Writing
Since one of my major projects for the year was writing, I want to cover that first. And it's exciting, because I finally got to put my big girl writer pants on this summer! I'm now officially an associate member of the SFWA, which was a giant personal accomplishment for me, to go with getting my first story published at a pro rate.
Written This Year
Novels: I started work on two novels and am still having a hard time figuring out which to work on first. Which is fine, since I haven't had a lot of time or attention span for working on something long anyway. I also got about a third of the way in to a second draft of one of my old NaNos, but let it fall by the wayside in favor of Throne of Nightmares
This year I also completed three separate drafts of Throne of Nightmares, which Isaac and Sin were good enough to critique. I also have started sending out queries for Throne of Nightmares, which is exciting and terrifying at the same time. We'll see if I have any luck there...
Shorter stuff:
Written total: 8 short stories, 1 novelette, 1 novella
Finalized: 5 short stories, 1 novelette
Consigned to the Trunk of Awfulness, never to emerge again: 1 short story
Publishing
Queries Sent: 48
Rejections Received: 38
Most rejections received: Transportation at 14
Published this year: The Book of Autumn in Beneath Ceaseless Skies issue #49.
Slated for next year: Transportation in Anotherealm in September, The Falling Star in the New Fairytales Anthology by Aurora Wolf which should be coming out in early 2011.
So I feel that generally, I did a good job with writing this year! I'm hoping to do as well next year, though I think my productivity will be lower since I won't have half a year off of school this time around.
Blogging
This, I didn't do so well at. Total, I did 165 entries this year, which is okay I guess... averages about one every three days or so. But I was trying for every other day. Up until about September I did all right (we shall not speak of April... my excuse is wedding prep!) but after that my productivity just tanked. I honestly don't think next year will be much better thanks to that grad school thing. In the grand scheme of things, if I have to choose between writing a blog post and writing on a story, the story is bound to win.
Everything Else!
2010 was a massive, crazy year for me. And mostly filled with good instead of bad, so I can't complain at all.
The Good
1. I got married! (I have many photos, by the way...) That was exciting, and involved some wonderful cake and a lot of British people wandering around in Colorado and feeling faintly bemused. Married life has, honestly, not been much different from unmarried life considering Mike and I had been living together for five years before the wedding. But it was still an incredibly important milestone in our relationship and I couldn't be happier.
2. I started grad school! I've still got my doubts, worries, and uncertainties, but I survived my first semester, and I think I survived it fairly well. Of one of my classes, the less said of it the better, but the other - sedimentary petrology - I did really well in. I even got the highest score in the class on my sandstone practical, as far as I can tell. I haven't started my research yet, but I read two articles a week and am slowly coming up to speed on the Bighorn Basin.
3. I survived to my 30th birthday! And then I got very drunk.
4. I've managed to get myself back into good enough shape to start kung fu back up. I'm incredibly excited about that. I've learned the entirety of the sze sze chuen suong ta now, and I've gotten deep into ching men chuen. I feel like that's extremely good for only three months back.
5. I got an Exxon-Mobil research grant, so I'll be able to spend a month or so up in the Bighorn Basin next summer. That'll hopefully give me a good start to my research. Once I figure out what my topic is.
6. Got my first short story published at a professional rate! Yes, I know that I already mentioned this, but it's so exciting I think it's worth mentioning again.
7. I rescued a cat and helped find her a new home. I got to cat sit for her at the beginning of December, and she's thriving. Crazy, but thriving.
8. I got to go to TAM for the third year in a row and hang out with all of my friends - and got hugged by DJ Grothe (omg Squee). I also was able to go to MileHi Con for the first time in years, even if only for a day. I was very excited about that and had a blast. And, of course, capped that day with getting to go to a Not-Quite-a-W00tstock.
9. Made it back to the UK for Christmas this year, after skipping last year so we could save up for the wedding. It was really nice to get to see everyone, and have our (mostly) annual walk along the beach in Brighton.
The Bad
1. The furnace springs immediately to mind, since it also only just happened. While it's only a thing, and it didn't kill or harm anyone, the harm that it's done to our bank account still has me reeling. I also realized that if it had gone up before we headed to the UK, we wouldn't have made it this year. So a thing falling apart in and of itself isn't that big of a deal, it's the stress that it puts our household under that makes it bad.
2. In the same vein, getting the news that the car is going to fall apart soon and really isn't worth repairing was rough. On the good side, it's still running, even if it sounds so awful you feel like you should have a bag over your head when you drive it somewhere. But we know the day is coming, and now our money that was reserved for the car is gone, thanks to the furnace.
3. The class that shall not be named in grad school made the last three weeks of the semester a living hell during which I didn't even get to see my husband for more than a few hours a week. This is probably for the best, since if I had seen him I likely would have started screaming at him for no good reason, just because of the stress.
4. Being completely unable to find an internship for next summer. This was a major blow to my self-esteem, particularly since everyone assured me I had a rock-solid resume. Maybe I just suck that much at the interview part of the process. Of course, this also adds to the financial distress, since it means I won't be earning nearly as much in the summer of 2011 as I should. But what can you do... we'll survive.
So... twice as much good as bad. That's always an excellent sign! Hopefully 2011 will be even better. A little less woe in the finance department would be nice.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Monday, December 27, 2010
The Mid-vacation Post
So far, it's been a nice visit to the UK, which is really no surprise to anyone. Christmas and Boxing Day were big family get togethers, which I enjoyed and only got a little drunk for. My jet lag problem is still present this year, though I think not nearly as obnoxious as it's been in years past. I've had to take naps on a couple of days, and have had a little bit of insomnia, but not to the point that I've been up at 3 in the morning and completely unable to sleep like I have been in other years.
The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I'm concerned. There's been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn't melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn't know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn's been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that's hopefully a sign that it's getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn't feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.
Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn't get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.
It's also worth noting that I didn't get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies... I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don't feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.
Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod's - the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I'm going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.
Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike's parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.
The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn't place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I'd say this one was as close at Doctor Who's really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I've seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, "I've got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw... let's combine that with Christmas!" the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It's also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor... considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.
I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won't be a very nice post.
Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that's exciting. It's hard to believe we're already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one's a few days shorter than trips we've taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.
Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering - I'm really excited about that!
The weather in the UK has been just fine as far as I'm concerned. There's been a lot of do about the temperature being below zero C, but I went for an hour and a half walk in it on Christmas morning while everyone else was at mass, and it was perfectly fine other than my ears getting cold since I forgot my hat back in the US. I think the bigger problem is just that the cold temperatures means the ice doesn't melt, and I guess this part of the UK doesn't know the wonders of car-destroying mag chloride the way we do in Colorado. I did have to avoid some terrifying icy sidewalks during my walk, to be sure. But other than that, it hasn's been any kind of Snowmageddon. Yesterday when we got back from London (around 2200) it was actually raining fairly heavily, so that's hopefully a sign that it's getting a bit warmer and the ice will go away. We ended up taking a cab from the train station at Wokingham, since the line west of it was shut down and the rain was nasty enough we didn't feel like waiting for the bus, or walking home once we caught said bus.
Speaking of Snowmageddon, we landed all right, but Heathrow has still apparently not gotten its shit together. Once we landed we had to park somewhere in the back of beyond for a good twenty minutes because there was nowhere for our plane to go, and then moved to a slightly less far away parking spot so that we could take buses to the terminal. Immigration was fast, but then we spent a stupid amount of time waiting for our luggage. I was also insanely thirsty the entire time, and there was nowhere to get anything to drink, though I could have apparently bought a SIM card from a vending machine if I wanted to. Maybe you can suck on those like mints. Anyway, our flight landed not long after 0900, and we didn't get our luggage collected and get out of there until after 1100. There was also a frightening graveyard of lost and unclaimed baggage taking up one entire section of the claim, which did not inspire confidence.
It's also worth noting that I didn't get to sit next to Mike for most of the flight, since the television for his seat was broken, and they moved him to the only empty seat on the airplane so he had something to do. I mostly used the flight to catch up on movies... I watched Toy Story 3, which I thought was very good and don't feel at all ashamed about sniffling through. I also watched The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The funny thing is, when Mike and I met up after landing and were talking about the movies we watched, we could each name two of them and it took us forever to remember which one the third was. For both of us, it was that movie. Which I think pretty much says all you need to know about how utterly unremarkable it was as a film.
Yesterday Mike and I went in to London. I paid a quick visit to Harrod's - the store was insanely busy, but everyone apparently just desperately wanted to buy perfume. After we got out of that section of the store it was just fine, and we were in and out in less than twenty minutes. After that we met up with Sam and Rick, and spent the rest of the day taking up space in a pub and playing board games. The game we started off with was Ticket to Ride, which was a lot of fun and I'm going to have to pick up a copy once my checking account stops crying about the furnace.
Oh yes, translation for any UK readers: by furnace, I mean boiler. Even though it has nothing to do with boiling water. I do not in fact own any sort of smelting equipment. This announcement brought to you by Mike's parents, who found that particular vocabulary mix-up very entertaining.
The Doctor Who Christmas special was pretty good, I think. I wouldn't place it higher than the first Christmas Invasion, or even the Runaway Bride, but I definitely liked it better than the silly episode with the space Titanic, or the one from two years ago that was kind of about the cyberman and all it really had going was a lovely steampunkish Victorian setting. I'd say this one was as close at Doctor Who's really gotten to just out and out producing a fable, and while it had the normal plot holes that you could drive a truck through, it at least had a lot more life in it than the last couple of episodes I've seen. (Which were, for the record, Victory of the Daleks and The Adventures of Spitty Timothy Dalton as the Most Underused Rassilon Imageinable [not its actual title].) Really, considering that I feel like the entire episode was based around someone saying, "I've got this awesome mental image of a shark flying through the air, pulling a rickshaw... let's combine that with Christmas!" the end result was surprisingly coherent and fun. It's also convinced me to give Matt Smith another chance as the Doctor... considering my first exposure to him was the underwhelmingly written turd of a Dalek episode from his season, he really needed something to recommend him.
I think a some point I may have to devote a post to how I feel about the way the Daleks have been used in recent episodes. It won't be a very nice post.
Today Mike and I are headed off to Brighton to see Sam and Dan and Rhi and hopefully Captain Stu, so that's exciting. It's hard to believe we're already at the midpoint of our trip, though this one's a few days shorter than trips we've taken in the past, since Mike ran out of vacation. Something to do with a wedding.
Also, Anotherealm has now published its 2011 lineup. Transportation will be the September offering - I'm really excited about that!
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Furnace Installation
There are scary noises emanating from my downstairs closet, which must mean that a nice man named Wayne is installing my new furnace. I hope.
As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.
As you can see, Loki is hard at work helping.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
For Christmas, I Got You an Empty Bank Account
I woke up this morning and the house was cold. Cold, and silent except for the sound of the cats and the hum of my laser printer in power save mode.
I'm sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.
I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he'd been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn't get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)
Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment's notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.
"Look in this hole. See where I'm shining my light?"
"Yes?"
"See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?"
"Yes?"
"That means your furnace is trying to kill you."
Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment's notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.
That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.
Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I've managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.
The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.
I guess I'm glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I've now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.
Santa, if this is how it's going to be this year, I just can't wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.
I'm sure everyone who has ever owned a home feels an empathetic sick, sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach just about now.
I called the HVAC people. They sent out a nice young man named Chris. His nametag helpfully informed me that he'd been both tested for drugs and undergone a background check. (They also e-mailed me his picture in advance, I suppose so a person posing as an HVAC technician couldn't get into my house and monkey around with my broken furnace.)
Chris, with Loki close by, ready to assist him at a moment's notice, fixed the furnace-not-turning-on problem very quickly. Unfortunately, he also found another problem.
"Look in this hole. See where I'm shining my light?"
"Yes?"
"See how this little tiny ring is missing from that aperture?"
"Yes?"
"That means your furnace is trying to kill you."
Okay, that last thing is not actually what he said. Rather, he told me that it was the symptom of a badly cracked heat exchange, and that if it was that badly cracked, my furnace might start filling my house with carbon monoxide at a moment's notice. So effectively, that last statement is what I heard.
That is why, the day before leaving the country for Christmas, we now only have about $500 in our savings account. I guess the good news is that we were saving all of that money for a new car next year, so we had it on hand to pay for a new furnace. The bad news is that we no longer have that money for acquiring a new car. But hopefully the faithful old steed will keep limping along while we try to rebuild our savings.
Chris brought in an electrician, who looked around and within five minutes found over $6,000 worth of reasons my house is not up to building code. Thankfully most of that can be ignored until I've managed to sell a kidney on the black market, several years from now. The stuff actually related to the furnace he took care of today, and the price seemed very reasonable in comparison to the number he quoted for, say, replacing my electrical panel, which comes direct from the 70s and is chock full of aluminum wiring. As far as I can tell, the sole purpose of aluminum wiring is to set houses on fire.
The new furnace will be installed tomorrow morning. Chris the Technician put a brand new carbon monoxide detector in that will warn us if the furnace tries to kills us, so that we can use tonight to prevent ourselves from freezing to death.
I guess I'm glad that this happened now, after I did all my Christmas shopping. It means all of our friends are getting nicer presents than a candy bar, or a used bookmark that Tengu has chewed up. I've now managed to take in enough alcohol that I no longer feel like screaming hysterically.
Santa, if this is how it's going to be this year, I just can't wait to see what surprises you have in store for me at the airport.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Emerging From Under My Rock
So, where have I been since Thanksgiving? The easy yet melodramatic answer is: in a black pit of horrible despair. Really, I just mean that I was working on an intensely awful end of semester group project, which I was having to spend over twenty hours a week on. With the other end of semester goings-on, it meant that I spent several weeks where I didn't get to see my friends and barely got to see my husband while he was awake. There was other awful drama connected with it that I'd rather not go in to now; let's just say that I'm glad I survived it without ending up in jail.
Thankfully, that's all done with now! WOO! I survived my first semester of grad school. I have been assured by many friends that grad school is normally not quite this horrible, so I'm going to try not to worry too much about next semester.
The last thing I did in the semester was actually write a paper for sedimentary petrology. That was actually a lot of phone, particularly when compared to the soul-destroying awfulness of the group project. I enjoyed spending time with my thin sections, and it also means I've got a new round of photo micrographs to share! The ooid grainstone micrographs are cooler looking than the lithic arenite, though I think the diagenetic history of the lithic arenite is more interesting. But that's because sandstones tend to be a diagenetic nightmare.
Lithic arenite photo micrographs
Ooid grainstone photo micrographs
Now that school's done with until January, I'm hoping I can manage to get some writing done. I'll also be in England from December 23-January 1, since Mike and I are going to see his family. There's a lot to look forward to this vacation.
Other things:
I love my Senator. Mark Udall, I mean. Bennet, well, the best I can still say for him is that at least he isn't Ken Buck.
Tron: Legacy was a fun movie. Don't bother seeing it in 3D, in case you're one of those people that actually likes the 3D thing. It's great in 2D, and I have it on good authority that the 3D really doesn't add anything. If you want something deep, it's not the movie for you, but if you want lightcycles and Jeff Bridges being stoner!God, it's a great time.
My parents gave me a Galaxy S as my early (and only) Christmas present. I am deeply in love with my amazing phone, and am greatly enjoying the fact that I no longer have the most pathetic phone out of all of my friends.
There is now a Jack'n'Grill by my house. We went there yesterday and the food is fantastic. It's also huge. We didn't realize until we got there that it was the home of the seven pound breakfast burrito once featured on Man vs. Food. The rest of the food is in keeping with that. You can't get a burger that's smaller than 10 ounces. But it's 10 ounces of pure awesome, that's for sure.
Yesterday Kat came up to hang out. During the afternoon we worked on some writerly stuff. The end result is that I sent out five query letters to agents. I am both excited and terrified about this. I hope the rejection callouses that I've built up over the last nine months with my short stories will help me in this process.
Thankfully, that's all done with now! WOO! I survived my first semester of grad school. I have been assured by many friends that grad school is normally not quite this horrible, so I'm going to try not to worry too much about next semester.
The last thing I did in the semester was actually write a paper for sedimentary petrology. That was actually a lot of phone, particularly when compared to the soul-destroying awfulness of the group project. I enjoyed spending time with my thin sections, and it also means I've got a new round of photo micrographs to share! The ooid grainstone micrographs are cooler looking than the lithic arenite, though I think the diagenetic history of the lithic arenite is more interesting. But that's because sandstones tend to be a diagenetic nightmare.
Lithic arenite photo micrographs
Ooid grainstone photo micrographs
Now that school's done with until January, I'm hoping I can manage to get some writing done. I'll also be in England from December 23-January 1, since Mike and I are going to see his family. There's a lot to look forward to this vacation.
Other things:
I love my Senator. Mark Udall, I mean. Bennet, well, the best I can still say for him is that at least he isn't Ken Buck.
Tron: Legacy was a fun movie. Don't bother seeing it in 3D, in case you're one of those people that actually likes the 3D thing. It's great in 2D, and I have it on good authority that the 3D really doesn't add anything. If you want something deep, it's not the movie for you, but if you want lightcycles and Jeff Bridges being stoner!God, it's a great time.
My parents gave me a Galaxy S as my early (and only) Christmas present. I am deeply in love with my amazing phone, and am greatly enjoying the fact that I no longer have the most pathetic phone out of all of my friends.
There is now a Jack'n'Grill by my house. We went there yesterday and the food is fantastic. It's also huge. We didn't realize until we got there that it was the home of the seven pound breakfast burrito once featured on Man vs. Food. The rest of the food is in keeping with that. You can't get a burger that's smaller than 10 ounces. But it's 10 ounces of pure awesome, that's for sure.
Yesterday Kat came up to hang out. During the afternoon we worked on some writerly stuff. The end result is that I sent out five query letters to agents. I am both excited and terrified about this. I hope the rejection callouses that I've built up over the last nine months with my short stories will help me in this process.
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