Author: etoiline

Gold medal, anyone?

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Five years ago this day I was down in Georgia, at Emory University, winning the 100m, the 200m, anchoring the gold-medal 4x100m team, and placing fifth in the 100m hurdles. The only time I ever openly celebrated the moment I crossed the line. Beating my “rival” Nyota Pieh, of Emory, who had won every year since in the three I won. Being part of an unbroken WU women’s outdoor track conference championship streak. Getting gum on the hem of my dress on the plane ride back.
In a few hours I’ll be on the road, once again on my way to Georgia, to cheer on this year’s Bears. I’m missing the WU 5-year reunion and a few friends b-day parties, but this will be worth it. I was sorely tempted to try to pick up my golden spikes (no kidding. That was the only color they had, honest) as a rallying point, but that is pretty silly. I don’t know where my medals are. I think I got them, unlike the ones from junior year outdoor UAAs…I’ll just cheer…and try to be motivational. Life is a journey, time is a river, the door is ajar, that sort of thing…
Here’s what I said the day after, all those years ago:
Well, here I am again. No more UAA competition for me.
At the risk of sounding braggish…
I now have three golds in my possession… one for the 100, one for the 200, and one for the 4×1 relay. We RULE! Lady Bears rock the planet! Or at least the UAAs. You could say I went out with a bang. Those and my fifth place finish in the hurdles. So overall (individually) I gave the team 10+10+4=24 points and the 10/4 points from the relay. Coach said the only reason I couldn’t get MOP of the meet 🙂 was that I had won it indoors. I really think I would have. No one else double golded except the girl who actually got the MOP award, in the steeple and 5K (she already won last year indoors, too, natch).
You know what? Prayer really works. I prayed before practically every race and look what happened 🙂
And one more thing… we qualified provisionally for nationals in the 4×1 🙂
Somebody up there really loves me.
Let’s go Bears!

Dresden-phile

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Tuesday night, I met Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera, and have two books signed by him and actually interacted with the man, and that made me a happy girl. (Until my class presentation partner emailed me a totally changed presentation at 11:30 pm, but that’s another story.)
Jim’s a really funny guy. And he seems like he cares about his readers. He spent about an hour on Q&A, various insightful questions by readers who obviously care about his stories 😉 I was seated right next to him, since I sort of sidled up along the side of a bookshelf so I could set my bookbag down (I was carrying my laptop and a bunch of papers for the presentation. I did *some* work, honest). The speaker for his mic was next to me, so it was a little loud, but not terrible.
I was so proud I had the courage to ask a question. I’m not usually that bold. But he’s very approachable. I asked how he comes up with the twists at the end of his books. He answered that what normally happened is that he piles up every bad thing he can on his main character, then figures that he’ll get out of it somehow. He sends off chapters to his beta readers (man, what I wouldn’t give to be a part of *that* group) and every so often he’ll mention, ‘see, I *knew* he’d get out of it somehow,’ and someone will write back saying, ‘you mean you didn’t know beforehand?’ So I feel better about my stuff if a famous best-selling author doesn’t know how his stuff will end either.
There were probably fifty to eighty people there (I’m terrible at estimating, though), so the signing line wasn’t too long. I brought White Night and Cursor’s Fury and stood behind a lady who works for an internet service provider as a tech. Which I should look into, because more money would be nice. (Though, on the upside, I got a very positive annual review from my boss today, so perhaps a raise is on the horizon?) The lady knew about NaNo, which always amazes me. I have met so many people who don’t know what it is that I have a little spiel that I spin out to inform them 😉
When I got up to the table where he was signing, Jim was very nice and said how are you, etc, and I told him thanks for writing the books and that he’s an influence on m writing and I’ve got 65k of a novel I hope to finish this year. And he didn’t sound at all exasperated when he told me to make sure that when I finish this one to write the beginning of the next. Which I’ve already done, actually 😉 I hope that when I’m a fancy published writer I can be as generous to my fans as he is to his.

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White Night

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I read a book yesterday. Now, before you say, oh, that’s boring, she does that every day (which is true enough), realize that I read an entire book yesterday. Specifically, Jim Butcher’s new Dresden Files book, White Night.

Oh, Jim. How do you do it? There are only a few authors out there that can make me forget everything that I’m supposed to be doing and read. Admittedly, it’s easy for me to get wrapped up in a book, but I don’t finish very many books in a day any more. Though last week I read two books in four days.
He’s got tight pacing. His characters are very human, no matter that they’ve got magical powers. His world is real, and I can see it. You care about what happens. And you know what? He actually answers questions that the series had posed earlier. Thank you, so much.
I read it fast enough that I can’t remember all of it, which is a failing of mine, but I don’t mind that much because it makes it easier to re-read 😉 Thank you for the funnies and the heart-pounding moments, thank you for Toe-moss and Marcone and Lash.
One day I will get something written that causes such emotion.

I miss my remote

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For the last few months, the remote that came with my (used) tv has only worked intermittently, which, while annoying, doesn’t bother me *that* much, since I mostly only use the tv in my room for watching the morning shows and the occasional prime-time show that I don’t want to have to watch in tri-color (yes, the tv in the living room still has large arcs of blue, green and red from the lovely antenna degaussing incident of last fall). But there are several shows I’ve taped lately that I’d like to watch in my room, and the tv is just far enough from my seat in my bedroom that getting up every commercial break is annoying. Yes, I’m lazy. But when I’m comfortably seated with my laptop on my lap, it’s a pain to get everything shifted so I don’t have to sit through the commercials.
So. Finally made it to Target last night with the roommate (yay! joint shopping trip) and bought a universal remote, claiming to support my brand of tv. Brought it home, tried all the codes, no go. Of course, I might have difficulty on this one anyway, since it is a tv/vcr. But I tried the vcr codes too, and no luck. I have all the packaging and I cut it open nicely, so maybe they will take it back. But it doesn’t change the fact that I need to get another one, and that just bakes my cookies.
On a funny note:

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prepare for glory

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I saw 300 a few hours ago. I have to say, wow. That movie is gorgeous. Gritty, gory, really dirty and totally unbelievable, but gorgeous.
And good God, the abs. I am in awe of the abdominal muscles of the Spartans. Most likely computer-enhanced, but anyway. Almost enough to get me out there working out 😉
It was rousing in a blood-soaked way. As long as I didn’t think about the masses of blood being shed, it was beautiful. It was a dance, almost, to watch the battle, to see the parry and recovery of an artist of war.
I saw it for purely research purposes, of course. I can’t quite figure out how to plan a war for my novel, so I need all the help I can get.
Two people I did not expect in this movie: David Wenham and Rodrigo Santoro. I like both of these actors, but I couldn’t get over seeing David aka Faramir bare-chested and blond in a sea of dark-haired Spartans, even if he did a great job as the storyteller. Considering the other roles I’ve seen him in (Moulin Rouge and Van Helsing) he’s not my first thought when someone says, hey! I need a Spartan! And as for Rodrigo, I’ve only seen him in Love Actually and those Chanel ads, but he is hardly recognizable.
Gerard Butler is very much recognizable, and does well. Though apparently Spartans were part Scottish…
I’m glad I saw it. It was visually stunning. See it if you can stand the gore.

Big words

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I am occasionally lexiphanic. I occasionally use pretentious language. I was accused of this in grade school (not in so many words, of course, we were too young), but before that it never crossed my mind that I might be using words that my classmates didn’t understand, or hadn’t come across yet, since I read so much more than the average person.
Word of the day, eh? Read about it.