Health Food

I'm sitting here on pins and needles waiting for a rejection from an anthology. Normally I wouldn't, except my friend Matt, who submitted to the same anthology, wrote me to tell of his rejection (sorry) and wished me better with my story. When I said I hadn't heard anything from them yet, he came back with something like, "That means it's under serious consideration." So suddenly I'm all anxious, and every day I don't hear from them is a torture it wouldn't have been if Matt hadn't opened his big mouth (or keyboard, I guess, since this was an email we're talking about). Thanks Matt.

Have to share this tidbit: at the station, we run this show called Home Delivery. It's not very good. In fact, it's due to be cancelled. But in one episode I ran last week, they had the story of a woman with a 2-year-old who weighs something like 90 pounds. At one point, they bring in a dietician who asks if the woman has any healthy food in the house. Her reply? "Oh yeah, we've got applesauce, stuff like that. Jello."

I've completed two weeks of my workout program. 11 weeks to go. I haven't been eating according to the diet plan, despite my best intentions going in, but I'm getting stronger, and I really like the variety and quality of the workouts. If you're already in good shape, and looking to bust through plateaus with a program that hits all areas of your body, P90X is a good program to try.

Hot

Well, I've finished the first week of my workout program. 12 weeks to go. And since I've had almost total focus on that lately, blogging has come in a distant second (or third or fourth). Not that I haven't had anything to write about. I saw The Aviator and thought I'd write about that, but didn't get around to it. I went to a meeting of my writers group and thought I'd write about it, but didn't get around to it. Next meeting, definitely.

Yesterday, the temperature got up to 70 F; I drove around town with the top down and got horrible tangles in my hair. TOday, it seemed even hotter; I kept the top up, but actually turned the air conditioner on for a while. In February. Global warming rules!

Highlights

So I'm watching Ambush Makeover, and the Style Agent is talking to a woman about her hair. The woman was sunbathing, and Style Agent Gigi says, "It looks like you had a lot of sun exposure, because these look like sun highlights, rather than real highlights."

Because of course, having your hair lightened by the sun is "fake," while having your hair chemically treated to look like it was lightened by the sun is "real."

I used to have the same reaction when I was selling watches and jewelry. People were constantly looking at gold chains and asking "Are these real?" God, I so wanted to say, just once, "No, they're holograms."

Yoga Sucks

I mentioned yesterday that I'd be starting a new workout program. Well, even though I haven't officially started, I decided to try the Yoga DVD simply becuase I wanted to ease into things, and it looked like the most complicated workout (at 90 minutes, it's by far the longest). So I'm doing these tough, tough poses, and in one, I'm supposed to bend over my bent leg, reach one arm behind my back and reach the other under my leg and clasp hands. As I'm reaching, sliding my fingers around to try to find the other hand, I feel this blazing pain in my shoulder and decide I'll try that one another day I was able to make a decent attempt at most of the poses. Five or six of them I didn't even come close.

I know, I don't post here nearly often enough. I ordered these P90X DVD's, a series of 12 advanced workouts, in hopes of getting in better shape. They're maybe a little more advanced than I expected. I'm planning to start on Friday (it's a scheduling thing), but last Friday, I tried to do a preparatory workout, and I'm still really sore.

Took my before pictures this morning. Urgh. Mirrors lie.

I have more to write, but I have to fix The Girl's lunch, and my own, before I take her off to Pre-K.

Feverish Creativity

Monday night, I went out with two writer friends, M.T. Reiten and Richard Cox. As we talked about our current projects, I mentioned that I'd been writing quite a few short stories lately, but that after I finished the current story I was working on, I would probably go back to working on my novel exclusively. So here it is Friday already, and what have I done since? Hint: I didn't finish the current short story, and I didn't work on the novel.

No, instead, I got inspired yesterday with a new short story idea, a kind of sequel to a story I have already almost sold (I submitted it to an Australian anthology, who rejected it, but asked to hold onto it for a follow-on work they're planning). I got the idea at work, brainstormed it for a few hours, went home and wrote it in an almost solid block from 3 to 7 p.m. When I finished, I had a story that I was really excited about and a headache. I read the story a couple of times, and I still liked it. My wife read it after I went to bed; when I got up this morning, I found the manuscript with a note that said, "Excellent" (unlike the last story I wrote, which left her kind of confused).

The weird thing is, some stories it takes a while to write. Days. Weeks. But these two stories featuring the same character were both written in basically a single day, in one fevered burst of work. And they seem to be some of my best work. Does this mean anything for my ambitions about novel writing? Because no way am I ever going to write a novel in a day.