Hope you’re having a good long weekend. We’ve been pretty laid back here at Stately Unfocused Manor; we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday, and mostly just hung out yesterday. School started for Junior on Wednesday; Unfocused Girl starts at her new school (now with extra distance from home!) tomorrow. I can’t believe she’s going into second grade. I hope the new school works out — it’s a new building with great facilities, but a school isn’t just a building, and it’s going to be a big change from the Montessori program we’re used to.
Miles run: 11.75 miles, in 1:51:08. I took it slowly, because I’ve added a lot of weekday miles lately and was kind of wiped, and because it was really hot — I finished my entire water bottle at the turnaround point. The important thing was to get my long run mileage up from 10 — the Chicago Half Marathon is in two weeks, and while I’m not looking to set a PR, I don’t want to feel as unprepared as I did last year.
Weather: Sunny and hot. ‘Nuff said.
What was on my iPod: J.C. Hutchins’s Ultracreatives Interview #4, C.C Chapman’s Accident Hash #273, and Black Lab’s album See the Sun.
How’s the writing going? I’m so glad you asked. I wrote 899 words of Meet the Larssons (87,776 and counting). I was distracted by the Democratic National Convention (anyone remember that? Denver? Speeches? Anyone? Bueller?) and by a short story that wanted to be written. I’m trying to keep the short story — I don’t have a good working title for it yet, so let’s just call it “Secretary-General” for now — to under 5,000 words, which would fit within the guidelines of most s.f. markets, and is about right for the story anyway. So far, it’s at 3,656 words, all written this week. I probably wrote the last 2,000 words on Friday; the Mrs. went to bed early, and I stayed up late. I know that I shouldn’t let myself get distracted by other ideas while I’m working on the novel, that I should just write them down and get back to work on MTL until the first draft is done. I try, I really do, although that kind of mental discipline doesn’t come easily to me. When an idea is just an idea, I can put it aside; I email myself a note about it, with “Idea” in the subject line, and I can forget about it. Sometimes, though, like TTB and now SG, I get more than just an idea, I get the whole story in my head, and in order to get it down so I don’t lose it, I essentially have to just write the damn thing. It doesn’t mean the story’s good, or really complete, but it does mean that I have trouble focusing on anything else until I get it down.
Rather than comment on the selection of Gov. Palin as McCain’s running mate (is he pandering to the religious right or to Hillary voters? It’s a mystery!) or Hurricane Gustav’s advance on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, since those topics are being more thoroughly hashed out elsewhere, I’ll leave you with the hysterical Large Hadron Rap:
The Unfocused Life 
If he’s pandering to Hillary voters, he picked the wrong woman.
To me it reads more like a desperate distraction.
Well, and now her daughter is pregnant? Seventeen years old? Did McCain watch Jerry Springer and say, “That’s who I choose as a running mate!”???
I just read last night about the rumor that the baby Palin had in April was actually her daughter’s; now the campaign reveals that the daughter is *five* months pregnant. That’s interesting timing.
McCain is claiming to have known about the pregnancy before he picked her, which is even stranger than the idea that his people barely vetted her at all. All I know is that her name hasn’t been placed in nomination before the convention yet, and I keep thinking about Tom Eagleton.
The video was great! I’ve heard about it but that was the first time I saw it. Now I know what it does…I think. :)
Glad you liked it, Mike. Unfocused Girl watched the video five times yesterday afternoon, then watched the Brainpop video on dark matter a few times to make sure she got it. I’m not sure she does, quite, but she’s pretty close, anyway.
Junior made me play it twice this morning, but that was mostly to see the two pictures of Spider-Man.