Yesterday morning I woke to discover that my mild cough had turned into horrible flu symptoms and a difficulty to breathe. So I went to the InstaCare in Orem. Thank you health insurance. I am SO GLAD we have it.

It turns out that I have neither swine flu nor pneumonia, though I was tested for both. I have bronchitis, which is a horror I've never experienced before. It hurts to breathe. It hurts to swallow. It hurts to move. And the pain of coughing is worse than them all.

I went to Llamafest with the guys anyway, because I want to. I took drugs, which helped some. I was a little zombie-ish, but I'm glad we went. I don't know that I would go again, but it was cool to see the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork. Turns out there is a little bit of diversity in Utah Valley after all.

I was happiest when we all sat down on Jared's couches and played four levels of Halo. At last something I could do while dying.

Today I don't feel sick anymore, but I'm in even more pain than yesterday. Today I'm not going to move. I'm going to play video games and lie in bed and drink gatorade and not feel guilty about any of it. Because holy cow, the pain.

I have this vain hope that I'll be all better by tomorrow. Or at least a little more functional. But if not, I'll probably just take some drugs and muddle through again.

Some day I should really learn to take it easy when I'm sick.

Since graduating, I've rediscovered my appetite for literary fiction, and most especially for non-fiction. It's not that I didn't read these things when I was in school--just that the texts were mostly chosen for me, and when I was done reading those, the last thing I wanted to do with my free time was more heavy reading.

Last week I read Sun Tzu's The Art of War (that was research, technically), which was much shorter than I expected it to be. Turns out all those big thick books are 75% commentary. I read the entirety of the text in a couple of hours, including all my note taking.

I had a residual buildup of books of essays on my shelf, so last week I also finished An Anthropologist on Mars, which was interesting at least, and Touch Magic, a collection of essays on writing by Jane Yolen. This week I'm working through a Best American Spiritual Writing Series book from 2006--a leftover textbook of Drew's that's actually pretty thought provoking. After that, I'm sadly out of non-fiction on my to-be-read shelf, which means I'll either have to go back to fiction (and the sad pile of high fantasy that's been amassing since I got sick of it last year) or raid the stash of literary criticism and political theory on our other bookshelves.

And after that I suppose there's the library, and my years-long list of things-I'd-like-to-read-but-do-not-own. I'm trying not to bring in other books when I still have 23 on my to-be-read shelf, and I'd like to either get through them or get rid of them.

At least I'm following the advice the Dean of Humanities gave us at my undergraduate convocation. If I could leave you with one piece of advice, he said, it would be that you keep reading.

I discovered a business mistake today. In essence Drew forgot a small piece of a task, and I forgot to double check that it had been done. It's not a big deal. No money was lost. There will be no long term repercussions. Our financial outlook is, if anything, better than it was.

I have to inform the involved parties of the mistake, but they aren't losing anything either, and it wasn't nearly so bad as it could have been. I'm sure everyone involved will forgive us.

But still. It was a mistake.

I hate making mistakes. It undermines my confidence so much.

*Deep breath.* Mistake is fixed. Time to move on.

My head is full of thoughts, but none of them do I want to share. I've been having that problem a lot lately, hence the lack of chatter here.

I've had a rainstorm of news this week, from amazingly wonderful to tragically sad.

Of course, not one single bit of it is about my life. My life continues to perch in limbo. Of course, I'll take limbo over what some other people are going through.

I have friends coming into town. There will be social things, some wonderful and some awful. (Mostly wonderful.)

And in the meantime I'll keep plugging away at my life, waiting to catch sight of the next big thing.

Drew worked a 13 hour day yesterday to finish up a particularly large project. I worked for 11 hours doing various business tasks and then cleaning our apartment, which was sorely in need.

It felt good. We've been playing hard lately, and so we were overdue for some hard work to go along with it.

That's my favorite way to live my life.

I haven't been posting much lately. This is because I've instead been out living my life. I don't have the energy left for an extended post, so here's the rundown.

There have been several lan parties, each resulting in thousands of slaughtered zombies and/or aliens.

Numerous trips to IHOP, the last of which resulted in a thirty minute inability to stop giggling. Could. Not. Stop. Apparently I actually go "tee hee hee" when I giggle that long at 3 AM. Who knew. (Okay, Drew did. He hears it all the time.)

A midnight walk down Center street in Provo. My random idea, actually.

An all-night Portal game. Man, that game is cool.

Several rpg games, one of which involved an all-night zombie apocalypse. My players all played themselves. The game started at Dragon's Keep, and then spread up through Orem. (The characters did, anyway. The players all stayed at the Keep.) And I attacked them with various zombies. We only had one casualty, and that was at the end. (I had to hand over the zombie stats I'd prepared at least once, after all.) We played for ten hours--8 PM to 6 AM. I was really, really nervous about running this, but I think everyone was happy with the result. There's talk of doing it again, which I think we probably will. Just not overnight. Unless it's next fourth of July.

We've been visiting with family--Drew's parents were in town, so we drove up to Salt Lake four times last week. Got to see the extended family, too.

Friends who've been in Japan for a year are in town. We spent a lot of time hanging out with them.

I love my friends. All of them. I haven't had enough sleep in the last several weeks, but my soul feels fed.

Several of my friends are exploring (or awaiting results of) business ventures lately. And I find myself eager for everyone to succeed. Every last one of us. My community is so full of bright, capable people with big dreams. And I want good things for every one of us.

Here's hoping for many great things in the future--both fun and business related.

I am now co-owner of a business that paid all our bills last month.

This thing I'm feeling? I think it's a cross between amazement and relief.

I just finished a couple of revisions on a couple of books.

Readers of mine, please remind me if I've said I will send you the new draft. Because I promise you I have forgotten.

Now it's time to start something new, so that I don't go crazy while waiting to hear. I'm thinking of finishing a book I started ages ago, and then doing a revision of an older project.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to be interrupted from all that at an editor's request for revision. Still, can't wait around for that to happen. Have to keep writing, or I'll go insane.

Sometimes it's important to be mean.

When I was a teenager in California I got hit on by a number of seriously creepy older men. And I was mean. I'd give them a look, I'd stand like I was strong, and I'd snap at them. And I was never in danger. They took one look at me and realized I wasn't the victim they were looking for. And moved on.

Being mean keeps me safe, and it also keeps me free. Since no one can push me around, I live my life the way I like. Most situations call for compromise and kindness, but occasionally it's important to tell someone to go away. Mind their own business. Leave me alone. Don't treat me like that. I won't stand for it. And so being mean protects me from losing my choices and my happiness.

Sometimes being mean protects others as well. Some people aren't good at being mean. They need someone else to step in and say, that's not okay. Leave her alone. Don't treat him that way. If the same goals can be achieved through kindness, that's preferable. But some times, you just have to break out the mean.

I'm really good at being mean, and it serves me well.

But sometimes it gets away from me. I get locked in a power struggle with someone I like, and the mean just flashes out. And I stay safe and free, but important relationships are broken. Which is more, in these situations, it was usually possible to achieve the same result while keeping the mean in check.

But sometimes I'm mean, anyway. It's not that there wasn't a problem to solve, but the job called for a screwdriver, and I used a sledgehammer. And so much more damage is done than was necessary.

If the only tool you have is a hammer, ever problem looks like a nail. But I have a whole shed full of tools, if I'd only calm down for a second and think.

And that just makes me angry with myself.

As I have mentioned before, I am a movie bigot. I never want to watch old movies, because I'm always sure I'm going to be bored.

I am also married to a former film student, who has a classic movie collection bigger than all the DVDs I brought into our marriage combined. And he's been slowly coaxing me to watch them over the last two years. Citizen Kane was excellent. Totally surpassed the enormous hype. The French Connection wasn't my favorite, but I appreciate it's affect on chase scenes. (We watched National Treasure II afterwards, and the highlight of that was watching them replicate the French Connection car chase nearly shot for shot.) I'm in love with Noir (Sunset Boulevard was amazing/disturbing), though I was bored by the lack of a sympathetic character in The Maltese Falcon. I didn't like The Sting, for the same reason. Rope was my favorite Hitchcock ever, and also my favorite Jimmy Stewart. And, in recent news, I'm learning to appreciate Gilliam, even though I leave every film of his angry.

You'd think in the midst of all this I'd have overcome my movie bigotry, but no. I still never expect to enjoy an old movie. They're usually paced slower, so I persist in expecting boredom.

So when Drew wanted to watch Vertigo, I rolled my eyes, but agreed.

And I was in fact bored for the first part of the film. I had told him I wanted to watch something fast paced. "This IS fast paced," he said. But no. Even he agreed that he was wrong. "I forgot how long this part of the movie goes on," he said. Forgot indeed. So I rolled my eyes and went along."

But then. Hitchcock tips his hand and holy crap! The feminist theory analysis jumped off the screen at me. When the movie was over I couldn't stop talking about it. [Theoretical spoilers to follow.] The way the men in the film are all trying to turn the women into an icon that doesn't exist. The way the second half mirrors the first, the men pushing the women into an idyllic role, and the women going along with it, complicit in their own oppression. The way the men play out their pre-planned psychodramas, pushing the women into an ideal they can never fully create. The way other women participate in and reinforce the the objectification. And then, of course, the way it ends up killing them.

Wow! And this was made in the fifties, when these kinds of commentary were particularly to the point. But the more I think about it, the more I could see these kinds of parallels creeping down through our media since Hitchcock. Which means we didn't really understand Vertigo. Hitchcock made a brilliant comment, but by and large we still aren't paying attention. (I'll probably go on about this at length later.)

All of this made me grateful for my masters degree. That's what English studies really all about. You look at the theory, and then at the text, and then up at your life, and holy crap! Suddenly everything looks different, and you understand it in ways that you never would without first looking at the theory and the text.

You'd think this would put a chink in my bigotry. But no. I persist. At least I have an awesome husband who loves me enough to make me watch these films, knowing I'll fall in love with them despite my protests.

I composed four posts in my head over the weekend, but none of them actually materialized. Now what I've got left are the highlights. Here goes.

Damon over at BSCreview is doing a giveaway contest with Garden Ninja minis. This week's prize is a set of finished-pewter Goblin Quest minis. Next week there'll be a set of Mistborn minis, and the following week a painted Jig. Head over to enter if you're interested.

My friend The Damsel has been doing some awesome stuff on her Old School blog. My favorites are her recent posts about buttermilk and yogurt. I like to be able to make food out of what's in my kitchen, largely because I'm too lazy to go to the store, so I'm really excited to try these. (Though I wish the sour cream was actually cheaper to make than to buy--I just can't justify buying cream to make it.)  Also, The Damsel knows how to fold a fitted sheet, which pretty much makes her a genius in my book.

My running was going very well...and then my knees got sore. They aren't injured yet, but I don't want to keep running on them while they're tender, so I'm taking a week off. It's very lame, and I hope it won't set me back too much. Things were going really well.

On Friday night I attended a writergirls meeting hosted by Pixiechick, which was awesome. I'm always nervous about social situations with people I don't know, because sometimes they're awkward, and I'm not a very good starter of conversations. But the girls at the meeting were awesome--it was the kind of gathering where we didn't know each other well to start, but were able to talk comfortably as if we'd been friends to start with. I'm really excited to do it again.

Okay, I think that's it. Maybe my brain will clear later and I'll actually be able to write about some of the other things I've been thinking about.

My goal when I started running was to be able to jog an entire loop at the park without walking. Today was day ten, and I did a loop and a half. Not bad. When I started, I was running maybe 30% of the time. Now I'm up around 75%. I really didn't expect to improve that fast, but I'll take it. I've also stopped needing a nap after I go, and my muscles aren't bothering me during the day anymore. So hooray.

In other news, finished Persona 4. I loved it. I've decided it's just as good a game as Persona 3, which is tied for favorite game ever with Stranger's Wrath. I still love Persona 3 more than 4, though. I thought the story was better, even if the mechanics weren't quite as polished.

I was VERY unimpressed with the ending of P4...but then discovered the "true" ending, which was everything I wanted. It annoys me that they hid the last half the ending so it's hard to find, even if they don't make you jump through extra hoops in order to play through it. Why not just let us play the good ending without having to look for it, huh? Finished the final fight this morning, and it was awesome. The Personas are vicious, unforgiving games. Love it.

(All right, Mike. You talked me into it. This one's for you.)

I have awesome friends. Lots of them. All over the country, in fact. And as much as I love my girlfriends, the ones on my mind right now are the guys at the Keep.

It wasn't until I was in college that I discovered how wonderful guyfriends are. My guyfriends don't care that I am blunt and not always in control of the harsh things that come out of my mouth. They just mock me and move on. We don't have to have a conversation about it later. We don't have to resolve the conflict. I can count on one hand the number of times I've needed to apologize. We just laugh at each other and forget about it. Fabulous stuff, really. Granted, my close girlfriends are pretty much drama free, but there's something about this careful dance that women do that's exhausting for everyone. And while it's totally worth it in many cases, sometimes it's nice to just be around people who plain don't care.

FPS LAN parties are one of my favorite things in the whole world. I was in a writing group with a girl who wrote a scene that took place at a LAN party once. She got it wrong, though. All the characters in her scene were quiet, focused on their controllers and their screens. Ignoring each other.

LAN parties are loud, man. Especially playing Left 4 Dead. Boomer! Boomer! Boomer down! Crap crap crap! Pinned! Help! Coming! You're good! Aw. Crap crap crap! Tank! Tank! Witch! Turn of your light! Ammo! Safe room! Where are you? Get in here! Crap crap crap! Coming! Combine the shouting at each other with the slaughter of zombies and that's the best time I've had in forever.

Last night I've been informed that I'm qualified to be a wing man, which is about the highest compliment I've had in 2009. (Still second to "I think your work is publishable" from one of my dear girlfriends last week. I really needed to hear that. Girlfriends, please don't be offended by this post. I love you too. I swear. It's just...different.)

Then we went to a restaurant with one of my favorite guyfriends. And I wingmanned it. And guyfriend got an awesome girl's phone number out of it, so I'm rather proud of myself. (And of him. Serious respect, man. You rock. Now call her.)

I hear there's an excursion to a bar in my near future, to settle a pretty hilarious bet. (Never been to a bar, at least not one that's not attached to a restaurant. It'll be a good writing experience, right? Because that's why I'm going. Of course. It's not because I want to maintain my reputation as "girl who will do all the guy stuff.")

Let's be honest: I dearly love being one of the guys (even if I know it's an honorary position).

There's a very large lake within a few miles of where I live.  I've lived in the area for eight years, and I'd never been to the lake.  In fact, I'd never known of anyone else going to the lake.  I've always thought it strange that there's a lake so close...but I don't know anyone who uses it.

So I heard about the Utah Lake Festival going on today--the state park out there is open for free and there's booths and fishing and, most importantly, free hot dogs.

So we went to the lake.  It's actually very pretty, probably even more so at sunset...and with fewer people.  The lake was full of sail boats, and looks to be most fun for people who are into water sports.  Lots of wind surfing going on.  And fishing.  Many, many people fishing, though I didn't actually see anyone with caught fish.

And free hot dogs.  We didn't even have to wait in line.

I love post-its. 

This may explain my love of Dead Like Me.   No other show so properly appreciates the importance of the post-it.

My house is full of post-its.  They sit on my desk, waiting to be stuck places.  The fridge.  The filing cabinet.  Into books.  I write to-do lists on post-its.  Grocery lists.  Reminders.  Phone numbers.  Notes.

I have a sporadic part-time job doing shipping for the Taylers.  Shipping party for the next book is on Monday, so Sandra and I spent yesterday organizing the postage, the boxes, the books.  We filled the file boxes with post-its.  There are post-its on the stacks of invoices, reminding us what they are.  Two sets of post-its on the folders, labeled and color coded.  When we assembled box sets last week, we post-it-ed them according to sketch.  When I was printing postage (post-it-age?) the stacks of invoices were labeled with post-its according to mail class, weight, box size.

The revision I'm working on right now is full of post-its.  There's easily two hundred post-its spread out through the pages.  Things I need to change.  Things I need to add.  Things I need to remember.  The post-its are necessary because if I decide to move a change or an addition, I can just slide it over to the page where it should go.  There's a collection of post-its at the beginning of the book for changes I haven't made yet, but I think should go in pages I have already revised.  Those we get re-stuck in my second go-through.  Without the post-its, I'd still be back in chapter one, trying to figure out where the heck the book was going.

Praise the post-it. 

Whoever invented it deserves a hug.

So, on Monday I decided to start running again. I'm not getting as much exercise as I was when I was running all over campus.  So I broke out my running shorts and my running shoes and went for a (n incredibly slow) jog.

This is how things usually go when I decide to start running:
Day one: This is great! But my endurance sucks. Better go again tomorrow.
Day two: Ouch. Ouchouchouch.
Day three: The muscle in my foot hurts. That's not good pain. Better take a few days off.
Three months later: Oh yeah. That running thing. Whoops.

So this time I was determined. When I hit the "this muscle in my foot hurts" stage, I wrapped it up and went anyway. (Seems to have worked. The muscle still tweaks, but feels better than it did on Wednesday.) 

And so I ran every day this week. Since I was going every day, I took it easy. Mostly walking with jogging mixed in to keep my heartrate up. My endurance still sucks. My muscles are fine, and I could force them to keep going, but if I do I feel like I'm asphyxiating, so I have to stop and walk in order to keep breathing. (And I like breathing.) So I didn't push it. I'd run until my breath got short, and walk for a while.

I probably should have done every other day, but if I skipped a day I wasn't going to make it out the next day.  I know that about myself.  So I kept it short.  25 minutes, warm up and cool down included.  That seemed to be about what my body wanted to do, so I just went with it.

Here are the results:

• I feel good about myself.  I completed my goal.  (For this week, anyway.)
• I genuinely enjoyed being outside.  I had to be careful not to go during the really hot part of the day, but I love being out in the sun.
• I settled into a routine.  Walk to the park as a warm up.  Run/walk around the circle at the park.  Walk home as a cool down.  Stretch.
• My jogging pace is not really faster than my walking pace.  But I'm still moving.
• My foot hurts, but it's getting better.  Ace bandage helps me not to further injure it.
• My muscles hate me, and don't ever want to move to do anything.  I'm stiff and sore pretty much all over.  (Though strangely, this only bothers me when I'm NOT running.  Once I get moving, everything loosens up and I'm fine.  But the rest of the time: Ouch.  Ouchouchouch.  But besides the foot, it's not injury pain.  So I guess I can live with it until it gets better.
• I'm sleeping better.
• Drinking a ton of water.  But not feeling dehydrated or anything.
• I took a nap every afternoon, because right after my cool down I couldn't keep my eyes open. I don't know why that is, but I'm really hoping it goes away.  (Running people: is this a normal beginner thing?  I really don't want to have to quit, but I don't want running to take two hours out of my day, nap included.)
• Despite the nap, I'm still sleeping eight hour nights. 
• Eating more regular meals, because I'm *hungry*.
• Oh, and I lost four pounds.

I haven't decided if I'm going today, or taking the whole weekend off.  I feel like giving my body two days to recover might be a good thing, but I really don't want to lose momentum.  Still.  Ouchouchouch. 

Maybe I'll just get Drew to go for a walk with me.

I really, really hope this gets easier, because otherwise I'm just going to punish myself some more before I figure out that it doesn't.

Hey, do you want to play through this level of Halo on Legendary with me?

It's the little things that make me happy.

Figuring out how to work out a manuscript problem.

$7 Sarah Lee pies on sale for $1.66. (Macey's, locals. Pumpkin, cherry, and apple. I can't even make one for that little.)

Stamps.com. It's such a bizarre thing to print your own postage, but it's incredibly user friendly.

Writing session writeups in the voice of my goblin bonegrinder character.

The whole Orpheus story...and building an ending for my players that will pay off on all the history they've built.

Zombies. Persona 4. Jerry Maguire.

Starting to believe that the future is actually going to take care of itself, even in the absence of any kind of indication as to how that might work.

Feeling peace. Knowing that I'm doing the best I can.

Working every day toward things I believe in. Being someone I like to be.

I stole this mini from Drew's pile of unpainted Warmachine stuff. Since it wasn't for my own army, I didn't feel compelled to get paint on the thing with any sort of speed, so I took my time and tried to really stretch. I'm quite pleased with the result. My new goal is to stretch to where this is my default quality.

(The really cool thing is that, when compared to Drew's default quality about a year ago, my mini is right on par. That means I might actually be able to catch him one of these days.)

Also, a writer friend of mine has a cool new blog, full of "old school" ideas for how to do things around the house. Her writing is often quite amusing. I particularly like her post about how to make butter.

I'm a big DIY person, and I'm all about learning new things, so I've really been enjoying it.

Here's the link, so you can enjoy it, too.