author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Today was one of those fresh summer days that wants to come in through every window. I opened up the patio door and the office window, which have screens. I opened up the front door, which, oddly, doesn't; it has something I want to call a screen door, but it has no actual screens in it. It has three glass panels. I figured out how to slide one of them up, but, again, there's no screen. One must choose between air in or bugs out. One cannot have both, at least not until I install a screen or just replace the door.

Replacing the "screen" door would probably be fine. Its latch is broken, too, such that it's difficult to get it to latch shut from the inside and entirely impossible from the outside.

Nevermind! The fresh summer day came in by the patio door and the office window, and extra light came in by the not-really-a-screen-door, and I found the energy to get some household chores done. Laundry, dishes, taking out the recyclables. Topping off the bird feeder. Attempting to rescue spinach seedlings that got dug up in the night, probably by that jerk the squirrel. (Seriously, I need to just bring all the plants in overnight. This is ridiculous.)

I even took a rag and some lemon oil and my spinning wheel outside, and I made a first pass at cleaning off the storage unit grime. All the dust came off, but there are stubborn stains on the treadles, probably from years of having that little bottle of spinning wheel oil hanging upside and dripping onto them. Still, some progress was made. At least the poor thing is no longer gross to handle.

What I'd really like to do is invite fiber-geek friends over and have a little spin-in on that front patio. Now that the summer heat has reached us, it's no longer a dim and freezing cold dungeon. But it's not so full of sun as to be wearying, either. And I've got happy little shade-tolerant plants hanging out there, the decade-old spaths and the new baskets of impatiens and begonias. It would be lovely to sit out there and sip tea and spin yarn (literally) and also spin yarns (figuratively).

Alas, I didn't get to any spinning today. Nor the piano. Mostly I spent the afternoon fighting with Patreon's new input interface while turning "Because You Weren't There" into the May 2015 Fictionette Freebie. The new interface is, in theory, a great improvement over the old. Not only can you input rich text via HTML now, but you can also upload new attachments to, and change out the image of, an existing creation. (You couldn't do that before. I KNOW.) However, there's a bug such that depending on the click path you use to get to the edit interface, the "save" button might not actually save your changes. That is, if you click through to a single post view, and then click Edit, you're fine. But if you click the Edit button attached to the post where it appears as an item in your posts stream, it will be a no-go.

But the post I wanted to edit--the plain-text excerpt of the Fictionette--I had created through the Activity Stream interface rather than through the Creations interface. Which isn't a distinction that ought to matter, since the new interface files both of them under "Creator Posts" as opposed to "All Posts" (that is, posts you posted, or messages your Patrons posted to you). But it matters this much: Posts created under the Activity Stream rubric appear to no longer have an Edit button within the single post view. I can only get in to edit them via the button on the item in the posts stream. Which click path, as I said, leads to a non-functional Save Post button.

Also, have I mentioned that since the interface update, some Patron-only posts got set to Accessible By Everyone? And probably vice versa? Pardon me while I go double-check the status of every single item in my archive since September 2014. Whee.

Finally, after beating my head against that brick wall for far too long, I struck a compromise. I gave up on trying to edit the post, and just created a whole damn new one, with the full text in HMTL and the links to the PDF and MP3 and also the announcement that it was now free for all to download regardless of your pledge tier or Patron status. And I emailed Patreon's support staff with the bug report, which hopefully isn't too rambling for them to understand. The above two paragraphs should give an idea of whether I succeeded; the email was more rambling than that, I fear. Then, at last, I turned my attention to Other Matters.

Which, it being now an hour until I had to leave for roller derby practice, meant things like getting into my derby clothes, cooking myself dinner, packing up my skate gear, and things like that.

Here's hoping tomorrow's work day doesn't get whittled away by technological frustrations like today's did. And that I get all the things done. And still get time to spin yarn and practice piano and maybe play a little on Puzzle Pirates too. And read blogs. And go for a long walk around Sale Lake. And...

Optimism! It's what's for midnight snackies!

Because it's about a mural depicting a shipwreck. It's called "Shipwreck in Progress." It's also about family relations, and maybe doomsday.

And now I have almost two whole weeks to prepare the next Friday Fictionette because May 2015 is a month with five Fridays in it, and I get fifth Fridays off. Nyah!

So I've changed my mind about my hummingbird visitor. Now I think it's most likely a male black-chinned hummingbird who looked red-throated only because I was seeing its neck feathers through the optical illusion of its wing-blur. In any case, it's been back countless times and seems to like what I've got on offer, but it still tries to drink out of the songbird feeder from time to time.

I tried to doctor up the songbird feeder with chili powder, because I've just about had it with the squirrel that it's attracted. It was cute at first, but when it's sitting in the planter and eating the leaves off the just-sprouted sunflower seedlings, it's just not funny anymore. The planter was already propped up on top of a bucket, but that sucker actually scrabbled up the sliding glass door to get into it. I have no idea how, but the noise its claws made on the steel frame of the door woke me up in time to watch it visiting the "salad bar." Now the planter has been moved further away from the wall, and what seedlings remain have been transplanted indoors to give them a chance to grow a few more leaves.

Today was the first sunny day I'd seen in what feels like weeks. It was sunny from morning right up until early afternoon, when we got a hailstorm. But before that I got to open up windows and doors and just let that warm air in, carrying with it all the songs of the birds and the occasional mew of the neighbor's adorable and affectionate black cat.

At one point I heard bagpipes, and I went out to hear them better. It's Memorial Day, and we live within view of a large funeral lawn with many a war veteran's tomb. It was pleasant, if solemn, to stand in the sun with my mug of tea and listen to the pipes playing "Amazing Grace," occasionally interrupted by the sound of the fighter planes doing their flyovers.

I did my Morning Pages late, and I did them on the back patio. In addition to sun and songbirds, there was the smell of a propane grill. Down on the lawn across the fence, some neighbors in the next condominium campus were having a picnic. When the big guy in the football shirt said, "Who wants more brats?" I very nearly called out, "Me!" They smelled that good.

And that's about all I've got. Lazy holiday Monday, a new Fictionette, and a bunch of bird-and-squirrel TV. I hope your Monday has been as pleasant. Cheers!

Let's concentrate on the positive. We got the piano tuned today! And the piano bench is sort of fixed, enough to sit on at least; Monday I hope to have it fixed in a more permanent fashion. So I sat down and played the piano today for the first time since we moved. Since months before we moved, in fact.

In the piano bench, which I emptied out in order to fix the piano bench, there's a heap of sheet music that belonged, I think, to one of my aunts. I suspect they were handed down to her from a previous generation. There is a Victor Herbert songbook with pieces whose copyrights range from MCMVI to MCMXXXIII. Victor Herbert died in MCMXXIV, which is the copyright date on a couple of the songs in the book.) I played through one of them--as best I can, that is, which is to say slowly and with many pauses to figure out the next chord. It was pretty dang melodramatic. I think it was supposed to be a cheerful song, though.

In other cheerful news, we have a hummingbird. Or multiple hummingbirds, I don't know. They jingle-buzz around the building, on both sides, and you can often catch sight of one zipping from tree to tree. I hung a feeder outside my office window in hopes of having hummingbirds visit me while I write, but almost a week went by and they didn't find it. Then, today, a hummingbird buzzed our patio window--just flew right into the balcony space and hovered meaningfully in front of the sliding glass door. "All right, already," I said, and moved the feeder from the office window to the patio. And now we have a new friend.

Back when we lived in Oregon, we had a hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen window. We weren't always vigilant about keeping it full, but the hummingbirds were not shy about telling us it had run dry. They'd start buzzing every other window of the house, upstairs and down, hovering outside the glass and going vvvrrrreeeee! in a pointed kind of way. I think today's visitor was doing something like that.

I brought a pair of cheap field glasses to the bedside so I could get a closer look next time the hummer came in for a sip (which it did about once every 20 minutes for the rest of the afternoon), but I haven't quite identified the species. It's got a gray-or-green body, a white-or-light-gray chest, and a reddish throat, which could be one of several species that WhatBird.com suggests for Colorado. My best guess is a male broad-tailed hummingbird. I suppose it could also be a calliope, but I didn't notice that striping/striation pattern in the red/maroon throat of my visitor. (WhatBird.com does not suggest the ruby-throated hummingbird this far west.)

One more happy thought: Roller derby tomorrow! Our first home bout of the season--at least, this will be the first competitive event we're hosting in 2015. The January event was a mix-up tournament. Tomorrow's will feature actual rated-and-ranked teams. I'll be skating with the Bombshells against the visiting team from Pueblo in the first bout of the evening--that'll start at 6:00 PM, with the frontman for Big Head Todd and the Monsters as the celebrity whistleblower starting the first jam for us. Right after that, our All Stars will take on Denver Roller Derby's Bruising Altitude.

I was going to put an article up on AXS.com about the event, but literally minutes before I was ready to upload the article, I got an email from AXS saying that they would no longer accept "game-related sports news or timely recaps." Argh. I was not prepared to try to turn it into some sort of "5 things to watch for" listicle at this late date, either, so I just let it go. You get this blog post instead.

$15 at the door! Doors open at 5:30! I'm assuming Georgia Boys will be there, with barbecue and mac & cheese for all. I know there will be lots of local beers and distilled spirits for the grown-ups. Come watch me skate, and then come see me at the fund raiser table during the All Stars bout (at halftime, of course; otherwise you should be watching the All Stars skate, because they are awesome) and help us keep our travel fund in the black! And speaking of the All Stars, keep your eyes on them this season. Latest WFTDA rankings put them at #33, which means this year may well be Boulder's D1 debut.

Meanwhile, it's Friday, and there is a conspicuous absence of Fictionette. I hope to get it up this weekend (where have we heard that tale before? but I really, really mean it this time. Well, Monday for sure). It was taking me longer tonight than I'd budgeted for, and it didn't seem wise to stay up late with such a big day looming over me tomorrow. So you will just have to stay tuned for tales of painted shipwrecks and sinister countdowns, I'm afraid.

Happy new week, everyone! I'm pleased to finally bring you the Friday Fictionette for May 15 and announce that now I am entirely caught up. (Except for the pesky audio archives, of course. But back-filling those will be a long process.) Hopefully everything will be back on track going forward.

One scene in "A New Doll for Polly," the one featured in the excerpt, draws on an episode from a family Christmas gathering years ago. I chose to describe that episode in the attached Author's Note. And here we get to one of those classic writerly dilemmas, where the personal experience I'm mining could be read as "airing dirty laundry." In this case, the laundry is only mildly stained. It's just melted wax. You can get that right off with careful application of a hot iron...

OK, that metaphor is kind of strained. Here's the thing. For most of my family, it's just a funny story, an inside joke, a tale retold to get everyone laughing. But for me, it was the moment I realized that it wasn't family policy to deny comfort to the victim of relentless teasing and practical jokes; it was just family policy to deny that comfort to me. I was fair game, because how else was I going to learn to grow a thicker skin and a sense of humor; but do that shit to Grandmama and you were mean and cruel for making her cry. (To be fair, I can't guarantee that my younger cousins got off any more lightly than I did. To be even more fair, it was rare they went after anyone else when I was available.)

So the dirty laundry isn't the story itself, but rather my side of the story. Which resolves the dilemma fairly easily: My side of the story is mine, and I don't owe it to anyone to efface my side of the story to privilege theirs. Also, what kind of loving family member enjoys making a child cry? Repeatedly? Every Christmas day? Especially if said family member is a grown-ass adult? Who the fuck does that shit? Well, whoever does that, they can just shut up about dirty laundry, is what I'm saying.

It was more just the image of an altered doll upsetting Grandma that made it into the fictionette, rather than the discovery that my family had double standards for how bullying victims were treated. The latter was just bad memory litter that the evocative image scattered all over the floor on its way through my brain and into the story, the inconsiderate jerk.

Eh. Go read the fictionette (or just the excerpt). It's more cheerful.

In other news, Mad Max: Fury Road was amazing. It was made of pure distilled rock 'n roll. It was breathtakingly gorgeous and full of momentum that never let up, not once. It maybe could have benefited from subtitles, the dialog being occasionally difficult for me to make out, but on the other hand you don't miss much by missing a word here or there. It wasn't big on words, that movie.

And it was indeed a deeply feminist movie, its plot containing such premises as "Women and children are people, not property" and "You know what? This crap hurts men, too." (Also, I didn't realize an action-adventure movie with a female lead could go from opening sequence to credits rolling without once hearing a man calling her a misogynist slur of any sort for any reason. That was astoundingly refreshing.) It was a deeply moral movie, concerning itself with how those with little power should treat those with even less. Some people kick them and climb over their backs to amass more power of their own, and the narrative tends to deal with them harshly. Others wind up using what little power they have to protect the powerless, and them the narrative holds up as heroes--even the ones who had to be convinced first.

So. Go see it while it's in theaters. It's good medicine for the soul, with the added bonus that it tastes fabulous.

Hello! It is Friday and here is a Fictionette. It is last Friday's Fictionette, but here it is nevertheless. It is called "Because You Weren't There," and it's kind of creepy and kind of sweet and kind of mythic. Basically it's about benign necromancy as a random act of kindness.

As usual, the title above links to a brief excerpt; from there, if you're so inclined, you can click the links at the bottom of the page to become a Patron and read the whole thing, along with all Friday Fictionette archives to date.

I just realized I've been doing this for more than 6 months. I guess it's been more like 8 months? I totally missed my half-year anniversary, y'all!

As for this Friday's Fictionette, it's about toys, siblings, grandparents, and always looking on the bright side of life. (Cue the Monty Python soundtrack.) If I am very diligent, it will come out tomorrow afternoon. The Fictionette itself is very nearly done, so that just leaves the technical details of making the cover image and the PDF and the audio and excerpts that go in various places. Watch for an update to Twitter and Facebook when it goes live.

I am also going to go see the new Mad Max movie this weekend. Mad Max is part of my childhood, y'all. I am totally down with seeing the franchise expand. Also, I hear Charlize Theron's character is making misogynists cry. I want in on that.

The current daily schedule that I'm trying to stick to involves breaking up my daily work into a morning shift and an afternoon shift separated by a long lunch break during which non-writing obligations get done, leaving the evenings guilt-free for playtime and goofing off (and roller derby). The days when I stick to it go great. I get lots done, I feel awesome, and I get plenty of sleep because I'm not up until stupid o'clock trying to clean up my to-do list. The days when I don't kind of suck. I get nothing done and I feel depressed. (But at least, lately, I don't stay up until stupid o'clock on those days either, because I've learned that if I don't get enough sleep then guess what kind of day the next day will be?)

You'd think, given those two types of work days, the choice would be simple. "Cake or death?" "Cake, please." Right? Except the good, productive, diligent sort of day always seems to be followed by a day when I can't seem to get out of bed or get anything done once I do. I've had an upsy-downy sort of week that way, and it's frustrating. Like I only have enough energy to have a good work day every other day; the day afterwards is spent paying for it. If the rest of my life outside of writing could accommodate, I'd move to an every-other-day schedule in a heartbeat. But I really don't think my other obligations and activities will allow for it.

So for now, the only real solution I have for the low-energy days is to apply more willpower. And maybe keep a close eye on myself for any clues to making things easier.

But enough of that! Putting this week to bed now and looking forward to the weekend. Mad Max, roller derby, and getting caught up on Fictionettes--woo!

Ok! So. Got a Friday Fictionette for you. It's the one for May 1, so I've still got last week's and this week's to go before I'm all caught up. But! I have been doing all sorts of catching up things, and then some.

First things first. The May 1 Friday Fictionette is called "To Come Before The Queen" (click for excerpt and also links to full versions). At 779 words, it's probably the shortest one I've posted yet. Any shorter and it would feel like a waste of time to publish an excerpt. But it's precise. Once I had the basic structure and story in mind, I set myself the challenge of writing only half the dialogue such that the other half could be inferred. It's a neat exercise, and it forces you to really think about word choice.

I wanted the cover art to be a huge honkin' commercial oven like the one the pastry chef baked hundreds of breakfast treats in every morning, back in the university dorm cafeteria where I worked in the mid-90s. You really could imagine a grown woman climbing in and sleeping in it at night. Alas, Google gave me very slim pickings. I might as well have just photographed our own oven (in which John, incidentally, has been baking lots of bread and other yummy things lately; I am, even more so than usual, a very fortunate spouse).

Another thing I caught up on this weekend: I typed up a Fictionette on my typewriter for the first time! See, at the $5/month pledge tier, I send you one of the month's Fictionettes typed up on an actual typewriter with actual typos and everything. Also illustrated capitals, watercolor doodles, and other unique surprises. Now, in my eternal optimism, I limited this tier reward to the first 10 Patrons to sign up for it. However, I think I'll have to lower it to 5. Why? Because 1400+ words on a typewriter takes a lot longer than I remembered! And not just because I'm no longer able to touch-type flawlessly in QWERTY! (I lost that skill when I learned the DVORAK layout. Apparently my fingers only have room for one layout for typing 90wpm with my eyes closed in.)

At least we now live on the bottom floor, with nothing beneath us but the garage. I'd be worried about shaking the floorboards otherwise.

So that was cool, and it's already gone out in the mail. (I was going to take a picture, but I forget to before I sealed it up in the envelope. Oh well. Next week!)

And here's one more cool thing I did this weekend:

I wrote a whole brand new story.

I did! It was for a contest on Codex, the annual Title Rummage Sale, where you pick a title from the virtual hat and then you write a story for it. I just barely made the lower word limit, and the story is about as drafty as a draft can get, but I finished it and I uploaded it and people are going to read it. And then I can make it better, and submit it somewhere.

That's exciting! It's been months since I last submitted something anywhere! Despite my intention to send out something new every month, and resubmit something every week! Well. Better late than never, right?

Also also also, I cleaned up the office. I took most of the boxes and things that have been hogging the floor and the futon since we moved in, and I shoved them all in the closet. Actually, I arranged them neatly and thoughtfully in the closet such that they can be accessed whenever necessary. So now I have a functional closet, and I can sit or sleep on the futon, and I can walk from the office door to the office window without dodging boxes.

How awesome is that? So awesome.

I... I think I have to make snow-angels in the carpet again.

'xcuse me.

The fictionette that went up today is not the Friday Fictionette for May 1. No, that fictionette will be late. Look for it tomorrow. And the one that went up today should have gone up yesterday. I'm just going to blame all this tardiness on the migraine that kept me flat most of Thursday, right? And not mention the book I took to bed to comfort me in my migrainy suffering, and how fascination with the book lasted longer, actually, than said migraine, and...

Oh hey. Did I say all that in my outside voice? Forget it. Point is, what went up this afternoon is a one-time bonus fictionette for the month of April 2015. Like I say in its Author's Note, this one's kind of a gift to thank my Very First Patron for signing up. I had posted a Milestone based on a pledge of $1 that said I'd do something unspecified but special for my first subscriber. Early in April that went from hypothetical to actual. In email conversation, that first subscriber mentioned getting drawn in by "Please to Confirm Your Appointment with BRIGHT SMILES!" and wishing it were longer. And I thought, a-ha!

So now it's about 1400 words longer and leans on a different POV character. And I just realized there is a major logic hole in it to do with what things happen when. Maybe. I'm not sure. I might be wrong. In any case, that's OK because it's totally not obvious except from inside my head, and I ain't saying a word.

Oh hey.

Nevermind! We also have April's Fictionette Freebie, which I decided had to be "The Hole in the Middle of the Block" because I utterly adore Becky and Olga and I want you to adore them too. Please enjoy! You can download the PDF and/or MP3 from Patreon, read the whole thing at Wattpad, or just click over to its manuscript display page here on the actually writing blog.

So tomorrow I'll publish the May 2015 Week 1 fictionette, which involves yummy baked goods and unorthodox sleeping arrangements. I'll try to remember to push a tweet through (which will replicate itself as a Facebook update) so y'all will know when it's up.

And then--then! Then it's back to the long-overdue short story.

Wonder of wonders, a Friday Fictionette that is on time. With accompanying audio, Wattpad excerpt, and everything. Who's impressed with me? I'm impressed with me. Especially since I stayed in bed until an embarrassingly PM hour, all achy from last night's endurance scrimmage and also tempted into devouring a book from cover to cover before venturing forth for a shower and a late start to my writing day.

(The book was Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go. It hooked me good and hard, despite moments when I wanted to yell at the author for arbitrarily prolonging everyone's state of ignorance about Important Matters. "It is time to tell you everything," says knowledgeable character, who will promptly be Interrupted By Reasons Or Bad Guys. Otherwise, I loved it. Now I need to hunt up the sequel, The Ask and the Answer.)

In any case. This week's Fictionette is "The Hole in the Middle of the Block," which is sort of a haunted house story, sort of a best friends story, and maybe possibly sort of unintentional Doctor Who fanfic. The cover art photography is mine. I went for a walk around our new neighborhood and eventually found a good stunt double for the house in the story. Also, there's a lovely little nature walk around the teeny tiny private lake just north of us.

That was the first time since the day we closed on the house (April 7, to remind you how long ago that was) that I found time to just walk around the neighborhood and let my feet get to know the place. I need to make time for that more often.

I also found time today to plant seeds! I've got lettuce things and spinach and squash things and cucumber and watermelon and tomato and pepper and corn and beans and parsley and dill and chives all in the soil now. Which is not to say they'll all necessarily come up, mind you. My balcony container gardening style is haphazard and hopeful. I just fill all available space with all the seeds, then I thin what comes up, if anything comes up and needs thinning, if I can bear to thin them. I'm a terrible softy when it comes to thinning.

Behold, another Friday Fictionette getting posted the following Wednesday. You can read an excerpt of "The Fourth Miracle of Emmaline Gray" at Patreon and, if you are so moved, become a Patron at $1/month to read the whole thing right now this second. Audio will be going up shortly after I finish this post. Wattpad... I'll probably catch up on Wattpad excerpts tomorrow.

Again, raise your hand if you're at all surprised here. I was so very optimistic--I'd do my writing in the car! And also when we arrived in Bloomington on Friday! And also after all tournament events and/or team outings on Saturday and Sunday! Which was not exactly how things went. It was kind of the exact opposite of how things went--as I would have expected had I possessed an ounce of realism during my planning stage. While John took a shift driving, I either read to him, or conversed with him, or napped, or played on my computer. While not actively doing something with my team during our time in Indiana, I was flat on the hotel bed, recovering from the drive or from the day's activities. Or cleaning my bearings and then putting my skates back together. I even failed to get my Sunday AINC reading done, because we had a 9 AM bout that morning and it didn't seem wise to sacrifice sleep and thus performance for it.

Lesson one about tournaments is this: Don't budget for anything else in the weekend other than the tournament. And allow for a day's recovery time when the tournament and all associated travel is over.

Lesson two: Mathematically, someone's gotta lose all three of their bouts and take last place. Sometimes, that someone is you. It doesn't make you a loser. It makes you a competitor, same as everyone else. The only thing that would have made you a loser is if, after the heartbreaks and mistakes and foul-outs in the second bout, your team had decided to give up and not show up for the third bout at all. But you did show up, darn it, and you fought through your best bout of the weekend. And the tournament hosts gave you mad props for tenacity in the face of adversity. And now you're home with the entire rest of the 2015 season still in front of you, and you're ready to study the footage and learn everything you can and make yourself into an even better team that'll perform better and play smarter and hit harder and earn fewer penalties and score more points next time.

Lesson two is kind of long, but that's only because it's so important.

Meanwhile, tickets are now on sale for BCB's double header season opener on Saturday, May 23. Get 'em online, at the door, or directly from your favorite Boulder County Bomber!

All right, already, it's up. "The Moon and the Mage's Gloves" is the Friday Fictionette for April 10, available in PDF and MP3 formats for Patrons at the appropriate tiers. Link goes to the excerpt posted to Patreon. The Wattpad excerpt is not yet up, nor is the one on the blog, nor yet the extra audio I meant to get to--but I'll get to those real soon now.

It felt damn good to sit down and write that thing. Even if it was only a slight, thousand word piece, it was writing and it felt good. It felt like, "That's what I'm supposed to be doing with my days." I look forward to doing more of it in the car tomorrow.

Speaking of which: I've washed my safety gear, I've put my derby wear through the delicates/hand-wash cycle and the air-dry cycle, I've gone to Target for brand new C9 "Champion" brand fitted knee pants to replace the pair that got a hole in during last season's final bout, I've bought road trip snacks at the grocery, and I've put in the car those things belonging to our league which my teammates who are flying entrusted us to take in the car. Am I ready to leave? Almost. By 9:00 AM tomorrow morning, I will be.

Am I ready for the tournament? Well. Tonight's practice was... well, it wasn't our sharpest, I'll say that much. But everyone showed up, so we had all our jammers and both of our blocker line-ups on the track. And our league's head coach as well as our team coach were there to work our butts off. And after our practice, our team coach revealed the secret that, at the beginning of practice, she said she'd share with us at the end. "The secret is this: You have to have a crappy last practice before your bout. It's a good omen."

It wasn't that crappy. Should I be worried...?

Nah.

Bloomington, Indiana: Here we come!

...pending a stopover in Kansas City! ("Do you mean the one in Kansas, or the one in Missouri?" I don't know! We'll find out when we get there!) And a freakin' whole lot of I-70!