What’s Up Wednesday? Convenient Subspace Highways…

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us!

What I’m reading:

Well, I finished “Skin Game” and “Trapped”, and today I started the next Iron Druid book in e-book format from the library, “Hunted.” Also reading a bunch of graphic novels; Buffy season 9 “Guarded”, and the entire run of “Scott Pilgrim!”

Haven’t been listening to any audiobooks since finishing Skin Game, as I’ve been catching up on podcasts like Storywonk, Quirks & Quarks, and Laugh Out Loud.

What I’m writing:

Still working on the Neural Rewiring story, that’s about it. Hopefully I’ll finish the draft around the weekend, if not sooner.

What inspires me right now:

Scott Pilgrim! I finally watched the movie a few weeks ago, really enjoyed it, but I think I like the graphic novels even more. As surreal and hilarious as either version of the franchise is, they share this kind of emotional honesty about finding yourself, learning how to be responsible, how to look for love and treat somebody in a relationship, that really spoke to me. And a really cool, self-deprecating Canadian sensibility, of course. It’s gotten me thinking about what I would want to say if I wrote something that gutsy and true to myself, and who the characters in that story would be.

Also Missy Higgins, “Where I stood”, and “The Nine Lives of Chloe King”, which I’ve just started watching the pilot for.

What else I’ve been up to:

I made it to the Toronto Browncoats screening this weekend, met some new really cool people, and made it to one of my Nanowrimo friends’ place for a potluck the other night. Still trying to prepare for my TNEO lecture, in fact I need to get a handout emailed off tonight, yikes!

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

Trying to glide through the Crash

On the walk to the downtown bus stop tonight, I was catching up on some of the last Storywonk Nano podcasts that I didn’t listen to during November, (I can never be prompt with podcasts,) and in one of them, Lani and Alastair were warning about the post-Nano Crash.

I think I hit the Crash over the weekend. On Saturday it wasn’t too bad – I was still high on sugar from Waffle-palooza, I did some grocery shopping, had some chicken schnitzel, and went into Toronto for a Browncoats shindig. Yesterday was a bit tougher. I felt as if I had a headache for most of the day, tried to nap but couldn’t stay in bed long, and didn’t get much done except for catching up on a few episodes of ‘Suburgatory.’

Lani said that you have to respect the Crash, that if you try to run from the Crash it will come get you. Now, even before I heard this, I wasn’t feeling particularly Crashed today – I did watch some videos on the bus to Burlington instead of diving back into ‘How to Revise your Novel’ or anything, but I felt fairly full of energy at work. On the bus ride home, I pulled out the eeePC and surfed through old word count tracking spreadsheets, trying to find promising short stories to rewrite for my workshop submissions, even though I think I have two strong candidates. Looking for other options is part of what helps me feel more confident in the choices that I already had.

So, I don’t think I’m going to just sit through my crash. I’ll take the December goals a bit on the easy side until I’m sure that I’m through the stormy weather, but a little gliding doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

What about you? Have you hit the Crash yet? What are your plans?

PS: I also want to mention, I’m kinduv liking the new National Novel Writing Month iPhone case that I got at the Night of Writing Dangerously. It’s a rigid case, with a bit less coverage than the big bulky Otter case I’ve been using, which means I can plug in the headphones with the ear guards, which means that I can listen to podcasts (or music, or audiobooks) on the iPhone while walking. With the Otter case, I had to use the apple ear buds, and they’d come loose if I was moving around. I think I’ll also be able to dock the phone on my little iPod speaker unit in this case.

The downside is that it seems like it wouldn’t give as much impact protection as the Otter, so I may switch back and forth – using the Nano case when I want to show it off, or use the attachments, and go back to the Otter – when I’m feeling clumsy, which is often.

Fan Expo – Too Many Crowds

I bailed on Fan Expo early today – or maybe I beat a strategic retreat. By a little after 4 I’d done everything I wanted to and still had the opportunity to do today, and I was tired of being in a crowd and the phones not working well. But I didn’t want to go back to my hotel room because there’s a Browncoats shindig downtown in about two hours.

So I’m loitering in the VIA Rail part of Union station nibbling on snacks and enjoying how well the iPhone works without 9000 other phones next to it – until the battery runs out. And I’m thinking about what I accomplished today and the disappointments.

Accomplishments:
Met Alan Tudyk in his autograph line. Got my copy of “Those Left Behind” signed, bringing that comic up to 5 big damn signatures, and 6 for the blueprint book, which has Melinda Clarke too. Alan loved the shiny detail in the blueprints, and he signed over the cockpit on the cover of course.

Played a little fragment of a Settlers of Catan game with a nice fellow from the board games room.

Got a pretty good seat for the Lost Girl panel, loved hearing the cast banter back and forth and seeing the blooper reel.

Superstition and trying to avoid bad stuff happening

I just got back from a Browncoats Shindig at the Yonge street Elephant and Castle pub in Toronto – had a great time, met a few new people, had a great steak sandwich. 🙂

But something was on my mind the whole time, especially getting from the Union Station bus terminal to the pub and back again – not hurting my knee again.

As I might have mentioned, I managed to fall and hurt my knee twice during April – both times in Toronto. This was the first time I’ve been back to Toronto since the Avengers, and I was going to a pub in the Yonge and Dundas area – which was exactly what I was doing when I fell the last time, on my way to a Doctor Who Society of Canada pub night.

So I was being very careful of where I was stepping and my balance and and sign of weakness in my legs and if there was anything damp on the ground – which is all pretty good stuff to be aware of if you don’t want to fall down. But I also felt superstitiously that I needed to make some other change in my routine if I wanted to avoid another painful tumble.

On my way there, I took the underground PATH again, (because I’d left my shades in the car, in Hamilton, and it was bright and sunny outside,) but I especially didn’t want to go anywhere near the part of the PATH where I’d slipped on a wet floor, so I ended up taking the West route up and crossing over from the Sheraton to the Bay, instead of walking the most direct route. (I also had more than three quarters of an hour from the time I arrived at the bus station before the Shindig was supposed to start, so I was killing time a little.) And on the way back, the sun wasn’t so much a problem so I walked on the sidewalk, all the way down Yonge street.

It seems odd, to get this superstitious about something like hurting my knee, but then, I had thought I was taking reasonable precautions the last time, and then my attention slipped for a moment and I hurt myself anyway. Superstition, might be, on some level, a bit like an allergic reaction in the brain, when you want to avoid a bad circumstance or get a good outcome but you can’t be sure what patterns are important to pay attention to, so you start following all kinds of patterns even though on a different intuitive level you feel that they won’t make a difference.

At least my knee is doing fairly well tonight.

Toronto comicon by hobbystar, day 1

I am typing this entry into my iPhone while waiting in line for a Nicole Deboer and Robert Picardo Q & A session, in the Metro Toronto Convention Center.

Con season for 2012 has officially begun.

I waited in my first line at 10:15 am this morning, for people who bought their tickets online to be let in.

It’s been crazy fun so far, emphasis on the crazy. So far I have:
Gotten two autographs from Charisma Carpenter, and one each from Robert Picardo and Kristanna Loken.
Bought my ticket for the Can’t stop the Serenity 2012 screening
Found two Angel graphic novels that I didn’t already have at the dealer stalls.
Spent eight dollars for a slice of pepperoni pizza and a bottle of water
Bought a ticket for Charisma’s photo op

I’m running low on cash, but have enough to grab some munchies before the photo op

Six Sentence Sunday is tomorrow, but I’ll have more of a Comicon report on Monday!

My Browncoat Fridge Magnet Poetry Journey, 2

My second try didn’t come into focus. I’m speaking mostly about the camera, here:

Nanowrimo day 27: Seeing the sights

Current word count: 63,187 words

Tentative target for November 30th: 70,000 words

Words written over the past 2 days: 2150

I’ve finished the new short story idea that I started Tuesday evening, ‘Alien artifact.’ Struggled a bit to find a new project to keep writing on, and I’ve possibly settled on beginning an idea that I was thinking of doing for my Nanowrimo before I settled on ‘The onus of Grace.’ So it probably won’t be something I can finish in the next four days, which is probably to the good. I can stop it once I get into December and then get back to that start later.

In other news, I haven’t writen much lately because I’ve been spending more time on touristy stuff and less on write-ins. My time in San Fran is definitely starting to draw to an end – I have only two full days left, in addition to what’s left of tonight, and Tuesday, which is the day I fly home.

Yesterday (friday): Spent all day on the bus tour to Monterey and Carmel, which was fun, but a little exhausting. Had fried chicken, corn on the cob, and mashed potatoes from a Forest Gump-themed shrimp shop in Cannery Row. Squeezed in a few hundred words at the pebble beach golf course, and at Carmel before the twilight faded too far. Got rather lost in Carmel after the sun went down – it’s a town without many street lights, but managed to find the bus just in time to not get left behind. Left my umbrella on the bus when I got dropped off at my hotel.

Today (saturday): Rainy. Got my umbrella delivered in the morning by a tour bus driver. Went down to the Cow Palace to take part in the Dickens Fair Victorian Christmas, which was mentioned by some people on the sfbrowncoats group. I was hoping to be recognized by some of them in my browncoats t-shirt, but the only one I actually met was Louise, who had posted details about where to find her and how to recognize her. Still had a great time, filled up the memory card on my camera, had a roast beef dinner for lunch, and the Legion Fantastique stuff was awesome!

Went home a little on the early side, and got some more words written.

Tomorrow (sunday): I have a booking for the Alcatraz ferry at 11am, and a bus tour to Muir woods and Sausalito starting at 2pm. Looking forward to it.

Monday: Nothing particular planned, except for meeting a guy from the area who I first met through a Roswell fanfic community, and have stayed in touch with over IM for several years. I’m going to BART all the way out to Dublin, and we’ll have lunch.