Reading Notes, 3/15/21

Finished Reading

I finished nothing in the past week, but I will be DNF-ing Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth by David Gessner. There are some tidbits of ultimate frisbee history, but it’s so repetitive.

It did get me thinking about my relationship with the game. In a way, I feel kind of fortunate that I am from a background that didn’t value sports and that I really have no shot at being an elite player. For me, I’ve never bothered being embarrassed to play a “ridiculous” sport like ultimate; all sports were considered ridiculous.* And while I seek ways to improve my play, I have no pressure to “make nationals.”** Heck, fall rec league will be my 20th anniversary league and I’ve still haven’t won a league championship. Not saying that losing doesn’t hurt, but stakes are low for me. So why do I play? To some degree, it’s the incongruity of my playing at all. Surprisingly, I have decent hands for catching. I can throw, somewhat. There is satisfaction in running down a disc or making a nice throw. Why does anyone chose to play any sport?

* I no longer feel this way. Sports offer a way to keep the body and mind working, as well as teach a lot about how to work as a team and take a loss (or a win).
** I actually did participate in the first women’s grand masters nationals competition. Our team got an auto-bid, but still, it was pretty cool.

Deal Me In

2♠️ – A WILD card!
I chose to read “We are Not Phoenixes” by John Wiswell, a story just published over at Fireside Fiction. This is a flash story and, dang, it takes talent world-build in less than 1000 words. And to add speculative fiction elements to stage magic. That was a surprise treat for me since I knew nothing about the story going in.

Currently Reading

I’ll be working on Children of Dune by Frank Herbert and Two in a Tower by Thomas Hardy. Might start In Cold Blood as my next nonfiction read.

On Ultimate Frisbee

If you watched ESPN2 or ESPNU (ESPN8) over the past week, you might have seen some ultimate frisbee* or caught this ad for the sport:

It’s a little schmaltzy and idealistic, but it also highlights some of the things that I love about ultimate.

#RoW80 Check In, General Notes

#RoW80 progress:

I expected the first week to be a bit slow. How Not To Write had a post a while back on returning to writing. Good advice, I’d say, even if I haven’t been following it to the letter.

This past week:

• I rewrote the gambling scene, changing the game of choice from blackjack to roulette.
• We’ve kind of finally decided on what sort of interstitial bit properly shows off Aleister’s luck. We had thought about news-report-style epigraphs (but I can’t write journalistically to save my life) or iterations of Aleister’s decisions. Instead, I’m writing bits showing how Aleister’s actions affect other characters, often very minor characters. I wrote/rewrote about three scenes in this manner. Not sure how it’ll work on a large scale. Eric’s only comment thus far was on the details of one scene, not on whether it works.
• Submitted 4 queries/short works. Got a rejection on one Friday, so that’s a slam-dunk #5 for this week.

I wanted to get though a fifth of the novel, but only got through about a tenth.

This week:

• 20 hours of work on Luck for Hire
  • Continue adding scenes/doing rewrites on certain scenes where applicable.
  • I’m getting to the point in the novel where I need to start paying attention to my things-to-be fixed notecards.
  • Shoot for getting through a fifth of the book.
• Tessa sent me preliminary artwork for Lucinda at the Window‘s new cover. I at least need to write a new blurb this week and start doing sone ebook research.

Check on my fellow writers!

I meant to do a non-writing post Friday and didn’t get to it.

I posted some thoughts on Let Me In and Let the Right One In over at Taming of the Queue. Haven’t gotten much reading done lately.

Tess has sent me the art (or at least some of the art) she wants included on her website. I need to get moving on that.

Wednesday disc has gone on hiatus. Sadness. But it will set us up for a triumphant return in September. In the meantime, we’re gearing up, slowly, for fall league. Keith will be running a small coed league in August in Scottsdale. Laura is hosting a Women in Ultimate forum Monday night and has asked my to talk about leagues. I haven’t done any public speaking since senior year in high school.

With the lack of ulti, I need to make a concerted effort to get more exercise. I didn’t exercise at all this past week. Of course, I haven’t been eating much either. Or sleeping much. I weighed in this morning and found that I was below 125 for the fist time in three months.

Summer Habits

As happens in the summer, when I’m aching for a change of pace, I’ve created a new blog: The Taming of the Queue. The conceit: documenting my attempt to clean out my Netflix queue, with the occasional review. Now, I do not need another blog. I will probably can it within a year when I have better things to do.

Eric and I have talked about Luck for Hire. I’ll have a kinda-sorta goal-run-down RoW80 post some time later, probably Sunday. I’ve been working somewhat on Divine Fire. I mulled/procrastinated yesterday. Need to write today. Started using Duotrope on Monday. I had occasionally used it for market info, but I signed up for the tracking aspect since I’ve been subbing more short works lately.

No morning/lunch Freescale disc today, which makes me sad. ‘Course, my hands do feel like they belong to an 80-year-old today, so that might be for the best. Maybe we’ll go out to Intel disc tonight.

Women’s League 2011, Finals

Women’s league finals were last night. Sno-Balls, my team, was the considerable underdog, but the majority of our players showed up and played hard.

We traded points for a while, but the undefeated Lucky Charms took the lead and went up 6-2 or so*. Somewhere in there I threw a Callahan, effectively giving Charms a point. I cursed, cursed some more, removed myself from the game, offered some beer to sideline spectators, and by the time I reengaged, Sno-Balls had whittled the lead down to about 6-4. The points were long. We probably didn’t get started early, but at 6-4, it was already 9:20pm. The game was also pretty chippy. There were probably more foul calls in this game that there had been all season.

I believe we traded points, more or less, and Lucky Charms took half. When soft cap was called, the score was 8-6 Charms, game to 10 points. We rattled off a couple points and it was 8-8 when hard cap was called. Universe point! Pretty much the same situation as the first game of the season. We pulled to them, got a D and marched it down the field. Monika threw a score to Marnie…and there was a call about whether Marnie was in or not. Discussion ensued. It was decided that Marnie wasn’t in, no game-winning score. There were a couple more turn-overs, but eventually, Lucky Charms threw a clean score. Lucky Charms won, 9-8, taking the championship.

I had joked on the way to the fields that I didn’t want another 17 point game against Lucky Charms (referring to our 2-15 loss to them a few weeks back). Well, it was a 17 point game, a much better game, but the outcome was the same. We lost by one and, whatever the controversy regarding the last point,  I am kicking myself for throwing the Callahan. One point gave them the game.

But! It was a really fun season. Last night, we had a great group of spectators and plethora of drinks and food. It was Betsy’s last game in the Valley and I’m super glad that she and Sarah drafted me and the rest of team. Everyone on Sno-Balls played hard and had such great attitudes. That’s ultimate at its best.

*It should be noted that I have a terrible memory when it comes to ultimate (and many things). This is a rough approximation of what actually happened.

Friday Randomness

I’m teaching myself to crochet. With the help of the internet, of course. For a while when I was growing up, my mom and grandma crocheted everything. Scarves, afghans, pillow covers, doilies, hats, warm socks, shawls. Both were quite good at it. Both stopped around when I went to college. I never learned. I came across Oma’s crochet hooks when we were searching for some important paper or another, so I took them. I bought a skein of "painted desert"-colored yarn on Monday and have been turning it into something scarf-like. It’s easier than I thought it would be, meaning that I haven’t tried to do anything difficult and my scarf-like thing is pretty uneven in quality. So far, my hands are okay with the activity, and my scarf isn’t yet large enough to make crocheting in Arizona in the summer a really stupid idea. I think I’ll work toward making a Jayne hat, crocheted version.

Sno-balls, my women’s league team, made it to finals! We edged out Push Pops to take second place. We’ll face Lucky Charms next Thursday night for the title! Our record against Lucky Charms is 0-2 with a 14 point differential, but that doesn’t really tell the story. The first time we played them was the first game of the season. Lucky Charms is mostly a tight-knit group of ASU girls. Sno-balls is a good mix of savvy vets and new talent; it’s taken a little time figure out what we do well. We lost by one that first game, but it didn’t feel like a loss. The second time we played them it was a full squad of Luck Charms against very few Sno-balls. We had two subs and most of the nine players were newer girls. Considering that, the score wasn’t too surprising.  But if most everyone shows up on Thursday, I think we have a chance.

A while back Grooveshark started offering surveys that paid in "points" that could be redeemed for their premium service (with last.fm scrobbling). I don’t mind online surveys so I jumped in. And quickly found that I rarely fit the demographic that they want to survey. Grooveshark: not for childless women in their late 30s with no income. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not offended. I find this pretty amusing actually, only annoying because it’s taken me about six months to get one month of premium.

Friday Summary: Reading, Disc

Two posts over at Reading Notes this week, one on Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind and the other about Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s Torn Wings and Faux Pas. I joined #ToBeReMo, but my number of books finished will be inflated due to my way of reading. I have the habit of working through several books at once. I was probably 75% done with Wild Mind when I signed up, and 50% done with Gordon’s book. Currently, my reading set up is like this: two hours in the morning to read twenty pages of I, Asimov, a chapter of a grammar book (probably will finish Sin and Syntax), write morning pages, and whatever is left over to read some other book (probably Moneyball by Michael Lewis or Joe Hill’s Horns). I’m on Goodreads, btw.

Unfortunately, if I don’t get writing work done, I might need to curtail my reading time.

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Had a great couple of games of disc, Wednesday and yesterday. Wednesday disc made it feel like I was finally getting back to my regular routine. Didn’t play especially well (I continued to try flicks into the cross wind), but felt pretty good. I woke up yesterday to achy hands and feet. I taped up and ibuprofen-ed up and felt fine by women’s league time. I still have the frustrating tendency of looking off open women because they don’t look open to me. I’m working on that. My D was good. We won. When this teams shows up, we play pretty well. It would be nice to win next week too and have a(nother) rematch with the green team.

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Been thinking about love versus fun, but I’ll write about that some other day.