Tauriasis

Here There Be Dragons

It’s been a while since I last posted anything.  A lot has happened to me since then and a lot has been going on.  I’m not sure anybody actually reads this blog, and if they do then they probably already know what’s been going on with me… either way, I suppose I’ll just jump into things.

First of all, last month was NaNoWriMo, which is always fun but also eats up a lot of my time.  My goal originally was to write half of a collaborative novel with my brother (which would be about 25k words) and to finish my own novel (which I estimated to be around 75k-100k words).  My finished novel ended up being around 50k words, so not as long as I had anticipated.  Then again, I was annoyed with the novel from the get go and so when the novel hit 50k I decided it would just be better for all involved if I killed off all of my main characters.  The collaborative novel was a blast though, so I’m really glad that I decided to try that.  All in all at the end of November I had 77,490 words, so not too shabby.

In early November (6th-8th) I met my brother and sister-in-law out in Raleigh, NC.  It was the annual Capital Area Handbell Festival, and for the third year in a row they were playing one of my brother’s handbell arrangements.  We played Friday night from 7:00 until 10:00.  Saturday was the festival itself from 9:00am to 5:00pm with a lunch break and a Raleigh Ringer’s concert.  Sunday was an advanced ring on the Raleigh Ringer’s bells and with some very talented bell ringers that went from 1:00pm to 5:00pm.  So, that was a fun weekend of bell playing.

That trip to Raleigh made me want to apply to North Carolina State University, which brings me to the subject of grad school.  A week before Thanksgiving I found out that I was accepted to Purdue and the University of New Mexico for their master’s of statistics programs.  So, I’m still making the decision on that, but nonetheless it’s exciting.

Also, the last post I made, I think I mentioned something about starting to run or wanting to do a mini marathon.  I have run not at all since I wrote that.  So, if I do the mini marathon still then it will be a walking thing and even then it’s not very likely.  It’s more likely that I’ll sign up for the 5k, and then only if I end up at Purdue where it would actually be possible to get to the race for the weekend.  I guess what I’m saying is that running so far is a big “No”.

That’s been my last month and a half really.  The past two weeks have been worrying about grad school, which will go on for another few weeks until I figure out where I’m going and get myself and my stuff there.  Last month was worrying about NaNoWriMo and attempting to write things filled with novelly goodness.  I do have a second novel that I only got 1000 words into during November that I plan to write and finish over the next few months.  My brother and I are still going to work on our collaborative thing too, I think.  So hopefully this time I will actually keep writing now that NaNoWriMo is over.

Ok, I know that in my last post I had mentioned updating this blog more frequently, but I’ve been busy lately.  All last week my mom was here in Alabama visiting me.  While that was really fun, we don’t get a whole lot accomplished when we’re around each other.  We ended up going to Barnes and Noble and stopping to get random groceries.  Last Sunday we watched the Colts (go Colts!) go to 5-0 while we ate chips and salsa and drank some mulled wine.  For the most part though we just sat around and watched As Time Goes By while we worked on some of our knitting projects.

We ended up going to Yarn Expressions twice, and we got some neat stuff to make socks and fingerless gloves.  I also ended up getting some artful yarns vineyard in the Bordeaux color.  I have no idea what I’m going to do with it.  I originally picked it up to make more fingerless gloves, but with all the yarn I got to make gloves I’ll have a different pair for each day of the week.  So, I decided I would do something else with it, and since I didn’t know that “something else” was, I got two skeins (take two, they’re small?).  I’m sure I’ll think of something cool to do with it.  I just need to ponder on it for a while.

As far as grad school things go, I mailed off my application to the University of New Mexico a week ago.  I knew that I wouldn’t have as much time to work on it with my mom visiting, so I made sure I got it done before she got here.  I still need to check with the department to make sure that they have all of my materials, but provided I didn’t do anything stupid they should have everything that they need from me.  I think my recommendation writers have it all under control too.

Still no word back from Purdue, but according to the FAQ on their website, I should be hearing back late October or early November, so I should know something *soon*, and it’s really starting to make me nervous.  It’s not really that I want to go to Purdue more or less than UNM, it’s more that I’d like to go somewhere.  At this point I’m far less concerned with *where* I’m going to grad school than *if* I’m going to grad school.  I don’t know when I’ll hear from UNM, but that application isn’t due until Nov 1st, so I’m guessing I’ll hear from Purdue first.  I’ll let you know as soon as I find out something one way or the other.

NaNoWriMo is right around the corner.  Two weeks from today thousands of people will commit to 30 days of being glued to their computers attempting to type 1667 words a day in a mad dash to complete a 50k word novel.  Actually, it’s not that hard of an attempt.  I actually found the 50k words to be a very achievable goal.  That’s why this year I’m teaming with my brother to write a novel as well as writing my own.  And this time I want to actually finish the story in my novel, which I’m guessing will take me past the 50k mark and more into the 75k-100k range.  I like a challenge though, so it’ll at least make November interesting.

I still have no plot or character ideas for either novel.  I think I worried too much about little details last year and not enough about the big picture.  This year before I start with my novel I’d like to have a good idea of a few characters, where the story starts, and where it’s going to end.  It turns out that the little twists and turns that you send your characters on are pretty easy to come up with, but you need a pretty good main problem to (a) get your characters going, and (b) have an interesting main plot/ending for your story.  My fallback is usually “random fantasy involving some prophecy about main good character(s) that main evil character(s) would like to exploit somehow”.  I’d like to try something different though.  Maybe a murder mystery or some sort of fantasy/horror thing with werewolves and witches.  I’ll figure it out as I go along if I need to, but I still have two weeks to come up with something.

NaNoWriMo, knitting, and worrying about grad school will take up the majority of my next month and a half, but there’s something else that I’ve been thinking about doing.  Next year my birthday is on a Saturday.  Not just any Saturday, but the Saturday that the Indy 500 Mini Marathon and 5k are being run.  I’ve always wanted to be a runner.  I hate going out in the heat and puffing and feeling like I’m about two steps away from death, but I want to like running.  So, I’ve decided that I’m going to run something next year.

I’m currently undecided between the 5k and the half marathon.  I ran (walked) the 5k a few years ago, and that was really fun.  The half marathon would be really cool to do though because part of the race takes you around the Indy 500 track, which I think would be really neat to do anyway, but especially cool to do on my birthday.  I know that preparing for the half would be pretty intense, but I have 4 hours to make it from start to finish.  I’m not looking to set any world records or anything.  Just finish it.  So, I’m pretty sure it’s doable by most people.  I’m just not sure if it’s doable by me.  My current idea is to start doing a run/walk plan next week, and see how far I get by a week before Christmas.  The half usually sells out around Christmas, so I figure that will give me enough time to determine if there’s any way I’ll be able to do it before they close registration.  If I can’t even run 3 miles at Christmas, then I’ll just sign up for the 5k instead.  Either way, I’ll keep you posted on whatever I decide to do.

This time I’m not going to promise to write more frequently.  With NaNoWriMo coming up, I know the chances of me posting more often are slim to none.  So, I’ll leave you with this little bit of motivation that I hope will help get me through at least the next month and a half (I’m doomed): “Try not.  Do… or do not.  There is no try.”

Until next time.

Not only have I managed to not write a post since mid-September, but I also haven’t read any more of my 2008 novel.  So, SeptNoFinMo has turned into OctNoMaybeFinMo.  I’m not very optimistic about finishing anything in October, the reasons for which will become apparent if you continue reading this post.

I just recently (like, 10 minutes ago) started my application to the University of New Mexico’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics for a masters in stats. All I’ve really done at this point is write to some of my college professors asking them if they’ll write letters of recommendation for me.  Tomorrow I plan to take care of getting my transcripts and GRE scores sent.  At that point all I should have left is the application and the letter of intent.  The letter of intent always scares me a little because it’s easily the most important part of the application, but sometimes my intentions don’t really make sense to anybody but me.

My mom is coming to visit me Oct 9 to Oct 18.  That should be fun.  She stayed with me for a week back in December of 2007 when I first moved to Alabama.  It helped to have somebody around and we ended up doing some pretty cool things.  Hopefully we can find some neat things to do this time too.

NaNoWriMo is just around the horizon.  The signup page went up just a few days ago (www.nanowrimo.org), so go sign up to write your novel now!  I’m still not sure what I’ll write about this year.  More than likely it won’t be a continuation of my 2008 story since I won’t have it finished by the time November starts.  I don’t think I want to recycle any of the characters either in case I somehow manage to salvage my 2008 novel.  This year my goal isn’t just to get the 50k words, but to actually finish the novel.  Ideally I’d like to aim for writing 100k words.

On top of that, I’m writing a joint-novel with my brother.  We haven’t discussed the terms yet of how we’re trading or how often.  I don’t think we’re going to discuss any story or character aspects before we start either.  My brother said he’s ok with fantasy and that he makes no promises that things won’t get silly.  I think for the most part he plans on giving me challenges to see how I get the character(s) out of things, and I’ll probably do the same.  So, that’s very vague but will be a ton of fun.

As you can see, my free time is pretty busy with applying for school, my mom visiting, and some minimal planning for November.  I may get around to reading my 2008 novel, but I doubt I’ll be able to write enough to finish it before NaNoWriMo 2009 starts.  Despite being busy, I’ll also try to post more.  I had a few posts planned out for the last couple of weeks, but never got around to writing them.  At some point I may write those and sneak them in to make the last few weeks look less lonely.  I’m not sure that I have enough readers that check often enough to actually notice their suspicious appearance.

It is now the halfway point of September, which means I should be well on my way to finishing up my NaNoWriMo 2008 novel, right?  Wrong.  I get very easily sidetracked.  To be hoenst, I haven’t even gone back through and reread my novel.  I’m about 3 chapters in right now, and it’s surprisingly not all that bad.  I’m finding that I like one storyline more than the other, so I’ll have to go back and rewrite the half that I like less.  Still though, I’m not deterred.  The plan has just slightly changed and, as I predicted, SeptNoFinMo has become SeptOctNoFinMo.  So, I’ll give another update to this at the beginning October.  I’m hoping to have my novel read by then, which is a fairly reasonable goal I think.

That’s really about it.  I know this was a short post, but there’s not much to update on the novel writing front.

I’ve been reading more recently than I have in a while, and I just finished Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. I originally bought the book after seeing Mr. McDougall on an episode of the Daily Show talking about the book.  With my interest in anthropology, I assumed that the book would be an interesting look into the lives of the Tarahumara who live deep within the Copper Canyons.  Although the book briefly touched on these people and their culture, it was really only included in tiny bits and pieces.  It was mainly a book for runners, which wasn’t what I expected, but was ok with me anyway.

I’ve always enjoyed reading about running.  Every once in a while when I’m out shopping I’ll buy the latest Runner’s World magazine.  I should probably say right now that I don’t run.  I’ve tried to get into it before and am trying to get into it now, but I can go maybe 0.2 miles before I have to stop and gasp for air while my legs throb.  Still, reading about running always makes me think that there must be something more to it than just pain.  The “greatest race the world will never see” that the Born to Run subtitle mentions was a 47 mile ultramarathon that took place in the Copper Canyons pitting the best of the Tarahumara against the best of the North American elite ultra runners.  Kind of makes my 0.2 miles seem weak, doesn’t it?

My favorite chapter in the book though is one that has nothing to do with the rest of the book at all.  Near the end of the book is a chapter completely devoted to human evolution.  It attempts to answer the question of how we managed to win the evolutionary war when our stronger and bigger-brained neanderthal brethren died out.  The theory that Born to Run puts forward is that we evolved to run.  Our bodies have certain parts that are only linked with species that run (like the achilles tendon) and because we are bipedal we have the advantage of breathing that most running species don’t have (most running species get extra lung power by their organs sloshing back and forth helping to push air out and suck air in, but this limits them to only one breath per stride).  The problem is that when most people hear that we evolved to run they automatically link running with speed.  But we didn’t evolved for speed… we evolved for endurance running.  We survived where neanderthals didn’t because we could run for long periods of time over great distances.  How did this help us survive?  Well, through persistance hunting of course.  Animals don’t sweat, so they rely on their breathing to cool them off.  The result is that when a group of hunters chases down an animal for long enough, it drops over dead from overheating.  We had the endurance, so we got the food.  This is Born to Run’s theory anyway, and I think it sounds about as plausible as any.

Mainly though, Born to Run is the story of a guy (Christopher McDougall) who got hurt running and wanted to know why he was in pain when some old Tarahumara guy in sandals was pain-free.  Rambly at times, but always interesting; I highly recommend it.

It’s been an interesting week. A couple of days ago I found out that almost all of the people at the job I left in March are losing their jobs because their contracts expired and aren’t going to be renewed. Then, just yesterday one of my good friends at my current company was given the option of resigning or being fired because there wasn’t enough money. I also found out that about 80 people got laid off from the company where my dad works this week too.

I knew that the economy was bad, but I assumed that Huntsville was immune to it. Or at least that the government contracted jobs were immune from it. The most alarmnig part of all of it is that the person from my company that lost his job was on the same contract that I’m on. For now things are ok, but I’m still a little shaken. They gave him no warning at all - in the morning everything was ok and around 10 am he went back to his cubicle, quietly packed up his things, and left out the back door. An hour later the owner of the company sent out an email about him leaving the company. It all happened so fast that nobody even knew he had resigned until the email came.

I have a feeling that things are going to get a lot worse with the economy before they get any better.

My parents drove down to Huntsville over Labor Day weekend to visit me.  Last time they were here was early May when they came down for my birthday, and they weren’t able to come back for a while after that due to my mom having knee surgery at the beginning of June.  She’s up and around now and moving better than ever.  When we went out for a walk on Saturday she was able to go about three or four times as far as she used to be able to before we had to stop and rest, and even then we were stopping because it was hot out and she just wanted to cool off as opposed to stopping because her knee hurt.  So, she’s making an awesome recovery.

Saturday night she was sitting on the futon next to me talking about knitting socks, when she pulled out a book that one of her friends had gotten her.  It was Knitting More Circles Around Socks, the sequel to Knitting Circles Around Socks (which I currently own), by Antje Gillingham.  I enjoy knitting socks in part because I think that they’re really easy to knit despite popular belief that you need to use two magic wands instead of needles for it to come out looking anything like a sock.

I’ve always been intrigued by the Circles Around Socks method of using two circular needles to knit both socks at the same time.  It seemed to me to be a very efficient way of getting your socks done with the same number of rows, the same size, and at the same time.  As I was looking through my mom’s book I saw a pair of slip-stitch socks that I really wanted to try, and so my mom challenged me to a sock war.

The way that sock wars normally work in the knitting world is that everybody involved in the war gets an address, shoe size, and sock pattern.  It’s a race to get your pair of socks knit and mailed off to your target before another knitter does the same thing to you.  If you get a pair of socks in the mail, then you’re dead and out of the game.  At that point you wrap up the socks you were knitting and send them to your killer, who has to complete them and mail them off before getting killed themselves.  It’s a silly little game, but sounds like a ton of fun.

The sock war with my mom is a little different.  Next time I see my mom, if one of us doesn’t have her socks done, then she’ll have to take 2 skeins of the winner’s sock yarn.  So, it’s not really a war by any stretch of the imagination and more like yet another attempt for my mom to dish off some of her yarn.  Still, at the end of it at least I’ll either have more sock yarn or a pair of socks.  So really I win either way.

In one of my previous posts I mentioned my brief bout with novel writing doing NaNoWriMo.  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is a month-long forced march approach to novel writing.  Every year hundreds  of thousands of writers sit at their computers on October 31st, buzzed from the Halloween sugar high with their coffee drip IV at the ready, waiting for midnight to hit so that they can start on their newest November novel creation.  Fifty thousand words in thirty days (coming out to roughly 1667 words written per day) is the requirement to “win” NaNoWriMo.

Last year was my first experience with novel writing, and I hit my 50k words in the first 16 days.  The issue is that although I’d won NaNoWriMo by my word count, I didn’t actually finish my novel.  So, I’m going to attempt to take September and part of October and make it SeptNoFinMo (September Novel Writing Month - I know it only has September in it, but SeptThruOctNoFinMo sounded too complicated), and I’ll see if I can’t finish up my story from last year before it’s time to start on a story this year because whether it’s another 25k or a whole new 50k to finish off my story, I want to have it done before NaNo ‘09.

As much as I’d like for this to be solely a September project, I’m 99.9% sure it will overflow into October, mostly because it will take me some time to re-read my story from last year and decide where I want to go from where I left off.  Plus I have a lot of grad school applications to fill out, a few books I want to read, and a play-by-post game of Exalted I’m participating in that should be starting up sometime soon (more on this in a later post).

One way or another you’ve made your way here to Tauriasis. So, now what? Just what is this blog actually about?

My interests are extremely varied, so you’re probably going to get a whole mish-mash of topics. My current interests include archaeology, novel writing, reading, songwriting, photography, learning guitar, learning Japanese, speedsolving rubik’s cubes, knitting, poi spinning, and trying to figure out what to do with my life. I’ll more than likely touch on all of these in this blog at some point.

A few of these activities I’ve only dabbled in. I’ve only ever attempted to write one song, my novel writing experience comes from a month-long novel-writing challenge (NaNoWriMo), and the only thing that might give you the idea that I’m interested in photography is the fact that I own a fairly decent SLR camera. With some of these activities, however, I’m a bit more experienced. My poi spinning skills aren’t too shabby for no longer than I’ve been doing it; the first sock I knit actually looked like a sock, which is apparently a rare occurrence in the knitting world; and if you give me a half hour I can solve your 5×5x5, 4×4x4, 3×3x3, and 2×2x2 rubik’s cubes for you.

Mostly though I plan on this blog being about interesting things that I’m doing or that I’ve heard about, which means I could really write about anything.

I’ve had this blog for about a month now. I keep meaning to post things to it and generally get myself out there on the intarwebs, but the thing that keeps stopping me is that I don’t know what to post first. I can think up all sorts of ideas for other posts, but it’s that first one that’s been stumping me.

So, my solution to this is to just put this here as a marker. Maybe someday I’ll come back and change this and make it more First-Post-On-My-Blog-Worthy, maybe I won’t. Either way it’s time to get on with it I think.