1. Breakfast at the neighborhood breakfast joint where we've never eaten even though it's literally across the street. I went for straight-forward bacon and eggs, but they have a fine array of Mexican-inflected items on the menu I want to try. It was really good. And it was right across the street. It's going to make me so fat.

2. Shopped for toilet paper and Cheerios. Then got my mom the first Midnighters book and The Lightning Thief for Mother's Day.

3. Hit up a coffee joint and worked on the series proposal I'm hoping to wrap up this week.

4. Happy-hour sushi. Including one-cent sake. Yum. Oof. Yum.

5. Beach.



6. Starship-motortrike.



7. Mississippi paddle-wheel traversing a bay in San Diego between two Polynesian resorts.

It's been a very nice, bum-around sort of weekend. Yesterday morning the weather was too perfect, so we strolled along the bay and out to the beach and had a relaxing breakfast at Seaside Cantina. Great place to watch waves and people.

Returned home after wading in the surf and caught a showing of Iron Man. I don't think I liked it quite as much as some people, but I really enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance, and the suit was totally neat. Sometimes superhero movies turn into CGI cartoons in the last half hour, but there were enough shots of Tony Stark's face behind the helmet that I never felt I'd lost contact with the character and shifted into a different movie.

Stopped at the market on the way home from the movie for sandwich fixings, came home and quickly assembled a picnic, and then headed out to sit on the sand by the bay and munch. I even snuck a beer out there, which you're not supposed to do anymore on account of the hundreds of drunken knuckleheads who rioted last Labor Day. I quietly drank my beer and did not riot.

I've already gotten some feedback on the novel from very-first readers, who caught some stupid things I thought I could get away with, some dumb decisions I made with pacing, and various and sundry. Trying to fix some of that today.

Now, however, I am sleepy.

Since most people reading my LiveJournal do it through their friends list, it's perhaps not evident that the name of this journal is Writing and Snacks. I feel as though I've been neglecting the snacks.

I will be watching the Super Bowl this evening, but I won't care about the combatants. If the Chargers had made it, I might have been able to generate some local interest on account of living in San Diego. If the Packers had gotten in, at least there'd be a narrative I could care about: the grizzled old general versus the blandly handsome prince. Or something.

Andy Rooney had an essay (I used to read Andy Rooney essays when I was in junior high, because that's the kind of kid I was) that recommended picking a team to root for or against when you watch sports. You could make your decision based on the color of the teams' uniforms, or maybe you once had a bad hotel room in one of the team's cities. It really doesn't matter why, as long as you pick.

I've never been to New York, and I can't even remember where the New England Patriots are from. As far as I know, both teams wear dark blue outfits.

Despite my lack of interest in the game, I am very interested in the snacks. There will be garlic potato chips, chicken empanadas, hot wings, and English hooligan beer. If I remember to look up at halftime, I'll wipe wing sauce from my jowls and see if Tom Petty can do a stadium medley.

It sounds like I won't have fun, but I will. I'm probably sounding grouchy because I read too much Andy Rooney when I was a kid.

Should you happen to go out to lunch with your good friend Zilla and order the extra-hot wings?

Wash your hands before you try to put in your contacts.

Wash them thoroughly.

And then wash them again.

You're welcome.

Woke up with the alarm (on a Sunday morning, blech!) for a writing run at the coffee joint. The lemon cake was good, Lisa was vexed by a fly, and I killed Odin.

I'm not going to hit the finish line tonight, and tomorrow's another day of crazy running around, but I got a reprieve on my deadline for Blue Heaven (the way it works is that everybody reads everyone else's first 50 pages, and then two people read and critique your entire novel, and my two people are lovely and cool and told me to take my time), so I can stop panicking just an eensy weensy little bit and have everything wrapped up by the end of the week. Huge relief.



***

wheatland_press is so right about Steve Nash being the toughest guy in the NBA. Tony Parker viciously head-butts Nash and then goes to cry on the bench with his booboo while Nash sinks a three-pointer with brains and blood and gore cascading from his demolished nose before being benched by the refs for uncontrollable bleeding. The Suns didn't play a good game, but with their captain and the rightful MVP out on the floor, the last minute could have gone much differently. We'll take our vengeance Tuesday night after Nash gets his nose re-attached.

***

I honestly don't know WHAT the HELL kind of SHITCRACK I was smoking when I said the new Rush album wasn't exciting me. Now that I've had six whole days to listen to it again and again and again and again, I declare that it's kick-you-in-the-gut-and-make-your-spirit-soar fantastic.

I'm giving up the shitcrack. Seriously. It makes your brain all stupid plus dumb.

***

Dinner. (There were some leftovers. Some.)

I'm aiming to make this a productive yet relaxing Sunday. I've already had one work session at the coffee joint, but I still need another 8 or 9 pages to hit my writing goal today. But I also need to give myself time to hang out by the tree and grill burgers and chicken, and there's Suns vs. Lakers (Kobe sucks!), so I'll be keeping my laptop handy while the TV's on.

Right now, I've got cheese puffs and beer for my second breakfast. I am so happy.

Airplane seat pockets are not my friend. I left my copy of Throne of Jade in my seat pocket last week, which wouldn't be a big deal, but I also lost my favorite bookmark, this little leather strip with a frog on it that, for some reason I can't even explain, never failed to make me laugh, sometimes hysterically.

Gosh, losing my frog bookmark made me sad. I once left my iPod in an airplane seat pocket, and that didn't make me anywhere near as sad as losing my frog bookmark.

Ah, well. Maybe my frog bookmark will enjoy a grand adventure.

***

The writing went sluggy this morning. Not even a donut could help. (The donut was actually intended to help with rapidly sinking blood sugar, but I figured it couldn't hurt the writing.)

I was going to write this whole thing about kung fu and writing and whatever, but this afternoon the weather was perfect, blue and breezy and in the low 70's, so I sat in the shade of a friendly tree and grilled a tri-tip and BBQ'd some chicken and drank Pacifico and ate it with yummy salad and baked beans that Lisa fixed, and now I'm all buzzed on beer and protein, and all else pales in significance.

Also, the Suns beat the Lakers. Life is good.

(Writing did occur.)

Despite getting a lot of good exercise this weekend, I feel really, really fat. I wonder if it might have anything to do with what I've ingested the last couple of days: lemon cake, multiple vanilla lattes, beer, fried chicken, bacon and eggs and pancakes, cookies, a quesadilla and chips, pizza, sangria.

I mean, Jesus H.

Not much point in doing six hours of kung fu and then throwing gobs of fat and carbohydrates down my gullet. Bodhidharma would be very disappointed in me.

But, oh, the sangria and pizza were so good.

At least how publishing works in one writer's experience:

sallytuppence (that's Sarah Prineas) recently scored a totally sweet multiple book deal with HarperCollins for her middle-grade fantasy trilogy, Magic Thief, with a new foreign rights deal coming in just about every other day. I was lucky enough to get to read the first volume in the series last year, and it's extremely well done and just a whole bunch of fun and pretty darn wonderful.

Sarah's going to blog from time to time about her experiences as a new author suddenly faced with the arcana of big-time publishing, and I've already found her first entry on the topic fascinating. It's great that she's willing to share what she's going through for the edification of folks like me. Thanks, Sarah!

***

Tangent Online reviews 23 Small Disasters.

***

When you have a beery lunch with certain people and the subject of coxswains comes up, you can't not giggle. Just go ahead and try it yourself if you think you're so mature.

***

I'm really liking my office lately.

Going over proofs is one of the more painful steps in the writing process. Man, there's some sloppy writing in this story. And what makes it worse is that the proofs are for a reprint, so my sins have already been committed in public. I mean, errors in verb tense? Cringe!

I will never be one of those writers who feels he doesn't need an editor.

I need an editor to make sure I don't go out with spinach in my teeth, for sure.

***

I've had a really good writing day today. A whole new chapter! (Helps that it was actually a previously written chapter into which I was inserting an additional character, but since it's me helping myself, it still counts.)

Plus, plus, plus, I had French toast for breakfast And bacon! And I'm wearing my special orange shirt of sunny disposition!

( daily cup/page pic below cut )

Dad's payday meant we'd either go to Sizzler in Marina Del Rey, or Shakey's Pizza at Brockton and Santa Monica Boulevard. I loved to stand on top of the platform in front of the window by the kitchen and watch the pizza chefs spin dough. I loved all the antiques they hung from the walls and the ceiling to give the place an old timey feel. I loved the turn-of-the-century newspaper pages on the table tops featuring men with huge, waxed mustaches and ads for artificial limbs. I loved air hockey and Pong. I loved the player piano, always loaded with ragtime rolls.

The chain got its name from co-founder Sherwood "Shakey" Johnson, who got his nickname from nerve damage he suffered while serving in World War II.

You gotta love a pizza place named in honor of one of the founder's tremors.

All of this I mention because an elderly gentleman at the coffee joint is banging out "Put Another Nickel In" and "The Entertainer," and, damn, now all I want to do is eat pizza and play Pong.

Twice now when I've looked to my left and seen the GIGANTIC YELLOW FACE STARING DOWN AT ME I've realized it's just a plexiglass component of the big Calderesque mobile hanging from the ceiling in time to avoid screaming and throwing my drink at it. But they were close calls, both occasions.

***

God, I owe a bunch of people critiques. And on really good things, too.

***

There needs to be a reference tool that knows the word I'm looking for when I'm too dumb to think of it. I settled for chittering, but that's not even close. It's more of a clacking that I'm after. It's really a blend of chittering and clacking. And I think I've already exceeded the allowable quota for made-up words in a single work of fiction.

***

Scientist develops caffeinated donuts -- thanks, shaolingrrl.

I've started adding the unfortunately named Xtreme Bean to my coffee joint rotation. I used to kind of hate the place, largely because they replaced the shabby funkiness of the Gold Bar (the old coffee joint that used to be in this building) with a sort of glossy corporate look, even though Xtreme is indie. It made no sense to me. But a few years down the line, much of the gloss has worn off, and some cozy clutter has accumulated (like used books for a buck or two, an overflowing community bulletin board, stuff like that), and they've done away with the annoying free-but-password-required wifi and replaced it with simply free wifi, and they're playing a solid mix of old fart 90's stuff (Nirvana, Soundgarden, the Chili Peppers, Counting Crows, selections of that ilk), and I think the major improvement is simply that's it's a lot darker in here now.

I just have to train them to give me my drink in a proper ceramic mug, and I think we'll be in business.

I wrote a couple-few thousand words here last week, and I hope to write a couple-few thousand more here this week (and at Steve's Espresso, and at the Starbucks down the street, but not at the new Gold Bar across the street, because the guy that runs that place is an idiot and half the time there's a 5-piece jazz band blaring away in there and the chairs are all these wobbly wire bistro pieces of dumbness).

This is basically what I want out of a coffee joint:
1. Good coffee beverages
2. Courteous, efficient baristas
3. Enough tables such that I can enjoy my good coffee beverage at a table
4. Enough electrical outlets such that I can plug in my laptop
5. Free wifi, such that I can procrastinate and waste time when I feel like it
6. Colorful neighborhood characters who don't make loud noises or pull guns on me or ask me for money
7. Chairs with lumbar support
8. Yummy snacks, both sweet and savory
9. Walking, or at least short driving distance
10. General cozy funkiness

I haven't found the perfect coffee joint yet, but I'm like Galahad in this. I'll keep looking. The one Tim used to frequent in Santa Cruz, Pergolesi, seemed to come close, but I only spent one morning there, and it currently fails the walking or short driving distance test for me. They did, however, have a cat that sat still long enough for me to bother it with my camera. They also served beer.

I managed to finish off a troublesome chapter yesterday, and I'm trying to finish off another troublesome chapter today. I don't know when exactly this happened, but I crossed the 300 page mark quite recently, though I'm not sure how much that means since there's a whole character I've decided to delete, and there's all those troublesome chapters to rewrite. So, a great deal of work left to do, but progress is progressing.

Oh, also, I had a terrific, relaxing, delicious weekend.

As you can see in the photo below, I have empty pages at the end of my manuscript, and it doesn't look like anyone else is gonna volunteer to fill them up for me, so I guess I should stop faking and start writing.

Have any of you ever taken that orange powder that comes with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and mixed it with margarine to spread on toast?

Cuz I just dreamed it up a few minutes ago and I'm thinking it's a brilliant idea. But not so brilliant that I want to be the first one to try it.

I'm having a cozy, relaxing Sunday morning at home with coffee in my monster mug, a sausage, egg and cheese croissant, and the morning interthing-clicky-papers. I do sometimes miss flipping through the LA Times Sunday edition, with Calvin and Hobbes, and the book section helping to grow me up literate, Jonathan Gold (one of the best LA writers since Raymond Chandler, even though he lives in New York now) and his musings on obscure lunch counters on Pico Boulevard, and Robert Hilburn's generally idiotic concert and record reviews ... but the interthing-clickies make sharing much easier.

Some items:

Good grammar saves lives!!

Some short chains of amino acids have been found to kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Gregory Stephanopoulos at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues reasoned that if the amino acid sequences of these peptides were treated as a language with grammatical rules, the rules could be used to create new peptides with similar properties.

Itty-bitty (albeit extinct) water buffalo!

The extinct creatures were similar to a modern species of small water buffalo that lives on the nearby Philippines island of Mindoro. That animal—the middle outline in the drawing—reaches about 3 feet (0.9 meter) tall. It is related to the Asian water buffalo—the topmost outline—an even larger modern species that stands about 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall and can weigh up to a ton.

You've probably heard of Pat Tillman, the NFL player who left football to join the Army after September 11 and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He served with his younger brother Kevin, who has remained silently out of the media until now:

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Dismiss that, Mr. Bush. Condescend to that. I know you will, but when you do, I hope your supporters feel queasy.

Kevin Tillman's whole piece is worth reading.

And, finally, so as not to end this entry with tooth-enamel-splintering rage, the best wildlife photos of 2006.

Caught an early matinee showing of Jet Li's Fearless, and though it was kinda cheesy, and Jet Li's acting kinda hammy (unlike his restrained performance in Hero, or his poignant performance in Unleashed), I did enjoy it for the great sets and costumes and the kick-ass martial arts action. He claims this is his last martial arts epic, and I truly hope that's not so. Maybe he can't keep up with the acrobatic stuff for much longer (he's 43 now), but I'd love to see the grace and poise of an ageing martial artist in big, sweeping epics with cool costumes and great sets.

The movie left me with a craving for Chinese food (much as Bladerunner always makes me run out for Japanese), and we ended up at a pretty good Chinese restaurant for dinner. My cookie yielded the following fortune: "You have had a good start. Work harder."

That's a very direct and absolutely spot-on fortune.

After dinner, went to hear Michael Chabon read at the beautiful old Orpheum Theatre in downtown Phoenix. He focused his selections around the theme of beginnings -- beginnings as in one's personal origins, and beginnings as in beginning a story. So, he read from a piece that he'd written in response to an assignment from the Washington Post, to write about summer in Maryland. And instead of just reading the piece he turned in, he also shared two of his lengthy false starts, stories that failed to keep his interest, that never ignited, that stalled, that died. In other words, he shared his failures, and I really appreciated that. The story that he did finish (which incorporated some cannibalized bits from one of the previous efforts) was quite good, but it was also a failure in a sense, because he'd misunderstood the WaPo assignment and had written fiction when they had wanted memoir. He didn't mention the title of the story, and he didn't mention finding a home for it, but in any case, it served as a wonderful illustration of how Chabon develops his stories, his relationship to self-criticism, and how he handles the task of taking memories, experiences, and people from his life and, in his words, betraying them to craft fiction.

I love good writer talk from good writers.

Steak and eggs for lunch.

Not that bad.

The temperatures are approaching nice in these parts. The days are still warm, but the mornings and evenings are not at all bad, and this morning my walk to the coffee joint was absolutely pleasant.

There's an interesting woman at the next table, wizened, somewhere between middle and old age. She's reading the newspaper, not drinking anything, and has a large, overstuffed suitcase beside her. Today she's dressed in a rather elegant, long, royal blue velour dress. The last time I saw her here, it was a totally groovy striped mini-dress with calf-high gogo boots.

An odd duck, but she exhibits only a few alarming behaviors.

***

We've got some new white belts at the kung fu school, a trio of guys that have all trained in muay thai. I've sparred one of them and spoken with another, and I don't think they understand how we spar at our school. They want to win, and it's not supposed to be about winning.

At my kempo school, it was about winning. There, we did tournament-style points sparring. Two points for a kick, one point for a hit, first person to five points wins. At the kung fu school, sparring is not competition. It's practice. It's learning. Instead of scoring points, we spar to practice the application of techniques. If you try a technique ten times, twenty times, thirty times, and your partner blocks your attack and gets in a counterstrike every time, it's okay. Losing is fine. We invest in loss. It's how we learn and advance. It's hell on the ego, but many people invest too much in ego. I certainly do. (I think there's much wisdom in this approach, this idea of investing in loss, and I've been trying to generalize these lessons to the rest of my life recently. But I guess pursuing a career as a writer requires similar investment, which is one I've been willing to make for years and years.)

So, when one of these muay thai guys was bragging to me about his sparring conquests, I had to walk away. It's not my place to correct his attitude, but I hope he gets it, and soon.

***

But, oh! We've got a four-hour sparring class Saturday in the park! I'm gonna be so beat, and so beaten up. But I can't wait!

***

Shaolingrrl has a much more cogent entry about martial arts and writing that I commend to your attention.

***

Okay, when I wasn't looking, the lady at the next table changed her outfit. Long-sleeved blue shirt, black skirt, black socks and shoes. I hope she changed in the restroom.