Day in the Life of an Idiot

So this morning, after dropping little boy off at school, I stopped by Barnes & Noble and picked up my two travel books on Cairo (note new user pic of same. I thought I'd try to mark the entries that are prequel related with this or... another cool one I found of what looks like a flooded Cairo, but is just an artistic shot of the Nile.) New cool Cairo fact: did you know the word in Egyptian for Cairo and the word for Egypt are the same?

My writing biorhythm for this book is very wonky. Normally, when I'm writing Tate's books I write after boy has gone to sleep. For some reason, Resurrection Code seems to be a daylight book. I've been writing it in little snips while Mason plays on the computer or watches TV in the afternoons. That's very odd for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that afternoons are usually my VERY worst time for writing because normally my brain has turned to sludge. I'm a lark. I get up early, and early morning is my ideal writing time. Having a child has forced me to become a writing owl, but I don't really like night time writing.

This could bode, well, however, for when Mason goes full-time in September.

In other news, my cholesterol is high. I have a very spotty relationship with health insurance since the government doesn't recognize me as a "spouse" and thus I'm not covered by Shawn's medical benefits, and I'm self-employed. At any rate, Shawn noticed a free cholesterol screening test offered at the MinuteClinic in downtown. So, I dutifully fasted and went. I'm not, as you know, terribly svelte, but I have been working out regularly so I had high hopes that my cholesterol would be if not good, then at least not horrible. Well, it wasn't good. I blame the fact that I was off my usual excercise routine the entire month of May and crappy eating habits. Before I go to my real doctor with the news, I thought I'd try it again after being back on the treadmill and cutting out some of the biggest offenders in my diet.

I was planning on going to the gym every day, but I need to figure out the timing of that. With the internet being so weird at Amore (which was ideally located between Mason's school and the gym,) I've been forced off-course to Cahoots these days, which is much closer to home than either the gym or the school. Also, I had an epiphany. Excercise is like acoholism. You can't just "go off the wagon" for a month and expect things to be easy. It's like starting all over. My body hurt in a way it hadn't since the first months. I was tired instead of enthused. The only good thing is that I know that if I keep it up, eventually it will become easier. But right now I'm only going every other day to ease back into it.

My fish are doing well. I'm ready to get a few more tetra for the upstairs tank. The four that are in there aren't schooling properly, and I think it's because they need a few more friends to feel safe. One of my more delicate plants gave up the ghost too, so I'm going to buy another couple plants and a few more tetra next time I get to the pet store. Of course, more plants means more snails, and I already have a million of those. I've actually been transplanting some of them to the other tanks. Goldfish (and shrimp) will eat snails, so I figure why waste the protein!?

Oh, and you'll never guess what I saw in my backyard the other day! A deer. Yes, a deer. I was taking out the garbage on Monday morning and talking to myself like I do when I'm in the middle of writing a book (which is always), and I startled a big mama deer who'd been eating the leaves off our sugar maple in the backyard. All I really saw was her butt springing away in a hurry, but I ran out into the street and asked a neighbor who was just getting out of his car if he's seen a deer. He said he saw it going "that'a way" and he pointed toward Snelling. My only hope is that the deer made it back to where ever it is she came from... Como? The airport? Despite being boxed in by several major streets (University, Fairview, Highway 94 and Snelling), my neighborhood gets a fair amount of wildlife, but usually it's confined to the urban variety: the usual birds (chickadee, nuthatch, "lbo" [little brown ones/house sparrows], slate-eyed juncos, cardinals, American goldfinch, purple finch, etc.), squirrel, rabbit, opposum (which I've only seen dead, alas,) and the ocassional Cooper's hawk/peregrine falcon. I've never seen evidence of anything bigger -- racoons or deer, until this week. It was startling, and a little unnerving. I wonder why deer have been pushed into the city. What habitat is going away? Is it all the empty farmland that's now being used because of the food shortage? I don't know, though I am pleased that she decided my yard was a good place to hang out.