C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 41

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...

gym blog: day three

So going to the gym on Friday was definitely a good move. Today, after yesterday’s 3rd gym session, I feel stiff but not really sore, whereas I’d have been crippled if I’d started all over again.

That said, I didn’t really cover myself with glory in yesterday’s session. My left knee (and obviously quads, because the knee bone connected to the etc) really is MUCH weaker than my left. I’ve obviously been compensating with my right leg ever since I fell off the sidewalk in Y2K and screwed up my...

Recent Reads: HANDS OF FLAME

It turned out re-reading HANDS OF FLAME was somehow slightly less weird than re-reading HOUSE OF CARDS, although it was ALSO full of things I either barely remembered, didn’t remember at all until it came to the moment of it happening, or remembered when something else triggered the memory but it turned out I was wrong about when it happened.

This is just full of spoilers, obviously, and so I’ll cut this entry here instead of letting most of it dangle out like I’ve done with the last two.

Fo...

gym blog: day two

I was not as sore as I expected to be, after the first workout. Whether the trainer really accurately judged my physical capabilities, or if I knew when to stop, or some happy combination thereof, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t spent the past three days whimpering and groaning and staggering. Once I get moving I’m okay but my thighs have lodged a Strong Protest, and sitting down has become something of a matter of faith that the chair isn’t going to move in any wa...

gym blog: the first workout

I went, more than somewhat trepidatiously, to the first trainer-dictated workout. Actually, no, trepidatiously is putting it too kindly. I was just not looking forward to it at all.

The workout went something like this:
12 minutes of This Will Probably Make You Puke (crosstrainer, I only lasted 8 minutes because I didn’t want to puke)

8 minutes of I Can Do This One Forever (cycling)

6.5 minutes of This Wouldn’t Be So Bad If I Had Any Back Muscles At All But I Don’t So It Hurts (rowing)

Then t...

artist’s figurines

So I had a great and terrible desire for these artist’s models and although I don’t really draw enough to justify them, it so happened that my great and terrible desire aligned with the Irish date for Mother’s Day, so Ted got ’em for me as a mother’s day gift.

They arrived yesterday (just in time for American Mother’s Day!) and I just spent an hour or more fiddling with them.

Conceptually they’re pretty damn terrific. The articulation is as good as it looks. They have nifty little boxes for...