally deficient to do anything when I got there. So, I showered (a chore), ate some oatmeal (unappealing), and went to the doctor (even more unappealing), where they shoved a probe into my nasal cavity (HORROR) to determine whether I had the flu. I do not have the flu, but I do have nightmare-inducing memories of a nurse trying to pull my brain out of my skull with a sharpened stick. Instead, they determined that I have bronchitis, and they gave me a prescription for an inhaler and some drugged-up cough syrup, with instructions to come back if my fever spikes or I have any other signs of pneumonia. YAY.

I spent the rest of the afternoon being v. lazy; I dropped the prescriptions off, ate fries and a milkshake in an attempt to restore myself (mildly successful), and took a three-hour nap. Then I picked up my prescriptions, sent a few work emails, and spent the rest of the night reading a book and trying to not fall asleep and not check for new reviews of my book (a failing task, I'll grant you). And now, I should sleep, and then figure out a gameplan for the next 2-5 years that does not involve me collapsing of exhaustion every three months. Heh. Goodnight!

why are there no songs about coughing?

I can't come up with any songs appropriate for the blog title tonight because I haven't left the house, have run through a box and a half of kleenexes, and am thoroughly and utterly miserable. At least the internet is back; today would have been even more misery-inducing without it. But I woke up feeling just as awful as I did yesterday, and my symptoms didn't improve at all. You know it's bad when my own crushing sense of Puritanical guilt didn't make me do any work at all, either for the day job or for my not-so-secret writing pursuits. Instead, I laid around on the couch, watched three episodes of "Project Runway" and an episode and a half of Craig, read part of an awful vampire romance (emphasis on awful), and was generally mopey.

Anyway, if I don't feel better tomorrow I'm going to drag myself to a doctor, so hopefully all my incessant whininess will stop soon. And really, that's all I have to report - goodnight!

tell me baby do you do more than dance

The internet is back (thank heavens), but I still feel like death, so I'll keep this brief. I had to go into the office today because there were things that I had to do at all costs, and the internet wasn't up this morning. So, I shuffled my way to the shuttle, got to the office around 10:30, and slogged fitfully and without enthusiasm until four. Clearly no one else wanted me there either, and I tried my best to stay away from all of them, but the lure of the internet was too strong.

Then, I came home, slept all the way back, and arrived to find that the new modem had arrived. Yay! But I tried to set it up and couldn't finish until Terry got home, since the Comcast account is under her name. I suppose I could have tried to hack into her Comcast account, but given that they would probably try to charge us to resolve that issue was well, I refrained. When she finally got home, I managed to get the modem hooked up and the wireless router turned back on. And then I promptly, woefully retreated to my room and tried to read a book, but I'm too congested to enjoy anything.

Oh, did you not realize that you'd been invited to a pity party when you opened this post? My bad!

sssanyway, I'm going to go to bed now, and unless I feel utterly restored in the morning (which will only happen if it turns out that my body now requires a constant wireless internet signal to function, which actually would not surprise me), I'm going to work from home and hope that this is the last time I get sick this season. Goodnight!

too busy writing your tragedy

No blog tonight either - the illness that began last night seized me in earnest today, and I stayed home to nurse myself back to health. However, the illness that seized our Internet last night was also not cured, so we still have no Internet in our apartment, which means I have to type this on my iPad. Worse, I had to drag myself into the San Francisco office for a couple of hours to take care of some urgent stuff, since I couldn't go to a coffeeshop for fear of being the person to accidentally leak trade secrets (or, more likely, get rained on while walking there). At least we have an SF office, and I managed to convince myself that paying for parking there was about the same as driving to my regular office and back, so I suppose it all worked out, even if I was in quarantine mode and didn't seek out any of my friends while I was there (hi Katrina!).

But now I need to sleep; since our Internet will still be out tomorrow, I'm going to the office unless I feel markedly worse than I do today. Great idea, right? Goodnight!

a deceitful country

No blog tonight - our Internet went down around 4pm and never came back, which is super annoying and awful, and I don't feel like typing this on my iPad. I especially don't feel like typing this when I'm pretty sure I'm getting some awful throat/lung disease - which will be even more unpleasant if I can't work from home tomorrow. Boo. So I'm going to go to bed and hope that when I wake up none of these calamities have befallen me. Goodnight!

til now i always got by on my own

I'm back from Tahoe, which is good - I had an awesome day and an awesome trip, but I'm really excited to sleep in my own bed and get some downtime tomorrow before going back to work. Today was lowkey, but it ended with a four-hour drive (well, 3.5hrs, plus time at In-n-Out), so I was destined to be tired no matter what I did today. The four of us had brunch at a restaurant in Kings Beach, and my huevos rancheros were super tasty and restorative - almost like eggs over easy on top of a plate of nachos, since the base of the dish was tortilla chips rather than corn tortillas. Yum.

Post-brunch, when we were all feeling a little bit more human, Lauren (aka Subz), Terry and I went down to the village, where Terry and I hung out at Starbucks for awhile while Lauren looked at ski boots. Then they went to the gym and I went to the adult rec center, which was basically just a room full of couches where I could work while I waited for them. I didn't get a ton of work done, since I had my usual Sunday call with my parents, but I contacted a couple of reviewers and dealt with some cover issues, so that was all good. Then we went back to the house, hung out in the hot tub for awhile, packed up, and were on the road by sixish. Terry and I spent most of the drive back dissecting a book I had made her read (POISON PRINCESS), which morphed into a discussion of career/life, which is always interesting and intense at the same time. And now, I'm super exhausted and must go to bed immediately - goodnight!

time can do so much

I continue to be in Tahoe, which should not surprise you, since no one comes up here for the night (except for the time I came up with John just to drop off the top to his convertible and have a sandwich with his dad before turning around and going back to Stanford, but obviously that was one of the many strange and bad decisions I made back in the day, so we'll leave it at that). Today was lovely, though; I was in desperate need of a break, as should be obvious from the increasingly frenetic language of my previous posts. And today was totally a break. We had a v. leisurely breakfast in the cabin, despite me being called out for my overly controlling nature in the kitchen/life (I'm just trying to hack y'all, you know - it's not a judgment, just an attempt to unearth the most optimal outcomes). Then, Subz and Terry went skiing while Nathan and I retreated to our separate corners with our laptops. I had intended not to work, and I didn't *really* work - but I did do some Prudence/Alex brainstorming, and set up some marketing campaigns, and answer some email, and tweet some tweets...

...so yeah, I continue to suck at taking vacation. Sorry, me. But it was all lowkey, and Nathan and I took a coffee break, which was nice. Eventually, we met up with Lauren and Terry at the village for some apres-ski action (that's 'drinking', for those of you who don't speak French). We had some fantastic tacos at some Mexican place, and then we found seats by a fire pit, where I indulged in a glass of wine and a fantastic hot chocolate with vanilla vodka and butterscotch liqueur, which may have been too sweet, but I was past the point of caring. We came home, spent some quality time in the hot tub, and eventually went back into the village for a late (and, consequently, hurried) dinner at the sushi place in the village. We had to get our act together because it turns out the shuttle closes at ten p.m. - this is such a family establishment that it's apparently unheard of for anyone to want a drink past 9:30. Crazy. But the sushi was fantastic, and the company was even moreso.

And now, after much hanging out and merrymaking and winedrinking and all the rest, I should go to bed. My only regret is that I couldn't do this weekend twice; Pincubus was in San Francisco today, but I got my dates mixed up and double-booked myself, and so I missed him. Sad, because I love him, and also because today looked like an amazing day in the city. Sigh. But Tahoe has been lovely, and I really needed a break, so I'm looking forward to another day of fun tomorrow. Goodnight!

i never really cared until i met you

I'm officially taking this weekend off. Or, I'm taking it off as much as I can allow myself to take it off - I may respond to a few emails. And the books I hope to read are books that I need to judge for a contest, so that's sort of half work. However, reading a couple of books and answering a few emails is like a blissful vacation compared to what I've been up to, so I'm pretty psyched.

Oh, and I'm in Tahoe. Yay. Today was a brutal slog to get here, though; I had a lot of work to do, and I was v. productive even though I worked from home. I spent my lunch break looking at stock photography for the redo of Malcolm and Amelia's cover, which was fun, but also work. Around four p.m. I threw in the towel and took a v stressful drive downtown to get my bangs trimmed and my brows waxed by my two favorite hair/brow professionals - the brow lady also does makeup, and if I get my headshots redone (which I'm considering, since I think the bangs are here to stay and I look different with them), I need to get her to do my makeup, since she's done amazing things for my brows. Yes, I've become that kind of person.

Post-beautifying, I stopped at Whole Foods, endured the torturous drive back home through rush hour traffic, and then had a fishy Catholic dinner with Terry at Nettie's Crab Shack. Then, I threw a bunch of stuff in a bag, and we left for Tahoe at around 8:30. I belted out 80s power ballads all the way up, which she mostly slept through, so either my singing is great enough or terrible enough to fall asleep to. We got up here a little before midnight, and spent an hour drinking wine and watching Siberian meteorite videos with Lauren (aka Subz) and Nathan, whose house we're staying in. Even though I have no intention of skiing or doing anything else wintery, I'm super psyched to take a break - I only brought my chromebook with me, so I can neither do work for the man nor get sucked into spending the weekend formatting the print version of Nick and Ellie's story.

But now, I should really sleep - may you all sleep safe from meteorites (and, more importantly, not wake up to find yourself in Siberia). Goodnight!

you begin to wonder why you came

I'm super sleepy, and I've totally hit the wall - I suppose that's to be expected since I did nothing but work today. I got up relatively early and was on the shuttle by 7:15, worked on my book stuff until I got to the office, and then I slogged very brutally and without much of a break until 4:30, when I left to come home. Unfortunately, the shuttle took over two hours; I expected this, since I figured there would be insane Valentine's traffic, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite that bad. But I got my reader newsletter out while sitting on the shuttle, so I suppose that's a good thing.

When I got home, I had intended to grab a burger at Roam, but the line was really long, so I ate a sad frozen enchilada instead. Then, I did some work for the man for a couple of hours. Then, I was going to do more stuff for my book, but I'm too tired to think, and I should have gone to bed half an hour ago. Boo. Hopefully tomorrow I can be slightly more well-rested, but since I'm going to Tahoe for the weekend and have to work a full day first, I kind of doubt it. Goodnight!

the a team

There is a day when I will not stare at my computer for sixteen hours in a row, but it is not this day. Actually, that's a lie; I drove to work and back, so I didn't stare at my computer for approximately two hours today. That's a positive thing, right?

So today was good, despite the fact that I've had a smashing headache since approximately my third day back at work. I had a nine a.m. meeting, but rather than scramble to get up this morning, I took it and the meeting after it from home, then drove down to the office. How civilized, right? Then I slogged nonstop until six and felt v. pleased with myself for it. Post-slog, I went to Palo Alto and had dinner at one of my favorite cafes (they were v. surprised to see me at night, and even more surprised when I ordered a steak and a glass of wine, since they only see me eat scrambled eggs). While eating dinner, I drafted newsletters for my readers and for my friends and family - the life of a writer never stops. Then I drove home, tackled the kitchen, folded laundry, and should have just gone to bed, but I decided to get my friends and family newsletter out instead. I also uploaded the content for the reader newsletter, but since this is now going to 1200+ people, I need to test it a bit more aggressively than I tested the friends/family one. But hopefully I can send it out tomorrow...and then move on to the next ten tasks on my to-do list.

And now, I must sleep. I don't know if I can continue to be insanely productive in all areas of my life (the answer is no, unless I also want to be productive in the realm of ulcers), but if I can just keep it up through the end of the month, I should be more clear on my job and also through the initial crazy phase of the book launch. Of course, that means I'll be up to speed and ready to do real, labor-intensive things at work just as I'm starting the real, labor-intensive work of trying to figure out what Prudence and Alex's story is...hmm. Wish me luck, I guess? Goodnight!

starships are made to fly

I'm super, super tired - please remind me not to make plans two nights in a row now that I'm working again. Of course, it doesn't help that things are speeding up at work just as I'm in crazy launch mode with zee romance novel. But, this is what I signed up for, and I'm actually much happier this week, when I'm too busy, than I was my first week, when I had nothing to do except go through trainings I'd already sat through half a decade ago.

Anyway, before I go any further, I realized I made a classic rookie marketing mistake and told you that my book was out, but failed to tell you where to go if you care to buy it. Right now, you can get it on Kindle or on Nook for the low low price of $3.99. The print version is coming in a couple of weeks. Kobo (I know none of you know or care about Kobo), AllRomance eBooks, and Google Play are coming whenever we get around to uploading to those sites (yes, I realize the irony of backburnering Play).

So, on the whole my day was lovely, but it started and ended with feeling carsick, so that kind of put a damper on things. I was too aggressive in my attempts to work on the shuttle this morning, and the drivers was too aggressive in general, and there was an accident on the freeway that created too much stop-and-go traffic, and the woman sitting next to me had heavy perfume and was eating something that smelled revolting, so I arrived at work feeling incredibly nauseated. I calmed my stomach with some breakfast, slogged hardcore until noon, took a break to have lunch with John, and then slogged again until 5:45. Then, Heather (aka dear respected madam) picked me up, and we went to downtown MTV to have dinner with Denise, who was a director way way back in the day when I was involved in doing quality for the temp program. Ah, the memories.

Post dinner, Heather dropped me off at work, where I caught a shuttle home. But since I didn't get here until 9:45, and I have more to do than I can shake a stick at, I made only a brief attempt to slog before deciding I would be better served by nine hours of sleep. So, I'm going to go to bed immediately - goodnight!

book birthday

And so, in an utterly surprising, rather anticlimactic turn of events, my latest book came out today. Color me shocked. Also, color me exhausted. My agent uploaded to Amazon and Nook this morning, and both systems have gotten faster, so they were live by noon or 2pm. Yay!!! And now begins the waiting game of seeing how it does in the rankings, and waiting for the first review, and hoping the first review isn't from someone who f'ing hates it. I'm a little nervous because I don't feel like I had enough time to promo it, and I have virtually nothing lined up...but what I do have lined up is good, so hopefully I can pull some more stuff together and go into overdrive to get people to read it.

And if nothing else, it's done. So if you were sick of hearing me bitch about Nick and Ellie, get ready for the names 'Prudence' and 'Alex' to burn themselves into your retinas - I apologize in advance for the next eight or nine months.

Anyway, I was nonstop-on today, which is probably when I'm at my happiest, so that was good. I spent the whole shuttle ride updating my website, uploading to Apple, taking care of business, etc. Then, I slogged hardcore all day; I'm done with training and starting to answer customer questions, which is actually kind of fun, even if it's something I did nine years ago and had long since graduated from. I also had lunch with Ziv, whom I managed back in the dark ages, and coffee with Alana and Joy - Alana is a longtime blog reader (yay) and Joy used to work for the big boss with me, so we all go way back. And then I caught a shuttle to the evil city, dropped my backpack off at home, took a taxi to the movie theatre, and met up with Lauren (aka Subz) to watch 'Argo'.

The movie was totally awesome, although I feel just a little weird that the last two movies I've seen have involved me eating tasty snacks while watching regime change/torture in the Islamic world (although this was way, way less intense than 'Zero Dark Thirty'). But, go 'merica, right? The real revelation in this movie for me was Ben Affleck -- not that he can direct (although the movie was fantastic), but that he's so freaking hot. When did that happen? The beard and the slightly world-weary look in his eyes makes a huge difference. Or maybe it was half a bottle of zinfandel (although I maintain that the zin was medicinal and an attempt to disinfect my stomach while eating movie theatre ceviche). But seriously, dude can rescue me from Tehran any day of the week. Also, did the Argo crew find Kyle Chandler asleep in the CIA set that they borrowed from Zero Dark Thirty and ask him to play a bit role, or was it the other way around?

And now actually seriously, I'll say that the movie was v. satisfying (well written, well paced, well directed) and also made me deeply, deeply wish that I had grown up in the seventies. Also, I wish that I were Alan Arkin - Subz told me that I could pull off his attitude, but I think that while I may have the wit/sharp tongue, I don't have the killer instinct to tell someone to go fuck themselves. Perhaps this would be a good area for development for me. Or perhaps I like having friends. But then, if I told people to go fuck themselves, I wouldn't end up getting my breasts massaged in India. This is a tradeoff that will haunt me, I'm sure.

Enough of this nonsense - it's time for bed. Clearly I'm giddy and irrational because my book is done and I can contemplate not writing for two or three days - yay. But now, I must sleep; hopefully my dreams are a little less psychotic tonight, since last night I dreamed that I was a hostage on some tropical island, which turned out to be the tip of a peninsula that developers wanted to take over, and Seeley Booth, the sharpshooter/FBI agent from Terry's beloved show 'Bones', came in to rescue us, which was super hot. Also, the guy holding me hostage really liked my glasses, so that was nice, but he was a total dick and not really a good person, so I'm glad Booth came in to rescue me. So maybe I do hope my dreams are psychotic again? We shall see, we shall see. Happy book birthday to me, and hopefully tomorrow I'm a little less insane (unlikely, right?). Goodnight!

css sucks

I am v. pleased to report that Nick and Ellie are officially, finally done. YAY. I finished inputting my post-proofreading edits this morning, then took a break, then talked to [censored], who had been gracious enough to [censored], which was super helpful. I also talked to my parents at some point, and I ran out to grab a burger with Terry (not quite the same as the lovely French restaurant we had discussed going to last night, but at least it was food, and at least I left the house).

But the majority of the afternoon/evening was spent finishing the formatting, which I think turned out really well - we'll see if I get any major complaints about usability issues. I reverse engineered another ebook to figure out why my ebook was having some weird inter-paragraph spacing issues on Nook; while I didn't figure out why it was only doing it on Nook and not on iBooks or Kindle, I did figure out how to fix it, so score one for that. It involved changing a bunch of css stylesheets and copious amounts of testing to make sure I hadn't broken something else, but it looks good on all of my devices and web reading apps, so I'm hoping there aren't any edge cases where it fails unexpectedly.

Anyway, I sent it to my agent around nine, then spent some quality time emailing people who had won copies of it in previous contests to let them know it's done. And then I said a brief farewell to Terry, who is leaving for NYC tomorrow (and is likely glad to have a break from me, since she said I reached a nadir sometime this afternoon - I was v., v. cranky from formatting, and apparently this crankiness leaked out more than I usually let it). It's sad that I reached a nadir, but that could have been the aftermath of this morning's champagne - we had book club at Lauren's, which was awesome and lovely, although I didn't even start to read the book because I had intended to take a break and do it this weekend and instead I spent the whole weekend reading css stylesheets and being hungover. Stupid. But it was good to see the book club people, even if I was woefully unprepared.

And now, I must sleep at once - I have this other job that I have to go to tomorrow, and I'm planning to get up at six a.m. so that I can make it into the office before traffic becomes atrocious. Goodnight!

in the waiting line

As you might guess if you have read the blog post I wrote this morning, my day was just a little bit brutal. As much as I'm glad that I enjoyed myself last night, and as much as I don't regret hanging out, it was still rather dumb to wreck myself when I am still recovering from whatever weird illness I had last week and am also trying to get my next book ready to go live. But then, I did the exact same thing with Adit ten years ago this spring, when I went out to a lowkey dinner with him the night before my honors thesis was due that turned into a night filled with port and ping pong - so it's either comforting or intensely sad that we've all changed so little.

Anyway, I spent the afternoon recovering, but I wasn't surly, just sickly. And i managed to finish proofreading the whole book and get about halfway through inputting all the edits I wrote down, so I'm feeling good about the book. Luckily, I didn't hate any of it on this readthrough, so I think it's ready to go out into the world! Beyond that, I did nothing; Terry and I were going to have roommate dinner tonight, but she wasn't feeling well and I was hungover and trying to finish proofreading, so we ordered in instead. And I left the apartment briefly this afternoon for some restorative huevos rancheros that were only mildly restorative, but they were facing an uphill battle that they couldn't win on their own, so they gave it their best shot.

And now, I should sleep; I have brunch plans, and then I must slog hard and fast to get the finished ebook to my agent (easy) and start building all my promo campaigns and listing out other tasks to do this week (hard). Goodnight!

born to run

Obviously, I should have posted this last night - I never post at eleven a.m. But last night ended sometime after five in the morning, and when I finally got to my laptop, I was capable of neither thought nor typing, so a blog post didn't happen.

However, I feel it is imperative to verify that I am still alive. Last night started, as all of my bad decisions do, with a v. low-key, romantic dinner with Adit (some people call him the cat). Or rather, I had intended to have a low-key dinner (my original suggestion was Korean hot pot), but it turned fancy when we ended up at Central Kitchen, a place that sounds like it should be part of some food court full of off-brand chains, but is actually the kind of place that has the gumption to charge $23 for an "entree" where the main ingredient is celery root. Wtf, man...wtf. Also, there were more white people there, in a higher white:nonwhite ratio, than I've seen anywhere since eating at a buffet-style restaurant with my sister at Christmas, which is bizarre and unusual in San Francisco.

But the food was good, albeit overpriced and pretentious - although if I were to have a low-key, romantic dinner in the future, I'd rather go to Mission Beach Cafe for that level of expenditure. The ambiance was cool, though. I'm pretty sure our waiter was drunk, but he seemed like a nice dude. And he asked us if we were in the food industry, so I must have looked hip enough with my weird sweater poncho to not drag Adit down, since Adit always looks hip (do kids still say 'hip' these days?) - the chef asked the waiter to ask us, since the chef thought he recognized Adit. Ha.

The wine was excellent, though...and that's where my troubles began. We split a bottle, which was an aggressive move on what I had intended to be a low-key night. But I was destined for trouble anyway. I was in a celebratory mood, since I seem to have fought off the flu (which will undoubtedly sneak back in and try to kill me since I let my guard down last night). And more importantly, my next book is suddenly, awesomely/regrettably coming out next week - the Nook people want to feature it as part of their Valentine's Day promo, which is fantastic news, but also means I need to work all weekend. But I hadn't taken a break, or hung out for an appreciable length of time, or done anything beyond the occasional dinner, in what feels like months...(but maybe hasn't been months, although I feel like a total hermit)...and so that half-bottle of wine turned into the beginning of a fun, slow-motion trainwreck.

Post-dinner, we joined Chandlord, Katrina, and Raja at the adjacent bar, where the drinks are printed on a booklet of Pantone paint chips (I love/hate SF) and had a cocktail. Then, we went to another bar, where I asked Adit to order me a vodka cranberry and he came back with a whisky ginger, which are two of my least favorite things...and yet I drank the whole damn glass. Then Katrina and Raja parted ways with us, and Chandlord, Adit and I continued to a third bar, where Adit and I each had two drinks while the three of us played Jenga on the bar (and we were surprisingly good considering our levels of inebriation). Then, since Chandlord had stopped drinking hours earlier and yet was somehow still up for hanging out with two drunken fools, she drove my car to Safeway, where we bought cheese and gluten-free bread, and then we went back to Adit's and made grilled cheese and egg sandwiches. Of course, we had to open a bottle of wine to go with that (mistake #20 of the night)...and then we did whisper karaoke until five, which started as real karaoke until Adit found out, via angry text, that his neighbor was still home rather than gone for the weekend like he had thought. Oops.

sssanyway, Chandlord dropped me off at home, then took my car to her place, so I'll have to retrieve it at some point - but going to her place to get it is much more convenient than going to 20th and Harrison, so I'm v. glad she has it. And now you're all caught up, and I need to get over my headache so that I can proofread - have a lovely day!

lips and teeth to ask how your day went

It's possible that I shouldn't have gone to work today. In fact, it's probable. But I felt like such a slacker for calling in sick during my third week of work, even though it's not my fault that my immune system can't handle being around people again. And when I woke up, it merely felt like I had been hit by a rickshaw rather than a truck, so I took that as a sign that I should go into the office.

However, I had a smashing headache all day, which made it hard to concentrate on what people were saying to me. Usually I can at least feign interest even if I'm having trouble concentrating, but I don't think I managed even that basic little bit of subterfuge. Also, my teammates could tell I was not feeling well and harassed me about coming in, saying that no one cared whether I came in and that everyone else would have stayed home in this situation. So, good to know that my team is not the kind of team to force you to work when you're dying...this could come in handy.

But I managed to get through the emails I hadn't read/responded to for a couple of days, and I took care of some other tasks that I'm glad I tackled. I'm totally wiped out now, though, and I think I'm going to go to bed immediately rather than stay up and try to work on anything else - I have a feeling that I would be better served by sleeping for ten or eleven hours tonight than I would be by working on either the day job or my writing stuff. Goodnight!

all this fighting with aching joints

I ended up staying home from work today. I know, being sick three weeks into a new job is ill-advised. I woke up and tried to convince myself to go to work, and had even showered, but the longer I stood up, the dizzier and more nauseated I got. So I ended up calling it in around eight a.m. Terry was also sick, so it's not like I could bask in the luxury of being home alone (ha), but perhaps I felt less like a hypochondriac since she has the same symptoms. Or perhaps we're both hypochondriacs together. But given that I have a splitting headache and everything aches, I think it's a good thing I stayed home.

So, I was online and feigned an attempt at work this morning, but by noon, I decided I was better off sleeping, so I took a three-hour nap. Then I messed around on my computer the rest of the day, alternating between browsing the internet and watching "30 Rock" with Terry. And now, even though it's only 9:20pm, I think I'm going to go to sleep - I want to try again to go to the office tomorrow, since I feel like a total slacker (and, more importantly, I'm out of food here). Goodnight!

she's just a girl and she's on fire

As is usual with me, the fact that I finished my book last night was pretty anticlimactic. Perhaps I would have celebrated tonight, but I'm worried that I'm coming down with something (either the flu or old age, although WebMD tells me I have a combination of an ACL injury and hepatitis). I'm sure this isn't helped by the fact that I didn't get enough sleep last night, although I slept the whole way to work and the whole way back, so that should have cured what ailed me.

Anyway, work was good; I had some meetings, and I had a delightful break for lunch with Elisabeth and Wendy, who were on my team in days of yore and have now moved on to bigger and better things. Happily, they still had time for me, so we caught up over free food rather than meeting and paying for wine (barbaric) like last time. I slogged until five, then caught a bus home, where I sat on the couch and contemplated nothing for an hour, and then spent the rest of the night figuring out how to format the book I just finished. It's something that is definitely within my ability to do, but I need to take some time to really learn the coding on the backend so that I can make sure it looks as perfect and professional as possible, rather than just spitting out a shitty conversion from some of the free software that a lot of the self-pubbers seem to use. Yes, I'm a snob. But I'm only a snob because I am so very picky about things like fonts and line breaks, and since it's my book, I can be as picky as I want to be. I got to a good first attempt by the end of the night, so I think I can wrap up the formatting for the advance copy for reviewers tomorrow night, and then spend a couple of weeks learning xml and css before proofreading a final time and formatting the for-sale copy.

Yes, I'm that boring. But you knew that. And now, I shall go to sleep and hope that the fever I seem to be developing is simply the result of being overly-excited by xml coding -- goodnight!

i get a little bit older

I just sent Nick and Ellie to my agent. I would be much more excited about this if I hadn't just burned out the last little bit of my brain - and if I didn't have to get up in less than seven hours. But I'm pretty excited regardless; I think the book turned out well, if I'm not too much of a crackhead now to accurately judge my own work. And hopefully we can do some cool promo stuff in the coming weeks, but that's a battle for another day.

Beyond the book, today was good; I made it to the office by 8:20ish, had breakfast, and slogged without break until noon. Then I snuck out of the office to check my mail over my lunch break, grabbed some food on the way back (at a cafe in a building that is not mine), and slogged for another couple of hours. Then, I had a series of meetings with people in partner organizations that I will be working with; they sit in different buildings than I do, so I ventured out to a different part of campus, which was fun. And at the end of my last meeting, I promptly caught a shuttle, and traffic was so miraculously good that I was home by six. Yay for everyone being too hungover from yesterday to go to work today. So I sat around here for an hour (and by that I mean I cleaned up from yesterday and ate some leftover chili), and then worked on the book until now (with a brief break to talk to Terry). I sent it to my agent at exactly midnight, which seemed auspicious. And now, I'm out of words and my fingers hurt from typing and I think the adrenaline is going to make me sick if I don't sleep immediately -- so, yay me! and goodnight!

when the lights go down in the city

There is sadness in San Francisco tonight. Granted, the pragmatic, doesn't-want-to-die prepper part of me is glad that the 49ers fans didn't burn the city down to celebrate winning, but the competitive side of me is v. sad that we lost.

But today was lovely. I woke up around 8:30, showered, made myself some breakfast, and wrote for about three hours (and by 'wrote' I mean 'edited', if that matters to you). Then, I talked to my parents earlier than usual before going downstairs to help Terry with the preparations for her Super Bowl party. In normal circumstances we would have both invited people, but a) I care about football whole orders of magnitude less than I care about the Olympics, and b) as you may have gathered from a read between the subtle lines of my blog, I'm trying to finish writing Ellie and Nick's book. So, I didn't invite anyone myself, but I love the people she invited (Lauren (aka Subz), Nathan, Fred, Jamie, Angela, and Lauren/Nathan's friend Mary, who wasn't invited formally but was a v. welcome addition). Terry pulled together the vast majority of the party, including some delish crab dip, her homemade guacamole, and other appetizers. She also made a baked potato bar, which was winning. I contributed a pitcher of mojitos (dangerous, since I think I drank half of them), my verging-on-famous chili (which I made a double batch of, so I'll be eating it later this week), and I grilled the lemon chicken skewers that she had skewered earlier in the day while the chili was cooking, since it was better for me to stay in the kitchen where I belonged than to pay attention to the game.

But I missed less of the game than I might have, since the infamous power outage happened while I was pulling the last bit of stuff together. And the post-power outage comeback was magical, and would have been truly epic if we had won. Unfortunately, not winning put a damper on things, and everyone pretty much left immediately, although Nathan and Lauren chose to watch an episode of "New Girl" with us until Terry was ready to drive them home so that they weren't subjected to outrageous surge-level pricing on Uber (a transportation/cab app, for those of you who don't live in SF/NYC). Although I suppose I should mention that we did watch more of "Puppy Bowl IX" than I had expected before everyone left. Also, I'm a little glad that the Ravens won, solely because the Ravens' owner looks like a true mafia don who would have killed John Harbaugh on the field if he had lost. As much as I would have liked to have seen that, I suppose it's best if both Harbaughs live to fight another day.

And now, I must sleep; apparently I have to go to the office or something tomorrow? Ridiculous. Goodnight!

she can ruin your faith with her casual lies

omg so tired. I think I worked on Nick and Ellie for twelve hours today, which is about ten hours longer than I normally have the mental capacity for - so it will be interesting to see whether I can be a functioning adult tomorrow, or whether I will be a gibbering mess. I'm rooting for functioning adult, since I'd like to put another six or eight hours in on the manuscript and also enjoy at least some of the Super Bowl, but my track record does not make 'functioning adult' seem like a probable outcome.

But I'm pleased with what I accomplished today. I finally rewrote the end, which, as you know, has been killing me for months. And, I made copy-edit type changes to the first third of the manuscript, and combed through the rest of it fixing little plot threads and dangling issues. There are still a couple of plot threads to weave back into the mess, and then I need to do copy-edit type changes to the last two thirds (this means word-choice type things, not wholesale rewrites), and then I need to proofread it and format it and send it to reviewers and and and...

It's enough to just focus on finishing the edits for now, and worry about all the rest of that later (i.e. Monday). I'm so freaking close, and I like the way the end came together today even if I wish it had come together for me three months ago. So, I'm going to try to stay focused on the positives, hopefully fall asleep in the next five minutes, and then dream about waking up refreshed and reenergized so that I can achieve the same zen-like flow I did today. Miracles happen every day, and I'm hoping this miracle happens for me. Goodnight!

now i'm dying to forget you

I have nothing positive to say about Nick and Ellie, so I won't say anything at all. In fact, I wasn't going to blog tonight, but I haven't missed a night in 2013 yet, and I want to see if I can keep that trend going since I missed thirteen days in 2012 (inexcusable, I know). So, here's a brief recap. I worked from home today, which was lovely, although I must say that I have already forgotten what it's like to feed myself all the time, and so today was challenging. I was pretty productive, though, and I dialed into a two-hour training and also had a video chat with another writer, so that was fun. But when it finally came time to knock off work, I was ready to - I went to the grocery store to get some tings to sustain myself for the weekend, and then came home and started contemplating Nick and Ellie.

And really, it's not as bad as I made it sound earlier; I just need to power through my inevitable end-of-book doubts and get to the point where I can comfortably say that it's finished. Hopefully that happens this weekend, because I'm pretty much ready to be done with them and move on to something else. So, in order to make that happen, I'm going to go to bed so taht I can get up tomorrow and write - wish me luck!