author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Things Become Irrelevant. The housewife contemplates the laundry machines. She has options now. She can run a small load on half the water. She can tumble her yoga pants and sports bra on an hour of the air dry setting. It won't be a waste of quarters. Quarters are no longer of pressing concern. Maybe there doesn't need to be a quarters jar anymore, just a single jar for all the household loose change. Later, the housewife will realize that she forgot a load of T-shirts in the dryer. There will be a moment of panic before she remembers she can leave those T-shirts there all night long, and no neighbors will care.

Meeting the Neighbors. The roller derby skater opens her front door, expecting nothing more than a brief wait for her ride to practice. Instead she encounters a pair of young deer. They stare up at her from the sidewalk, as though caught in the act of daring each other to ring the doorbell and run. Skater and deer simultaneously engage in a pretense of nonchalance. If it's a contest, the deer win. They amble away towards a not-very-distant lilac bush. The skater is too delighted to keep a straight face. She watches them snacking on the shrubbery until her teammate arrives to pick her up.

Care and Feeding of Your First Hot Water Boiler.
"Help! I can't get any hot water for the tub!"
"What?"
"I need a hot bath, and the water's coming out lukewarm!"
"I... just can't. I don't know. I'm tired and I need to eat. Can I not deal with this?"
"Wait, it's OK--there's this dial thingie on the boiler thingie, and it was set to VACATION. When I turned it, it started a fire! Look, it's all blue and stuff!"
"Good. That's good. Good for you. We're good now, right?"
"Yeah, I set it somewhere between WARM and HOT."
"Good."

Paradigm Shift. The author sits at her desk, writing with teal ink in a spiral notebook. It is her desk. On the desk is her computer, her printer, her electric kettle and her favorite cup of tea. The routine has been enacted countless times before. But all these things are in a room that is entirely new to the author. Thus she is writing at her desk in her office for the first time. She remembers a previous move, when the cats slinked and yowled in the empty rooms of a new apartment, how they only began to settle down when the humans unloaded the cats' familiar, beat-up, second-hand arm chair from the U-Haul trailer. How they gravitated to it immediately, how they curled up around each other on the stained and much-scratched cushion. The author understands them better now. The move wasn't real until the desk arrived. She can finally convince her habitual self that this isn't a hotel, they won't be packing up again and going home. They are home.

Moving week of doom is upon us. Much-anticipated activities of stress and delight and more stress will be enacted. It will look something like this...

Monday: Met with State Farm about transferring our inside insurance to the new address. Visited the Xfinity office to reschedule transfer of service to new address. Grabbed empty boxes from storage. Proceeded to be aggressively useless for the rest of the day. It was my last chance all week to be useless, and I was going to take it.

Monday roller derby content: A brief scare that we had a scrimmage in Colorado Springs. Turns out that no, someone just misread the calendar, and the scrimmage against Pikes Peak Derby Dames isn't until May 3. Just kidding!

Tuesday: In the morning, pay all the bills currently due, and file change-of-address notices with all services and utilities and credit card accounts etc. Transfer of insurance policy takes effect. Pack up the First Carload, focusing on items which need to be moved anyway to free up the furniture items. Bring also scrap paper, Sharpie, blue masking tape. Go to the 1:30 PM closing. Once that is done, we officially Take Possession. Drive directly from closing to the new address, hurl ourselves face-first into the carpet, and giggle madly while making snow-angel motions. Regain our senses. Unpack the First Carload, then consider where all the furniture will go. Use scrap paper, Sharpie, blue masking tape to label furniture destinations. Go back to old address and prep furniture for moving, possibly with more labels to tell movers where they'll go.

Tuesday roller derby content: All Stars practice, preceded by brief bout production committee meeting.

Wednesday: Movers gonna move. A four-man crew will wrestle all furniture items, and anything that might conveniently accompany them, down the stairs and into their truck, then unload them at the new address. Potentially there will be a trip to storage for other furniture items that would benefit from this treatment. After that, John and I will continue shlepping boxes and loose items by the carload. Meanwhile, transfer of Xfinity account takes effect. Old address will be without internet. Activate Xfinity gateway at new address.

Wednesday roller derby content: Bombshells practice.

Thursday: We continue shlepping boxes and loose items. Undoubtedly I'll remember yet a few more change-of-address forms to fill out and transfer requests to file.

Thursday roller derby content: All-league scrimmage for both me (skating) and John (coaching)

Friday: Just like Thursday, but with higher stress content, because the old address needs to be empty at the end of Friday. We also need to have run the oven's self-clean cycle by now, too, by request of the cleaners. Also, I need to round up all owners' manuals for appliances which remain at the old address (stove, dishwasher, refrigerator, air conditioner, dual flush mechanism on toilet, etc.), which will be turned over tomorrow to the buyer. Maybe also the remaining stain and lacquer used on our various wood furnishings? Left-over paint? Yes? No? (Better text the agent to find out.)

Friday roller derby content: NONE. Hallelujah, blessed be.

Saturday: Let the cleaners in at 9:00 AM to do their magic, then run off to Longmont for roller derby action item A (see below). Cleaners wrap up around noon, when John will see them off. John will then wait around to meet the buyer's agent, who will do one final walk-through, accept delivery of keys and owners' manuals, and Take Possession of our old address.

Saturday roller derby content: Fulfilling my training obligation for April and my event obligation for 2015 Quarter 2. Thus, action item A - train Phase 1 from 10:00 a.m. to noon. Action item B - skating at the Longmont Library Festival / Teen Second Saturday from 6 to 9 PM.

Sunday: Moving is over. Over over over. We are home! But we can't relax, because...

Sunday roller derby content: All Stars practice (10:00 AM) followed by Bombshells practice (1:00 PM) for both me (skating) and John (coaching). John may also stay to coach the Daisy Nukes/Shrap Nellies for 4:00 PM if the coaches-to-skater ratio suggests that would be useful.

Then we go home (our new home) and probably fall face-first into the carpet again, and not move until Monday morning.

Not that y'all need to know all these details, but, 1. when I inevitably get very little of anything else done this week, I can point back to this post and say, "That's why"; and 2. it's darned handy to have it all written down in one place, in case it all falls right back out of my head.

Sometimes I don't know what to say in these blog posts. I get to that time of the night where I need to cross "actually writing blog" off my daily to-do list (or, to be precise, check its checkbox on my list of HabitRPG "dailies"), and I find I don't have much to say. Not that I've ever let that ultimately stop me, as my nearest and dearest have learned to their chagrin. But that's arguably part and parcel of being a writer. You can't let "I don't know what to write" stop you from writing.

It doesn't help that tonight I can't seem to hold a thought in my head much longer than it takes to chew and swallow what's in my mouth. Roller derby ate my brain, and only food can give it back. Tonight's scrimmage was especially brutal, because it was an interleague scrimmage--BCB's Bombshells versus the combined might of Castle Rock 'n Rollers, South Side Derby Dames, and I think High City Derby Divas were in there too. (Look, I don't know, once the whistle blows all I see is hips and shoulders and helmets. Especially the helmet with the star on. Sometimes all I see is the helmet with the star on, and not useful things like, say, jersey colors, and I try to block my own jammer BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT I DO DURING TEAM PRACTICE.) Anyway, it was a great outing. We had a rotation of two blocker line-ups and three jammers, so it really worked our endurance. It was great practice for our upcoming tournament. The opposition hit hard and didn't give an inch. All of which means I am now gobbling down egg fu young and cold sesame noodles as fast as I can shovel it in my mouth.

Anyway. When I first started blogging, my thought was, it would hold me accountable, because 1. I would not blog unless I had written that day, so 2. if I didn't blog, it meant I hadn't written. Which at the very least kept me in subject matter. If I'd written that day, I probably had something to say about how the writing day had gone.

But now my rule is to blog every weekday. In theory it should work out to about the same thing, because I'm also supposed to write every weekday. Well, every Tuesday through Friday. Although it's looking like I won't be doing farm work on Mondays, so it might be time to consider Monday a writing day. (Or I could continue preserving Monday as a Get Shit Done day. I rather like that idea. There's shit that doesn't get done unless I have a weekday that isn't a writing day.) But the sad fact is, there are days I don't get any writing done at all.

Like today. For no really good reason at all.

And then, unless something really momentous happens (like, say, closing on the sale of our home of 15 years), I wind up without much to say.

Well, I suppose I could say something like,

I slept until ten and I wished I hadn't, because what with one thing and another I wound up with no time to do Morning Pages before the representative from The Cleaning Fairies arrived. She walked through the house, took notes, asked questions, and concluded that the job would take two staff members and three hours for a total of $240. So, nine a.m. to noon on Saturday the 11th. Armed with this knowledge, I called back our buyer's agent and scheduled her final walk-through for one p.m. on the 11th. Then I realized I couldn't both be there and be at the Longmont YMCA to take my turn at training the Phase 1 skaters, so I double-checked with John that he could be there instead. He said yes. After that I spent rather a while on the phone hammering out details about the mortgage because it turns out the sale of our place lets us make a somewhat higher down payment and thus take out a smaller loan, and also get explained to me how it works that our condo owner's insurance policy is now bundled up in the mortgage payment too. Once all that was done, I failed to be productive until it was time to leave for scrimmage. At least I got to my Morning Pages, if only by 4:00 p.m., and used them to hash out with myself what the next few days are going to look like. That is, what they'll look like if I actually manage to get out of bed on time.

And I suppose I just did say something like that. But it's boring. It's full of minutiae and administrivia and excuses. Worse, it has very little to do with writing, and this is the actually writing blog, dammit. I would prefer to have a writing day to report on.

Hopefully that will happen tomorrow. If I get up on time, that is.

As promised, the Friday Fictionette for March 27. I wasn't able to get it up over the weekend after all--that's the last time I predict that a weekend's roller derby content will "go a little easier on me." (How can three hours in one day be almost as exhausting as six hours over two days? I don't get it. I really don't get it.) In any case, here it is. It's called "Not Fade Away," it's about a sinister birthday gift (among other things) and you can read an excerpt here and also here.

After "The Divorce Arch," this one was a relief to write: much more fun, much less complicated, much less fraught with unfortunate implications. It was just a straightforward urban fantasy of the "subtle portal fantasy" design--which is to say, the main character doesn't realize it when they cross from the world of the everyday into the world of the fantastical. They're going along their normal, mundane life, when suddenly The Weird intrudes and nothing will be the same again. You don't get to Refuse The Call. You're in it now, whether you want to or not.

As they say: Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans.

With this Friday Fictionette, I am all caught up at last. With any luck I'll be right on time with tomorrow's Fictionette Freebie and the first Friday Fictionette of April. I may also start producing the promised audio versions Very Soon Now. Turns out, I proofread by reading aloud anyway so I might as well do the reading aloud into a microphone and an Audacity project file. I just figured this out tonight, so, yes, there is already a recording of "Not Fade Away." Not sure what, if any, I'll do for musical accompaniment. My piano's out of tune, and it won't get tuned until we move (next week! Eek!). Maybe I'll tootle on my flute.

So. Moving! That begins happening after we close on the purchase on April 7. The bulk of the moving-stuff ordeal will be April 8--but the bulk of the planning will be tomorrow. I have all of the phone calls to make. And then we're going to start transporting the contents of our closets to storage.

In other words, please do not expect any miracles of literary productivity out of me this week or next. And maybe not the week after that, either, since that's the week culminating in the Bleeding Heartlands B-Cup Tournament. Oh dear. Basically, I'm just about going to manage fictionettes and daily blogging; anything beyond that should be considered pure buttercream frosting. (Mmm, frosting.)

Some years ago I was introduced to the Pomodoro technique for time and task management. I tried it out. After a while, I drifted away from some of its tenets--like, tracking how many 25-minute sessions, or "poms," I got done, or considering interrupted poms forfeit, or logging my distractions, or limiting myself to 5-minute breaks between poms. But the basic idea stuck with me: Set a timer, work during the timer, take a break after the timer goes off.

The timer application I got in the habit of using was Focus Booster (which I see has come up a few version numbers since I last downloaded it). I think at the time the Pomodoro people were linking to it. It's designed for the Pomodoro technique, in that it alternates work sessions and breaks, whose length you can define separately (default 25 and 5 minutes, respectively). But I started using it for just about anything with a duration of 2 minutes or longer. It came in useful for physical therapy, for instance.

I never quite got around to installing Focus Booster on the ASUS laptop when I moved all my work off the Dell. Either I just timed myself off the computer clock, "I'm done at 15:45" kind of thing, or I maybe possibly perhaps didn't actually get my timed writing done at all. *shamefaced*

Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated part of my brain, I'd just gotten the news that there will be no new levels for Two Dots rolled out to the Facebook app. This made me all kinds of unhappy. I don't have a smart phone, I don't want to have to get a smart phone--and, thanks to John's smart phone, I managed to get addicted to Two Dots during our train trip to New Orleans back in December. We'd take turns attempting levels, passing his phone back and forth. I was so happy when I found out I could play it on my computer via Facebook--and so sad to learn the game designers would not be supporting it on that platform anymore.

The disappointment was enough to spur me to try just one more time to install the Android emulator BlueStacks on my laptop. I'd tried to get it to work back in December, but either the application froze on initialization, or once it launched it felt klutzy and laggy to navigate, or I couldn't figure out how to get Google Play to let me install Two Dots in the first place ("You don't have any devices!" Damn straight I don't--that's why I'm trying to install an emulator!). Well, this time I managed to get it to work. BlueStacks itself seems to have rolled out a more stable and fluent version earlier this year, for one thing. But the main thing is, I flailed harder at Google Play until I stumbled across the process for linking my "device" (i.e. BlueStacks) to my Google account. I'm honestly not sure how I got there. I logged into Google, I logged out, I Alt-Tabbed over to Firefox, I came back, the dialogue box was waiting for me.

So now I'm happily playing through the Two Dots levels all over again, eagerly anticipating the happy day when I finish level 185 and keep going. Cave levels! Jungle levels! More dots! More!

I'm also happily discovering the world of free Android apps. Oh my gosh, y'all, is this why everyone loves smart phones? All the apps! For doing everything.

Maybe for timing poms?

I was completely app-happy by now, so I went looking for timer apps. And I found the Pomodoro Challenge Timer. It's like Focus Booster with more stuff: the ability to define projects, to track poms completed on each project, to define both short breaks and long breaks, and, best/worst of all, a tendency to nag you until you get to work. Seriously. When it's time to get back to work, it whistles at you. Like a sports coach. If you do not promptly click the START POMODORO button, it whistles at you again and displays the message, "Any reason why you're not working?" Nag, nag, nag! I'm not sure it motivated me per se, but it amused me, and I played along. And I logged five poms today before I had to do other stuff to get ready for tonight's roller derby scrimmage.

Did I mention it has achievements? It has achievements you can unlock. They are very sarcastic. Today I worked for at least two hours in a single day using the Pomodoro technique, thus unlocking the coveted "One foot off the couch" achievement.

Anyway, all that stuff comes with the free version. If you pay a whopping $4, you unlock Pro mode, which gets you a few other perks.

My only complaint about the thing, really, is about its front page design. The WORK button is illustrated by Iconic Construction Man! The PROJECTS button is illustrated by Iconic Science Guy! The ACHIEVEMENTS button is illustrated by Iconic Triumphant Business Dude! Like, would it have hurt to make one of these three Iconic Dudes a Dudette? How hard is it to insert a Rosie the Riveter type figure, or Marie Curie? For the love of little bran muffins, people!

It's a little piece of discouragement that looks me in the face every time I fire up the app: Male is the default pronoun, and Man is the default human. (Yes, even in women's sports. The number of times I've heard a roller derby coach or trainer tell a bunch of women on skates to form a "four-man wall," or describe the goal of our pack sprint as "no man left behind," exceeds my patience for keeping score. And don't get me started on "if you can't do a boy push-up, do a girl push-up!") "Everyman" really is a man, by whom women are expected to feel adequately represented and with whom women are expected to seamlessly identify. We shouldn't need to see female protagonists or pictures of women using the products we enjoy; of course that male cartoon figure stands in for everyone. What, don't you have any imagination? Are you really so selfish that you have to see pictures of yourself everywhere you go? (Meanwhile, when a woman is on the cover of a book, just for instance, or invited to speak at school, boys are expected, even obligated, to tune out.)

I'm sure the developers made their Iconic Humans men because they just didn't have a good reason for making any of them women. Now, if the app were primarily designed to help Mommy time her baking, or her children's time-outs, that would have been a good reason to include a picture of a woman. Or if the app was rewarding the user's hard work with pictures of sexy supermodels. Good reasons like that, see?

("Because about half of the population is women" never seems to be a good enough reason. See also.)

It's disappointing. Not enough to keep me from using the app--today's use of the Pomodoro Challenge Time was indeed useful!--but enough to itch every time I use it. And this is just the mildest example of what is called microagressions.

Which is a bummer of a note to end on, but it's past midnight and I'm out of clever exits. So. In sum: Two Dots is fun, the Pomodoro technique works, and human beings come in a wide variety of genders and colors that are all worth acknowledging. Do better, app designers!

(Oh hey! Also, I have downloaded Hybrid Stopwatch and Timer. Just in case it's ever not awkward to sit in the infield and time a skater's 27-in-5 with my laptop.)

Today we got every kind of weather. We got hail and rain and snow and blissfully warm sunshine too. To fit all that into a single day takes a strict timetable, I imagine. "Hurry up," said the weather coach. "We have a lot to do today. And no chit-chatting between drills! Move it, move it, move it--"

Or maybe Colorado was presenting its meteorological portfolio to a prospective employer. At the job interview, when the Rocky Mountain Front Range was asked "What's your greatest weakness?" it probably answered, "Inconsistency." Or perhaps, "I have a tendency to try to do everything at once. But I make up for it by being a great multitasker!"

I had foolishly, optimistically thought that we needn't turn the heat on ever again this spring--in fact, ever again at this address, as we're moving in about two weeks. (Two weeks! Shit-bird, that's scary-soon. I should be making check-lists and writing an inventory of stuff-still-to-be-packed!) But it got cold while the snow was driving at 45-degree angles this afternoon, and it got cold on the drive home from roller derby practice this evening too.

Tomorrow is supposed to be warm and sunny, just like yesterday (and the day before, and the day before that) but more-so. Tomorrow, Colorado will wake up with a hangover and declare that it doesn't remember and has absolutely no desire to be told what it got up to on Wednesday the 25th. It's just too embarrassing.

Speaking of roller derby (as I always am), Bombshells team practice failed to kill me. It didn't try all that hard, mind; it only lasted two hours instead of three, but more to the point, it's the environment in which I've been practicing for almost three years. I'm comfortable there. Which is not to say it goes easy on me either, but it's the level of practice I've grown used to. I'm more accustomed to its demands. Whereas yesterday's All Stars practice was a shock to my system. Everything was faster! stronger! harder! longer! and done by people who are so much better at this stuff than me. It's intimidating.

But yesterday's the only taste I'm going get of it, just a dip of the toe in the pool, until next week Thursday. The All Stars are going to the Dust Devil Tournament this weekend in Tucson, Arizona. I was added to the team far too late to go with them, which is just fine. Frankly, I need another week of Bombshells practice just to remind my body, after its enforced two-month "vacation" from skating, what regularly practicing is like.

And it's not just practice I need. I need to adjust my entire lifestyle. Well, that's a bit strong. I mean, I need to get into better self-care routines so that my body is able to handle not just a higher intensity of physical activity when it comes time to skate, but also my unreasonable demand that I do more with my days than just skate.

Just look at all the different kinds of weather that can fit in a single day. If Colorado can do that, I should be able to cram all my writing projects into a day that contains roller derby, right?

But the body is a machine that needs regular maintenance. I haven't been taking very good care of mine. I've been up until all hours and staying in bed late with headaches and exhaustion because of it. Which then leads to a failure to eat right or hydrate sufficiently.

This has been less than ideal for my ambitions to productivity. It probably also has something to do with the way this past weekend laid me out flat.

Preliminary steps to fix this include getting up at 8:00 AM--no excuses!--regularly feeding myself breakfast and a good multivitamin, drinking a glass of water for every cup of hot caffeinated tea, having no caffeine past five in the afternoon, and getting to bed no later than midnight.

I have not been very good at that last thing. Days aren't long enough to start with. I can't get nearly as much done in one as I'd like. Naturally I'm reluctant to let one come to an end.

But this one is coming to an end now, because new good habits have to start sometime.

Goodnight, everybody!

A thing I learned today: It's amazing how much one can do if one actually gets out of bed up on time.

However, it's also amazing how easily a small roadblock can dam that fresh flow of productivity. To wit:

A thing I really wish I'd learned today: Why the heck Scrivener will only successfully launch once on the ASUS.

That's it. Just once after install. After I exit the program, the next time I attempt to use it, it will completely fail to launch ever again. Sometimes it signals its failure by a big blank window that includes the parenthetical "(Not Responding)" in its title bar. Sometimes it just sits there, invisibly, in the Task Manager list of processes. In neither case will it enable me to write. Recovering functionality then requires uninstalling Scrivener, rebooting the computer, and reinstalling Scrivener. Some service or background application is clearly jamming up the works, and it's not Dropbox, because I got rid of that sucker. It may be time to disable pretty much every service listed in msconfig and see what happens.

A thing I already knew: What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

It is still too early to determine which of those two categories, "things that kill me" or "things that make me stronger" All Stars practice will ultimately fall into. But if you illustrated that venerable saying by means of a Venn diagram, with "things that kill me" in one circle and "things that make me stronger" in another, non-overlapping circle, you would then draw a larger circle such that it encompassed both of the smaller two, and that larger circle would be labeled, "things that are, in fact, trying to kill me."

I dunno; maybe I'm being a little overdramatic. I plead not guilty by reason of being under the influence of my body, which is top pro at complaining, y'all.

Complain or not, it's going to skate again tomorrow evening at Bombshells practice.

(This may or may not occasion more Venn diagrams.)

The weekend was as full of derby as advertised. Fuller, even. More full than I actually expected; turns out that I was permitted to participate in C Team practice. So I did. The only thing I wasn't allowed to do, as a skater without an up to date skills assessment, was scrimmage. Except I ended up scrimmaging a little after all so that the coaches could score my jammer, blocker, and pack awareness skills as part of my assessment. (John typically writes our numbers on our shoulders with a Sharpie marker before scrimmage. "Five Zero Four. It's been a while since I last wrote this number," he said. "I know," I said, "I've missed it.") Then, after scrimmage, they put me through the rest of my paces and completed my assessment. I didn't expect that, either; I thought we'd get some of that done, but that some of it would have to wait for Thursday.

I also didn't expect to utterly collapse during the post-derby periods of each day, which includes today as well. It's amazing how eight weeks off-skates can return a body to a state of Utterly Unprepared to Exercise.

So no, Friday's Fictionette remains not done yet. I might manage to finish it tonight. I might not. I am having trouble with Scrivener, which seems to be having trouble with Dropbox, which is itself having trouble believing me when I tell it I don't want it to run at startup, nor do I in fact want it installed. In any case, I thought I'd write this blog post now rather than leaving it for my usual midnight scramble.

In addition to roller derby, there was bowling. We had a small team-building party after practice Sunday at the bowling lanes in Longmont. It was a lot of fun, and I hope we do it again sometime. But it was fun that involved Unaccustomed Exertions, namely, hefting a 12lb bowling ball for two hours and nearly three whole games. My upper back and right shoulder were tight and sore by the time we were done, and they just got tighter and more sore over the course of the evening. This probably has something to do with the headache that kept me uselessly horizontal most of today.

I'm hoping that as I get back into condition, physical activity will cease to exact quite so high a price. It has to if I'm going to function at all, because there's going to be a lot of physical activity in my near future.

I understand that the "Respectable career woman by day, hard-hitting roller derby skater by night" format of skater bio causes a certain amount of exasperated eye-rolling among participants and fans, and for the same reason fans of the sequential art storytelling format roll their eyes at yet another headline of the "Wham! Bam! Pow! Comic books aren't just for kids anymore!" format. And yet, that skater bio is so accurate. Full-time writer by day, roller derby skater by night. Pretty much every night, these days. And also all day Sunday. And some Saturdays, according to the current season's bout and tournament schedule.

Because the result of this weekend's skills assessment is, I'm a "BombStar." I've not only been put back on our B Team, my beloved Bombshells for whom I've skated since the team's formation in 2012, but I was also offered the chance I've feared and hoped for all this time, to additionally join our A Team, the All Stars. The practice schedule of a crossover (two-team) skater is a crowded and exhausting one. I'm having a hard enough time fitting all the things I want to do into the same life with only one team to skate for. But this is the next step in my roller derby career, and I'm going to take it. It's not just the chance to compete as part of our league's WFTDA charter. That's exciting, yes--and also terrifying! But more important to me is the chance to practice at the WFTDA charter level. More will be expected of me, and I'll become a stronger and better skater because of it.

That's the season-long view of things. Meanwhile, my immediate goal is to not have this development change my cheesy bio to "Hibernating bear by day..." I suppose, given a few weeks of practice, I'll adjust. But today, Monday the 23rd, I'll just have to accept as more or less a complete write-off.

Tomorrow, Tuesday the 24th, isn't looking very good for writing, either. Besides having Tuesday All Star practice, I also have my final physical therapy appointment and I'm meeting the CPA about our taxes. Which means I have to get all our documentation in order between now and then. Argh.

And then Wednesday is volunteer reading and Bombshells practice. And Thursday is scrimmage. And we're moving in April.

Somehow, I'm going to make this all of this work out. It oughtn't to be that hard. Compared to some of our league skaters--some of whom are parents, some of whom are students, most of whom have full-time jobs outside the home--I've got it easy. I should be able to do this! All I have to do is figure out how.

Well. Good luck to me!

Alas, but the Friday Fictionette for March 20, 2015 will be be late. I don't have a particularly good excuse for it. It's giving me trouble, and I'm giving me trouble, and so it'll go up over the weekend. Also I think the cover notes post for last week's fictionette still has to go up. Argh. I hate getting behind on things. It tends to snowball.

And there's still this short story I'm supposed to be revising. To editorial request. Why is this not done yet whyyyyyyyyy.

While I'm making excuses and admitting temporary defeat, I ought to give y'all a heads-up that things are going to get a little crowded with me, schedule-wise. Our closing date for selling this house is coming up on April 1st (no joke, ha ha). Presumably our closing date for buying the new place will be shortly thereafter. Then we're moving between April 7 and April 12. And then John and I will be taking a little road trip to Bloomington, Indiana, for a roller derby tournament on the 18th and 19th. Whether I will actually skate in said tournament will be determined by whether I succeed at assessing and getting placed back on our B team. (Despite the kind words and encouraging expectations of my league mates, I am not taking this for granted; the universe likes to smack you if you get smug.) But at the very least, we've committed to going. So that's three nights reserved at the hotel bracketed by two days of driving each way.

These are all very exciting developments, but they are also somewhat pressurizing. I suspect by the end of April my mouth will have blossomed in ulcers, which is my body's typical reaction to periods of sustained stress. I suspect I will look back on March 2015 as "the halcyon days."

Anyway. I'll do a bonus weekend blog post when the fictionette goes up, so's you'll know.

Meanwhile, I'm going to skate my legs off. I'll attend Phase 2 practice at noon tomorrow, and before that I'll join some of the Derby Lite folks for trail skating in Boulder. Then on Sunday I'll attend Bombshells practice. Which is to say, I'll gear up, hopefully knock a few items off my assessment checklist, and participate in as much of team practice as I'm allowed to given that I'm not technically on the team yet this year.

And next week I will be a busy little bee. A busy little, productive little bee. A busy little pen-wielding, fast-typing bee making large amounts of literary honey.

OK, that metaphor got weird. Let's just say I'll be busy, right?

So I was a penalty timer at the Shamrocks And Shenanigans scrimmage tonight. When you're a penalty timer, everyone comes to visit you. Everyone gets penalties, after all. Maybe not everyone on every night, but everyone eventually. If you never ever get penalties, it's questionable whether you're in the game.

When I arrived, I told our head coach, "I'm ready to be assessed! Whenever works for you." (I got injured before the league went through skills assessments and travel team tryouts. I still need to do that before I can skate with any of our teams.)

She said, "Great! Get your gear on."

And I said, "Er, tonight? I... didn't think that would be an option." I hadn't brought my gear. Drat.

By next week, though. Between Sunday practice and the following Thursday scrimmage, I should have ample opportunity to demonstrate my skills to people empowered to fill out my score sheet. After that... team practice again? Please? As soon as possible? Back with my Bombshells? Pretty-please?

Obviously this has been much on my mind.

It has been sharing space in there with something very random: the Mark Reads archives for the Discworld novels.

You know about Mark Reads? Blogger Mark Oshiro began a project some years ago to read the Twilight novels and comment on them, chapter by chapter. And, well, a lot of people came along for the ride. It wasn't so much that they enjoyed watching him suffer, per se--it was that he suffered so entertaingly. And also enlighteningly, if that's a word. His criticisms were spot-on and his pain was shared and familiar.

Inevitably, the blog community began urging him to read something he'd actually enjoy. As soon as he got through Breaking Dawn, they said, he should treat himself. Read Harry Potter, they said. Because, as it turned out, he hadn't read those books yet. There were a lot of books, beloved classics of the fantasy genre, that he'd just never been exposed to. And his fans not only wanted him to enjoy a reading experience, but they wanted to enjoy watching him experience it.

And Mark read it. And it was wonderful.

You can never go back and read a favorite book for the first time all over again. Not so long as your memory is intact, that is. But the privilege of watching someone else read that book for the first time, witnessing them falling in love with the characters you've come to know so well, that's almost as wonderful. Maybe it's even better.

Mark has since then read many, many wonderful books, and his fans have enjoyed the heck out of watching him discover all these worlds and characters. And for a commission of $20, I think it is, he'll add to his written review video footage of him reading the chapter aloud. And that's the best. His reactions are priceless, hilarious and touching by turns.

So about a year ago he embarked upon a chapter-by-chapter read-through and review of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. In--and this is important--the order that they were published. (Which means he's only now making his way through Eric.) Discworld fandom is large and it is contentious; veterans will often try to curate newbies' experiences by telling them which books to read first. "Oh, don't start with Colour Of Magic, he hadn't gotten good yet, you'll be turned off. Read Reaper Man first," or, "Rincewind is tiresome. Read the Vimes books instead," or whatever they'll recommend.

Which is understandable, but at the same time, it's kind of arrogant. Like, dude, you're so proud of having been around when Colour of Magic came out, you read them in publication order because you had no choice--you still fell head over heels in love with them. Why do you think someone approaching them for the first time today couldn't do the same? Why do you think they need you to shepherd them through the experience? And why is it so important to you that they come to the same conclusion about the characters that you did?

Sometimes it's understandable, like I said; you love a thing, you want them to love it too. You want to spare them the jarring moments of the not-quite-good-enough. But sometimes I think, there are some fans who have a bit of ego involved in being the living filter through which someone experiences the material. I suspect that, either consciously or un--, it makes them feel important.

To hell with that. Mark is going into this as completely unspoiled and unbiased as a reader on publication day would, only without the three-year wait between The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. His spoiler policy is aggressive, and I share it: If I haven't gotten there yet, don't talk about it. Allow me to experience it the way you did--without you hanging over my shoulder saying, "Oh, this is when it gets good" and "Just wait until you meet [CHARACTER] in Chapter [X]!"

I only heard that this was a thing the week after Terry Pratchett died. And it's been fantastic. I've been watching his videos or, where appropriate, converting them to MP3 and listening to them in the car. Not only does it convert these old familiar books into brand new experiences for me, but it comes at a time when 1. I wanted to commemorate the author's passing with a read-through of my own, but 2. all my books are in storage and I can't easily get to them. So I get to have Mark read them to me! And I get to hear him react to the awesomeness! And the hilarity! And the puns, dear Gods, the puns. (Oh Gods the "horse d'oeurves" pun. Mark's reaction to the pun. It takes him like three minutes to get past it, it hits him that hard. I love Mark this much, y'all.)

I've just gotten up to Mark's read-through of Mort. And it occurs to me I may never actually have read Mort before. I could swear I'd borrowed it from a friend back in the late '90s, but I'm not recognizing any of it at all. Maybe my memory isn't intact--which would be odd, for me--but maybe The Last Continent isn't the last Discworld book I've yet to read? This is such a treat.

Like I told John, "Mark's reading Discworld! Expect my productivity to dip a bit." And so it has. Drat.