Yeah, It's Been a While . . .

Oh, holy crap. Sorry, just need to take a moment to express how seriously convoluted the new Blogger layout is. I know Google's been updating their look the past few months. I got used to the new Gmail. I'm sure I'll get used to this. But right now? It just seems like WAY more than I actually need.

(I'm also having issues with the new post-writing format. I had to come in and manually change the HTML code to get rid of extra huge spaces between the paragraphs. Not that anyone cares.)

Anyway.

Football!!!

Yeah, I know it's not NFL season, but that doesn't mean I haven't been following the Bears this offseason. It's been a fairly exciting offseason for the Bears. They got rid of their old (kinda crappy) GM and hired a new guy. When free agency opened up, he made a pretty big splash right away by acquiring a big #1 receiver threat in Brandon Marshall. There's been a little bit of news regarding Marshall's RL issues, but it's been somewhat quiet lately.

The Up Side of Colds

Yup, it’s my first post of the new year (I’ve been lazy), and the first thing I’m talking about is being sick. I had a cold that started hitting me on Sunday, got worse on Monday, and got even worse Tuesday. I even have to bring a new box of Kleenex to work since I’ve already blown through (pun intended) the one I opened Monday. So why is the title of my post “The Up Side of Colds”? Because today I feel fantastic! I’m still a little congested, but compared to Tuesday; I’m at the top of the world. I find it somewhat ironic that a cold that can make you so utterly miserable can, in its vacancy, make one appreciate something as simple as the ability to breathe through your nose without coughing.

That’s really all I had for today. Work is busy, but not completely kicking my butt like it was towards the end of last year. The weather (for this week anyway) is pretty nice. It’s sunny and in the low-mid 40s. I know it’s still early, but I’m looking forward to spring and getting back outside. I’m sure I’ll have some posts relating to games, outside, work, etc, but I’ll save that for later. For now I’m enjoying the ability to breathe normally, and looking forward to a friend’s birthday dinner at Red Robin. Yum...

Feeling Like Myself Again

I can't get my hopes up that this is anything more than a fluke, but for about half an hour this morning, I was feeling like my old self.

Not my OLD old self, but the self that I was from about March through September of last year, once I had settled into my groove of working out and eating right, seeing results, and feeling great.

Today at the Y was probably the best workout that I've had in a while, not in terms of effectiveness or effort, but in terms of attitude. Instead of wondering why I was even bothering, I felt like I was supposed to be there. I wouldn't say I was enjoying myself, exactly, but I was a lot closer to that end of the spectrum than the dread and failure I've felt recently when I try to work out.

5-Star Arrogance

I came across the most ridiculous thing while browsing GoodReads giveaways. The book was Dear Sun, I Am Real, by S.G. Rainbolt. The summary of the book begins and ends with the following message: please read "Star Rating System - What Makes a 5-star" book blog before posting your rating and review.

So I found the aforementioned blog, out of curiosity, and this is what I discovered:

Back to Business

Okay, I have been extremely lax in my weight-loss efforts over the past several months, for a variety of reasons. Obviously the holidays are the easiest excuse, but it started well before Thanksgiving, and has continued for far too long.

Well, my reason for not getting back to the Y right away is because I don't like crowds, and didn't feel like dealing with the inevitable influx of people with New Year's resolutions. No big deal, I thought . . . I can still get back to eating right, and work out in the comfort of my own home! Yeah . . . that didn't happen. I've been having far too many mindless snacking sessions and emotionally-induced binges. As for working out . . . I used the Wii Fit for a few days that first week, I think once the second week, and not at all last week. It just doesn't motivate me the way it used to. I feel like it's not a serious workout, so why bother, which is ridiculous because a) any activity is better than none, and b) some of those exercises do make me sweat, especially if I keep it up for an hour.

Strange Topic

So, this is going to seem a bit anticlimactic, what with it being my first post of the new year and all (especially after I promised details on our New York escapades last time), but I've recently discovered something disturbing about Goodreads.

So, when I link to one of my reviews, there's a date in the upper right corner of the review. For example, my most recent one:

Holidays

Well, it's been a while. I guess NaNo didn't have quite the lasting effect on my writing habits as I'd hoped.

There's a few things I've been meaning to mention recently and just never got around to doing it. Probably the biggest thing is I realized neither of us posted an update after our New York trip! To be honest, we may have never even mentioned here that we were going to New York. But that's definitely a subject that deserves its own post, so I'll have to get to that later.

Let's see, what else? I chopped my hair off. It's basically a chin-length bob, but since my hair is so thick, it's actually wider than it is long. I honestly don't feel like it's a great look for me, but low-maintenance wins over style in this case. I wish I had the guts to get a pixie cut, but I'm not quite that brave.

My weight-loss has come to a standstill. Actually, that's not true; it's reversed. Not by a ton. I've only put on about five pounds, which considering the fact that, for over two months now, I've completely stopped tracking of my food intake, and my workouts have been sporadic at best, I'm actually pretty satisfied. But I'm not satisfied with how lazy I've been. I keep telling myself that after the holidays I'll get back to it, even while this other part of me -- the part that lost over 50 lbs -- is screaming, "Why wait until then? Start tomorrow. Better yet, start today!" And I'm just not listening.

Anyway . . . tomorrow we'll be heading out of town for Christmas, and I won't be back till after New Year's. Not that I won't have a computer, so maybe I'll see about writing that New York update, among other things.

Happy holidays!

EDIT: I lied, it's not quite chin-length. Just looked in a mirror and realized it only goes just past my ears. The point is, it's as short as I dare go.

NaNo & GoodReads

I finished my novel on Saturday. Yay! Final word count was 65,731, for an average of 3460 words per day. Obviously my 10K-day to start helped inflate that, but I do wonder if I could keep up that pace for an entire month. Every year I've done NaNo, I have always finished writing before Thanksgiving, condensing what is officially a 30-day goal -- and sometimes beyond -- into just 2 or 3 weeks. How many stories might I have written by now if I was this productive year-round? Seems like every November (well, the years I actually participate) I remember how much I love it . . . but then it just falls to the wayside again.

Anyway, I spent a good chunk of today doing a different kind of writing: book reviews. I do like writing at least a little something on Goodreads, to explain my star rating if nothing else, but so often I don't do it right away, and then I forget . . . which leads to days like today when I go back and write ten or more reviews at once. I'm determined that eventually they will all have reviews, but considering I still have over 100 books without them, that day is not coming any time soon.

Anyway, here is a list of my most recent reviews, for anyone who might be interested:

The Inheritance Cycle, by Christopher Paolini
Eragon
Eldest
Brisingr
Inheritance

The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Mockingjay

The Talisman, by Stephen King & Peter Straub

Twenties Girl, by Sophie Kinsella

NaNo, Day 15

So, here's a screen shot of what my word count graph looks like up to this point in the month:



As you can see, I kinda pounded it out in those first couple weeks. I jumped way ahead of schedule on Day 1 and just kept pushing ahead. Now I've slowed down considerably, though I still anticipate finishing my novel late this week, or possibly early next week. Before Thanksgiving, definitely.

Despite all the preparations I made this year, I've still run into some problems I didn't quite expect, though perhaps I should have. Even if I didn't anticipate what those problems would be, I should have known that it wouldn't just suddenly be easy. Sure, I've accounted for some of the problems I usually have when tackling a project of this size, but being successful in those areas just opens me up to a whole new set of problems.

I'm being intentionally vague, just because to get into specifics would give away certain aspects of the story. And, despite my setbacks, I am determined to actually finish and edit this one into something that I would not be embarrassed to allow people to read, a feat that I have yet to accomplish with any of my previous NaNo attempts. I don't think it will take on quite the same form that I originally envisioned, but I'm still optimistic about the final product.