Readathon Wrap-Up
Saturday was Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon. I managed about 21.25 hours, heading to bed just after 2am my time. That is pretty much how readathon always goes for me, though I only took a short nap in the morning.
What did I read?
- 44% of It Came from the Closet, edited by Joe Vallese
- 41% of My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
- 3 articles
- 6 “episodes” of WHEREWOLF
- 2 short stories
I probably would have been better off DNFing My Heart is a Chainsaw and moving on to something else. The book just wasn’t clicking with me. I kept expecting it to pick up, but it didn’t.
Ultimate Frisbee
Club nationals were this past weekend and I kept some of the games on in the background during readathon and semi-watched finals on Sunday. There are two things that are currently bothering me about club ultimate: vert stack and the amount of contact that is occurring.
My problem with vertical stack is a pet peeve. I find it boring to watch; even the best teams stagnate and cuts out of vert stack are prone to picks and other stoppages of play. As a player, regimented vertical stack is also difficult to run at a recreational level because it requires an amount of talent, athleticism, and organization that really doesn’t exist at a community league level. That hasn’t stopped many club-level league captains from trying unsuccessfully to get it to work.
Likewise, the concern over amount of contact occurring might be because I’m an aging player who doesn’t want to deal with younger players who find bidding into a cutter to be an acceptable thing, even if they “got to the disc first.” But I feel like there’s been some disregard for ultimate being a non-contact sport. Additionally, I was very surprised at how often foul calls were contested, even when the foul was pretty obvious. It feels like players are maybe being coached to contest instead of taking responsibility for a bad decision.
Writing Check-In
I’m reorganizing my blog with separate posts for movie-watching and reading, but I haven’t decided if I want a separate post for writing. I don’t regularly have much to say about my writing other than usually brief updates. So, my Writing Check-In will stay here for the moment.
Writing went pretty well last week. I added 4000 words to “California Gothic.” I don’t know what I think of those words, but I need to remember that I can’t edit and polish a draft if I don’t *have* a draft. Today, I’m going to reread my notes and what I’ve written and outline the rest what I need to do for that story. I’d like to finish the draft over the next two or three days and take the rest of the week to riff on my NaNoWriMo project.
And, yes, fine. Here we go. I’m going to do NaNoWriMo. Even though it starts on a Tuesday, so help me. View all my messy NaNo journeys.
One new rejection for “The Aeronaut’s Wife.”
Simple Tricks & Nonsense 