Archive for May, 2010

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Move It Mama Monday! Suck it up, cupcake, part deux

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Remember how I said that this was the season of "Suck it up, cupcake?" And remember how I said that I was going to do what I needed to do fitness-wise even if I didn't want to do it because I had to do it?

Well that little promise I made has already been put to the test.

I'm at Balticon right now. I've been in a hotel since Friday, at the biggest science fiction convention I attend all year long. And the question that always presents itself to me at cons has once again reared its ugly head.

Do I exercise at the con, or do I just blow it off until the con is over?

Balticon is an endurance event no matter how you slice it. There are always at least three panels going on at the same time that you want to be at, and in between panels it's non-stop meet-and-greet, hand out the hugs, sell books, make connections, chat with friends, party-hardy for four days straight. Adding exercise into that mix is a bit daunting, and usually I don't bother. But I'm happy to report that this weekend has been different.

For starters, Mary and Patricia, two of my best friends, were here for the first half of the con. They've got karate belt tests coming up. I've got a karate belt test coming up. We agreed we would get together at least once for a practice session to go over some katas. So I made sure to pack sweats and sneakers and not stay up too late on Friday night, and lo and behold, not only did I get in the karate practice Saturday morning, I also managed to do a 20-minute run before hand.

And then I was dead tired the rest of the day. So naturally, I thought I'd skip the whole workout thing on Sunday because a)Mary and Patricia wouldn't be there to spur me on and b) my ass was too worn out to get up and move. And yet, somehow, I managed to get up and get my rear in gear and I headed out the door for another morning session of running and karate practice.

Did I want to do it? No, not in the least. Therefore I did it anyway. And that's the whole point of "Suck it up, cupcake!" There are lots of times when I just don't want to do what I know I should do, and I've got to do it anyway. So I do it, through the miraculous technique of shutting down my brain and not thinking about what it is I'm going to do until I'm actually doing it and then it's too frikkin' late to do anything but go through with it.

Seriously, I did not even consider where I was going to run or how long I was going to be out on Sunday morning. I did not think about what katas I needed to practice. I did not even think the word "run" until I got out the front door of the hotel and then I let my feet do there thing and yeah, I cursed and swore at myself a bit for putting my body through the torture of another early morning workout, but I did it anyway.

I will not be doing an early morning workout this Monday morning, I know, because I'll need time to pack the car and get ready to head home. However, I do know I will be back in the dojo on Tuesday no matter how tired I am from the weekend because my instructor told me I would be there and Patricia and Mary told me I would be there and because I know that when my inner whiner kicks in with a resounding chorus of "I don't wanna!" I'm just going to shut down my brain again and do it anyway. Like I said, the season of "Suck it up, cupcake!" is here, and yours truly plans to do just that for as long as she can keep her brain completely turned off.

Really, how hard can that be?

Have fun exercising!

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Sunday Contentments – Con-tentment

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

It's Sunday morning, late, and instead of watching the bird feeder while sitting at my dining room table with my cup of joe and my soft-boiled egg on toast, I am sitting in the lobby of the Hunt Valley Inn at Balticon, watching the people go by. I've had my morning run, my breakfast, some good conversation and two cups of coffee and I actually feel halfway human in spite of the fact I've been up late the last two nights in a row. This is good.

I don't get out much, being a work-at-home mom, so events like Balticon are a big deal for me. I spent all day Thursday packing, trying to pick just the right outfits for the weekend, and making sure I had enough books to sell, enough promo to hand out. This is one of those rare times I actually get to see whether or not my hard work pays off. I'm happy to say this it looks like it has. I've had some wonderful people come up to me and say, "Hey, I read your Science of Sex/Move It Mama Monday post last week!" or "Hey! I love your web comic!" or best of all, "Hey! I read your book, Future Perfect! It was great!"

The moments when you realize you're really a write with an audience can be few and far between, but they are very, very worth it when they come. So this weekend I'm happy to know that no matter how often I feel like I'm laboring alone in my tiny little office, no matter how often I feel like I'm just shouting into the void, I know I'm not. And that's one of the the best feelings ever.

Enjoy your Sunday, folks. I'm going to go hit the con.

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The Science of Sex – Lying Antelopes and Prehistoric Sex Toys

Friday, May 28th, 2010

I found two articles this week that were too good to pass up. They're completely unrelated, but who cares? They'll definitely give you something to think about.

The first is an article on how male antelopes trick females into not straying far afield and thus increase their chances of mating with them. Apparently scientists have discovered that when male antelopes see ovulating females wandering away, the males will snort and act as though they sense a predator in the area. The females will then stick close to the male, rather than wander off to find someone new. In other words, male antelopes lie to keep their females close by. The bastards.

The second article talks about a stone tool that archaeologists believe was a combination sex toy and fire starter (uh-huh, I'll bet). Apparently a siltstone phallus was discovered in Germany with markings on it that indicate it was used to strike against flint to start fires. However, the shape and polished surface also indicate it was used as a sex aid. I wish I could find more information on this (I just keep finding the same article over and over again), because I have about a million questions on this one, such as how does anyone know the phallus was used as a sex toy instead of a religious object or fetish object (not THAT kind of fetish, you perverts!)? And how are they certain that the notches in it are flint marks, and not some sort of decoration? I mean, it's obviously a phallus. There's no mistaking that. But how do they know anything about it beyond that?

So anyway, there's some interesting tidbits for you to mull over. Remember, the purpose of the Science of Sex posts is to get you thinking about story ideas, so think of what you could do with these two articles. Frankly, I think there are some great sci-fi story possibilities here.

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Rats! Episode 20 – Land Navigation and an homage to my favorite show

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Ah, Land Navigation. Ladies and gentlemen, there was a time when, if you handed me a compass, an azimuth, a twelve-digit grid coordinate, and a topographical map, I could have told you exactly where we were, were we were going, and how long it would take us to get there. It was one of the very few things I was good at as an Army ROTC cadet, and I was a bit proud of myself when I successfully completed the Land Navigation course at Camp All American while some of my fellow ROTC cadets who outstripped me in all other areas couldn't find their way to the first point on the list.

But Land Navigation was pretty much the only thing I was good at, sad to say.

My career as an ROTC cadet was pretty miserable. I was mediocre at weapons qualification. I stunk at PT. I couldn't understand Troop Leadership or basic squad tactics if my life depended on it. I was a lousy cadet. And yet somehow I graduated and was commissioned into the Army Reserves. Now as an officer, I did much better, but then I was in the Transportation Corps, where we worked with vehicles and... maps! I was always good with maps.

For those of you not familiar with Land Navigation, allow me to explain the cartoon above. Cadets were always sent out in pairs for training (though for the Land Nav course at Camp All American, we were on our own). This was a safety precaution, of course. You'll see in the cartoon the one rat lists off the course direction in degrees (which can be measured on a compass) and a distance of 1000 meters. The other rat is counting paces. Before every Land Nav course, we had to do a pace count, where we counted how many paces we had to take to match a 50 meter distance. That way we could count off the paces to mark how far we were traveling as we followed the course direction (or azimuth) on our compass and thus got from point A to point B.

Sounds simple, right? Except that not all Land Nav problems were that straight forward. Sometimes you were given a description of a landmark and it's direction relative to you. Then you had to calculate the distance to get there. Or you were given a distance and a landmark, but had to find the direction by finding the landmark on the map. Or maybe you were just given a 12-digit grid coordinate and had to figure out all the other info from there. Or...

Simply put, Land Navigation was the same problem over and over again - figure out how to get from point A to point B - but configured many different ways. I understood that. But it was about the only thing I understood in the Army.

Good thing I went into Transportation, huh?

(**Interesting little tidbit. I write these posts the Sunday before they go up. I just realized as I write this that tonight is the season finale of my favorite show LOST, which is also the final word in this week's cartoon. Imagine the forces of fate that had to line up to make that happen! Okay, yeah. I'm stretching it, I know. But still!**)

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ACW Episode 69 – Mummy Dearest

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

By strange coincidence, Pixie managed to injure herself by sitting on a cat tent right after I finished drawing this. The cat tent is made of PVC pipe and canvas, and when she sat on it, it collapsed beneath her and the pipes went everywhere. The end result is that she now has a perfectly circular bruise on her left butt cheek. Not even filled in, just the outline of a small, perfect circle where she managed to land on the tip of one of the pipes. Of course, she wanted a bandage for it.

This week is my mom's birthday. My mom is a nurse, so unlike me, she knows how to handle any medical emergency. Even after I grew up and moved out of the house, she continued to take care of me when I was sick. She was with me when I had my gall bladder removed. She was with me when I had surgery for endometriosis. She and my dad drove all the way up from Arkansas to help out when I had my c-section for Princess, and they were both there when I gave birth to Pixie. Mom always knows what to do and when to apply that Band Aid. So here's a big "Happy Birthday!" to the woman who brought me into the world and has managed to keep me in it no matter how many times I've ended up in the hospital!

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Move It Mama Monday! Suck it up, cupcake!

Monday, May 24th, 2010

We have now entered the season of "Suck it up, cupcake!" In other words, the months prior to my next black belt test, where I can no longer avoid karate class or practice by using excuses like, "I'm tired, I stayed up too late, I'm too busy..." No, now I have to dig a little deeper and get my butt out of bed in the morning so I can head outside to practice, and then haul my ass into class four hours every week and fulfill whatever other requirements I need to make sure I'm ready to test come the end of summer.

Actually, this is an ideal time to suck it up. The weather is warm, which means I'm actually looking forward to exercising outside early in the AM. In winter, when it's cold, not so much. I hate exercising in the cold for a number of reasons, not the least of which is all the fond memories I DON'T have of getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to participate in ROTC workouts when I was in college. Trust me, running stadium steps at 5AM in the morning in December when it's 20 degrees out is not my idea of happiness or fun. Heading out for a run and karate practice at 6AM when it's a warm spring day, though... Well that's all together a different story.

It also helps that I have a clear goal in mind. Knowing that I am testing for san-dan makes it easier to motivate myself to do what I would rather not do (i.e. shift my sleepy butt out of bed and do some serious exercise). So I know this summer should go well because of those two things - warm weather and a goal.

What I'm thinking about now though is how I might continue karate practice after the warm weather and the test have passed. I know, I'm thinking months ahead, but I'm doing so because I realize this is a problem I have. Finding a place to practice karate is tricky at best. It almost has to be outdoors, unless I can find a large open indoor space. The only one I know of is the basketball court at the local Y. I've used it before and it's perfectly fine. However, I'd have to somehow fit extra trips to the Y into my already crowded schedule. I much prefer to step out my front door for a run and a practice. Not to mention the fact that it's damned hard to get through the doors of the Y carrying all my gear (and yes, I do have a lot of gear; I work with 8 different weapons, some of which are 6 ft. long).

So heading outdoors is most expedient. I can carry short weapons in a backpack while I run through the neighborhood and then stop at the tennis court to practice. For the long weapons, I can just leave them right inside the front door and when I get back from a run, grab them and practice in the backyard.

The problem is the cold. I don't have the right clothing to run in the cold, and I need to fix that. So I'm going to be spending this summer researching cold weather running gear and see what I can come up with before the first fall frost. Ideally, I'll find something that will keep me warm (and dry!) even in the middle of January, when it's absolutely freezing cold out. I'm sure such an outfit(s) will cost money, so I'll have to buy it a bit at a time. Thus all the more reason to start looking into the matter now.

So yeah, summer will be the season of "Suck it up, cupcake!" But fall and winter will be the season of "Keep sucking it up, cupcake!" and that will be the bigger challenge.

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Sunday Contentments – Survival

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

It's been a rough week. Power outages. Cars in the shop. Sick children. Sleepovers. Multiple birthday parties and a banquet.

Sometimes the best sort of contentment is the kind where you get through a week like that and you realized, "I survived all that?!"

Yes, I did survive that. Most of it anyway. Still got one more children's birthday party to go.

Pray for me.

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Science of Sex – The life expectancy of a Cougar

Friday, May 21st, 2010

It doesn't pay to be a woman.

At least that's the conclusion I come to after reading articles for this week's and last week's Science of Sex blog posts. First, last week's look at 50 years of the pill brought up all the hazards women have to deal with when it comes to managing their fertility. Now this week I read that older women married to younger men are more likely to die sooner than older men who are married to younger women.

In other words, being a Cougar comes at a price while being a Sugar Daddy comes with benefits.

Apparently, the Max Planck Institute, a German research organization, analyzed the marriage and death records of two million Danish men and women and found that when a woman married a man seven to nine years younger, she was 20 percent more likely to die prematurely than a woman married to a man her own age. And should a woman marry someone more than 15 years younger, that risk jumped to more than 30 percent.

In contrast, a man who married a woman seven to nine years younger was eleven percent LESS likely to die at any point.

Of course, the real kicker here was that evidence was found that women marrying significantly older men also tend to die prematurely. The best thing for women to do, says Sven Drefahl of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, is to "marry a man of exactly the same age."

And then pray that he doesn't dump you for a younger model, right?

Here are some articles on the subject. Take a look at the first one especially, as it comes straight from the Max Planck Institute.

Marriage and life expectancy - Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

German Study: Cougars Die Young, Sugar Daddies Live Longer

The cougar's taste for toyboys could be her undoing

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Rats! Episode 19 – First Aid

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

So I know I said last week that there were more Great General Pumpkin cartoons coming up, and there should have been but for the life of me, I can't find them! I know I have them. I've seen them! But they weren't in my Year 01 or Year 02 folder, and it's too late at this point for me to hunt them down.

Therefore, we move on to first aid. In Army ROTC, the junior and senior cadets were expected to teach classes on common tasks to the freshmen and sophomores. First aid was one of those subjects. I tell you, there's nothing like standing in front of a bunch of freshmen, struggling to remember the symptoms for shock or how to splint a broken leg while your ROTC instructor is standing behind you with a clip board grading every little thing you do. And it doesn't get any easier because once you actually get into the Army (or the Air Force or the Navy or the Marines), you must continue to teach other folks how to do things like this. In fact, one of my jobs in the Army Reserves was training officer. Not only did I have to teach class, but I also had to put together the training plan for the entire unit every single month. Not an easy task to do.

Anyway, it was always kind of fun to be a freshman watching the upper classmen try to run a class, but not so much fun a couple years down the line when it was your turn to teach someone else.

I'll keep looking for the Great General Pumpkin cartoons. I know I have them somewhere. But if I don't find them, we'll continue on with the Army ROTC cartoons for a few weeks, 'kay?

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ACW Episode 68 – Say what?!

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

As opposed to the non-feral ones, you mean?

What kills me about this one is the word 'feral.' What the hell does that have to do with Egyptian queens? I swear, at any given moment one of my kids will say the strangest damned thing I've ever heard. When Princess was about 18 months old, she talked about tiny nipples floating to the sky. Pixie sings about rotten tomatoes and her eyeballs falling out. And then the two of them get together to play "Let's Pretend" and I wonder if I should have them both medicated based on what I overhear during the course of their play.

I'm sure there will be plenty more of these "Say what?!" cartoons coming in the future. Pixie and Princess have dropped some seriously deranged one-liners on me lately, and on more than one occasion have caused me to spew Darjeeling through my nose. So be warned. It only gets weirder from here.

Posted in Cartoon, The Adventures Of Cynical Woman | 2 Comments »

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