The moment I rode away from the bike shop on Clyde back in August, I became aware of something magical: I completely failed to think of myself as a fat person.

I was a little self-conscious about being an obvious newbie, but from that day to this, I get on that damn bike and I'm instantly free from the shameful self-concept that has ruled my life.

What's even more magical is that the effect seems to spill over into my not-cycling time. At a public planning meeting last week, Mayor Sam surveyed the crowd, and one of the questions was "For you, what is the hardest part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle?" The choices were:

A. Time and discipline for exercise
B. A place to exercise
C. A full service grocery store
D. Cooking healthy meals
E. Stress – not enough time to relax

and it hit me like scratching the winning ticket: "None of the above! None of the above!" I have a healthy lifestyle. C, D, and E have been mine for a while, but now I've got a full house, the winning hand. This is a revolution.

I tried on a pretty new outfit yesterday (ruffly print blouse, aubergine sweater, black skinny-leg trousers), and I looked in the fitting-room mirror ("Fitting Room Mirror!" is the name of a horror movie AFAIC...) and thought, hey, that looks nice. I completely forgot to hate myself. This is also a revolution.

I wore my new outfit today as I cycled from work, to my healthcare appointment, to the uppity grocery store, and home. People smiled at me and said hi. My healthcare completely failed to be about losing weight. I completely neglected to feel ashamed about buying delicious food at the skinny-people's store.

I didn't start riding Clyde to create a revolution in my life, but that's what seems to be happening. Sure, I've been younger, I've been thinner, and I've certainly had better knees, but I have never felt better in my whole life.

My dry spell on Restraint (the Regency J2 AU) has come to an end in the last couple of days. This weekend I've written most of the bridge section whose absence was preventing any further progress. I feel like I can finally write through to the end now. OMG this has been a long haul. Started that sucker more than a year ago, and have been stuck for the last three months.

It feels wonderful to have found my feet again on this novel. I've never discovered anything more fun than writing fresh new story--new snarky dialog, new minor plot twists, new character reveals. I LOVE THIS STUFF!

In other fannish activity, I just finished recording the eleventh of the twelve chapters of my Podbang entry. Many hours of editing lie before me. Many, many, many hours of editing. But the recording is almost done.

And I posted one of my very few fics to the A-Triple-Oh! Archive. PEOPLE WHO ARE IN THE OPEN BETA: Do you post locked or unlocked, and why?

Oh, and I just started watching "White Collar". Wow. Fun AND slashable. I like.

And finally, I took 25 night photos this evening and only one was any good.

( Moon River )

...there is no bike parking at the liquor store.

Yet here I am with a nice shot of 15 year old Laphroaig single malt at hand, because where there's a will, there's a No Parking sign that you can lock your bike to for a few minutes.

And that's one more thing I never would have predicted doing by bicycle: booze run.

New camera. Works great! What does this make? Four posts in one day? [ETA: Nope, only three.] Sorry! Spam stops after this.

( Clyde. Sam )

I'm looking for a song. I don't know which one, so I need your help. I'm looking for a non-religious song with lyrics having to do with redemption, someone saving someone emotionally, helping, offering a hand and a heart, letting the other person know s/he's going to be okay and isn't alone, lifting someone up, giving someone hope for the future.

That sort of thing.

It's for my Podbang entry. The author specified song lyrics for 11 out of 12 chapters but told me she drew a blank on the one, and said "go for it". I've been googling my little heart out, but popular music, she is very very big.

Suggestions? Moodier is better, but upbeat is possible too. Country, rock, pop, soul, blues, folksy--I welcome any ideas.

TIA flist-o-mine!

On the (very, very) Plus side of the ledger, I am taking a course in chocolate on Sunday, along with roseambr and my 17 year old niece, and str8ontilmornin is the instructor. I have spoken of str8ontilmornin's confectionery and baking skills and now I get to learn some of them!

In the somewhat more Minus column, they just told me I have to work on Sunday. So, straight from chocolate heaven to office heck.

Dang. Does that seem right to you?

Have I mentioned that lately? I love my bike. Sure, we've had a few troubles, but I had the brake pads replaced, and I raised the seat a little, and everything's smooth now.

And I love riding my bike. I guess I've made that pretty clear. But yesterday! Yesterday I had the Mondays and was super late for work, so I drove. And when I finally got out of there at 6:00, there was this bizarre tropical tradewind, and it was 64 degrees out, and humid, and breezy and all soft, and two or three cyclists came hurtling down Madison Street towards the river in the gorgeous night while I was sitting in my car at the stop light. I just looked at them glumly and felt like I'd cheated myself out of the best thing ever.

So around midnight, when my chores were done and my Podbang chapter recorded, I rode to my credit union for a little cash, and--I'm not kidding--I wore flipflops. And my feet didn't get cold. Wet, yes. Cold, no.

The Coconut Wind was still blowing this morning, but by then it had brought the rain. Did this stop me? No! I set out on Clyde, and in a few minutes the sun came out, and Waterfront Park was filled with geese, and I was blow-dried by the time I got to work.

I love my bike.

Gran Turismo what?

As threatened yesterday: photos are back!

( Here's my super high-tech podfic recording studio: my closet. Ta-da! )

Ooh! My new camera just arrived! And OMG it has a special setting just for taking pictures of food! There's a little fork-and-knife icon, and the manual says, "Gourmet: Shoots food arrangements in delicious color."

My last camera was stolen in June and I've been saving up to replace it. After absolutely no research, I bought the same camera my sister got recently, the Sony Cybershot DSC-H20/B. I thought about a DSLR but came to the realistic conclusion that I'm never going to be that much of a photographer. I just want to illustrate my blog and stuff.

Besides, it's fucking AMAZING what a point-and-shoot will do these days. Like take special pictures of food. And David Pogue really liked this particular camera for its large light-sensor (which apparently improves the quality of images in ways that more megapixels can't do).

The battery is on the charger, so be warned: more picture posts are in my very near future.

My boss, a woman of about my age who is extremely athletic and spends her vacations climbing things (like Andes) today said, "You've really caught the bike commuting spirit!"

This was in response to my attending our bi-weekly one-on-one meeting in damp-legged jeans and soaked shoes, because, as I told her, riding in the rain was preferable to getting on a crowded bus.

She has good reason to be surprised: by contrast to her vigorous lifestyle, I must seem a complete slug, good at the computer work, but kind of large and lazy. Cats to her dogs. WriterCon to her rock-climbing. But we have one thing in common now besides our employer, and nobody's more astonished than I am.

I'm really going to have to tackle the Rain Gear In My Size issue, though. Soon.

You may have noticed that I've been taking part in National Blogging Month by posting every day, but I'm at a bit of a loss today.

I don't have a lot to say about war veterans that I haven't already said, and while I love the idea that there's some special numerological power in the 11/11 date, I can't say that I've ever witnessed any particular magic from it. Maybe in two more years when it's 11/11/11? IDK.

What I can say is that kispexi2, through a series of pointed questions about Restraint (the Regency J2 AU I've been working on for a year), nudged me off the writer's block this morning; I rode my bike to work (yes, I had to work--I'm at work right now) in the chilly sunshine at 11:30; I had a lunch with avventura1234 at the Heathman Marble Bar (wild mushroom fettuccine and an ale--it was yum) for two hours right after I got here; and and now I'm going to don my helmet and pedal on home in what I hope is the still-dry evening.

Okay, maybe there's been a little magic.

I'm kind of amazed, really, that I'm keeping this up. Darkness hasn't stopped me. Streets full of wet, slippery leaves haven't stopped me. Drenching rain hasn't stopped me. Today on the way to work my brakes almost didn't stop me, but I stopped and fixed 'em and kept riding.

I seem to be in an absolutely perfect set of circumstances for making a successful transition to being a cyclist:

• my commute is just long enough to be challenging but not daunting
• it's mostly downhill to work
• my route is though the bike-friendliest part of the bike-friendliest city in the US
• my employer totally supports bike commuting and provides great parking (and doesn't have a cow over something like today's brake-related half-hour delay)
• it's actually faster for me to cycle than to ride the bus to work
• the transit district recently cut service, so I'm highly motivated to avoid the newly-crowded, unpleasant buses
• combining travel with exercise is the only way I'll do the latter, but doing the latter is making me feel fantastic and providing its own motivation to continue.

October was a wash because of mechanical problems and the flu, but November is shaping up extremely well:

( 86%! )

As a native Portlander, I have a philosophy about rain, to wit: It's Only Water, also sometimes articulated as "I don't need no stinkin' umbrella."

Turns out, that's easy to say when you only have to wait for a bus, or walk a few blocks. When you're riding a bicycle four miles, rain is really, really wet. Your back gets wet. Your thighs get wet. Your feet get wet. Your hands get wet. Rain gets in through the vent holes in your helmet and your hair gets wet.

My living room and bathroom are draped with soggy garments.

Lest you think I complain: no! I had the bike lanes to myself, I proved that I can ride in a downpour, and I feel fantastic! It's only water, after all.

I just finished re-recording chapter 4 (of 12) of my Podbang entry. I lost almost three weeks of podfic-recording time to the flu! I felt fine after one week, but my voice didn't come all the way back till yesterday. It will be a dash to get the remaining eight chapters recorded and edited by deadline. I'm gonna need another bottle of Scotch.

Along with making podfic, I managed to generate 3000 new words this weekend on the long Regency AU fic. Some of those words are good, and a few are even good in the order they're currently in. It's a great feeling to jumpstart a stalled novel. I love that thing.

In the department of consuming written material, I listened to another couple of hours of The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, and I have to tell you, the book is almost unbearably thrilling as the author follows the paths of several individuals involved in fighting the massive forest fire. I burst into tears at a couple of points, either from sadness or joy as these real, documented people--and their towns--perish or miraculously survive.

And in the department of consuming other things, I made a perfect-looking batch of Pandora cookies while I listened to my audiobook. They've been cooling while I've been recording my podfic. Now I get to go eat one! Or maybe two.

Today's massive deluge was brought to you by Global Climate Change™.

The rain was so heavy and the skies were so dark that I could barely see highway signs. The roads were like rivers, except where they were more like lakes. One massive, car-shaking crack of thunder rocked the part of Clark County I was driving in, and I had to speak sternly to myself about the unlikelihood of lightning striking my particular car.

By the time I got where I was going, at least half an hour late, I was all out of sorts. Thankfully, it was lunch with roseambr and we made up for stress with tasty food, great conversation and a little shopping. (I bought eyeshadow! Whee!)

The more I ride my bike, the less I can tolerate driving my car, and on days like today the best answer of all is just to stay home and drink hot tea.

Which I shall now proceed to do.

Wow, noisy recording. Sorry! Crank your volume down.

VoicePost 44K 0:13

(no transcription available)

kispexi2 and I have been talking about our respective accents, and how much fun it would be to get everyone to record and post some little snippet that would reveal their particular brand of spoken English.

Kis suggested the phrase "a pound of brown and purple worms" as playing up her own regional accent. Me, I don't have an accent! Ha! So not true, but I think of myself as speaking "plain American" and I'm at a loss for a particular phrase, except that I live in a state whose name people from other states frequently mispronounce.

Of course, IDEA, the International Dialects of English Archive, has already done this on a grand scale. They have recordings of people from all over the world reading a standardized text: most regions of every English-speaking country, various ages (age makes a huge difference!) and the accents of non-native speakers on every continent. If the ways we speak English interest you, IDEA is a fantastic way to kill a Saturday morning spend half an hour.

So, "I bought a pound of brown and purple worms and buried them in Oregon, where they are doing very well" is going to be my phrase. My first voice post is coming up.

Supernatural 5.08: My overall assessment is "dumb episode": no forward plot motion, still more uncomfortable and shark-jumping-esque self-referential hilarity, and another new player in the Apocalypse Games.

I laughed, I admit it. And seeing Jensen shot in bright, colorful light for a change was interesting and strange and made his eyes very, very green (though frankly, he and Jared are both far more beautiful in the greyed-out Supernatural world). It was amusing, but come on, let's get on with it! Stop with the fanservice already, Kripke.

In other miscellany, I NEED A CAMERA. Mine was stolen months ago, and I'm about ready to splurge on a replacement. I miss taking my unartistic little illustrative photos.

Oh, and I liked this, from Warren Ellis by way of Wil Wheaton:

At least half of all writing involves just sitting and staring into space. Letting your brain out to hunt down ideas, bringing them back all warm and bloody between its teeth.

Bonfire Night! I won't pretend to get all the nuances of Guy Fawkes Day, having lived in England for only one of them, but I love my annual chance to use this icon. *waves to all her UK friends*

Speaking of fire, I'm reading/listening to The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, by Timothy Egan, the surprisingly thrilling and subtextually homoerotic history of the founding of the United States Forest Service.

I know, right? But the friendship between Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot was passionate and deep, and founded on a love of the American West that gave rise to the very concept of conservationism in the US. (I've lived near the Gifford Pinchot National Forest most of my life, and didn't know until this week that Gifford Pinchot was just, this guy, you know?)

Egan uses a devastating forest fire that burned much of northern Idaho and Montana in 1910, as the linchpin of his story--it's the kind of book that starts with a vivid and horrifying description of the approach of a disaster--the titular fire--then goes back in time and traces the threads that led up to that disaster and its importance as "the fire that saved America". I still don't know whether the town survived!

[ETA: nwhepcat has been there! It lives! Wallace, Idaho.]

The audiobook is read by Roberston Dean, whom I know nothing about except that he has a deep, rich, James-Earl-Jones-ish voice that's wonderful to listen to.

Highly recommended.