Summer Sunday Stats #6B: The Last Summer Sunday.

Posted on September 14, 2008 | 2 comments

This is the second part of a two-part Summer Sunday Stats post.  This post will make more sense if you read Summer Sunday Stats #6A first.

Today’s Chicago Half Marathon was the last meatspace race I’ve registered for this year, but I have one more virtual race to go:  The 3rd annual World Wide Half Marathon, part of the Phedippidations World Wide Festival of Races.  It’s self-timed, and the course isn’t USATF-certified, but the race directors do a great job building the excitement and even put together a e-goody-bag, and Steve prepares a special episode of Phedippidations with people cheering, which is great to listen to.  The race is October 11 and 12; each runner decides when and where to run his or her race, then post results to the website.  It’s a lot of fun, and there’s still time to register for the half marathon, 10K, or 5K races.

Moving off the running:

Words of Meet the Larssons written this week:  3,770 (92,948 total).  That’s more like it.  I managed — for the week, anyway — to stick to my pledge not to work on any other writing projects until the first draft of MTL is finished.  The draft will need a lot of work, but I think I’m on track to make my self-imposed Halloween deadline.

Other news:  We introduced the kids to Go Fish! yesterday, and Unfocused Girl to Clue, both of which went over big.  We were looking for something to do together on a rainy afternoon other than watch a movie; we’ve tried card games and board games before (Candyland, Hi-Ho-Cherry-O, a couple of others) without success, but it looks like the kids have finally gotten old enough to handle games with rules, which is great.

What a disaster of a weekend, weather-wise.  Even here in the city, not far from our house, the Chicago River has flooded hundreds of homes and streets with waist-high water.  Unfocused Girl’s school is closed tomorrow, thankfully just because of flooding in the streets and not in the school itself.  We’ve been lucky to have had only a trickle of water in the basement, back by the mechanicals.  Anything I can clean up with a few towels qualifies as a minor problem.

Finally, I came across a couple of interesting writing blogs this week, which I’ve added to the “On Writing” section of my blogroll on the sidebar.  Chicago-area mystery writer J.A. Konrath writes A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, which focuses on marketing yourself (and your book) and the business side of being a writer.  Scott William Carter, whose own first novel is coming out soon, writes The First Book, with interviews of authors whose first novels are about to be or have recently been published.  If you’re a wannabe novelist looking for inspiration, you might want to check these out.

There’s more I meant to put into this post, but I’m exhausted and I’ve forgotten what it was.  If I remember it and I have the energy, I’ll post an epilogue.

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Summer Sunday Stats #6A: Lessons From My 14+ Mile Half Marathon.

Posted on September 14, 2008 | 4 comments

The final Sunday of summer deserves special treatment, so today’s post will be divided into two parts.

Miles run:  13.1 in just a few seconds over my goal time of 1:45:00 for today’s Chicago Half Marathon, plus well over a mile from where I parked my car to the starting line.  First lesson for the day:  don’t leave late for races.  Especially when it’s raining.  Especially when the race starts in a neighborhood with absolutely no decent parking. The gun was scheduled to go off at 7:30am; I parked my car at 7:25am at University Avenue and 61st Street (and the only reason the space was open was because it was zoned parking; I want to thank the Chicago PD for not being aggressive about ticketing during the race).  According to Google Maps, that’s a mile and a half from the starting line.

The northern edge of what’s left of Hurricane Ike reached Chicago today, although it’s impossible to tell the difference between yesterday’s unending rain (not from Ike) and today’s unending rain (all about Ike).  The Chicago Half Marathon website made it clear that the race would be on rain or shine, although they would almost certainly have canceled it if there were a lightning storm.  I went down to the race Expo yesterday and picked up my race packet; it wasn’t a big Expo as these things go — I didn’t see any of the local running stores represented, which was odd — so I didn’t stay long. I threw the running clothes I wanted to wear for the race into the laundry before bed, and didn’t give it much more thought than that.

I got up at 5:30, but dawdled over breakfast and didn’t get out of the house until 6:45.  Still raining.  I did two things right:  I grabbed towels to put on the seat of my car after the race, to keep it from getting soaked (and smelly), and I grabbed a sweatshirt to put on after the race so I wouldn’t freeze.  I didn’t forget anything I would bring to an ordinary race — watch, Cliff Shots, hat — but I didn’t make any other preparations for the weather.

Here are all of the things I did wrong, in the order that they mattered:

  1. I left half an hour too late (6:45 departure for a 7:30 start).  The race start is around 17 miles from my house, and parking in Hyde Park on the morning of the race is very, very, very difficult.
  2. I took I-55 from the Kennedy Expressway to Lake Shore Drive, since that’s the most direct route to Hyde Park.  If I had thought it through, I would have remembered that in previous years, the traffic was pretty bad on LSD going into Hyde Park, but I didn’t.  Luckily, I realized in time that it was all of the southbound Drive, not just the ramp, that was backed up, and was able to get off and take the Drive the other way and get back onto the Kennedy, to the Ryan, and then took 55th Street into Hyde Park.
  3. I ran to the lakefront and realized that the starting line had moved; after years of starting by the Museum of Science and Industry at 57th Street, the race started this year at 63rd Street.  Had I read the materials I received at the Expo, or checked the course map on the website, or read the big “New Start Location” paragraph on the “Half-Marathon Information” page, I would have realized it.  Lucky for me, the confusion caused by the rain and the new start affected a lot of people and the race gun went off around 12 minutes late.  Even so, I didn’t have time to wait in line for the port-o-potty; I had to insult a bush.
  4. Because I was so late, I joined the pack approaching the starting line towards the back.  It took more than four miles for the pack to thin out, and it slowed me down considerably.
  5. I forgot to pack dry shoes and socks, so the drive home was kind of unpleasant.

But eventually, it did open up, and I came within a few seconds of my goal time.  I’m pretty happy with that, considering I was soaking wet before the race ever started, and my shoes were completely waterlogged.  The only real problem was one that those of you who are male and who run for long distances have undoubtedly faced.  Just a moment:

NOTE TO FEMALE READERS:  You can skip the rest of this entry.  Really.  You’re not missing anything.

Okay, so here it is: bloody nipples.

Normally, this isn’t a problem for me on runs of less than 15 or 16 miles, but it starts much faster in the rain when my shirt gets wet; if I’d been thinking, I would have put on band-aids before the run, so that I wouldn’t need to be wearing them now.  Which I am.

The rest of this week’s Summer Sunday Stats later.

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And Boy, Are My Arms Tired.

Posted on September 12, 2008 | Leave a comment

I got back late last night from an overnight trip to California (business, not pleasure), and I’m completely wiped.  I didn’t have a chance to get any work done on MTL while I was gone, but I will say that it’s amazing how much work one can get on a four hour plane ride.  Both ways, I had my laptop open the entire time (except for those pesky takeoffs and landings), and burned through a lot of email and to-dos for work. The lack of distractions is wonderful.

When American Airlines finally gets its act together to set up Internet and cell phone access in-flight, I will never get caught up when I fall behind, and a little part of me will die.

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Summer Sunday Stats #5: Marathon or NaNo?

Posted on September 7, 2008 | 2 comments

Summer Sunday Stats for today — only one more weekend to go before I’m doing Fall Sunday Stats.  Depressing thought.

Miles run:  12.19 in 1:37:11.  It was the same run as last weekend, but oh, so much better.  The training is starting to pay off, I got more sleep on Saturday night, and I had time to eat breakfast before my run.  My left hamstring started to ache at about mile 8, and my right hip bothered me a bit starting around mile 9, but they slowed me down much less than I would have expected, and the ice bath I take after these long runs goes a long way to dealing with the little aches and pains.  Yes, I said ice bath.  Try it, you’ll stop screaming eventually.

Only one more week until the Chicago Half Marathon, and I’m feeling like maybe it won’t be a complete disaster.  Even if I don’t finish with a better time than I did last year, if it feels less like a death march, I’ll be happy.

Weather:  beautiful, sunny, not too warm.  Can’t beat Chicago in September.

What I was listening to on my iPod:  Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing #59 (Clarion Graudates), and Phedippidations #151 (Starting a Beatless Heart).  I only started listening to AISFP in the last few weeks, and so far, I like what I hear.  Shawn and Sam get some great interviews with well-known writers as well as up-and-comers, like the graduates of this summer’s Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop.  I always wanted to do Clarion when I was writing science fiction in high school and college.  Obviously, I’m not in a position now to drop everything and go to San Diego for six weeks; I’d do better to find a local critique group of people I enjoy working with.  I attended one meeting of a crit group a few months ago, but I’ve been traveling so much I haven’t been able to go back.  I’m not sure that group is for me, anyway; it just didn’t click.  I should probably look for another one.  I might do better with an online crit group, too; I’m not really excited about another thing that gets me home late and causes me to miss the kids’ bedtime.

Happily, Steve Runner, the host of Phedippidations, has decided to go back to a weekly schedule after several months of only podcasting once every three weeks or so.  Fdip was the first podcast I ever subscribed to, and Steve has been a great running buddy, even though we’ve never met.  I’m glad he’s back at it on a regular schedule.

Words written of Meet the Larssons:  1402.  Certainly an improvement over last week, but here’s the problem:  while I wrote 1402 words of MTL, I wrote 3902 words of “Secretary-General,” the short story I started 10 days ago.  I need to be better disciplined about this.  I’ve decided I have to — have to — finish the first draft of the novel by Halloween, for any number of reasons, from needing to end it so I can put it down for a while and come back to the revision process fresh, to the fact that I’m starting to lose track of the plot because I’ve been working on it for so long, to wanting to possibly do NaNo this year (more on that in a moment).  If I’m going to get MTL put to bed in seven weeks, I need to put other writing projects away and not create any new ones.  Any bright, shiny ideas that come to me in the next seven weeks will get put into a box labeled “Do Not Open Until November 1.”  They can come out to play then.  SG is temptingly close to finished, but it isn’t coming out the way I wanted it, anyway, so I’m going to put it aside until after Nov. 1 (after Nov. 30, if I end up doing NaNo).  A few days ago, my daughter and I realized that she was reading five books at the same time (four novels, one math book); I told her she could do what she liked, but she might get more out of them if she finished a couple before she added any new ones to the mix.  She finished Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this afternoon, and has been making good progress on a couple of the others without starting anything new, so I guess she took my advice.  I should do the same with what I’m writing.

Marathon or NaNoWriMo?  That is the question.  I had no plans to run a marathon this year; instead, I started the New Year planning to enter NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month — in November, after having worked on my writing chops by starting this blog and writing a couple of short stories.  Instead,  I’ve written two short stories and gotten nearly 90,000 words into a novel, which I will finish before NaNo starts on November 1.

At the same time, I’ve been running better than I expected this year.  I managed to keep my long runs going — not perfectly consistently, but well enough — through the spring and summer, and now I’m heading into the fall with a pretty good base.  I would still just be thinking about the Chicago Half Marathon next weekend and the World Wide Half Marathon in October, since there’s no way I’d be ready for an October marathon (Chicago or Milwaukee), but then I found out about the new marathon in the beach town where we spend our summer vacation.  It isn’t until the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and instead of the craziness of the Chicago Marathon, this would be a small, friendly race; Mrs. Unfocused and the kids would be able to see me at different points of the race without having to wonder if they missed me in the crowd, and I’d be able to see them.  I’ve never traveled for a race before, but the whole family could go, and we’d have a place to stay.

But, but, but.  It would mean missing several days of work just for travel, and having to decide whether to rush home to be in the office for Thanksgiving week or just blowing it off and staying at the beach for some or all of the week.  Even if I could swing it, I’m just not sure I should.

And finally, I think the two things are mutually exclusive.  If I decide to do the marathon, November will be almost all taper, so it isn’t that the running would interfere so much with the writing.  Instead, it would be the travel and the associated stress. I don’t think I could possibly crank out 1700 words a day for the month if I’ve got an out-of-town marathon scheduled.

Plus, I know what I’m like in the weeks before a marathon — I’m a paranoid, hypochondriacal wreck, obsessing about every bruise, bump, sniffle, or twinge.  The weeks before a marathon are not a fun time to be Mrs. Unfocused.  From what I’ve read about other people’s experiences with NaNo, there are certain similarities — the NaNo participant becomes obsessive about the writing, muttering about the novel, failing to provide any domestic assistance, sleeping only fitfully, etc., etc.  Again, not a fun time to be Mrs. Unfocused.  I have no desire to be kicked out of the house and forced to move into the YMCA for being a self-absorbed, germophobic, hypochondriac chained to my laptop who never sleeps and constantly talks about people who don’t exist; that’s not a bad description of me now, and if it got worse, she’d be well within her rights to change the locks.

I’ve finished four Chicago Marathons (started a fifth, but had to drop out due to injury).  I’ve never done NaNoWriMo, but the point of NaNo is to get you off your butt and make you write; I’m writing now.

So, marathon or NaNo?  I haven’t decided yet; I think I still have a few weeks.  But it isn’t going to be easy.

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Safety, Prosperity, Peace, and Drill, Baby, Drill: The GOP Convention Is Finally Over.

Posted on September 4, 2008 | 3 comments

I’m starting this as McCain is giving his speech — a protester just threw off his opening.

Another protester.

And another one.

Who’s the dumbass who gave these people credentials?  The Republicans can’t even run their own convention, how are we supposed to trust them to run the country?

Strangely, I was not roused by McCain’s speech.  I expected to be typing a vituperative rant during the entire thing, but honestly, he hasn’t said anything that makes me really angry.  A little misrepresentation of Obama’s positions here, a few gratuitous slaps at unions there, but … whatever.  So far, the most annoying thing he’s said is to repeat his party’s ridiculous insistence that we can drill our way to energy independence, leading to another round of “Drill, Baby, Drill” chants from the delegates.

There was some good stuff about how, as a former navy officer from a navy family, he hates war and wants most of all to work for peace.  More about his very impressive personal story, of course, but the rest of the speech was reheated, leftover GOP talking points, not delivered terribly well.

The speech is probably most remarkable for being so incredibly at odds with every other speech at this convention.  The previous speakers have been angry and sarcastic, for the most part, without any realization that their words would be heard by anyone outside their echo chamber in St. Paul.  McCain had a few snarky moments, but was mostly very earnest in cataloging the failures of his own party.

I would like to point out John McCain has been in Congress for 28 years, and his party has been in the White House for eight years — would someone please explain to me how he’s the outsider?  He may have been a maverick eight years ago, and he’s had some skirmishes with President Bush, but let’s not forget about his voting record in the Senate:  90% of votes with the Bush administration.  He’s not an outsider, and when Republicans run against Washington in 2008, they’re running against themselves.

The conventions are finally over — just like Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say the McCain-Palin campaign is.  Thank goodness.

One final note:  worst of all, Mrs. Unfocused points out that the music in McCain’s video (and Palin’s, too) was ripped off from the theme for Dallas.

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Another Rant. It’s Short. I Promise.

Posted on September 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

Rudy Giuliani just mocked Obama for — allegedly — mocking Palin’s hometown for being too small.

Giuliani was major of New York City, for crying out loud, and mocked smaller cities regularly.  Come on.

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Rant While Watching the Republican Convention.

Posted on September 3, 2008 | 3 comments

I’ve had more than enough of the Republicans going on about veterans and the military, as if the military is a branch of the GOP, but something Huckabee just said is making my head spin around.  He just told a looooong story, the punch line of which was that we should be grateful to our veterans because they “gave us our freedom.”

Horse. Shit.

During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army fought for our freedom.  Since 1783, our military has defended our freedom.  At no time did the military “give” us our freedom.

It’s right there in the damn Declaration of Independence, you ignorant Republican twits:  “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness[.]”

The identity of the Creator is left as an exercise for the reader, but I don’t think any of us would suggest that title belongs to the military.  I have a great deal of respect for the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, but let’s not deify them.

While I’m flaming the Republican National Convention, I want to mention the photo I have taped over my desk in the study:  it’s a close-up picture of me, 50 pounds heavier than I am now, that I keep up as a reminder to keep my face out of the refrigerator.  The picture was taken at a Democratic campaign event in October of 2000, and I’m standing with the nominee for Vice President.

Last night, I came very close to shredding that picture.  I didn’t; it’s still up, because it’s a pretty good reminder to keep my face out of the refrigerator.  But it’s also a reminder that revenge, while it may feel good in the short term, can be very self-destructive.

Last night, Lieberman said he was speaking to the Republican National Convention because, as an American, he honestly believes that it is important to elect John McCain President, because he has the experience and judgment to govern the most powerful nation in the world in these dangerous times.  I was skeptical but hey, McCain’s his buddy, so what the hell, it’s his career.

Then he told us all how great Sarah Palin is, and the non-partisan mask disappeared.  He came to the convention to talk about McCain’s experience and judgment, and then he started talking about Sarah Palin?  No, this was revenge for losing the Democratic senate primary in 2006, so that he had to run as an independent.  He has turned his back on the Democratic party but the Republicans will never, never, accept him.  I don’t like making predictions, but just this once, I will:  I predict he’s going to be kicked out of the caucus, he’ll lose his committee assignments, and I sincerely doubt the Republicans will give him any of their precious few minority party committee slots.  I predict that as of January 3, 2013, he’ll be the least popular law professor at the University of Connecticut.

And now the delegates are chanting “Drill, Baby, Drill!” at Rudy Giuliani.  Who the hell does this appeal to?

Feh.

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Summer Sunday Stats #4: A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Posted on September 1, 2008 | 6 comments

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:

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Another Rejection, Another Submission.

Posted on August 29, 2008 | 3 comments

That was a fast turnaround; TTB got its third rejection yesterday (no personal comments), less than 24 hours after it was submitted. I’ve sent it on to its next potential home already, which will probably have a somewhat longer turnaround time. Ah, well.  The Democratic National Convention played havoc with my writing this week, but at least I got the story out for consideration.  Twice.

So how about you?  What have you got outstanding, sitting in a slush pile?  How long has it been out there?

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Oh, Wow.

Posted on August 28, 2008 | Leave a comment

I don’t have anything particularly intelligent to say about Barack Obama’s speech. Just, wow.

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