Blogging seems so different now. I just took a look at all the Friday Fives that I have missed over the last month and I really can’t bear to answer the question, “If you were a shoe, what would you look like?” Even now, I’m tempted to answer the question. I can feel the answer welling up within me, but the Internal Bullshit Detector that I installed to get through the month of writing nothing but fiction until I hit the 50,000 word mark keeps bitch-slapping the answer until it whimpers something about Saint Bartholomew.

“He was skinned alive, you know…” it quietly mutters, hoping the words will keep the Bullshit Detector from hitting it anymore. “He’s usually depicted as a bloody figure carrying his own skin. Charming, huh? Don’t you think it’s strange how scared the Christians are of the Wiccans when the Christian symbols of holiness are so gory?” The Bullshit Detector raises its hand as if it’s going to hit the idea again. “Show some respect!”

I don’t know how to uninstall it. I hit the Add/Delete Programs button on the Start Menu, but it’s not listed there. I don’t quite remember installing it, but I must have done it. No one else has access to the mainframe of my mind. I’ve actually found the Bullshit Detector useful over the last 30 days. Maybe it’s in the Startup folder and I just need to put it back into the list of programs to be clicked on only when I need it instead of continually running in the background.

It’s there right now, trying to transform and mangle the words I write into something useful. “Maybe Ambigo could be feeling like this. Maybe Petros is trying to document everything that has happened and is having writer’s block or something…” It works very well. I didn’t have writer’s block the entire month. I just had moments when I was so tired I couldn’t move my fingers. Fortunately, Stacey, Dan and Mike took me to Vegas and my fingers got a good four-day rest right in the middle of the month when I needed it most.

It was so helpful having that voice in the background at all times. “What does this have to do with the task at hand? Is it research? No? Well, it certainly ain’t writing fiction! Get back to work, slacker.” The Bullshit Detector speaks with a southern accent in a really loud voice. I think it’s an amalgam of that drill sergeant from An Officer and A Gentleman played by Louis Gossat Junior and Nell Carter from Gimme a Break when she was mad at the girls and not the loving nanny that she was most of the time. It’s neither female nor male. It’s tough as nails and it’s telling me that I am completely off my rocker if I think I am going to post this as a blog entry.

Maybe it’s not a Bullshit Detector. Maybe it’s the Demon of Perfection that has haunted me since I first started writing way back in 1979. Miss Veater reading my essay about Great Britain in front of the whole class and telling them that what I wrote was exactly what she was looking for is not enough. Mr. Godfrey reading my poems in front of the class and not making fun of them was not enough. Getting my work in the literary magazine was not enough. Being a member of the staff of the literary magazine was not enough. Publishing my thoughts every day was not enough. Writing 50,000 words in a month was not enough. Yes, that’s what it is. I’ve received another visit from the Demon of Perfection.

Dammit, I thought I had that thing locked in a box. How the hell did it escape? Good costume, though…

I picked up Yourself! Fitness a couple of weeks ago. I have really enjoyed exercising with Dance Dance Revolution Ultramix on my Xbox, so I thought that this game might be interesting. I had no idea how much I would like it.

(Continue Reading…)

I have so many things to talk about that I put on hold for the last month. Everything looks like crap, though. I know it’s the Demon of Perfection spitting all over my ideas, but I haven’t been able to get it back into the box yet.

I got DDR Ultramix 2 for the Xbox, but I was so busy this month, that I have only played it once. Before I started NaNoWriMo, I had been so excited for its release, but now, all of that seems so silly and superficial. Why can’t I bear to put the game in the controller? Well, I can’t play the songs on anything higher than beginner, which isn’t really a workout for me, so playing the game is just playing the game for fun. I can’t have fun, I have chapters to write.

I told myself that I was going to take a month off and not write a word for a month, but my fingers have all of these muscles from writing every day and they get restless if I leave them with nothing to do. I wrote over 14,000 words in two days. I can’t expect to go cold turkey, can I?

I left them all in a bind in the last chapter. Simon was sick with a fever and Herod’s soldiers were on the road behind the swell. What is a swell? I imagined it to be a kind of rolling hill like you see in movies set in Great Britain. We don’t have hills like that. We have huge, lurking mountains or flatness. Of course, they aren’t in Great Britain or Utah. They are dunking Simon in a lake that may or may not exist in ancient Israel.

See that? See that last paragraph? That’s why I need to take a break from writing fiction. The problem is that when I try to go back to my regularly scheduled blogging, the Demon of Perfection gets all medieval on every idea I have.

The worst of it is that I feel like I’ve run a huge race and there were only three people at the finish line cheering for me. I know there have been over a hundred of you reading my chapters every time they’ve shown up. Those numbers on the stats just don’t cheer loudly enough to hear all the way here in SLC.

The Utah State Library for the Blind never got back to me, so I sent them a $300 check. Twenty hours at my current salary is less than that, but I think I called to St. Lucia about twenty times a day last month. I’m also working on recording my chapters as MP3s so that anyone who is blind can listen to them. Voice work is a nice break from writing fiction.

Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.

This audio track is MP3. It was recorded with MusicMatch (at 160 kbps) and I haven’t learned how to adjust the microphone level so that it’s loud enough to hear without cranking the volume up all the way. If it were meant to be perfect, then I would record it in a professional studio and the dog’s claws wouldn’t be clicking in the background.

Perfection is overrated…

Looking For Christ Audio: Chapter One Download

13 K file – 28 minutes 52 seconds

Update:

Mike put this track through Sound Forge, fixing the volume level a bit and removing the dull hum in the background. To speed the download process, we made them 64 kbps instead of 160 kbps. Since he fixed the volume and noise, we didn’t lose much by reducing the quality and it will download a lot faster. He can’t fix all the little speaking errors, however…

Fixed some microphone problems. Still recorded on MusicMatch. Mike adjusted the levels on Sound Forge and was able to edit out one phenomenal speaking error. Other than that, this is about as good as it gets without entering a recording studio.

Looking For Christ Audio: Chapter Two Download

15 K MP3 file recorded at 64 kbps – 32 minutes 11 seconds

I just found a website devoted to exercise gaming called DDR4Health. I read it all day today and because of it, I added quite a few things to my Amazon wish list. Most of them are too expensive for me to contemplate purchasing right now. They’re just there to remind me of all the cool things that are out there. Here’s a quick overview of the things that are just setting my mind afire right now.

GameBike

Think of it as a huge controller for your console system. It works with PlayStation and they sell an adapter for use on Game Cube or Xbox. Pedaling the bike causes the game to accelerate. According to the documentation, it doesn’t make a difference if you pedal quickly or slowly, you just need to pedal to make it work. I think this would be a great controller to use with Project Gotham Racing. So what if you are pedaling and steering a bike instead of driving a car? It would make all that game time productive.

FP Game Runner

This thing looks like a cheap treadmill connected to a controller. It connects to your computer for first person games with a USB connector. It doesn’t work with any of the current gaming systems (computer only). When I saw it, I thought to myself, “Hmm… I could take apart a normal controller and solder the connections to a cheap treadmill from the thrift store.” I wouldn’t recommend this item because it is so expensive. For that kind of money, you could get a heavy duty treadmill from Nordictrack that goes up to 30% incline at 10 mph.

KiloWatt

It’s another huge monster controller for your console system. It is compatible with Xbox and PlayStation. This is a strength training machine. It is meant to build upper body strength, but the FAQ state that you will notice improvement in your quads as well. Apparently, it’s a huge machine that you manipulate instead of pushing buttons. I wasn’t interested in this one as much because it’s so colossal.

The Journey to Wild Divine

This is not an active game. It’s a biofeedback tool to help you meditate. I thought it was really interesting since getting me to calm down is nearly impossible. I keep thinking that I’ll learn to relax someday. When I saw this, I thought, “Maybe then I could relax.” I keep trying to buy relaxation instead of realizing that the best thing I could do is just complete some projects and write some chapters. This program looked cool, though.

Even though all of these things look like they aren’t quite ready for prime time, what sets my mind afire is the idea that they are the start of a wave of exercise gaming options. I can imagine a future where every house has a gaming machine that attaches to their game console. It works cardio and strength training and makes the games exciting and challenging on an entirely different level. Of course, I could always just go outside and play like my grandma always used to say…

The fiber optic lights on my small Christmas tree pulsate at a rate that could cause seizures, but my contacts have been carefully placed in their proper containers. I am blind, so the lights are soft round balls of color to my eyes. They look almost fluffy.

Being blind always seemed like a detriment to me, but now, I pity the perfectly sighted. My cheap little tree looks like a wondrous joy of light and flickering. I want to reach out and touch the fluffy lights, but they don’t exist. They are merely tiny specks in the real world. In blind world they are large, round and almost feathery.

Only the blind can experience this. I am amazed at the beauty and call Mike to see, but he can see too well. He takes off his glasses and squints his eyes, but they are just lights to him because he is not blind.

I forget how blind I am sometimes. The gas-permeable contacts go into my eyes within minutes of my waking and stay there until right before I sleep. My eyesight has been aided since the age of ten on that beautiful day when I got my first pair of glasses. The world was suddenly sharper. I could see things that I never knew other people could see. Each leaf on the tree was visible and flapping with the breeze.

The MOUNTAINS! Oh dear Jehovah, the mountains! I could see every crevice, crag and gulley. My lovely mountains of soft billowy snow were transformed into a crisp backdrop worthy of any episode of the Brady Bunch. The white blobby clouds looked like cotton fluff and angel hair.

In that instant so many years ago, I realized all the best in the world that I had been missing. I remember taking my glasses off and comparing the two images, filling in the details. After years with corrected vision, however, I had forgotten. The beauty and softness of the world when I was blind was lost to me that day and replaced with the crisp details and never ending minutia.

When I am blind, the world suddenly becomes smaller and softer. The lights loom largely over me with hazy halos. My reaction time is slowed, so my walking is slower. The world closes in on me when I am blind. I had forgotten how cozy it could be.

My weight loss story is not the story people want to hear. People magazine runs articles about people who lose 100 pounds in five months or people who lose half of themselves in half that long. The populous likes to hear stories about the obsessive compulsive guy who lost weight by eating nothing but rice cakes. They want to hear about the lady who put on a pair of tennis shoes and ran herself thin in record time, eventually winning marathons. My story isn’t nearly as glamorous.

I joined Weight Watchers January 17, 2002. I remember the day because my life really hasn’t been the same ever since. My habits have drastically changed since that day a month before the winter Olympics. What was I thinking? I joined Weight Watchers right before I went to Hawaii for two weeks. I went to Hawaii. I went to Weight Watchers in a Catholic church in Ka’paa. I lost weight on that trip and I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything Hawaiian. I tried all the food, I just logged it in my food journal.

What was I thinking? I’ll tell you. My friend, Stacey Staley, was looking good. She had always looked good, but she had confessed to me a few months earlier that she was the biggest she had ever been. She was wearing a size 14 and I would have killed to fit my size 24 ass into her fitted slacks. Still, she had been unhappy with her appearance. Several months after her confession, she looked amazing. I mentioned it and she whispered to me, “I didn’t want to tell anyone. I joined Weight Watchers and I’ve lost twenty-five pounds.” I was amazed. She ended up losing forty pounds, getting to goal and earning Lifetime with them.

Two months later, I noticed that my sister (also named Stacey) was getting thinner. She had always been more fit than I was, so it wasn’t amazing to me, but I asked her what she was doing. She confessed to me that she had joined Weight Watchers at work. She said that she really liked that she was able to eat at any restaurant. She said I should come because they were starting a new class at her work in January.

After fighting with every diet on the planet, I was tempted by the freedom to eat anything as long as it fit within my points range. I had tried the Atkins Diet, which ended in a bread binge that lasted for months. I had tried Body For Life, which was abandoned when the program didn’t allow for the pain that a new exerciser was going to feel. I was ready for Weight Watchers.

I knew two people who were looking fabulous because of Weight Watchers, so I joined with my sister’s at work program. I was disgusted with my appearance. I was ready to do whatever they told me to do because whatever they had was working. It worked for Stacey Staley and it worked for my sister. My sister was cut from the same cloth as I was. If it worked for her, it would work for me. I joined blindly and followed all of their rules. Forty-five pounds dropped off me with relative ease.

That’s the glamorous side of my story. I lost forty-five pounds in about four months. It was so easy that I was planning on being at my goal weight within the year. But here we are nearing my three year anniversary, and I’m not at goal yet. For awhile, that was really discouraging for me. I felt like I should be at my goal by now. Even though I had lost all that weight, I felt like I was a failure because I wasn’t at my goal yet. Each month that went by made that goal seem so much further away.

It wasn’t the plan’s fault. It’s not like I was staying within my points range and the weight wasn’t budging. No, I couldn’t blame it on Weight Watchers. My weight loss stagnated because I wasn’t following the program. Sure, I would follow it faithfully for a couple of weeks, but then the binges. I had allowed the bingeing to return to my life. I made excuses just like everyone else does. I could list them right now for you, all the excuses that I made for myself. They sounded so valid when I made them, but now they seem empty, like an abandoned hermit crab’s shell.

So here I am. My butt fits easily into those coveted size 14 jeans. I find myself in the strange situation of being where I wanted to be and finding out that it’s not enough. I know Weight Watchers told me that it was not enough, but back when I started with them, all I wanted was to be as thin as Stacey Staley was when she started. Now, I’m there and I realize they were right. My weight needs to be between 109 and 131 just like the little chart says. Losing forty-five pounds isn’t enough for me anymore.

Last Saturday, I was back on track. Last Saturday, I started Weight Watchers again just like I did back in January of 2002. The only difference is that it is so much easier for me now because I know exactly what to do. What is she thinking? Starting a weight loss program right before Christmas? Why doesn’t she just wait?

Nope. Can’t wait. Not one more minute. Not one more second am I going to wait. I can enjoy Christmas and eat healthy. I know this because I’ve done it for the last two Christmases. I can live like this for the rest of my life because this is the healthy way to go. I have cut the bingeing out of my life. That’s the only thing that I needed to do. I just needed to quit making excuses for the binges. You know the excuses (it’s Christmas, we’re on vacation, we’re camping, it’s a party, it’s the weekend, we’re celebrating, ad infinitum). They are crushed under my feet like that empty hermit crab shell. The shards splinter and spray around me and I am released from them forever.

If I lose at a healthy rate, I will be at my goal by October 1, 2005. That seems so far away, but I refuse to do anything unhealthy and losing faster than one or two pounds a week is not healthy. You’ve seen me do amazing things. I lost the first half of my weight without a glitch. I wrote 50,000 words in my novel in a month. I’ve written almost every day in my blog for over a year. I can do amazing things and this is the next one on my list. I will be at goal by October 1, 2005. This year, I’m going to be a vampire for Halloween and knock your socks off. Hope to see you at the party!

I made Silver on Yourself! Fitness today. That opened up the Alpine Retreat exercise space and let me use the Techno music. I really liked the Alpine Retreat. There was a mountain biker that drove by in the background a couple of times and a hot air balloon gently floated over the water. I don’t know why those little extras make things more enjoyable for me, but they really do. It reminded me of being up at Snowbird. The Snowbird Ski Resort has a nice open space where they have Oktober Fest and I imagined I was up in the Wasatch mountains exercising.

By the way, if you don’t exercise for a week, she does give you a lecture about consistency. When you start exercising regularly again, she gives you a lot of positive feedback. She has told me two corny jokes. Yesterday, I wasn’t too happy about exercising, so I chose the “You’re lucky I’m here” selection. She responded, “Kind of like my date last night.” This morning, she asked me if I’m always this animated and then said, “I am, get it?” You know… because she’s computer animated… Yeah, I didn’t think they were funny either, but she never tells jokes when I’m exercising. That’s the important thing.

On another note, tomorrow is my second DDR-U2 workout with Sinistar, the editor of DDR4Health, on Xbox Live. We are meeting at 7am Eastern (5am Mountain), so if anyone wants to join us, we have room for two more people. We play the songs on Light for 30 minutes and let the computer choose them at random. I’m excited for this workout. It gives me something to look forward to during the week.

I am really enjoying all the exercise options that are available to me. I still have both gym memberships, but I haven’t used either one in a long time. I’m getting workouts that are just as intense as I would at the gym, but I don’t have to leave the house. I can just hop in the shower afterward and get ready for work. Something about not going to the gym bothers me, though, and it’s not the fact that I’m paying for something that I’m not using.

I think that being at the gym is a positive influence on me because there are people there who are uber-fit. Having someone to look up to and strive to be like is really inspirational. The brown-haired girl from the Bosu Incident could have been one of those people. She was able to perform every exercise that the teacher asked without a flaw. She was really good and really fit, but instead of being a role model, she brought back every junior high nightmare in one vivid flashback. Even though the brown-haired girl isn’t at 24 Hour Fitness, I’m reluctant to go there.

I haven’t worked out the whole gym thing. Maybe the gym isn’t right for me, even though I have found inspiration there. I don’t know the answer to this yet, but I’m still working on it. In the meantime, you’ll find me exercising at the Alpine Resort on Yourself! Fitness. There are no brown-haired girls there. Maya’s my personal trainer and she never makes fun of me.

“Have you read the Da Vincio…”

His voice trailed off, but I knew what he was talking about.

“No, I haven’t read The Da Vinci Code .”

“I was watching something on The History Channel about it…”

I could tell that he wanted to talk about a book he didn’t read and conspiracy theories he has only had a passing glance of. I went through my conspiracy theory phase in the early nineties, so I had no patience for him.

“I heard it was a cheap rip-off of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. I read Foucault’s Pendulum, so I didn’t bother with The Da Vinci Code. Foucault’s Pendulum was written in Italian and translated rather poorly, so maybe that’s…”

The phone rang and I answered it professionally even though I was in mid-rant. We never got back to the conversation and in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t get to finish. I was about to talk about Portuguese, Latin and Italian. I was about to tell him how I regretted that I didn’t write the translations in my book so that my friends could read it. I was about to tell him about Dylan’s rant, “Bring me the head of Umberto Eco!”

I just looked up The Da Vinci Code at my library’s website. They have 10 books and 49 holds. Anyone who has stepped into a Barnes and Noble in the last year has seen the huge display of Da Vinci items. Apparently, The History Channel even has a show about it. All that popularity makes me recoil from it like a Britney Spears concert.

Yet, at one time, I was so intrigued by the idea of conspiracy theories that I was willing to slog through Foucault’s Pendulum. I looked up the Latin. I muddled my way through the Portuguese. I did my best with the Italian. I consumed the Templars. I was intrigued by the Kabala. I even chuckled at the thought that Mickey Mouse had a part in it all. I didn’t go all Illuminati or anything, but I enjoyed the ideas for a brief month or two in my life.

I liked the ideas in the past. Why do I recoil from them now? Is it just the popularity of them that makes me dismiss them with a “cheap rip-off” jab? I’m feeling guilty now and my words from this morning sound callous and hollow. I guess I should read the book. It’s not like it’s going to tax my intellect like Umberto’s did. I could probably read it over a weekend. I’m not waiting in line behind 49 people, though. I better buy my own copy.

It has been foggy in Salt Lake. The engineers are complaining, but I feel cozy and enclosed. The airport has had delays, which is the last thing they need during this busy season, but I am staying in the city with no flight plans for the holidays. Last weekend, Mike, Stacey, Dan and I went to a movie at Jordan Commons. When we came out, the clear evening had become foggy. The Christmas lights looked fuzzy and soft as if someone had put Vaseline on the lens of our lives.

It has been so cold that I fear that we will have no snow for Christmas this year. We had snow earlier in the year, so I’m not feeling Scroogy, but it looks like we will be graced with yellowing grasses and foggy air for the holiday instead of clean skies and a crisp white covering over our city. Thus is Christmas in Utah. Half the years, we are buried so deeply that we are stranded in our homes. The other years, we are roasting in fifty degree weather or freezing below the snowing temperatures.

The funny thing is that I like the fog. I like the snow. I like the sweltering fifty degree winters. I like the horrid temperatures below freezing. I like them all. I still complain when I am cold or hot, but on the whole, the weather is one of the things binding me to the city with steel bands. I like the passing of the seasons, even if they are unpleasant. I know that a new one is around the corner in a few months. I always have something to look forward to. I fear that if I moved to Hawaii, I would feel as if time stood still, waiting for a winter that never came.

I need this quiet, dark, cold time. There must be a hibernating creature deep in my DNA longing for the cold and fog, because this weather feels wonderful to me. Have a very foggy Christmas and a slushy New Year!

Considering my new focus of attention, my personal blog has the potential of becoming the “Laura is Losing Weight” blog. More and more, I want to write about new exercise things I’ve found or exciting ideas for eating healthy. That, however, is not why I started this weblog.

This site is where my writing goes: my fiction, my feelings, my ideas, my opinions. If I devote this blog to health and fitness, it’s no longer totally me. The incongruous juxtaposition between a rant about the gym and the next chapter of Looking For Christ is too much for me. I’m not much of a person to compartmentalize, but Health and Fitness is one thing that is getting big enough to take over.

So, Mike and I started Starling Fitness. It’s a daily blog about Health and Fitness. All my entries from here that are pertinent to this subject have been copied over there. If I write something intensely personal there, I’ll mention it here. Mike did all the programming and style sheets for it and he has done an amazing job of it.

I’m really happy how this is all turning out and I am right on schedule for that October finish. I’m just going to talk about it over there instead of here. Hope to see you there!

It looks like I’m going to get my White Christmas after all. It snowed on Wednesday night and it has been too cold for the snow to melt ever since. It makes me happy in a child-like way. The snow is powdery, so it’s no good for snowmen or snow balls. It’s just right for skiing, but I’m not that type of girl. I’m sure Snowbird, Brighton and Park City are active with skiers. If they aren’t, they will be right after Christmas day. This sort of fluffy goodness is what made our mountains the site for the Olympics. It just makes me happy that we have snow instead of yellowing grass for the holiday.

Over the Christmas holiday, I read The Da Vinci Code. I had been told that it was a cheap Foucault’s Pendulum rip-off. At first glance, it might appear that way. Both books start with a murder in a museum. Both books are conspiracy theory stories in which the characters are searching for The Holy Grail. Both books drag everything under the sun into the conspiracy including Mickey Mouse. That, however, is where the correlations end…

(Continue Reading…)

From Boing Boing: “The Arkon LavNav is a nightlight that clips onto your toilet seat. It senses your approach in the night and glows gently (no blinding 100w bulb at 2AM) — green if the seat is down and red if the seat is up.”

I’m a little clumsy in the middle of the night. Can you just imagine how the toilet would look when the light fell off the lid and into the toilet? I can’t flush it. I’d have to reach in and get it. Yeah, I think I’ll leave this one to the early adopters and risk sitting on the toilet without the seat.

Arkon’s website seems to have a multitude of choices in gadgetry. Motion activated soap dispensers that would spew soap on my cats when they walked by. Personal air purifyers that would blow that strangely smelling ionized air at me. PDA mounts that would allow me to see what songs are playing on my Tungsten while I’m driving (ok, those look really cool).

This is the best idea for a cheap date that I have ever heard of in my life. It would really only work with married couples, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a really fun thing to do on a blind date.

Courtesy of Michael Main: The Bargain Hunt

The show on BBC America that he’s talking about, Bargain Hunt, sounds like a really fun show to watch. I wonder if I have that channel? I seriously haven’t bothered checking the channels for months. I turned on VH-1 for a half hour or so last week, but my television viewing has dropped to almost nothing. I wonder if the show is worth changing the TV from Game Mode (for the Xbox) back to TV Mode.

I’ve talked about robots alot (Artificial Intelligence, I, Robot, I, Robot Reloaded) in the past. I don’t know why I want them to exist, but they are so cool to me. Honda has some movies of their brand new ASIMO robot. Not only can it walk on two feet (amazing!), it can go up and down stairs (rock on!) and it can RUN! They say it runs at 3 KM an hour. That’s almost 2 miles an hour, which seems slow, but when I weighed 236 pounds, I could barely walk 2 miles an hour. I think it’s amazing and the videos are fun to watch!

Honda ASIMO Videos

It just made me feel like I would be able to see robots in my future. I would be able to interact and communicate with a brand new life form of our own creation. I have all but given up seeing aliens in my lifetime, but a different species of our own making is something that we are so close to that I feel like I could reach out my hand and touch it.