Day in the Life of an Idiot

 Today, (more like this evening at this point) I hope to get a new Tate bit posted on Wattpad, but I had to work today from 9 to 1 at Maplewood library.  It was really busy thanks to the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  Normally, Maplewood is my favorite library because the people are so awesome and they have the best ever graphic novel collection in Ramsey county, I swear.

In other writing related news, Rachel and I are also trying to see if we can build more of an audience for our School for Wayward Demons project by x-posting that at Wattpad too.  So, if you find it easier to read an comment on things over there, you should feel free to check it out: http://www.wattpad.com/96121914-song-of-secrets-book-1-of-the-school-for-wayward  (Also, if you want to, you can follow us on Tumblr, too: http://waywardschoolofdemons.tumblr.com).

If you're still following along at the entertheunseen.com website, the newest chapter is up "Bad Magic Puppies."

Meanwhile, Mason and I are recovering from our sledding excitement.  His face looks like he was attacked by Wolverine, and I keep finding new "old lady" bruises all over my body. You know what I mean by that, right? It's like those ones where you're, like, 'what? where'd this come from... oh, right.' accompanied by general stiffness, despite liberal application of aspirin.  Ah well.  'Twas fun.  

Mason had a friend sleepover last night, and we took him sledding with us to the big hill over by the St. Paul Country Club.  I got a good shot of the boys climbing up the big hill together and another of the Minneapolis skyline:

Yesterday, Mason and I managed to "hit the slopes" for a little while in the afternoon. It actually snowed (and stayed,) so we had to venture out to attempt a little sledding. The hill at the Country Club is awesome because it's steep enough that I'm not sure how necessary snow really is... a slick piece of cardboard would probably work just was well in the summer time, if you know what I'm saying.

In the evening, we went to Kuk Sool Wan. That, as usual, was a lot of fun. I'm setting a couple of goals this year, and one of them is to finally really GET the tornado kick. Luckily, we worked on it last night. Then a couple of friends and I went out for coffee, which was a real treat. Grown-ups! Granted, they were the sort of grown-ups with which I could fannishly go on about Bleach with, but hey, that actually works for me.

Speaking of which, I'm planning on attending Anime Detour for the first time this year. Listen, when I jump into a fandom it's with both feet, damn it! Sadly, Bleach is really kind of old school for a lot of people, so I'm not sure what I'll have to talk to anyone about. Still, it should be fun to go. Perhaps I can try out my rude Japanese.

So, yeah, I've been meaning to post about the further adventures of "John Learner" the hero of my language tapes. I picked up these Japanese language tapes at Half Price Books, and started trying to learn polite Japanese while driving in the car (they're cassette tapes). The author of the tapes decided that it would be a good hook to have a kind of story happening in the background. John is in Toyko to meet up with his college chum Toro and to negotiate a business deal with his company. (This is 1984, everyone is in Japan on business). John has the sort of adventures you might expect on a language tape. He has to go through customs, take a taxi to the hotel, check in, etc. A long the way, he learns to say "hello (polite form)" and count to ten.

The other day, I'm driving and half-listening to some simple phrases, "I want coffee" and "I would like tea." And, then out of the BLUE, John says, "I want to live." I nearly swirved off the road! John!!! What's going on???

I suspect he's preparing to say something like, "I want to live in Toyko," but he never goes there. He just WANTS to LIVE.

So, now on my list of things that I really want to have on a language tape is a whole series of misadventures, because really, when you're in another country, especially one where you don't speak the language, things NEVER GO SMOOTHLY. The time when you're really desperate to know how to speak the local tongue is usually when your bag is missing or the hotel has lost your registration. So, I'd like to record a sort of "flip-side" to the John Learner tape in which poor John arrives in Tokyo and the first thing he hears from the airport officials is, "Could you step out of line, sir?"

And things go badly from there.

I was thinking it would even be fun to have a scene where the taxi driver dumps poor John in the crappy neighborhood and demands extra money before taking John to hotel. John, having wasted his money bribing officials to let him in the country, decides to tell the taxi drive to stuff it... this is where the tape will introduce the listener to all sorts of rude Japanese while John tries to get back to the hotel in one piece.

"Don't shoot! I want to LIVE!!"

You'd listen to a tape like that, wouldn't you?

Once again, I have been a poor correspondent and have much to catch you all up on. Probably the most exciting news (for me), is that I have completed the revisions for Tate's Precinct 13 (which will be out in August of 2012).



It took me a surprisingly long time to get through these revisions, but I'm happy with the results. Yesterday, as part of the celebration of finishing, Mason and I went sledding with a friend of mine from KSW and her brother (who is about Mason's age). Even though there's only a dusting of snow in places, we discovered a section of the hill at the St. Paul Country Club's golf course was still plenty slippery. We had a blast going up and down at speed for an hour. They had one of those innertube sleds, so we all had to take turns on that, while trying to avoid the "pit of doom" as we dubbed the sand trap that was just at the far end of the hill.

Good times.

Plus, then we invited everyone back to our place. The boys watched "Bleach" and the ladies all gathered in the kitchen to make a batch of fleischkuechle (a German from Russia meat-filled pastry that's DEEP FRIED.) So good! It was so much fun, in fact, that Kate returned to hang out, chat, and nom fleischkuechle while I continued to fry and fry and fry.



Speaking of kuk sool wan, on Friday I also participated in a jumping class wherein I MOSTLY didn't embarrass myself. It turns out, however, I FAIL standing on one foot.

Also, I got an invitation to participate in programming at Chicago's WorldCON this year, and it seemed too much like an offer I couldn't refuse. So I filled out their participant form AND registered myself as attending. So, guess who's goin' to WorldCon this year?? That's right: Yours Truly!

Otherwise, I'm looking forward to doing all those things I neglected while working on revisions! Interwebs, here I come!!

After yesterday’s first run at sledding, I promised Mason that we’d go every day of vacation. Today* (*actually Tuesday) was quite the adventure. Since we discovered the packed snow was quite hard on the old buttinski, we were determined to try out the inflatable sled grandma and grandpa bought us for Solstice.

Step one: figure out how to actually inflate the thing. Did I mention that it’s almost as tall as me? Shawn, being Shawn, had in the basement an air compressor that hooks up to your car’s lighter plug. I tried that out to see if it worked. It made a lot of noise, but not much air pressure. Next step was back to the basement for a hand pump. That worked, but, as you can probably imagine, it took a lot of effort for not much results. I finally decided the smart thing was to go to a gas station and see if I could use the adaptor plug on the air hoses they have there.

Well, since I wasn’t sure if we could actually fit the pumped up sled into the car, I decided the smart place to go was to the Country Club at Marshall and Otis. There’s a BP across the street, so I figured worst case scenario, we’d park the car somewhere near the gas station and walk over with the sled (and I’d let the air out for the drive home.) We got to the BP, but wouldn’t you know it? The air hose was missing. I went inside and asked. The rubber had frozen. This BP is also a service station so I asked the attendant if she thought it would be okay if I asked the guys in the shop if they’d be willing to use their tire pump. She said okay, so I stuck my head in the service area. Three guys were having a lunch break (we were there at about 12:30), but one of them said it would be no problem. So I hauled the sled in and they carefully pumped it up.

It was quite huge. I had my doubts it would fit in our car. It certainly didn’t fit in the trunk. But I got Mason in his new booster seat, and asked him if he’d be okay with his face pressed up against the sled. He laughed. But that’s pretty much how we had to do it. With a mighty shove, I got it in. I couldn’t see at all out the back window, but we only had about three blocks to drive, so….

At the country club, we parked in their lot. I’d noticed other sledders were parking there, so I figured it would be okay. (It was.) It used to be that you kind of had to sneak in. It’s a private golf course during the summer, for paying members only. Way back when I first moved to the cities, they kept the place pretty tight during the winter, but turned a blind eye to all the people wiggling through the gap in the fence. Now they just leave the gate wide open.

Mason kept saying, “Look at that hill! It’s huge.” Which is funny, because I think the one at Como might actually be taller, it’s just that this slope is a lot more gradual so it’s more stretched out. We trekked our way to the top. Now, I have to admit that I’m kind of scaredy cat when it comes to sliding. I don’t like regular park slides that are too high, and I tend to go all tense and try to slow my descent by any means necessary, including digging in my heels in the snow. I know that out of control speed is sort of the point of sledding, so I’ve been encouraging Mason to go on his own. He wasn’t so sure, but I kind of tricked him at the start and he discovered what a nice, gentle hill the country club is (compared to Como.) I also reminded him that the more he went on his own, the more likely I was to be willing to stay (even though I still slid down on my snow pants and helped him haul up the sled each time.)

He went sledding on his own for almost a whole half hour. I finally decided I needed to try it. The nice thing about this sled for a chicken like me is that there’s really no way to stop it. The edges are too high for my hands to reliably hang out, though there are hand holds for my white knuckles. Similarly, I’m big enough that I can’t sit crisscross applesauce in the bowl meant for the second person. I have to stretch my legs out and under Mason’s grips. So you see, I can’t dig my heels in. I simply have to surrender to the ride.

And you know what? It was a blast.

We went another half hour with me in the back seat. I’m still enough of a chicken that I screamed the whole way down, but the air made the bumpity-bumpity-bumpity of the hard pack of snow more like a boof-boof-boof. I still felt it, but my tailbone didn’t ache. Plus, we could kind of steer, so I felt as much in control as you can hurtling down an ice covered hill at high speed.

Alas, on our last trip down, we blew a hole in it. Luckily, the sled came with a patch kit (this must be a perennial problem). Tonight, I’m going to have Shawn help me figure out where the hole is, so we can get it ready for tomorrow.

‘Cuz I’m ready to go again!