So yesterday my BEDA buddy Alison asked if anyone was going to do something special for the end of BEDA, and I said I would make a song. I was sort of joking, but then I whipped out the GarageBand application on my laptop (and later the iMovie application), and uh, well...



It's The BEDA's Over Blues!

It's very silly, and there are definitely rough spots, but hey, I did throw it together just this afternoon. Cut me a little slack? If you find the snakes confusing, you should probably read Maureen's Big Book of Snakes blog post.

So, that's it for BEDA. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and I want to say thank you to all my buddies for being so awesome. Also to Maureen for coming up with this idea in the first place. And for being consistently hilarious in her own blog.

Missed a day of the BEDA blogging. Oops.

I walked 10 miles on Monday, but at the end I felt like I wanted to die. I think I'm blaming my shoes. Today I've walked six miles (in different shoes), and will either walk another 3.75 or 1.25 before bedtime. The fact that I was not in such sorry shape that I couldn't do a longish walk today is encouraging. Still, eep! I hope I do have the 20 mile stamina on Sunday. After today I'm sticking to four miles or less per day so I'll be fairly rested when the big walk comes.

This week I discovered podcasts. Oh sure, I knew they existed before, but I never really thought about them as things I might find useful. This week (well, last Thursday, anyway), I realized that I can listen to them while I walk! Probably you already know all about this, and already have a list of subscriptions, but in case you don't, I'm here to say that you might like them!

I'm not sure I should listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, though. It makes me feel a bit more in touch with random pop culture and current events, yes, but it also makes me even more likely to randomly spout off bits of trivia than I already am. Like last night when Moss and I were watching Sabrina Down Under (which I think means we've now seen every live action Sabrina thing with Melissa Joan Hart in at this point. For the record, the show is better than the movies), Sabrina turned herself into a fish, got tossed around in the ocean, and said that she didn't know fish could get sea sick... And I said, "Actually apparently fish can at least get air sick. I learned that from NPR." Also, just in case you were wondering, ants have real estate agents, and the milky way smells like raspberries. The things is, you weren't wondering, were you? I didn't think so. And it's not like I don't accumulate enough random trivia in the course of my daily life without a radio show built to encourage that.

Far and away my favorite podcast is the Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo movie reviews one from the BBC. I was listening to that on my computer months before I realized I could walk with podcasts, and I highly recommend it. Dr. Kermode is hilarious, and enthusiastically sincere. I could listen to him for hours. I'm also currently subscribed to Stephen Fry's Podgrams, Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing, but I'm wondering what else people really love to listen to. Do you have podcast favorites?

Ooh, I know, let's have a poll!


Poll #1392013 Podtastic!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 19

Podcasts are totally:

Should I listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me?

What shoudl I be listening to, and why?

Next Sunday is the 20 mile walk for hunger, which I'll hopefully be doing alongside asakiyume. Yay!

Today I'm planning to do between 10 and 12 miles. I have been so slack at training for this thing. Seriously. The most I've done so far is 8 miles. But I should still be able to do the whole 20 on Sunday. I am sure I won't be going very fast, but I can do it. I'll be ecstatic if I manage to do it and not feel dead for the next few days afterward. I was a mess after the Portland Marathon in 2005. Blisters, twisted ankle, pulled hamstring... the whole next week I was pretty much confined to bed. My goal for this walk is to finish and still feel up for doing normal stuff by Tuesday.

Anyway, I don't really love the idea of asking people for money on my behalf, as if my walking is something you should find impressive enough to pay for. Truthfully, I'm walking because I want to go on a long walk with a bunch of other people, not because it's a horrible ordeal that I am enduring with saintly patience in order to end hunger. That said, Project Bread is a good charity. They give a lot of hungry people food, which is why I donated $50 when I registered for the walk. If you're looking for a place to put some of the cash that keeps falling out of your overflowing pockets, you could do a lot worse. So, I invite anyone who's interested to visit my donation page and buy some smug self righteousness.

The group of BEDA buddies that Maureen Johnson matched me with thought it might be fun to choose a specific theme to have everyone in the group write on. Since Maureen Johnson's book Suite Scarlett is just out in paperback and takes place in a hotel, I thought why not write about memorable hotel experiences we've had? This is mine:

Just yesterday Moss met me in the town center where I was eating a hamburger.

"Should I eat a hamburger, too? How is it?" he asked.

"It's Victorian," I said.

"Oh, well, never mind, then," said Moss.

I know, you're thinking, "Okay, bizarre, but what's that got to do with hotels?" Don't be so antsy. I'll get to it.( Read more... )

Sometimes there are things that make it hard to get work done.



When I tried to get a better picture by holding the laptop higher up, she started licking my hair.


Then the sushi delivery guy came. He looked a bit alarmed when I opened the door. I don't have any pictures of that, though. Now, dinner!

I recently read a fun book, so I wanted to post a little review and a video about it. This is my first book trailer, but I think it came out pretty well (especially considering how terrible my drawing skills are).



Okay, so now that you've hopefully watched it, and gotten the basic gist of the story, let's get into details. Probably the first thing to know is that this is the first of a two-book series. The second book, Twice a Prince is out as an e-book, but not as a paper book, and since I have no e-book reader except the computer screen, I haven't yet read it. I definitely plan to when it comes out as a paperback, though, because the first one was a ton of fun. Here are three things that made me really happy:

*I didn't mention in the trailer that Sun, Sasha's mother, also goes back through the magic door. Sun goes because she wants to find Sasha, but she ends up having her own adventure. What's really neat to me is that Sun's adventure is cool while also believable for a middle aged woman who isn't at the peak of her swordfighting prime.

*Sasha is strong, intelligent, independent, and also a lot of fun. When she gets sucked through the door, she doesn't immediately fall in love with the first guy she meets like some fantasy heroines might. Instead, the first thing she does is kick some ass, and keep her guard up. She also has lots of amusing insights about her father's home world.

*There are pirates in this book, and they totally rock. I'm often wary of pirates because I don't love violence and sketchy morals, but in this book, the pirates are awesome. There's all kinds of fun swashbuckling that one can enjoy with a clear conscience.

If this sounds like fun to you, you can get a copy of the e-book, or the paperback, from Samhain Publishing.

I know I should be posting actual content, but I'm very tired. Spent today working on a story revision and then we drove through traffic and rain to New Hampshire for dinner with Moss's mother. Two and a half hours there, an hour and a half back. It was a nice dinner outing, but tiring.

Via Cake Wrecks, I found Mmmeliacakes!, though. I am tempted to order one for my sister's upcoming graduation.

Anyway, I'm off to sleep (hopefully not on the bathroom floor as in this icon, though!).

So for BEDA, Maureen Johnson assigned everyone groups of buddies, which is pretty cool. My buddies are all awesome people. One shares my first name, one lives way over on the other side of the world, one likes a lot of cool music, and one does fun things like write backwards. I wonder if we should do a buddy project. Like have a challenge to all write on a specific theme one day, or make up a story together one blog post at a time, or something. Thoughts?

My video project is not yet complete. I'll be working on it more tomorrow, but I don't expect to have it finished until Thursday or Friday. For now, please enjoy this series of pictures of me in different wigs.

( Read more... )

Home. Long, rainy, nerve wracking drive. We're safe, though. And the cat is relieved to have company. Bed now.

We spent today at the 27th annual Annapolis Cup croquet match. As the article says, for Johnnies, it's a sort of informal reunion. We generally spend the day checking out other people's amazing outfits, eating a ridiculous variety of cheeses, and occasionally wondering if anyone on the college lawn actually knows the score. Today, in addition to all of these things, we had a fantastic conversation with a friend who happens to have an alter ego: James Madison.

Yes, the Father of the Constitution himself is available to appear at your wedding (or funeral) for a modest fee, which I am assured is, "Dirt cheap! George Washington would cost you $1,000!" I had no idea George Washington did weddings (let alone funerals), but apparently it's a thing. I'd definitely recommend James Madison as portrayed by James Inzeo for any of your founding father needs. He certainly knows his history, and he's very enthusiastic.

We asked Mr. Inzeo why he had chosen James Madison as his character, and he said that it was because he decided against being Alexander Hamilton. We puzzled over this after parting ways with him, but then over dinner, Martin pointed out the obvious reasoning. If one follows the rapper/R&B/hip hop name template of first initial plus first syllable of last name (e.g. J-Lo), Alexander Hamilton is A-Ham, but James Madison is J-Mad. The choice seems pretty clear when you put it like that, doesn't it?

The trip is going splendidly so far. We spent some quality time in Morgantown, WV with Cait and Billy doing things like trying out new moustache styles. Big picture post coming soon, but for now, here's an appetizer course:



Here's Billy with the Tough Guy moustache. Billy and Cait have three awesome Moustache mirrors. When we saw this picture, we had to try our own.


Here's me with the Classic moustache. Classicly silly!


And finally, Moss, sporting the Texan 'stache. He looks tougher than Billy, I think. Wouldn't want to cross him, anyway.

After we finished playing dress up, we drove East to Annapolis, Maryland, and had dinner with my sister before retiring for the evening. More tomorrow!

We are going to be in 6 states today. On a one day drive. As a native Californian, this still blows my mind. We are starting in Massachusetts, and ending up tonight in West Virginia. We'll be going through Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. This drive is the same distance that we used to drive from our apartment in Northern California to my mother's house in Southern California. The East Coast is weird!

Anyway, I have to run, but consider my BEDA requirement for today met! I will check in again tomorrow from the Mountain State!

I thought about trying Maureen Johnson's idea of blogging every day in April, and then apparently the very thought of committing to that froze my blogging muscles for half the month. Oops. I'm joining in late with a goal of actually posting every day for the next two weeks, though!

Of course, as luck would have it I'll be gone for the weekend starting tomorrow, so my every day posts through Monday are probably going to be very short. On Tuesday, however, I vow to work on an exciting YouTube video, which will be a sort of book review/trailer thing full of fabulous works of art stick figures, and maybe the cat mrowing in the background (if we're lucky). How exciting!

Do videos actually excite other people, or is that just me? I love it when my friends post videos they've made, and I think it's really cool when I manage to do a video myself. Something about the multimedia personality sharing experience, I guess. Of course one video leads to another, and inevitably before I know it I've just watched the entirety of the Disney Channel movie Twitches in ten minute chunks, but this happens to everyone else, too, right? ... Right? ... Guys?

Anyway, that's it from here. Just checking in to say that I should be checking in a lot more often in the next couple of weeks. Woo! But for now, I have to run, as I promised myself that today would be the day that I got started on the poem about the female centaur that someone requested after they won my auction for helpvera way back when (though to be fair, I only got the theme request last month, so I'm not too bad on timing). So. I'm going to walk into the center of town and work on that now.