Thursday, 27 November 2003

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jackie and I collaborated on the feast as we usually do--I stuff and roast the turkey and make the gravy, Jackie does everything else. We had Barbara over. It was a great success.

Yesterday I had an idea for a story, one of those rare ideas that comes along with a title. Still, it's been just a bit resistant to being written. So, I spent the day working on my story submission database, which is just about done. I went ahead and entered most of the data. There's still work to do, if I want to realize my fancier ideas for it (such as having it suggest markets for stories), but it's very close to being functional for entering submissions as they go out and recording rejections and acceptances as they come back.

I have my new idea (let's call it the robot story) to work on, and my demon story that I'm excited about. Once I get those written I'll be able to start some larger project, either a screenplay or a novel. It's almost time to start thinking about those, but I'm still holding back--the only way I can be confident I'll be able to finish the things already in the works.

Prairienet has been down all day, so I haven't gotten any email. I don't suppose very much important email has gone out over Thanksgiving, but it's still annoying.

When it started, Prairienet was a freenet, which made me pretty inclined to accept a certain amount of downtime. For about three years, though, I've been paying a fee to have an account there, which makes me less inclined to cut them as much slack. Now that I've moved my web hosting elsewhere, about all I use Prairienet for is email, and I suppose I could move that elsewhere as well.

After putting the turkey in to roast, I went for a run. I ran 4.93 miles at an average pace of 11:43. The route I thought of as my 5-mile route is just about that long, so that's good.

I read an article in a running magazine about choosing off-season runs to emphasize quality over quantity. It suggested doing just three runs a week--a long run, a hilly run, and a "tempo" run (done at race pace).

Of course, those people are crazy. A different article described a particular speed workout. Before the workout itself, you run 2 to 3 miles to warm up and then run 100 meters fast four times (jogging about as far in between to cool down). I don't know about you, but if I run 2.5 to 3.5 miles, including some fast bits, I'm done. That's my workout, right there.