Category: updates

Endings, beginnings

~ EMM ~ 1 Comment

It’s my birthday-eve! 

Last night I finished my fourth UC Berkeley extension writing class. Four down and three more to go for the certificate in creative writing! I’m really excited to not have class after work anymore — but I also really liked this class and the group of students in it. I’m going to see if any of them want to keep things going and start a writing group, but so far only one person has taken me up on the idea… 

So, now that I have all this time back, what do I choose to do with it? Enroll in two more classes, of course! I decided to do my literature electives over the summer. I am taking “Mystery Fiction” as an online class. I have six months to finish it. I finished the first of eleven modules tonight. For this class I am going to read about four or five mystery novels, and a bunch more short stories. As far as online classes go, it is really well structured and I think I’m going to learn a lot about mystery fiction. I’m pretty excited about that because, even though I’m not an avid reader of detective stories, I do like a good mystery mixed into a plot… A couple of the stories I’m writing right now have mystery elements in them, so I’m interested to learn more about how mysteries work and more about the history of the genre. I mean, I get to read Sherlock Holmes for class! How can you not like that?

The other class I’m taking is called “Vampires and Steampunk” — it’s a new class offering and only 5 weeks instead of the usual 10 weeks. It’s taught by the same professor as the Mystery Fiction class, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this class since I first saw it listed as “coming soon” on the course list. I’m not a big fan of vampires, and I’ve read almost no steampunk, but the blurb says the class will also focus on sci-fi and “urban fantasy” (aka dystopian fiction?). This is another one where I’m interested in a more in depth study of and discussion of a genre I am gravitating toward in my writing. 

And, of course, here I am biting off more side-projects when work is crazy busy, and I’m planning on taking a summer vacation. But we already know, I’m most productive (and happy) when I’m busy.

So, bring on year 36! Let’s do this! I mean, it is my year after all (year of the Snake!)…

Writing break to write about writing

~ EMM

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there! Hope you are all enjoying your day and getting all the pampering you deserve.

Since my mom is over 2k miles away, I’ve been spending the weekend on writing-related activities rather than mom-related activities. Yesterday I participated in the UC Berkeley Student Readings at Books, Inc. on Van Ness in the city. I read the first three pages of the story that I’ve been working on that started off as a writing exercise that I posted here back in March. That was a thrilling experience that I hope I get to repeat!

The story, which I am tentatively calling “Bridge Beat,” isn’t done yet. I am on about my third revision (not counting the exercise). When I submitted one of the first versions to my workshop class, they all seemed to think that it deserved to be even longer… I don’t think there is enough there for a novel, even if I did create a moderately interesting world. So, I am still attempting to fit it into a short story sized box… Novella at most.

But, my current revision clearly ends at what is just the beginning of something that is presumably a much longer story. Either that, or I have completely missed the point and need to circle back and short circuit this before it gets entirely out of hand. The last thing I need is another in-progress novel. I swear this thing could be a short story if I could only see the story with fresh eyes…

But there’s the rub — it’s really hard to see a story objectively when you are writing it. The story is in your head. You know all the bits and pieces (even if there are also bits and pieces you are totally making up as you go along). So it’s hard to know how the story is appearing to the reader. Are you giving away too much too soon? Or are you being so vague that the reader is left guessing at too much?

Still, plot, character, and scene are my favorite bits of storytelling. I really like creating worlds and characters and setting them in motion. For me that’s the most fun part of story writing. The things I end up struggling with are “theme” and “meaning.” As in, “what’s the point?” and “what does it all mean?” Since I hate it when stories have heavy-handed “messages,” I tell myself I’m just writing to entertain, so it doesn’t matter.

As usual, Mark Twain probably said it best:

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

However, if I’m honest with myself, I know that the stories that I love the most make me feel something. That may be because they mean something or have a theme. So, if I want to create stories that people love, I probably need to get real about this “theme” thing. It also might help me figure out how to know when I’m “done.”

This afternoon I’ve been mostly banging my head against the wall and repeating, “what does it mean? what does it mean?” and hoping that will help. Spoiler: it’s not helping.

This is where writing groups and workshops come in handy. Other writers (or avid readers) that know how stories work, can look at what you have, break it down, and help you see what’s needed. This kind of feedback from my writing workshop classmates has been invaluable, and I’m going to miss it when this class ends. (Sounds like it’s time to find myself a more permanent writing group…)

I did send my current revision to a handful of my classmates and to my teacher to get some fresh eyes on it. But, in the meantime, I think I need to take a step back and let it rest for a bit before I have another go at it. I feel like I’m so close… but to what, I’m not exactly sure. A breakthrough, definitely. But possibly one that involves scaling a mountain rather than skipping across a crack in the sidewalk.

(If you are a sympathetic human who knows me IRL and is absolutely dying to provide feedback on an early draft of this story, send me an email. I’ll send you a PDF.)

Friday Fun

~ EMM

Yesterday was filled with little awesome, happy things. Here are two captured on Twitter:

First, Seth Green and co. visited Twitter to talk about their show, Robot Chicken (which I have actually never seen, but will now have to…). I was always a big fan of Oz on Buffy, and his other appearances in the “Whedonverse“…

Then, inspired by this awesomeness, I tweeted my “top five” list of people who I would love to see visit Twitter, and @neilhimself (Neil Gaiman) responded! Twitter is magic. My tweet and his response, generated a lot of responses and favorites.

The top five, in case you can’t decipher their Twitter handles, are:

  1. @NathanFillion = Nathan Fillion, another star of the Whedon-verse, known mostly for his role as Captain Malcolm Reynolds (aka “Captain Tightpants”) in Firefly / Serenity, and his current role as Richard Castle on the ABC TV show Castle (which I’ve only seen a few episodes of because it’s not on Netflix streaming…)
  2. @rebsoni = Rebecca Soni, Olympic swimmer and gold medalist in the 100 and 200 breast stroke
  3. @neilhimself = Neil Gaiman, author of some of my favorite books including Neverwhere and American Gods
  4. @ActuallyNPH = Neil Patrick Harris, actor first known for his role as Doogie Howser in the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D., more recently known for his role as Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, but also for his appearance in Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog
  5. @feliciaday = all around amazing actress and writer / producer, frequently appearing in the Whedonverse (Buffy, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible, etc.), but recently better known for a web series called The Guild.

Of course there are many other actors, actresses, and famous people that I could have listed here (like J.K. Rowling, for example). But, part of the reason I picked these five is that they are all very active on Twitter and use Twitter to interact with their fans and fellow famous people. I feel like they are getting a lot out of the product, and I’d love to hear them talk about  how they’re using Twitter and what they love, or what they’d love to see, in the product.

If any of these folks ever do make an appearance at the Twitter office, it will be difficult to contain my levels of extreme excitement, and hold back my inner fan-girl “squeeeee…”

Ode to Google Reader

~ EMM

Google Reader is dying, but increasingly it appears that I am still going to be there, holding its hand, pleading with it not to leave me, until it takes its final breath and they find me staring at my laptop screen hitting refresh and quietly sobbing, or until I finally have to press my finger to the app icon and hold it there until I can bring myself to drag the app to the little “x remove” at the top of the home screen on my phone (Android, people, deal with it).

Melodramatic much? Fine. Maybe. But this is Google Reader! How am I going to get all of the many blogs I lovingly read and obsess over to deliver their contents to the same place where I can easily read, file, tag, email, and share articles on my phone or on my laptop?

Google Reader is how I keep up with my long-distance friends’ mommy / daddy blogs. It’s how I make sure I never miss an XKCD comic. It’s how I keep up with what’s going on in the wide world of technology. And it’s where I read about and draw inspiration from the blogs of several authors and one editor I admire.

Yes I know there are a bunch of alternatives, but none seem to give me the same mix of basic functionality (everything you need to have and nothing you don’t), with a clean UI. And of course, how do I know they won’t just up and leave me someday? After all, when I gave all my feeds to Google Reader, I would never have expected (the Spanish Inquisition…) the Googles to just shut it down one day.

I’ve tried paring down the blogs I follow to a bare minimum. I’ve loaded everything that’s left into “The Old Reader.” I’ve tried (when I’m on my laptop… I’m not sure Ye Ol’ Reader has an app, so I haven’t figured out how to use it on my phone…) to break my Google Reader habit by deleting the bookmark and adding one for the Reader in its place. After a few days I dug through the “more” menu on Google trying to find a link to Google Reader and finally resorted to Googling for the link. Then I just left the Google Reader browser tab open. I’m such a cheater.

This whole drama (as exaggerated as I’m making it out to be) is forcing me to think more about two topics that, in my line of work especially, you generally don’t spend much time thinking about… 1) who owns the content I create and curate, and what right do apps have to hand that content over when they decide to close their doors? … and 2) is consuming all this information (drinking from the information highway fire hose…) really that good for me?

Maybe the information-age haters are right and “News is bad for you.” According to them I would be more creative and more productive if I stopped reading “news flashes” (like Twitter) and stuck to reading only things folks today would consider #LongForm or “tl;dr” (Note to Mom: that stands for “too long, didn’t read”). I don’t exactly know if the contents of my Google Reader fall into the long-form category, or if they are more “news flashes” that are just supplying me with a steady stream of information that I wouldn’t really miss if I didn’t know it was there. Maybe losing Google Reader is actually going to be good for me.

I’ll admit it, I am an information junkie. I love to read, and I love to collect information. You never know when that information is going to come in handy, or give you inspiration for a piece of writing. Tools like Twitter and Google Reader allow me to plow through mountains of information in a small amount of time, and flag anything that looks especially promising to read in more depth later, or forward on to someone I know would benefit from (or enjoy) the information.

But like any good junkie, maybe I’m just in denial about my addiction. And, like any good junkie, I’m not going to let the death of Google Reader slow me down.

Red ribbon season

~ EMM

The US Masters short course yards (SCY) season is over (for me). Registration for the Nationals meet in Indianapolis closed mid-week last week, and I decided not to go (even though I swam qualifying times in all three breaststroke events). I decided I didn’t need to go to Indianapolis to have my butt kicked by people much faster than me.

I am only slightly regretting that decision after my races this weekend. I really wish I had one more chance to swim the 200 breast to see if I could squeak into the top ten times for my age group in that event. As it is I think I’ll probably be in the top fifteen. Which is good, but I’m so close to breaking into the top ten… if only I had one more race… 

This weekend was the Pacific Zone’s SCY Championship swim meet. I swam four events: 200 breast, 100 IM, 50 breast, and 100 breast. I swam season best times in all but the 50 breast (where I was only a few hundredths of a second off my season best time). I placed second in my age group in every single one of those events.

Why second in every single one? Because, you know who else swam every single one of those events (and some others as well, just to make it look that easy…)? This woman named Andee Bell who is hella fast. She is, I think, two years older than me, and faster than anyone I ever swam with in high school. She was busy racing this 22 year old, fresh out of college swimming, and probably didn’t even notice me. We were never in the same heat, and she was busy setting Pacific Masters records. 

I’d seen her name in the “top ten times” before, and she was listed as swimming in the heat sheets for one of the meets I swam in earlier this year, but she never showed. I was wondering if she was still swimming, and sort of hoping she wasn’t because I have no chance of ever beating her… I mean, did you see those times? 

Honestly, I should be focusing on how well I did this season after just getting serious about swimming again in January. I’ve really only had about three months of training. And I didn’t get close to the yardage that other masters swimmers do daily at practice (them: upwards of 3k yrds per practice, me: between 2k and 3k for the last month or so — less before that).

I’m sad it’s over so quickly, and now I have to wait another eight months before next season starts. In the meantime, I think I’m going to try some open water swims this summer, and definitely a long course meters meet or two, if there are any in the Bay Area. And, I am pretty sure that short course meters season coming up in the fall will give me something to look forward to… 

I also have eight months to train, train, train and get fast, fast, fast (still, probably never as fast as Andee Bell, but I’ll take what I can get… like faster than high school would be nice…).

Here is what I learned over the past three months:

  • Swimming is awesome. I love swimming. (Why in the hell did I wait so long to get back in the pool?)
  • I had terrible endurance in high school (glad I kept such good records of my times so I can compare to now…).
  • You can swim FOREVER! (and some of the older women are faster than me!)
  • Competing makes me so much more excited about training. I am actually excited about getting out of bed early and going to the pool.
  • I am better at endurance races than sprints (bring on the 200s! …maybe even the LONG distance stuff…)
  • My best event is the 200 breaststroke — I am pretty sure I’ll end up with a “top 20” time, maybe even “top 15” in my age group, and I finished 5th overall at the Pacific Masters SCY Championships. (Plus I’ve only raced it twice!)

So, for all of you that are sick of me talking about swimming, you can be happy that my main racing season is over, and you’ll likely not have to read a bunch more swimming related blog posts for a while. Of course, I’ll still provide updates in my monthly “by the numbers” posts.

Thanks for bearing with me while I’ve obsessed about swimming for the last three months, and thanks for cheering me on! 

Writing exercise

~ EMM ~ 1 Comment

I have a little bit of writing I thought I might share with you… it’s short, so it’s easy for me to post here on the blog. It was generated from a writing exercise we were given in class. Our instructor, Dan Coshnear, gave us the following assignment:

Write a story based on one of the two scenarios below. story should look like 3 paragraphs with white space between them to signify a transition in time. Paragraph one is in the present tense, par. 2 is in the past tense, par.3 returns us to the present. Each of the paragrapghs begins with a line from either scenario A or B, in their respective order.
A – Par. 1 – (present) The Bonneville drifts over the double yellow line. “Stop it, Lyle,” she says. “Do you want to get us killed?”
     Par. 2 – (past) She’d met him six months ago at a retreat for community organizers. He was the hairiest man she’d ever seen, and he wouldn’t leave the hot tub.
     Par. 3 (present) – “It can’t be now all the time,” she says.
B – Par. 1 (present) We’re driving over the Golden Gate Bridge when I see something go over the side. A yellow flash.
     Par. 2 (past) I hadn’t had a vacation in over a year.
     Par. 3 (present) – “Do I know what day it is? What the hell kind of a question is that?”
As i said last night, if you’d like to edit or change any of the lead-in lines, I have no trouble with that. what’s important is that you try this simple structure, present, past, present and see what emerges.

So, I chose “scenario B” and wrote the following:

We’re driving over the Golden Gate and I see something go over the side like a yellow flash. “There. Pull over. Now.” Rex angles the car toward the pedestrian walkway and jams on the hazards. He parks the car in the midst of the northbound bridge traffic and we both jump out, leaving the doors open, and run for the guard rail. He gets there first and begins jogging back and forth along a ten foot span of bridge railing, pushing tourists out of the way, looking for the telltale shimmer we were told would be evident. I struggle to climb over the barrier, land on the concrete walkway, and sight a direct path to the point I haven’t taken my eyes off of since I saw the flash.

I hadn’t had a vacation in over a year. This was my beat, the Bridge beat. All we knew was that somewhere along this two mile stretch of concrete and steel was a portal. Folks on this side mostly didn’t know these portals existed. The folks I’d been working for knew about the portals, but didn’t know where they were. The did know that at some point someone from the other side was going to have to use this portal. So we were on stand-by, always ready, ever vigilant, as though the very survival of the species depended on us getting this right. One other thing they didn’t know: I’ve been to the other side and returned. Now I needed to make sure that I was the one who went back to warn them.

“Do I know what day it is? What the hell kind of question is that?” The cop questioning me was blocking my path. They were quick on the scene, I’ll give them that. A parked car on the most iconic bridge in the country will have that effect, I guess. I have to find the portal before they march me off to the looney bin. Rex catches my eye and shrugs. He can’t find it. I tilt my head toward the cop and hope Rex will be able to interpret my look. He smiles, nods, turns around, and climbs up on the railing, drawing attention from the tourists. The commotion distracts the cop and I lunge past him. I spot the shimmer, fainter now, it will disappear soon. No time to think, I vault the rail and hurl myself over the side, angling my body toward the portal. Either I’m going home, or I’ll be dead when I hit the water. Either way, I’ve found my ticket out of this place.

I’m thinking about expanding it into a short story, but I’m not exactly sure about the plot… I may play with it a bit more this weekend, but thought I would throw it out here and see if anyone reading this has any thoughts…

So what do you think? Worth expanding on? As a short story? Something longer? Or do you think it’s complete as-is?

Busy

~ EMM

This has been a crazy busy week. Two writing classes this week, lots of end of quarter stuff at work, PyCon, a swim meet, and some family stuff. I feel like I’ve been going non-stop. PyCon deserves its own post, and it will get one, but not tonight…

While you’re waiting for that PyCon post (and more posts to come about my experiences learning to program), I’ll let you know that I qualified in another swimming event this weekend. I swam the 200 breaststroke for the first time ever (this is not a high school event). I always thought I might have made a good 200 breaststroker (it is a college event, I didn’t swim competitively in college) because I am not really a sprinter. I am pretty good at pushing a pace consistently over a medium-long distance. Or at least, that is what I discovered when I was running (post-college, and before I returned to swimming).

There was evidence of this in my high school swimming career. I could never manage to get my 50 breaststroke consistently under 38 seconds, either during my leg of a medley relay (the only time you swim 50 breast in high school), or on the first leg of my 100 breaststroke race. I thought I would get the opportunity to break 38 seconds this weekend, but it turns out this weekend the events were 200 and 100 breaststroke (no 50). So… next weekend…

But, the big news from this weekend: I dove in and swam a 2:55.23 for the 200 yrd breaststroke! That beats the qualifying time for my age group (2:58.03) and also beats the goal time I had posted on the side of my fridge (2:57.57).

So, having “blown away” my original goal times for both the 200 and the 100 breaststroke, I needed to come up with some new times… Here are my new goal times:

  • 50 breast — 37.55 (no change to this one… yet…)
  • 100 breast — 1:18.65 (was 1:22.57)
  • 200 breast  — 2:49.57 (was 2:57.57)

Those all seem like rather ambitious goal times, but so did the other ones when I made them, and I can rationalize these times (except for the hundredths, I just made those up). So, I’m just going to re-set the bar even higher and see what happens.

Next weekend is the March Madness swim meet at University of San Francisco. I’m registered to swim the 50 breast, the 100 breast, and the 100 IM. I have a secret hope (not so secret now, I guess…) that I will be able to swim a qualifying time in the 100 IM (1:14.27). But it’s my last race of the day, and I’m going to need to get my sprint on in the 50 if I want to get my time below 38 seconds. We’ll see what I have left…

The March Madness meet is my last meet before the Pacific region championship meet. So far I haven’t decided if it’s worth flying to Indy to swim in the Nationals. I can’t decide if I want to fly out there to get my butt kicked by crazy fast people. I got a taste of getting my butt kicked (or at least touched-out by) crazy fast people at the meet this weekend in Palo Alto. I was the youngest person in my heat, the “fast heat,” of the 100 breaststroke, and I finished 6th overall (2nd in my age group). At least in the 200 breast two of the five women who beat me were significantly younger than me (again I finished 6th overall, but this time 1st in my age group).

Note: these are just the crazy fast people that happen to live / compete in the Bay Area. Then again… If I race Nationals, it does give me one more month of training to help me get my times down… So maybe the crazy fast people will still beat me, just not by as much, and I may be able to sneak in to the top ten times…

Let’s just see how I do this weekend. Then I’ll decide. It’s not like I don’t have enough on my mind right now…. I’m just going to focus on what I have to get done tonight, and what I’m going to swim at practice tomorrow morning. And write that PyCon post…

Swimming in the pool of champions

~ EMM ~ 1 Comment

This day has disappeared into a sucking vortex of daylight savings hour loss and crazy long swim meet. After a long nap, the fact that I blew away my 100 breaststroke goal for this season and I still have two more meets and almost two months before the Pacific Masters short course yards championships is finally sinking in.

The meet today was held at University of California, Berkeley’s pool and hosted by the CAL Masters Swimming Team.

Image

There were definitely more young, fast swimmers at this meet than I’ve seen at any of these masters meets to date. And then there was the intimidating “wall of Olympians.”

Image

They ran out of space in the first section and had to start a second, but they still haven’t posted plaques for the London Olympians. You may note that UC Berkeley claimed 45 of the Olympians at the London Olympics in 2012, more than any other public school, and 19 of those were swimmers. Also, it is soon to be the home pool for Missy Franklin. That second section is going to fill up fast…

Did you notice that this is an outdoor pool? Oh, California… so different than growing up in the Midwest…

So, surrounded by this much greatness, I had to do well, right?

Yesterday (to boost my confidence?) I dug out my old time log book that I kept through high school.

IMG_20130309_201621

It doesn’t have much from my freshman year, but it looks like I recorded all my sophomore, junior, and senior year meet times. I noted that my high school best in the 100 breaststroke (which was “my event” in high school, even though I was not fastest on the team and never qualified for the State meet) was 1:19.04. That was at sectionals, fully tapered, at the end of my junior year. (Sadly, I actually got a little slower my senior year and lost my place as “second fastest breaststroker” to a freshman.)

I honestly had no idea what to expect today. When I got out of the pool after the 50 (my first race), I was surprised that I had managed to swim a 38.79 (about half second slower than qualifying time). The race didn’t feel that fast. Watching everyone swim while waiting for my next race, I started to get nervous. I kept telling myself that I would be fine if I just swam like I did in the 50 — just for twice a long.

My 100 yrd race went by in a blur, but not so fast that I couldn’t be totally aware of how terrible my turns were. I didn’t arrive early enough this morning to warm up in the competition pool. So, I didn’t get an opportunity to familiarize myself with that weird pool separator thing. You can’t see from the pictures above, but it doesn’t extend all the way to the bottom of the pool, which is a weird effect when you’re swimming to the “wall” but can see right under it to the adjacent pool. It becomes very hard to judge distance to the wall. My timing was off and I kept ending up with less than a full stroke as I closed in on the walls. When that happens you either end up with a painfully long “glide” into the wall, or a short, rushed half-stroke.

To make matters worse, I was in an outside lane of the fast heat. I could only get a glimpse of the woman in the lane next to me, and I couldn’t see the swimmers in the middle of the pool. And the woman in the lane next to me was kicking my ass. I chased her up and down the pool, but couldn’t close the distance. So when I finished and asked the timer for my time I was definitely not expecting to hear “1:21…” Turns out my official time was 1:21.65. Here are the results, posted by age group:

Image

That person that beat me in my age group? She was the one in the lane next to me. That is an awesome time. No wonder I couldn’t catch her!

So, I am officially faster than I was in my freshman year of high school. That is blowing my mind.  I’m swimming fewer yards per week, and I’m pretty sure I don’t have the same muscles I used to, but somehow I’m faster. My goal for this year was to swim a qualifying time (1:23.32). The psych-time I posted on my fridge was 1:22.57. So, now I need a new goal. How about 1:19.04?

Next weekend… 200 yrd breaststroke… and another chance to shave a little more time off my 50 yrd breast time.

Another swimming post

~ EMM

Sunday is my first opportunity to swim a US Masters Swimming Nationals Qualifying Time in breaststroke — basically the only stroke I think I have a snowball’s chance in hell of swimming a qualifying time in… this year. 

Frequent readers will know that I swam in my first post-high-school swim meet just two short months ago. In that meet I swam the 50 breaststroke event, but opted out of swimming any longer breaststroke events because I hadn’t been training regularly and my endurance was crap. In that meet I swam the 50 yard race in 40.26 seconds. Not too shabby for someone who hadn’t been training.

For those of you with no context for swimming times, you can check out the full USMS National Qualifying Times here. Right now I’m just focused on these three times:

  • 38.22 (50 breast)
  • 1:23.32 (100 breast)
  • 2:58.03 (200 breast)

On Sunday I swim the 50 and the 100 breaststroke. And yes, you read that right, I need to drop at least 2 full seconds (and a couple hundredths) off my time in order to beat the qualifying time for my age group. Now, 2 seconds may not seem like a lot, but it’s actually a pretty large chunk of time for such a short race.

As if that weren’t enough to worry about, I haven’t raced 100 breaststroke since high school and I’ve never raced 200 breaststroke (not a high school event). I’m pretty sure my best time for the 100 breaststroke in high school was 1:18 or 1:19. Do I need to remind anyone that was 18 years ago? (Ugh. I did not need to do that math. That can’t be right. When did I get so old?)

I’m nervous. So I’m writing about it and obsessing. Can you tell?

In preparation, all this month I’ve been increasing the percent of my workout that I swim “in stroke” because that’s what the coach at the stroke clinic I went to told me to do. She basically told me that I had great form (my mom is laughing right now… I’ve always had nearly perfect form, but fast and form are not the same thing). She couldn’t really find anything to tweak and suggested I just need to build endurance.

Annoyingly, breaststroke is the slowest of the competitive strokes and swimming more of my workout as breaststroke (instead of fast freestyle) means workouts take longer. And are exhausting. But some sets are starting to get easier, so I think I’m building my endurance and I plow ahead and hope this is all going to pay off.

So why is this worth it? What does swimming a qualifying time get me? Basically nothing. See, you can actually enter up to 3 events at Nationals without ever swimming a qualifying time. Anyone can go, no matter how slow they are, and compete. You’ll likely get your ass handed to you, but you can go. If you want to enter more than 3 events, you need to have “qualified” in any events in excess of your 3 “free” entries, up to 6 events total (note: not actually free). 

This year Nationals is in Indianapolis, IN. It’s kind of a great excuse to visit my family in Chicago and take a quick drive down I-65 to race and see the pros in action. I am pretty sure that Olympic athletes don’t compete at USMS Nationals, so not that kind of pro… but definitely some swimmers there can say they are *almost* as fast as Rebecca Soni. 

On the other hand, the Pacific Region (the one I belong to) has a regional Championship race. I think all the regions probably have their own. The Pacific Masters Short Course Championship is held in the Bay Area and will definitely attract some fast swimmers (judging from previous years’ results online). So, I’ve made this deal with myself, I’m not going to Indy unless I “qualify.” If I don’t qualify, I’ll leave it all in the pool at my regional Championship and be happy with that.

Even if I don’t go to Indy, I can still achieve my goals:

  1. Swim a qualifying time in at least one breaststroke event. (Probably do-able)
  2. Swim a time that lands me in the “top 20” times for my age group for at least one breaststroke event. (Probably do-able if I do #1)
  3. Swim a time that lands me in the “top 10” times for my age group for at least one breaststroke event. (Stretch goal… )

So, by now you all think I’m completely nuts. Maybe I am a little obsessed. What can I say, I like competing.

Anyone placing bets on how I do this weekend?

Predictions for times? (I’m seeded at 40.26 for the 50 and 1:23 for the 100).

Time for an update

~ EMM

I’ve been pretty much all consumed by working, swimming, and keeping up with my writing class. We made it through the poetry segment of the class (so happy that’s over…). I had to write some (terrible) poetry and read it out loud in class. I was shocked when many people in the class actually seemed to like what I wrote. Especially since one of the poems I wrote, the one I read aloud in class, was an ode to my extreme dislike of poetry. Regardless of feedback from the workshop, I don’t think publishing poetry is in my future.

We’ve now moved on to short stories. I’m no expert on short stories. I definitely came late to this party. I don’t remember reading any short stories outside of school until I started reading the Completed Collection of Sherlock Holmes last year. Shortly after purchasing that for my Kindle, I picked up a “best of” collection offered through a Kindle Daily Deal. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011 contained a section of short stories. I fell in love with this book and wrote the following review:

This little gem was edited by Dave Eggers (of Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, McSweeney’s, and 826 Valencia fame), and has an introduction by Guillermo Del Toro (producer/director/writer of fan-boy classics such as: Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, and the upcoming Hobbit movies). The selections for inclusion were made by high school students. One of my favorite parts is the “Best American WiFi Network Names” (who knew people were so creative with WiFi network names?). If this isn’t enough to make you want to get a copy to read by the pool this summer, maybe this article will convince you: http://www.sfweekly.com/2011-11-30/culture/best-american-non-required-reading-dave-eggers-826-valencia/

At the same time I was trying to finish my first UC Berkeley Extension writing class and attempting to write my first short story since my high school creative writing class. These short stories and my attempts at writing them inspired me to purchase a subscription to Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Basically, I was giving myself a crash course in short stories.

With the exception of Asimov’s, I haven’t been reading short stories recently, and I certainly haven’t attempted writing any (bad me). But, I’m steadily increasing my appreciation of this genre of fiction. My next writing assignment is to write a short short story. I haven’t made much progress yet… okay, I opened a file, typed in my header, and saved it… I am going to start writing for real any minute now…

While I attempt to determine what in the world I am going to write about, I am inspiring myself with one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, who is doing this project with Blackberry called “A Calendar of Tales” that also involved Twitter. You can check it out here if you have no idea what I’m talking about: http://keepmoving.blackberry.com/desktop/en/us/ambassador/neil-gaiman.html?CPID=E70C215 (you can download the stories from there)

As a result of all the working and the swimming and the keeping up with my writing class, I’m making slow progress with Blue Remembered Earth, even though I am enjoying it and wish I had more time to read it. Every time I find free time there seems to be something else more pressing to do, or I’m too tired to read. At this rate I’ll be happy to finish one book this month (and one blog post, for that matter).