Danny Adams's Blog
April 24, 2016
Remembrance Of Dr. Denis Lape: A Falstaff, An Honest Puck, And Constant As The Northern Star
This is what I said yesterday - an extended version, as I trimmed a little bit as I spoke for fear of speaking too long, especially since I could have gone on for hours - at the memorial service of my college professor, adviser, mentor, and friend, Dr. Denis Lape. It seemed much too small for such a great man and one I had known for twenty years, but I hope it captured a little a part of the essence of who he was.
I’m Danny Adams, Roanoke College Class of 1998, English major with a concentration in K-12 education, and presently a college librarian and a freelance author. Denis Lape was both my adviser and my mentor at Roanoke, and then my friend in the years since I graduated.
Jane, I don’t know if this is something that you and Denis planned, or this was something the universe lined up him, but today – this exact day, Saturday, April 23rd, 2016 – is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. I can’t imagine any better day to have a memorial for Denis Lape.
For those of you who were at Denis’ memorial during Alumni Weekend, I hope you liked what I said then, because you’re going to be hearing most of it again. It was the best way I could think to compress twenty years into five minutes.
Also, though it’s been nearly ten years since Denis asked me to call him Denis, he still made such an impact on me from early on that to this day, I still have to think a little bit before I call him Denis instead of Dr. Lape. If I bounce back and forth between the two, that’s why. He told me to call him Denis because he now considered us peers and equals—which I still have trouble believing, that I could be Denis Lape’s peer and equal, but he was never anything but honest with me, so I’ll try to take his word for it.
I started at Roanoke College late, transferring in just a few weeks before I turned twenty-five. I’d wanted to go to Roanoke for a long time, and in the meantime I’d been through quite a lot, so I was determined that nothing and no one was going to stand in my way. I decided to become an English major mainly because I’d been a writer since I was twelve, but knew I could be a much better one, and so I was hoping the major would improve my skills. Upon starting school I was given Dr. Denis Lape as my adviser, and my first class was one of his.
Other students met the news of this with what seemed like awe and trepidation, if not a little fear. “Dr. Lape!” It wasn’t exactly said like a whisper, but it might have been. There were stories about Dr. Lape. Stories and…legends. But I was determined. As much as I’d been through to get to Roanoke, I wasn’t going to be intimidated by a professor.
Then I got back my first paper from Dr. Lape – with a D. I think the class was American history, the paper about Thomas Jefferson or something like that, and I was convinced that it was a good paper. I knew it was! It was, I thought, well-written…concise…and all of my arguments were backed up by well-cited expert opinions. So I marched to his office barely containing my righteous fury, and demanded—well, politely, because this was Dr. Lape, and despite my resolve he was a little intimidating—why he gave me a D. I gave him my reasons, but when I got to the part about the well-cited expert opinions he stopped me short.
“I don’t care what they have to say!” he declared. “They’re not my students! You are my student. I want to know what you think about this. And I want to know why you think it.”
Whoa. He didn’t slam his fist down on his desk, but he might as well have for all the impact this on me. I think I stared at him for a moment, completely dumbfounded. My entire academic career up until that point had discouraged any notion that what I thought was relevant. If it wasn’t backed up by expert opinions, it didn’t matter.
But more than that, even after writing for a dozen years, I had never really developed a voice or a style of my own in my personal writing. I had a lot of literary heroes, people who had led me to writing, and my efforts were aimed at imitating the best of what they had to offer. Because—though I hadn’t realized it until that point—it never truly and deeply occurred to me that my own writing, as my own writing, might be important.
To use a phrase I first heard at Roanoke College from Dr. Deborah Selby, this shifted my paradigm.
And this wasn’t a one-shot occurrence from him, either. This was Denis Lape. He quickly became not just my adviser but also my mentor, but that encouragement was always there: to be a better student, a better writer, a better person. And I did need a lot of reinforcement, especially those first few months. He saw the potential people had and was willing to make a mighty effort to bring that out. Nor did it stop after I graduated, either, but continued in the years afterward when Denis and Jaine invited me into their home.
(It should surprise nobody in this chapel, by the way, that Denis never had a problem with the fact that most of my writing has been science fiction and fantasy.)
I’ve done pretty well at writing since then, and I’m indebted to Denis a great deal for that. He’s always been in the back of my mind as I’ve continued writing. When I finished what became my first published solo-authored novel, he was the first person—
after my wife Laurie—to see it. When I published a science fiction sequel to Moby Dick—a book I own primarily thanks to him—again, after Laurie, he was the first person who saw a copy. When I made my first trip to the Globe Theater in London last summer, he and Jaine were the first people I sent a Globe postcard to.
As for the future . . .
I’m reminded of an interview that NPR did a couple of years ago with the former Poet Laureate, Donald Hall. Hall was in his early eighties, a widower, and confined to a wheelchair, but insisted that he wasn’t miserable at all. He could still wheel his wheelchair up to his table, he said, and write, and as long as he could do that, he would be happy.
That’s what I’m hoping for. If I’m lucky enough to still be writing in my eighties or beyond, if I can still wheel my wheelchair to the table and write, I’ll be happy.
And I’ll still be thanking Dr. Lape then, too.
Thank you, Denis. And thank you, Jaine, for asking me to speak today.
I’m Danny Adams, Roanoke College Class of 1998, English major with a concentration in K-12 education, and presently a college librarian and a freelance author. Denis Lape was both my adviser and my mentor at Roanoke, and then my friend in the years since I graduated.
Jane, I don’t know if this is something that you and Denis planned, or this was something the universe lined up him, but today – this exact day, Saturday, April 23rd, 2016 – is the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. I can’t imagine any better day to have a memorial for Denis Lape.
For those of you who were at Denis’ memorial during Alumni Weekend, I hope you liked what I said then, because you’re going to be hearing most of it again. It was the best way I could think to compress twenty years into five minutes.
Also, though it’s been nearly ten years since Denis asked me to call him Denis, he still made such an impact on me from early on that to this day, I still have to think a little bit before I call him Denis instead of Dr. Lape. If I bounce back and forth between the two, that’s why. He told me to call him Denis because he now considered us peers and equals—which I still have trouble believing, that I could be Denis Lape’s peer and equal, but he was never anything but honest with me, so I’ll try to take his word for it.
I started at Roanoke College late, transferring in just a few weeks before I turned twenty-five. I’d wanted to go to Roanoke for a long time, and in the meantime I’d been through quite a lot, so I was determined that nothing and no one was going to stand in my way. I decided to become an English major mainly because I’d been a writer since I was twelve, but knew I could be a much better one, and so I was hoping the major would improve my skills. Upon starting school I was given Dr. Denis Lape as my adviser, and my first class was one of his.
Other students met the news of this with what seemed like awe and trepidation, if not a little fear. “Dr. Lape!” It wasn’t exactly said like a whisper, but it might have been. There were stories about Dr. Lape. Stories and…legends. But I was determined. As much as I’d been through to get to Roanoke, I wasn’t going to be intimidated by a professor.
Then I got back my first paper from Dr. Lape – with a D. I think the class was American history, the paper about Thomas Jefferson or something like that, and I was convinced that it was a good paper. I knew it was! It was, I thought, well-written…concise…and all of my arguments were backed up by well-cited expert opinions. So I marched to his office barely containing my righteous fury, and demanded—well, politely, because this was Dr. Lape, and despite my resolve he was a little intimidating—why he gave me a D. I gave him my reasons, but when I got to the part about the well-cited expert opinions he stopped me short.
“I don’t care what they have to say!” he declared. “They’re not my students! You are my student. I want to know what you think about this. And I want to know why you think it.”
Whoa. He didn’t slam his fist down on his desk, but he might as well have for all the impact this on me. I think I stared at him for a moment, completely dumbfounded. My entire academic career up until that point had discouraged any notion that what I thought was relevant. If it wasn’t backed up by expert opinions, it didn’t matter.
But more than that, even after writing for a dozen years, I had never really developed a voice or a style of my own in my personal writing. I had a lot of literary heroes, people who had led me to writing, and my efforts were aimed at imitating the best of what they had to offer. Because—though I hadn’t realized it until that point—it never truly and deeply occurred to me that my own writing, as my own writing, might be important.
To use a phrase I first heard at Roanoke College from Dr. Deborah Selby, this shifted my paradigm.
And this wasn’t a one-shot occurrence from him, either. This was Denis Lape. He quickly became not just my adviser but also my mentor, but that encouragement was always there: to be a better student, a better writer, a better person. And I did need a lot of reinforcement, especially those first few months. He saw the potential people had and was willing to make a mighty effort to bring that out. Nor did it stop after I graduated, either, but continued in the years afterward when Denis and Jaine invited me into their home.
(It should surprise nobody in this chapel, by the way, that Denis never had a problem with the fact that most of my writing has been science fiction and fantasy.)
I’ve done pretty well at writing since then, and I’m indebted to Denis a great deal for that. He’s always been in the back of my mind as I’ve continued writing. When I finished what became my first published solo-authored novel, he was the first person—
after my wife Laurie—to see it. When I published a science fiction sequel to Moby Dick—a book I own primarily thanks to him—again, after Laurie, he was the first person who saw a copy. When I made my first trip to the Globe Theater in London last summer, he and Jaine were the first people I sent a Globe postcard to.
As for the future . . .
I’m reminded of an interview that NPR did a couple of years ago with the former Poet Laureate, Donald Hall. Hall was in his early eighties, a widower, and confined to a wheelchair, but insisted that he wasn’t miserable at all. He could still wheel his wheelchair up to his table, he said, and write, and as long as he could do that, he would be happy.
That’s what I’m hoping for. If I’m lucky enough to still be writing in my eighties or beyond, if I can still wheel my wheelchair to the table and write, I’ll be happy.
And I’ll still be thanking Dr. Lape then, too.
Thank you, Denis. And thank you, Jaine, for asking me to speak today.
February 16, 2016
The Slow Circle Road
Beyond the vegetable and animal foods we purchase shrink-wrapped from the grocery store, many of us no longer can call our fellow creatures by name. The naming of things is essential to our understanding of them and to our belonging among them, and there are costs to our ignorance. … Maybe it is significant that God set man the task of naming the creatures early on in Genesis as the first and necessary part of assuming our responsibility as stewards. What we have names for, we are more likely to notice and appreciate, less likely to ignore, abuse or consider of no consequence. We know our friends by name, and attend to them better than we do to rank strangers. I wonder if we couldn’t be better caretakers of the planet if we were on a first name basis with more of its inhabitants, and knew more about their families and their kin.
-Fred First, Slow Road Home
I used to know the names of my neighbors. I’m a lot less familiar with them now, even though I own a home on their doorstep.
I mean the wild neighbors like Fred First is talking about in the passage above. In my early twenties especially, I consumed whatever books I could about the natural world around me, always as a prelude to doing my own boots-on-the-ground and hands-on explorations. I hiked on and off trails for miles around the Blue Ridge Mountains. I drew what I found, or sometimes saved samples, particularly leaves and bark to look up later and teach myself what I was looking at. I memorized the different varieties of trees, and even researched their medical uses. I would follow animal tracks, figuring out what animal it was first, then what they were up to when they left the tracks—including, once, a mama bobcat with two cubs who stayed side by side nearby while she chased and took down a deer. I took note of claw marks on trees and stones. A few years later, had I been more confident in myself, I likely could have gotten a job as a park ranger when one was offered to me.
I’ve let myself get distracted since then.
Most of what I learned about my wild neighbors I’ve forgotten. I can tell you if something is an oak or a maple tree, but not specifically what kind anymore, and only by the leaf, almost never by the bark. I can tell you what many birds are on sight, but no longer by their songs. I look at those drawings I made twenty-odd years ago as if they were done by someone else. But I don’t like that at all. I want to learn about my neighbors again, especially since I’m now living on the edge of hundreds of acres of a mountain forest.
That’s the odd thing. I’ve lived on this mountainside for ten years come August, but all but the last two were in a rented house, so it never really felt like my own. I went hiking in the woods many times, exploring all over my side of the mountain, but I never took such care to relearn what I was looking at as I had in younger years. I’m not sure why; maybe it’s because I still felt a sense of impermanence, heightened in 2010 and ’11 by a months-long scare that I was going to have to move.
Worse still: I realized at the beginning of February, as I was hiking Tucker through the woods behind the house, that I hadn’t done any real hiking or exploring since moving into the house. That forest was a big part of the reason I moved here, and a big part of the reason I bought the house I did, and yet once I had the house, I let other things get in the way of going back into it. Writing, work, the house itself, all seemed to take priority until the morning Tucker and I dove into the forest because the road salt left before a winter storm meant that I couldn’t take him out onto the street. I actually felt ashamed of myself for not making my way back into what felt like a second home for so long.
Every piece of land has an admirer at least once somewhere in its history, and I’m an admirer of the forest I live beside, so let me introduce you. It starts a few dozen feet behind the house where flat yard drops sharply down the mountainside, a steep boundary between tame and wild. It stretches for hundreds of acres, but the forest on the southern half of the mountain is young as forests go, only a few decades old.
While the northern half of the mountain’s spread of trees remained intact—if you look at the mountain from a short distance you can see that side is much thicker—the southern half was almost completely devoid of trees as recently as eighty years ago, because it was farmed. A few hundred feet behind my house and across a creek are the remains of a late 19th century or early 20th century log cabin, whose foundation stones and chimney’s bottom half still exist, along with occasional tiny shards of ceramic ware. If you squint a little you can see a narrow thinning in the trees behind it where a road—a dirt road or track—ran to the cabin. A few hundred feet to the north are a series of stone walls ascending the hill where the land was terraced. An old dirt road, now blocked off from the paved neighborhood stretch, makes a loop over the mountaintop. Near the road are two long depressions running side by side along the side of the mountain which are probably old collapsed shafts made by miners looking for iron, a plentiful substance here that gives this area its red soil, and gave the town and college campus the name Ferrum.
There are some enormous oaks here left from the days before that side of the mountain was stripped, probably as shade trees. Sadly one fell recently, leaving a giant hole both in the ground and open to the sky. There are some big maples and others, including birch, since not many timber companies were interested in birch. But otherwise this forest is only a few decades old—though in that time it has reclaimed the mountainside for its own and spread everywhere where it wasn’t held back by houses and back yards.
We have deer most nights. Turkeys occasionally cross a road a little farther up the mountain. I haven’t seen a raccoon in years but their hand-shaped paw prints still mark their regular passages. We’ve had coyotes, bobcats, and at least one brown bear—seen looking miserable as it fled across my front yard to the woods in the middle of a downpour. The woods immediately behind my house are part of the territory of a red-tailed hawk—who is much hated by crows staking the same claim—and there are at least two Great Horned Owls you can occasionally hear calling and marking out their spaces at night.
All of this probably makes it sound like I know my neighbors, but I really don’t. Offhand I can’t even tell you what type of oak rises straight up in the center of my front yard, or the two maples that flank it. I remember finding young chestnut trees in the woods some years back, ones that hadn’t yet been strangled by the blight, but I can’t remember now where they’re located. I don’t even know if they’re still alive. I can’t tell you when our owls will sound off, or when the hawk will be overhead. If you showed me one of my own old drawings of a leaf or bark without the caption, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what it is.
Like Fred First in the passage above, I think my learning the names of my neighbors will only be a good thing, help me appreciate them more, and maybe even care for them better as much as I’m able. I bought the house here, I’m in it for the long haul, and those neighbors were a big part of the reason why. It’s way past time for me to go exploring and reintroducing myself, and relearning just who I share my ground with. I’m tired of not knowing.
I admire this land and I always will, now. I’m on a slow circle road taking me back to the starting point of learning about it, one leaf and one bird song at a time, and being in love with the knowing of everything around me. The more I learn the more I love it. If you ever visit me I’ll take you through the woods, as deep in as we can go if you want. Sooner or later you’ll find something to take home with you.
-Fred First, Slow Road Home
I used to know the names of my neighbors. I’m a lot less familiar with them now, even though I own a home on their doorstep.
I mean the wild neighbors like Fred First is talking about in the passage above. In my early twenties especially, I consumed whatever books I could about the natural world around me, always as a prelude to doing my own boots-on-the-ground and hands-on explorations. I hiked on and off trails for miles around the Blue Ridge Mountains. I drew what I found, or sometimes saved samples, particularly leaves and bark to look up later and teach myself what I was looking at. I memorized the different varieties of trees, and even researched their medical uses. I would follow animal tracks, figuring out what animal it was first, then what they were up to when they left the tracks—including, once, a mama bobcat with two cubs who stayed side by side nearby while she chased and took down a deer. I took note of claw marks on trees and stones. A few years later, had I been more confident in myself, I likely could have gotten a job as a park ranger when one was offered to me.
I’ve let myself get distracted since then.
Most of what I learned about my wild neighbors I’ve forgotten. I can tell you if something is an oak or a maple tree, but not specifically what kind anymore, and only by the leaf, almost never by the bark. I can tell you what many birds are on sight, but no longer by their songs. I look at those drawings I made twenty-odd years ago as if they were done by someone else. But I don’t like that at all. I want to learn about my neighbors again, especially since I’m now living on the edge of hundreds of acres of a mountain forest.
That’s the odd thing. I’ve lived on this mountainside for ten years come August, but all but the last two were in a rented house, so it never really felt like my own. I went hiking in the woods many times, exploring all over my side of the mountain, but I never took such care to relearn what I was looking at as I had in younger years. I’m not sure why; maybe it’s because I still felt a sense of impermanence, heightened in 2010 and ’11 by a months-long scare that I was going to have to move.
Worse still: I realized at the beginning of February, as I was hiking Tucker through the woods behind the house, that I hadn’t done any real hiking or exploring since moving into the house. That forest was a big part of the reason I moved here, and a big part of the reason I bought the house I did, and yet once I had the house, I let other things get in the way of going back into it. Writing, work, the house itself, all seemed to take priority until the morning Tucker and I dove into the forest because the road salt left before a winter storm meant that I couldn’t take him out onto the street. I actually felt ashamed of myself for not making my way back into what felt like a second home for so long.
Every piece of land has an admirer at least once somewhere in its history, and I’m an admirer of the forest I live beside, so let me introduce you. It starts a few dozen feet behind the house where flat yard drops sharply down the mountainside, a steep boundary between tame and wild. It stretches for hundreds of acres, but the forest on the southern half of the mountain is young as forests go, only a few decades old.
While the northern half of the mountain’s spread of trees remained intact—if you look at the mountain from a short distance you can see that side is much thicker—the southern half was almost completely devoid of trees as recently as eighty years ago, because it was farmed. A few hundred feet behind my house and across a creek are the remains of a late 19th century or early 20th century log cabin, whose foundation stones and chimney’s bottom half still exist, along with occasional tiny shards of ceramic ware. If you squint a little you can see a narrow thinning in the trees behind it where a road—a dirt road or track—ran to the cabin. A few hundred feet to the north are a series of stone walls ascending the hill where the land was terraced. An old dirt road, now blocked off from the paved neighborhood stretch, makes a loop over the mountaintop. Near the road are two long depressions running side by side along the side of the mountain which are probably old collapsed shafts made by miners looking for iron, a plentiful substance here that gives this area its red soil, and gave the town and college campus the name Ferrum.
There are some enormous oaks here left from the days before that side of the mountain was stripped, probably as shade trees. Sadly one fell recently, leaving a giant hole both in the ground and open to the sky. There are some big maples and others, including birch, since not many timber companies were interested in birch. But otherwise this forest is only a few decades old—though in that time it has reclaimed the mountainside for its own and spread everywhere where it wasn’t held back by houses and back yards.
We have deer most nights. Turkeys occasionally cross a road a little farther up the mountain. I haven’t seen a raccoon in years but their hand-shaped paw prints still mark their regular passages. We’ve had coyotes, bobcats, and at least one brown bear—seen looking miserable as it fled across my front yard to the woods in the middle of a downpour. The woods immediately behind my house are part of the territory of a red-tailed hawk—who is much hated by crows staking the same claim—and there are at least two Great Horned Owls you can occasionally hear calling and marking out their spaces at night.
All of this probably makes it sound like I know my neighbors, but I really don’t. Offhand I can’t even tell you what type of oak rises straight up in the center of my front yard, or the two maples that flank it. I remember finding young chestnut trees in the woods some years back, ones that hadn’t yet been strangled by the blight, but I can’t remember now where they’re located. I don’t even know if they’re still alive. I can’t tell you when our owls will sound off, or when the hawk will be overhead. If you showed me one of my own old drawings of a leaf or bark without the caption, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what it is.
Like Fred First in the passage above, I think my learning the names of my neighbors will only be a good thing, help me appreciate them more, and maybe even care for them better as much as I’m able. I bought the house here, I’m in it for the long haul, and those neighbors were a big part of the reason why. It’s way past time for me to go exploring and reintroducing myself, and relearning just who I share my ground with. I’m tired of not knowing.
I admire this land and I always will, now. I’m on a slow circle road taking me back to the starting point of learning about it, one leaf and one bird song at a time, and being in love with the knowing of everything around me. The more I learn the more I love it. If you ever visit me I’ll take you through the woods, as deep in as we can go if you want. Sooner or later you’ll find something to take home with you.
January 11, 2016
Interregnum
I've been half-joking with the returning students that since this was the first Christmas Break in years that found me not working on a novel, I spent it meandering and not really knowing what to do with myself. That's (a bit of) an exaggeration. But not quite a month after sending Secret Project to the publisher, I have been restless in the writing sort of way since I am In Between in the activity that usually rules my days and mind. Thus my brain has been spinning out the next two possibilities:
(1) Short book that for the most part won't require research. This would be a science fiction young adult novel that I literally dreamed up a few weeks ago - not the ending, of course, since my brain apparently wants me to work for it at least a little bit. The premise is an already-happened alien invasion of Earth, but one where the aliens weren't coming willingly and most would scurry off as fast as their appendages would take them if they were able.
(2) The next giant historical novel, the one about the Mississippi River. Another one that's been in my head for a long time, like the Shenandoah and Arizona novels before it. Research intensive. I would prefer this be a large single novel, but I know how well that worked out (or didn't) for my Shenandoah and Arizona novels plural.
In a small writing note I discovered last night that the painting I would like to use as the cover of the first Arizona novel, should I ever self-publish it - a painting by Frederic Remington - is not only public domain, but at least one museum also offers up a free-use photograph of it. (That would be the sticky part in copyright - the painting may be out of copyright, but not necessarily online pictures of it.) The cover of the second book would likewise be a Remington painting, but I haven't found any free-use photos of it yet.
Semi-related, I have a large collection of pre-World War II postcards of places in Europe and Asia that were destroyed or severely damaged in the war, including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Nuremberg, Rotterdam, and several places in Normandy. I've toyed with the idea of self-publishing a book of these - a "Here's what these places looked like before they were destroyed" collection, including text about the places in the postcards - but there might be copyright issues there as well. The oldest postcards would be public domain automatically, but the rights to a few might still be owned somewhere. Since some were photographed and published in the Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan eras, that could be a thorny but interesting search.
Today was my first workout day of the new year, and actually the first workout I've done since October. I ended up not leaving myself time to do as much as I wanted, but I still knocked out an elliptical mile in 9 minutes and 40 seconds, along with some weight pushing (as opposed to weight lifting, that is). My only New Year's Resolution was to get to the gym at least twice a week, preferably three times; since I was going at least twice every week in the months leading up to my trip to Europe (so I could gallivant around Europe without giving myself a heart attack), I know it can be done if I just put my feet on the ground. Or the elliptical treads, as the case may be.
Now back to awaiting Secret Project edits, though now I will do so either listening to David Bowie or watching The Prestige again.
(1) Short book that for the most part won't require research. This would be a science fiction young adult novel that I literally dreamed up a few weeks ago - not the ending, of course, since my brain apparently wants me to work for it at least a little bit. The premise is an already-happened alien invasion of Earth, but one where the aliens weren't coming willingly and most would scurry off as fast as their appendages would take them if they were able.
(2) The next giant historical novel, the one about the Mississippi River. Another one that's been in my head for a long time, like the Shenandoah and Arizona novels before it. Research intensive. I would prefer this be a large single novel, but I know how well that worked out (or didn't) for my Shenandoah and Arizona novels plural.
In a small writing note I discovered last night that the painting I would like to use as the cover of the first Arizona novel, should I ever self-publish it - a painting by Frederic Remington - is not only public domain, but at least one museum also offers up a free-use photograph of it. (That would be the sticky part in copyright - the painting may be out of copyright, but not necessarily online pictures of it.) The cover of the second book would likewise be a Remington painting, but I haven't found any free-use photos of it yet.
Semi-related, I have a large collection of pre-World War II postcards of places in Europe and Asia that were destroyed or severely damaged in the war, including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Nuremberg, Rotterdam, and several places in Normandy. I've toyed with the idea of self-publishing a book of these - a "Here's what these places looked like before they were destroyed" collection, including text about the places in the postcards - but there might be copyright issues there as well. The oldest postcards would be public domain automatically, but the rights to a few might still be owned somewhere. Since some were photographed and published in the Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan eras, that could be a thorny but interesting search.
Today was my first workout day of the new year, and actually the first workout I've done since October. I ended up not leaving myself time to do as much as I wanted, but I still knocked out an elliptical mile in 9 minutes and 40 seconds, along with some weight pushing (as opposed to weight lifting, that is). My only New Year's Resolution was to get to the gym at least twice a week, preferably three times; since I was going at least twice every week in the months leading up to my trip to Europe (so I could gallivant around Europe without giving myself a heart attack), I know it can be done if I just put my feet on the ground. Or the elliptical treads, as the case may be.
Now back to awaiting Secret Project edits, though now I will do so either listening to David Bowie or watching The Prestige again.
January 5, 2016
Where Am I?
Oh, right. I was actually a little nervous logging back into Live Journal for the first time in forever - well, about ten months, with my last entry posted in mid-February - as if I was going to be met by a screaming mob at my threshold. Here I am, poking around, running my fingers along the walls, turning on the lights room by room, as if I'm going through a house I spent part of my childhood in but haven't been back to in years.
My being away wasn't due to not having anything to write about. As it happened, 2015 was a busy year.
I finished my For Fun Fantasy Novel, which eventually was named No Word In Death's Favor (a riff off of Homer), and despite being written for fun and as a multi-layered experiment, I did (probably inevitably) send it off to a publisher some weeks ago. A publisher that still likes large novels in hard copy, which is good since No Word In Death's Favor rounds out somewhere around 150,000 words. The second novel got underway in mid-September, after getting the go-ahead to write it in July; I still call it the Secret Project because I can't talk about it quite yet, but it qualified as another dream project. That one was finished and delivered to the commissioning publisher about three weeks ago. Lest Camelot Fall, though it did well in itself many months, disappeared last spring when its publisher, Musa, called it quits. I'm still debating about self-publishing it, and probably will, though there are a few small rewrites I want to do first. 2015 was devoid of short stories and poetry for the first time in some years; I didn't publish any new pieces of either, but I did have an older poem reprinted in the just-released volume 1 of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.
I finished off the last major general item on my bucket list by finally getting to Europe, a trip I've wanted to make since I was a teenager, but one where every plan I'd made to go in past years fell through. This time, at last, was different, and the result was a 17-day whirlwind through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and England, with a couple of all-too brief layovers in Iceland. Immediately before and after that trip was a total of a week spent in Northern Virginia visiting and catching up with friends that I hadn't seen in several years, an altogether too long of a time to be bereft of their company. I don't know when I'll ever make it back to Europe, but I would like to make it back to NoVA at least once every summer.
I continue buying books, which would be a shock to absolutely no one. It's a novelty having a living space that fits all of my books, which just mischievously encourages me to buy more. If only securing the shelves was that easy.
I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Three times. Once in 3D. And I'm willing to go again if anyone wants to come with me.
Two people I'd been close to for a long time died towards the end of the year. The first was my college mentor, Dr. Denis Lape; strangely (though not so strange if you know my family's history), the day he died I'd spent awhile thinking that I hadn't talked to him in several months and really should get back in touch. Then right before Christmas, my aunt, my mom's sister, Diane Carpenter, passed away. We hadn't lived at all close since I was a little kid, but we'd always been close. Both of those deaths were shocks, and reminded me of the constant need to make certain that people you love should always know how you feel about them.
No new animals came into my fold in 2015, but there are still plenty in control of my house. Eight cats, two dogs. Add in a few thousand books and space gets a little tight, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
As much as I miss my niece and nephews being wee bairns, I do appreciate the fact that they're old enough that I can start getting them cool presents. My niece Alex, for example, was the recipient of a 5-foot tall Bear Titan recurve bow. She's proven herself adept at smaller bows, but ones that were all borrowed, so I thought it was time she have her own, and one somewhat more formidable.
Now, as for 2016...well, we'll see. The Secret Project will be out by summer, and this summer will also see me traveling to Saint Augustine, Florida in June and to Columbus, Ohio in July. Along with, I hope, Northern Virginia. I'm still deciding what book to write next - there are a couple of possibilities - and whether or not to finally take the plunge and self-publish my long-waiting Shenandoah and Arizona historical novels.
Beyond those things, I haven't the foggiest notion of what I'll be up to. But maybe I'll remember to blog about them.
Current Location: At The Beginning
Current Mood: Chin-Rubbing
Current Music: "It's A Brazzle-Dazzle Day" from Pete's Dragon
My being away wasn't due to not having anything to write about. As it happened, 2015 was a busy year.
I finished my For Fun Fantasy Novel, which eventually was named No Word In Death's Favor (a riff off of Homer), and despite being written for fun and as a multi-layered experiment, I did (probably inevitably) send it off to a publisher some weeks ago. A publisher that still likes large novels in hard copy, which is good since No Word In Death's Favor rounds out somewhere around 150,000 words. The second novel got underway in mid-September, after getting the go-ahead to write it in July; I still call it the Secret Project because I can't talk about it quite yet, but it qualified as another dream project. That one was finished and delivered to the commissioning publisher about three weeks ago. Lest Camelot Fall, though it did well in itself many months, disappeared last spring when its publisher, Musa, called it quits. I'm still debating about self-publishing it, and probably will, though there are a few small rewrites I want to do first. 2015 was devoid of short stories and poetry for the first time in some years; I didn't publish any new pieces of either, but I did have an older poem reprinted in the just-released volume 1 of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.
I finished off the last major general item on my bucket list by finally getting to Europe, a trip I've wanted to make since I was a teenager, but one where every plan I'd made to go in past years fell through. This time, at last, was different, and the result was a 17-day whirlwind through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and England, with a couple of all-too brief layovers in Iceland. Immediately before and after that trip was a total of a week spent in Northern Virginia visiting and catching up with friends that I hadn't seen in several years, an altogether too long of a time to be bereft of their company. I don't know when I'll ever make it back to Europe, but I would like to make it back to NoVA at least once every summer.
I continue buying books, which would be a shock to absolutely no one. It's a novelty having a living space that fits all of my books, which just mischievously encourages me to buy more. If only securing the shelves was that easy.
I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Three times. Once in 3D. And I'm willing to go again if anyone wants to come with me.
Two people I'd been close to for a long time died towards the end of the year. The first was my college mentor, Dr. Denis Lape; strangely (though not so strange if you know my family's history), the day he died I'd spent awhile thinking that I hadn't talked to him in several months and really should get back in touch. Then right before Christmas, my aunt, my mom's sister, Diane Carpenter, passed away. We hadn't lived at all close since I was a little kid, but we'd always been close. Both of those deaths were shocks, and reminded me of the constant need to make certain that people you love should always know how you feel about them.
No new animals came into my fold in 2015, but there are still plenty in control of my house. Eight cats, two dogs. Add in a few thousand books and space gets a little tight, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
As much as I miss my niece and nephews being wee bairns, I do appreciate the fact that they're old enough that I can start getting them cool presents. My niece Alex, for example, was the recipient of a 5-foot tall Bear Titan recurve bow. She's proven herself adept at smaller bows, but ones that were all borrowed, so I thought it was time she have her own, and one somewhat more formidable.
Now, as for 2016...well, we'll see. The Secret Project will be out by summer, and this summer will also see me traveling to Saint Augustine, Florida in June and to Columbus, Ohio in July. Along with, I hope, Northern Virginia. I'm still deciding what book to write next - there are a couple of possibilities - and whether or not to finally take the plunge and self-publish my long-waiting Shenandoah and Arizona historical novels.
Beyond those things, I haven't the foggiest notion of what I'll be up to. But maybe I'll remember to blog about them.
Current Location: At The Beginning
Current Mood: Chin-Rubbing
Current Music: "It's A Brazzle-Dazzle Day" from Pete's Dragon
February 11, 2015
Keep Up With The Old Guy
I'll admit it: I'm one of these middle-agers who looks over the younglings in the gym with a bit of envy. I know I'm not the only one, and in my case, it's colored by the fact that aside from occasional walking and hiking when I was a youngling, I had a naturally high metabolism that meant I could stay skinny without trying hard. Nowadays moderate exercise simply means I don't gain weight, rather than losing it.
But until today it never occurred to me to wonder what was going on in the younger folks' heads when I came into the gym. Now I'm thinking of it as "Keep Up With the Old Guy" Syndrome.
I'd noticed flickers of this before but brushed it off, figuring I was imagining things: that sometimes when I was working out and I would periodically speed up on the elliptical or stationary bike, people of the half-my-age variety would speed up on their machines, particularly if I'd been going faster than them to start with. I saw that again today: every quarter mile on the elliptical I would increase my speed, and two people on treadmills a few yards away sped up too. (During the first two speed increases their conversation got more winded. After speed increase #3 they stopped talking altogether.)
I likely would have ignored and brushed this off too. But then after doing the weight workout I went to a cool-down on a stationary bike moments before another youngling got on the one next to me. The first half-mile on the bike I increase my speed at tenth-of-a-mile increments, then bring it back down for the second half. And I noticed yet again that when I sped up, he did too. That caught my attention because it's the first time this happened twice in a row during a workout.
Then, while I was staring straight ahead and listening to the Monkees burbling away in my headphones, I saw - not once, but twice - the guy next to me lean over and look at my speed. When he leaned back he sped up to go faster than I was.
I've got to say I was boggled. All this time being jealous of youth and strength and high metabolisms, and folks half my age or younger are trying to keep up with me? I don't mean out of jealousy - but maybe they felt like the old guy was showing them up.
Which made my day, I'm not too big to admit.
So take heart, those of you of my generation and older who are trying to keep yourselves healthy amid a workout sea of young faces. One way or another, you may be a better example than you realize!
(P.S. If they really were bothered by my workout, my leaving didn't provide any relief. As I was walking out a friend was coming in - a fellow who is a little older than me, in better shape...and an ex-Marine.)
Tags: exercise
Current Location: Not The Gym
Current Mood: Snerky
Current Music: "Fly Me To The Moon" ala the Virginia Gentlemen
But until today it never occurred to me to wonder what was going on in the younger folks' heads when I came into the gym. Now I'm thinking of it as "Keep Up With the Old Guy" Syndrome.
I'd noticed flickers of this before but brushed it off, figuring I was imagining things: that sometimes when I was working out and I would periodically speed up on the elliptical or stationary bike, people of the half-my-age variety would speed up on their machines, particularly if I'd been going faster than them to start with. I saw that again today: every quarter mile on the elliptical I would increase my speed, and two people on treadmills a few yards away sped up too. (During the first two speed increases their conversation got more winded. After speed increase #3 they stopped talking altogether.)
I likely would have ignored and brushed this off too. But then after doing the weight workout I went to a cool-down on a stationary bike moments before another youngling got on the one next to me. The first half-mile on the bike I increase my speed at tenth-of-a-mile increments, then bring it back down for the second half. And I noticed yet again that when I sped up, he did too. That caught my attention because it's the first time this happened twice in a row during a workout.
Then, while I was staring straight ahead and listening to the Monkees burbling away in my headphones, I saw - not once, but twice - the guy next to me lean over and look at my speed. When he leaned back he sped up to go faster than I was.
I've got to say I was boggled. All this time being jealous of youth and strength and high metabolisms, and folks half my age or younger are trying to keep up with me? I don't mean out of jealousy - but maybe they felt like the old guy was showing them up.
Which made my day, I'm not too big to admit.
So take heart, those of you of my generation and older who are trying to keep yourselves healthy amid a workout sea of young faces. One way or another, you may be a better example than you realize!
(P.S. If they really were bothered by my workout, my leaving didn't provide any relief. As I was walking out a friend was coming in - a fellow who is a little older than me, in better shape...and an ex-Marine.)
Tags: exercise
Current Location: Not The Gym
Current Mood: Snerky
Current Music: "Fly Me To The Moon" ala the Virginia Gentlemen
February 10, 2015
You Must Avoid Balance, Daniel-san
Amid my mostly futile efforts to try combining multiple fairly substantial tasks - like writing, exercising, and house-work - within individual days, I ran across a snarky astrology page that was a revelation. Libra, my sign, is described as "Indecisive. Tries to balance everything".
Trying to balance everything might be a good description of my problem here. Or rather, trying to balance everything in a single day. It struck me - particularly as I close in on the end of the For Fun Fantasy Novel, finally - that the analysis at the end of the day really should be qualitative rather than quantitative. I don't mean that stuff doesn't get done, but I need a better metric than 24 hour cycles. I may get 5000 words a week done whether or not I write every day, but if I spend a day devoted to writing, rather than a half-hour here and there because I'm trying to do other things too, and those 5000 words are better when I can devote more time in one sitting to them, then what sense does it make to do everything in pieces?
Likewise, for work on the house. One of my upcoming projects is to rip up a small section of carpet and put down tile, for instance. It makes less sense to do this in several chunks than doing it over one or two days, and like those 5000 words, the quality of the job would probably be better. I can concentrate on tile without thinking "But I haven't written today...", or writing without thinking "There's still a lot of bare floor..."
So I just have to somehow un-corkscrew myself from Libra-ness. I might have had an easier time learning to balance, but we'll see. Maybe it's just a matter of getting out of the habit of going to bed thinking "What have I done today?" and replacing it with "What have I done this week?"
The exception to this, though, is exercise. Some things I can put off, but I put off exercise at my peril. Three times a week would be enough, or has been in the past, as long as it's consistent. This is something I need to keep up regardless of what else is going on the rest of the day, for my own long term (much, much longer than a week) sake.
Another bit of time unfortunately just opened up for my next few weeks, too: Amazon has cancelled its Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year. I've been a judge for that contest since its inception in 2008, and figured that being annual and being Amazon, I could solidly expect to do it again this year too. Nope. I heard from my Publishers Weekly editor, Rose Fox, yesterday that it was being scrubbed, with the official notice arriving today. Ah well. I thought it was a great thing and I hate to see it disappear. Some of the manuscripts I read were real stinkers - one year all of them were - but there were others I thought absolutely brilliant, and I'll miss those. RIP, ABNA.
* * *
Anyway, as I said above, I'm closing in on the end of No Word in Death's Favor. I might even wrap it up in another two chapters and perhaps a small epilogue. Then I'll connect the dots from chapter to chapter so it flows better, and then eventually decide whether or not I think it's any good.
I went into it not thinking about publishing as the major goal but experimenting with things I hadn't tried before, or not tried much. Publishing or not will enter my mind more thoroughly once it's finished. I'll try not to let the fact that I spent ten months on it influence my decision; aside from the fact that much of that time was spent not writing while I worked on New House, the extra time was also built in from the start because of all the experimenting (and, yeah, playing around in the name of experimenting).
Then again, I might really like it. We'll see.
And after that...maybe a Secret Project. I call it that because it's probably something I'm not supposed to be writing. But offhand I can't recall any time such a prohibition stopped me.
PROGRESS REPORT
New Words: 1400 on chapter 28 ("Unwin") of No Word in Death's Favor. Unwin has little choice but to take the word of a dragon, and his excellent memory for historical details may have sunk him in some lethally hot water.
Total Words: 139,700. Darn straight I'd better be close to finishing.
Reason For Stopping: Finished the chapter (I think) and had to get ready for work.
Mammalian Assistance: None. Vegas the Writing Assistant much preferred the old Book Room (and doesn't like this one at all in winter, when the window is closed). But overall he and my other Book Room Cats, the sisters Nate and Hayes, usually only like to be in there when I'm not writing, so they kan haz all teh attenshunz.
Exercise: Walked Tucker the Big Dog around the neighborhood.
Stimulants: An ice cream sandwich.
Today's Opening Passage: By the end of it, Unwin was so utterly spent that he didn’t notice everyone else around him had stopped, and hardly cared that he tumbled to the ground in exhaustion when he did realize they'd stopped. He cared somewhat more, though, when he realized that Daromas, Tora, Hugh Kabir, and several dozen others, many shadowcast, were staring straight at him. Straight down at me, more precisely.
Darling Du Jour: Not bad in the context...
Unwin had never met the Lord of Sardon himself, but knew Jaskua immediately from the stories. Like the tempting demons of old, Jaskua was not ugly, for when did temptation ever present itself with a horrid face? Indeed he looked like a king from some — appropriately — forgotten ancient age, his regalia a mix of leather and bronze, but built around a body used to constant fighting and hunting, with revelry too but not enough to blunt the sword.
He looked, in fact, much like Daromas himself. Only a Daromas with more years of rule and conquest behind him, knowledge and cynicism the reaped rewards for his successes.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Moonshine Corner by Ibby Greer; The Eagle's Daughter by Judith Tarr; Ancestral Journeys by Jean Manco.
Current Location: Marginally Prepared Land
Current Mood: impatient
Current Music: "Be Prepared" by Tom Lehrer
Trying to balance everything might be a good description of my problem here. Or rather, trying to balance everything in a single day. It struck me - particularly as I close in on the end of the For Fun Fantasy Novel, finally - that the analysis at the end of the day really should be qualitative rather than quantitative. I don't mean that stuff doesn't get done, but I need a better metric than 24 hour cycles. I may get 5000 words a week done whether or not I write every day, but if I spend a day devoted to writing, rather than a half-hour here and there because I'm trying to do other things too, and those 5000 words are better when I can devote more time in one sitting to them, then what sense does it make to do everything in pieces?
Likewise, for work on the house. One of my upcoming projects is to rip up a small section of carpet and put down tile, for instance. It makes less sense to do this in several chunks than doing it over one or two days, and like those 5000 words, the quality of the job would probably be better. I can concentrate on tile without thinking "But I haven't written today...", or writing without thinking "There's still a lot of bare floor..."
So I just have to somehow un-corkscrew myself from Libra-ness. I might have had an easier time learning to balance, but we'll see. Maybe it's just a matter of getting out of the habit of going to bed thinking "What have I done today?" and replacing it with "What have I done this week?"
The exception to this, though, is exercise. Some things I can put off, but I put off exercise at my peril. Three times a week would be enough, or has been in the past, as long as it's consistent. This is something I need to keep up regardless of what else is going on the rest of the day, for my own long term (much, much longer than a week) sake.
Another bit of time unfortunately just opened up for my next few weeks, too: Amazon has cancelled its Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year. I've been a judge for that contest since its inception in 2008, and figured that being annual and being Amazon, I could solidly expect to do it again this year too. Nope. I heard from my Publishers Weekly editor, Rose Fox, yesterday that it was being scrubbed, with the official notice arriving today. Ah well. I thought it was a great thing and I hate to see it disappear. Some of the manuscripts I read were real stinkers - one year all of them were - but there were others I thought absolutely brilliant, and I'll miss those. RIP, ABNA.
* * *
Anyway, as I said above, I'm closing in on the end of No Word in Death's Favor. I might even wrap it up in another two chapters and perhaps a small epilogue. Then I'll connect the dots from chapter to chapter so it flows better, and then eventually decide whether or not I think it's any good.
I went into it not thinking about publishing as the major goal but experimenting with things I hadn't tried before, or not tried much. Publishing or not will enter my mind more thoroughly once it's finished. I'll try not to let the fact that I spent ten months on it influence my decision; aside from the fact that much of that time was spent not writing while I worked on New House, the extra time was also built in from the start because of all the experimenting (and, yeah, playing around in the name of experimenting).
Then again, I might really like it. We'll see.
And after that...maybe a Secret Project. I call it that because it's probably something I'm not supposed to be writing. But offhand I can't recall any time such a prohibition stopped me.
PROGRESS REPORT
New Words: 1400 on chapter 28 ("Unwin") of No Word in Death's Favor. Unwin has little choice but to take the word of a dragon, and his excellent memory for historical details may have sunk him in some lethally hot water.
Total Words: 139,700. Darn straight I'd better be close to finishing.
Reason For Stopping: Finished the chapter (I think) and had to get ready for work.
Mammalian Assistance: None. Vegas the Writing Assistant much preferred the old Book Room (and doesn't like this one at all in winter, when the window is closed). But overall he and my other Book Room Cats, the sisters Nate and Hayes, usually only like to be in there when I'm not writing, so they kan haz all teh attenshunz.
Exercise: Walked Tucker the Big Dog around the neighborhood.
Stimulants: An ice cream sandwich.
Today's Opening Passage: By the end of it, Unwin was so utterly spent that he didn’t notice everyone else around him had stopped, and hardly cared that he tumbled to the ground in exhaustion when he did realize they'd stopped. He cared somewhat more, though, when he realized that Daromas, Tora, Hugh Kabir, and several dozen others, many shadowcast, were staring straight at him. Straight down at me, more precisely.
Darling Du Jour: Not bad in the context...
Unwin had never met the Lord of Sardon himself, but knew Jaskua immediately from the stories. Like the tempting demons of old, Jaskua was not ugly, for when did temptation ever present itself with a horrid face? Indeed he looked like a king from some — appropriately — forgotten ancient age, his regalia a mix of leather and bronze, but built around a body used to constant fighting and hunting, with revelry too but not enough to blunt the sword.
He looked, in fact, much like Daromas himself. Only a Daromas with more years of rule and conquest behind him, knowledge and cynicism the reaped rewards for his successes.
Non-Research / Review Books In Progress: Moonshine Corner by Ibby Greer; The Eagle's Daughter by Judith Tarr; Ancestral Journeys by Jean Manco.
Current Location: Marginally Prepared Land
Current Mood: impatient
Current Music: "Be Prepared" by Tom Lehrer
January 19, 2015
I Can't Move My Arms
That's not a reference to A Christmas Story (though I was tempted to take a picture of myself bundled under three or four coats), but rather that I finally got back to the gym today for the first time since before I moved (that is, before last April).
I'd been telling myself that I'd get back for...well, never mind that. But it was particularly intense over the past couple of weeks, except I let my time-gobbling duo of writing and doing house-related things (125,000 words on No Word in Death's Favor as of this past Saturday, by the way) gobble time that could otherwise have gone to working out. But today I was determined to get there, since I was starting to feel my resolve slipping again.
And more to the point, I have an active summer planned, which will include a maniacal amount of sightseeing involving an equally maniacal amount of walking, plus hiking with some treading up to the tops of giant rocks. I anticipate having a great deal of fun this summer, so naturally I do not want to cut it short in midstream with a heart attack.
At any rate, the hardest thing for me about working out is not the exercise itself, but making myself not compare where I am now to my 2009 peak of one hour workouts four days a week, when I dropped several inches off my waist, could run a couple of miles without breaking a sweat, and lift the highest settings on the campus gym's weight machines one-handed. That was after several months of intense exercise, and honestly I'm not sure if I could reach that level of intensity again. But what I would like to do is get rid of as much of the gut as possible, build back some arm muscle...and of course, not die of a heart attack (on vacation or any time in the next few decades thereafter, preferably).
I broke down today's workout into my old standard non-intensive plan:
I started with the elliptical, doing a mile in about 10:30 - no record-breaking there, but breaking the no-workout streak was all I cared about. I did another half mile in almost exactly five minutes, then a cool down.
Then the weight machines, and the titular loss of feeling in my arms. While I was smart enough to not try the same weights I was doing even when last I worked out, I was naive enough to think I could do the same quantity. After seven ten-sets of pull-downs (with the machines set to 7 out of 12 on five of those, and 8/12 on two), I knew I was done with lifting for the day - especially when an 8/12 machine pulled me back into my seat on the last tug.
Then a mile on a stationary bike going 55-100 RPM, with a third-of-a-mile cool down.
This is the point where I pointedly tell myself not to remember that my original workouts would've added jogging three laps around the gym, a number of push-ups, an extra one-half mile to one mile on the elliptical, and at least twice as much weight-lifting. Right now I'm just pleased that I got to the gym at all, so I'll go with that.
What I need to figure out now is why I have so much trouble keeping up this exercise habit, while in 2009 I was kind of obsessive about working out and stopped only after (1) a doctor told me to quit exercising for a month after my nearly-lethal spider bite, and (2) my car died. I suspect if I can figure this puzzle out I'll at least get back to something close to fighting shape.
Or walking miles a day shape. Either way I'll be happy.
Current Location: Closer To Where I Want To Be
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees
I'd been telling myself that I'd get back for...well, never mind that. But it was particularly intense over the past couple of weeks, except I let my time-gobbling duo of writing and doing house-related things (125,000 words on No Word in Death's Favor as of this past Saturday, by the way) gobble time that could otherwise have gone to working out. But today I was determined to get there, since I was starting to feel my resolve slipping again.
And more to the point, I have an active summer planned, which will include a maniacal amount of sightseeing involving an equally maniacal amount of walking, plus hiking with some treading up to the tops of giant rocks. I anticipate having a great deal of fun this summer, so naturally I do not want to cut it short in midstream with a heart attack.
At any rate, the hardest thing for me about working out is not the exercise itself, but making myself not compare where I am now to my 2009 peak of one hour workouts four days a week, when I dropped several inches off my waist, could run a couple of miles without breaking a sweat, and lift the highest settings on the campus gym's weight machines one-handed. That was after several months of intense exercise, and honestly I'm not sure if I could reach that level of intensity again. But what I would like to do is get rid of as much of the gut as possible, build back some arm muscle...and of course, not die of a heart attack (on vacation or any time in the next few decades thereafter, preferably).
I broke down today's workout into my old standard non-intensive plan:
I started with the elliptical, doing a mile in about 10:30 - no record-breaking there, but breaking the no-workout streak was all I cared about. I did another half mile in almost exactly five minutes, then a cool down.
Then the weight machines, and the titular loss of feeling in my arms. While I was smart enough to not try the same weights I was doing even when last I worked out, I was naive enough to think I could do the same quantity. After seven ten-sets of pull-downs (with the machines set to 7 out of 12 on five of those, and 8/12 on two), I knew I was done with lifting for the day - especially when an 8/12 machine pulled me back into my seat on the last tug.
Then a mile on a stationary bike going 55-100 RPM, with a third-of-a-mile cool down.
This is the point where I pointedly tell myself not to remember that my original workouts would've added jogging three laps around the gym, a number of push-ups, an extra one-half mile to one mile on the elliptical, and at least twice as much weight-lifting. Right now I'm just pleased that I got to the gym at all, so I'll go with that.
What I need to figure out now is why I have so much trouble keeping up this exercise habit, while in 2009 I was kind of obsessive about working out and stopped only after (1) a doctor told me to quit exercising for a month after my nearly-lethal spider bite, and (2) my car died. I suspect if I can figure this puzzle out I'll at least get back to something close to fighting shape.
Or walking miles a day shape. Either way I'll be happy.
Current Location: Closer To Where I Want To Be
Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees
January 14, 2015
2014: Annales Photographia, Part 2
More highlights from my past year as told in a few of my favorite photos.
Tucker wishes one of his bovine buddies a happy 2014. (January)
And then the same day plays with Tiger, a neighborhood buddy. (January)
The opening of the year saw Musa Publishing release my first solo-authored novel, Lest Camelot Fall. (January)
January also saw our first real snowfall since December 2009. (The library is in the background.)
Tucker certainly enjoyed the snow whenever he got to mingle with it. (January)
Back inside, Tucker can't understand why Nate has to snuggle with him when she has the whole couch to pick from. (February)
Friday, in the center, wonders the same thing about Velvet and Vegas when they flank him. (March)
The family at my cousins Chip's and Denise's July 4th party.
Small boy, big dog: Evan and Azul. (November)
"And the band begins to play . . . " (November)
My first time riding with Alex the Driver.
Wait...when did Alex get old enough to drive? (November)
My oldest friend, Barb Fischer, and her mom, Karon Semones, at Karon's house - the first time I'd seen Karon in years, and Barb for any length of time in years as well. (December)
The kids hug-attack my sister Jana on Christmas morning.
Then Azul the Big Puppy follows their example.
The kids make some aquatic friends at the Roanoke Science Museum. (December)
Alex looking over Campbell Avenue in Roanoke, VA. (December)
Current Location: Between Cold and Warm
Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "Nine Times Blue" by the Monkees
Tucker wishes one of his bovine buddies a happy 2014. (January)
And then the same day plays with Tiger, a neighborhood buddy. (January)
The opening of the year saw Musa Publishing release my first solo-authored novel, Lest Camelot Fall. (January)
January also saw our first real snowfall since December 2009. (The library is in the background.)
Tucker certainly enjoyed the snow whenever he got to mingle with it. (January)
Back inside, Tucker can't understand why Nate has to snuggle with him when she has the whole couch to pick from. (February)
Friday, in the center, wonders the same thing about Velvet and Vegas when they flank him. (March)
The family at my cousins Chip's and Denise's July 4th party.
Small boy, big dog: Evan and Azul. (November)
"And the band begins to play . . . " (November)
My first time riding with Alex the Driver.
Wait...when did Alex get old enough to drive? (November)
My oldest friend, Barb Fischer, and her mom, Karon Semones, at Karon's house - the first time I'd seen Karon in years, and Barb for any length of time in years as well. (December)
The kids hug-attack my sister Jana on Christmas morning.
Then Azul the Big Puppy follows their example.
The kids make some aquatic friends at the Roanoke Science Museum. (December)
Alex looking over Campbell Avenue in Roanoke, VA. (December)
Current Location: Between Cold and Warm
Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: "Nine Times Blue" by the Monkees
January 9, 2015
2014: Annales Photographia
I started writing a "Year In Summary" post for 2014, but after a couple or three paragraphs I decided I'd rather just post some of my favorite pictures from the year. This isn't all of them - they only cover up to October - so I'll likely post more when I get the chance.
One of the first pictures, if not the first, I took of the New House, three months before the sale went through. (January)
Dad and Mom on their first visit to the New House. (March)
My nephews Evan and Jacob, playing with Tucker on their first visit to the New House. (April)
Evan and Jacob, with Laurie, on their first overnight visit. (May)
My niece Alex playing with big new puppy Azul. (June)
Sunset at Pipestem State Park in West Virginia. (June)
Alex and my sister Jana hiking along the Bluestone River. The boys were just ahead of us. (July)
Our rediscovered cousin Teresa, daughter of my Uncle Bobby. We lost track of her many years ago when she was a childand her parents split up, but she found us again with the help of the Internet. We met her for the first time in person at Pipestem. The picture is Uncle Bobby from his Navy days and probably dates from the Korean War. (July)
Jacob atop Heritage Point above the Bluestone River at Pipestem. (July)
My traditional all-the-kids-in-front-of-the-mountains Pipestem shot. (July)
Alex at Carvin's Cove in Roanoke, near land her ancestors owned before the cove was flooded. (July)
With the boys in front of the old courthouse at Appomattox, Virginia, "Where the nation reunited". (August)
Jacob practicing guitar at our triple family birthday party (the triple being my parents and me). (October)
Mabry's Mill in Meadows of Dan, during my Blue Ridge Parkway Birthday Expedition. (October)
Current Location: One Foot in 2014
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: "The Last Goodbye" by Billy Boyd
One of the first pictures, if not the first, I took of the New House, three months before the sale went through. (January)
Dad and Mom on their first visit to the New House. (March)
My nephews Evan and Jacob, playing with Tucker on their first visit to the New House. (April)
Evan and Jacob, with Laurie, on their first overnight visit. (May)
My niece Alex playing with big new puppy Azul. (June)
Sunset at Pipestem State Park in West Virginia. (June)
Alex and my sister Jana hiking along the Bluestone River. The boys were just ahead of us. (July)
Our rediscovered cousin Teresa, daughter of my Uncle Bobby. We lost track of her many years ago when she was a childand her parents split up, but she found us again with the help of the Internet. We met her for the first time in person at Pipestem. The picture is Uncle Bobby from his Navy days and probably dates from the Korean War. (July)
Jacob atop Heritage Point above the Bluestone River at Pipestem. (July)
My traditional all-the-kids-in-front-of-the-mountains Pipestem shot. (July)
Alex at Carvin's Cove in Roanoke, near land her ancestors owned before the cove was flooded. (July)
With the boys in front of the old courthouse at Appomattox, Virginia, "Where the nation reunited". (August)
Jacob practicing guitar at our triple family birthday party (the triple being my parents and me). (October)
Mabry's Mill in Meadows of Dan, during my Blue Ridge Parkway Birthday Expedition. (October)
Current Location: One Foot in 2014
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: "The Last Goodbye" by Billy Boyd
January 7, 2015
Link Stew, Sponsored By The Brand New 2015
Visiting A Park Could Save Your Life. Well, yeah. And woods too, I imagine.
Talk like an Egyptian: If we want to safeguard our languages, stories and ideas against extinction, we had better study Egyptology. This is actually the sort of thing that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to collecting and preserving my own library. I also really got deep into this idea, as it were, a few years ago when I read Gregory Benford's non-fiction book Deep Time .
Why Creative People Seem To Have The Messiest Minds. Based on how messy mine can be...second only to my room.
This Brilliant 11-Year-Old Revolutionized Flood Prevention. Peyton Robertson invented the possibly genius and potentially life-saving sandbag that doesn't require sand.
Top Ten Ancient Egyptian Discoveries of 2014. I always especially love "old news".
First Buffalo Roam East Of The Mississippi Since 1830. There were even buffalo here in southwestern Virginia until the last one was shot in the late 1790s. Alas, a program trying to reintroduce them in certain areas some years back never came to fruition.
Byron Ballard keeps Appalachian folk magic practices alive. And it turns out that she happens to be the friend of a friend.
Oh My God, There’s A Cat In Russia That Wears A Bow Tie And Works As A Librarian. Because cats.
Morris the rescue cat has become a horse whisker-er since meeting Champy. Because cats and horses.
Christmas Tree Massacre! Big cats and a different sort of catnip.
In France, Vestiges Of The War's Bloody End. World War One, that is. Meanwhile, French town tries to save first world war soldier’s room for posterity. A century-old time capsule.
NASA Astronaut: Why We Need To Visit The Moon, Not Mars. I particularly like Hoffman's point that the Moon, being closer but extraterrestrial, would make the perfect practice ground for a Mars expedition.
Current Location: A Building Struggling To Stay Warm
Current Mood: cold
Current Music: "Candle on the Water" ala Kristin Chenoweth
Talk like an Egyptian: If we want to safeguard our languages, stories and ideas against extinction, we had better study Egyptology. This is actually the sort of thing that's always in the back of my mind when it comes to collecting and preserving my own library. I also really got deep into this idea, as it were, a few years ago when I read Gregory Benford's non-fiction book Deep Time .
Why Creative People Seem To Have The Messiest Minds. Based on how messy mine can be...second only to my room.
This Brilliant 11-Year-Old Revolutionized Flood Prevention. Peyton Robertson invented the possibly genius and potentially life-saving sandbag that doesn't require sand.
Top Ten Ancient Egyptian Discoveries of 2014. I always especially love "old news".
First Buffalo Roam East Of The Mississippi Since 1830. There were even buffalo here in southwestern Virginia until the last one was shot in the late 1790s. Alas, a program trying to reintroduce them in certain areas some years back never came to fruition.
Byron Ballard keeps Appalachian folk magic practices alive. And it turns out that she happens to be the friend of a friend.
Oh My God, There’s A Cat In Russia That Wears A Bow Tie And Works As A Librarian. Because cats.
Morris the rescue cat has become a horse whisker-er since meeting Champy. Because cats and horses.
Christmas Tree Massacre! Big cats and a different sort of catnip.
In France, Vestiges Of The War's Bloody End. World War One, that is. Meanwhile, French town tries to save first world war soldier’s room for posterity. A century-old time capsule.
NASA Astronaut: Why We Need To Visit The Moon, Not Mars. I particularly like Hoffman's point that the Moon, being closer but extraterrestrial, would make the perfect practice ground for a Mars expedition.
Current Location: A Building Struggling To Stay Warm
Current Mood: cold
Current Music: "Candle on the Water" ala Kristin Chenoweth
