C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 38

imagining myself as less ambitious

Friday morning I had the thought, as I occasionally do, that it’s just not possible to get all the things I want to get written, written, especially in the time frame I wanted to, and that I really just needed to be less ambitious.

48 hours later and I’m still like, “yes, this is a good plan, a reasonable plan.” It won’t last, it never does, but for the window here where I’m going “really it’d be okay to not put so much stress on myself” and believing it, it’s nice. I should go tackle my Work...

Futuretripping: Los Estados Nuevos

June 1, 2017: United States Climate Alliance formed with 3 charter members. Within hours, 7 more signed on with 11 more expressing interest.

Sept 2017: The USCA, backed by 37 member states, Puerto Rico, & Washington DC, is seen as the framework for pursuing the future liberals want.

Dec 2017: All but 4 states (Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, & Alaska) have joined the USCA. The member states demand a constitutional convention.

March 2018: Denied a convention by an increasingly authoritarian federal...

Birthday & Wonder Woman

So yesterday was my birthday and it is also the birthday of my many many birthday twins, but I wasn’t online much and so I failed to say happy birthday to Esmerel and Silkblade and Chaz’s niece and also Morgan Freeman and Marilyn Monroe and Superman (the first Superman comic was published June 1 1938 :)).

Happy birthday, twins, and thank you to everybody who wished me a happy day!

Ted and Indy snuck off and got a couple pieces of art that have been sitting around for a long time framed, for m...

a brief panicked spate of gardening

IT’S STILL MAY I CAN STILL PLANT STUFF

I’m afraid I’m probably the kind of gardener who is only going to garden if it’s stuff one sows directly. Or, at least at this early stage in my gardening career, that certainly appears to be true. Which is fine, really. The fact that I got potatoes into the ground a month ago is a great triumph!

In fact, it looks like we have 28 potato plants, and I think we planted 32 or 36, so that’s quite good. Better than I expected! (“Catie,” a friend said, “you li...

collecting bookstore addresses

My wonderful readers! Could you Do A Thing for me?

Could you look up your local bookstore(s) address(es) and email them to mizkitink AT gmail.com?

I’m trying to collect a database so I can send out postcards for new books, and it struck me that the best way to find bookstores (Barnes & Noble and other chain stores count!) is to ask people if they could take a minute to do that.

A bunch of people on my mailing list have, and I’ve gotten over a hundred addresses already, but I bet there are mor...

blogging: a once a week occurrance

apparently, anyway :)

I don’t know what I’m doing instead of blogging, since I’m on the computer all the damn time. (That’s not true. I know what I’m doing instead of blogging: watching the fall of the American nation in real time.)

We had a college friend visit in early May. We had a wonderful time with her. We saw a steam train in Dublin, and went to the zoo (where, as we were lecturing/answering Indy on some topic, switching back and forth with providing information, and ending by saying e...

chopped liver, or: a story of parenting

A couple of weeks ago Indy and I went out to a restaurant here in town and Indy asked them if we could have a window seat. But they brought us to what he considered the wrong one, and he said, “No, that one please,” and pointed to the front window, which had obviously just been vacated and not cleared yet. I was saying words to the effect of “oh my god indy don’t make their lives difficult” when the host suddenly said, “Oh, now I know you! You usually come in with your father!” to Indy, and s...

a really useful rejection letter

I’ve just gotten the most useful rejection letter of my life, from a publisher who is pretty clearly enthusiastic about working with me but we’re stumbling around a little in finding the right project. It’d be for a historical YA book/series.

They really loved what I sent them, but it didn’t quite (to summarize wildly) tie in enough with how they sell a lot of their books. So the editor I’ve been talking with *apologized* for pulling me in all sorts of directions (which they haven’t been) and...

this is not an all-gym-all-the-time-blog now, i promise

I just haven’t gotten my act together enough to blog about other stuff, like our college friend’s visit, and movies I’ve seen, and…stuff… :)

I have effectively not gone to the gym in almost two weeks. Well. No, it’s not Friday, is it. Only Wednesday. Okay, a week and a half. Anyway, I went today and I did…most…of the workout they gave me.

I dropped the crosstrainer and the squats, because I would never do either voluntarily and just the idea of them was apparently sucking the fun out of going...

gym blog: 1st check-in

So I hurt my back while carrying books on Wednesday morning and thought it was the better part of valor to not go to the gym. (It was, too.) I had not been looking forward to going at all, but once I couldn’t I was really annoyed, so that’s…perverse.

Friday the bus ran so late that by the time I got to the gym it was time to leave again, pretty much. I mean, in between arriving and going I had my first follow-up consultation about how the workout was working for me, but basically I didn’t wor...