greetings from the left coast

So, my kid and I saw Mad Max: Fury Road (in 3D!) today.

( my thoughts )

(In unrelated news, I have tickets to see Brian Setzer in June.)

ALSO: Writing more, based on the first feedback from one of my beta readers because I agreed with her comments wholeheartedly.

I've been a little immersed in media lately. Wait, I'll backtrack. We stayed here for the holidays, which was lovely and relaxing. But somewhere along the line I came down with an annoying cold. It's sucked most of the creativity right out of me, so instead of writing I've been reading and watching. We saw Life of Pi and Lincoln and Les Misérables and Rise of the Guardians at the theatre, and I had a few movie nights here with friends where we watched Truly Madly Deeply and The September Sessions and Love Actually, and with my kid we watched Midnight in Paris and The Aristocats (finally streaming on Netflix!) and Step Into Liquid and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and with my sweetheart we watched Pitch Perfect and Riding Giants. And finally, we watched the first episode of S3 of Downton Abbey which is probably old news to most of you, but we waited until it was on over here. I finished reading the Dragonthology anthology (self-serving plug here, my story's in it) and also finished reading A Dance with Dragons (so now I'm all caught up on ASOIAF), and read all the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, and a mystery called Never Tell by Alafair Burke and Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman. Right now I'm reading Peter Heller's Kook, which is a nice antidote to George RR Martin. That means it's going to be a fast read!

We were also lucky enough to score tickets to see The Book of Mormon onstage with the touring company, which was a treat and a lot of fun. I grew up just outside NYC and got to see a lot of theater, and I miss that. It's way more expensive now than it was then, and it's less accessible here than it used to be, but we try to go when we can. This show was one we went to for my husband's birthday.

I dusted off a story I started a while ago and I'm furiously trying to finish it. My frustration with it was that I stopped writing at the very beginning of a sentence, just after the opening quotation marks. I have no idea where I was going, and I don't like what I came up with. Time to scrap it and start again. I also finished the book I started in October. It's my longest piece of writing to date, and also the one that was finished most quickly. I don't know what that says about it, but I've sure had a wonderful time writing it, so at least it says I love it. It's out to its very first reader. That makes me nervous!

In other news, I'm mainlining tea (on my third cup of the evening right now) trying to shake this cold. I'm also trying to reestablish my appetite, which seems to have gone far far away. I still want to see The Hobbit and Django Unchained and The Impossible and maybe even Skyfall, but first I want to get rid of this cold. At least I'm only working tomorrow and Saturday. I have been keeping up with working out, though, riding the stationary bike on hill courses with the difficulty level almost all the way up for at least 45 minutes almost every day (that's when I get my best reading done), then doing sit-ups and free weights too. I feel better when I exercise. Still no skateboard, but it's been too wet for skating anyway.

How are all of you?

This past weekend, Syfy (man, do I ever wish it was still sci-fi, that was so much easier to make myself type) marathoned some disaster movies. It was my chance! I had to watch Meteor Storm! So, I waited for a nice quiet time like tonight and about ten minutes in, decided that this was the greatest movie ever. Also, the worst. How can it be both? you ask wisely. ( Follow me and find out. )