Furious Yoga

I've been doing yoga for over a month now and I'm really enjoying it. This morning I was out of bed and all set for 40 minutes of stretching at 7:15. Yoga first thing is completely different to yoga second or third thing. It's like that first stretch when you wake up, only it lasts for 15 minutes rather than 15 seconds. I think I'm getting a little stronger too. And I'm definitely getting more flexible - only by a tiny bit, but it makes me feel good about the whole thing.

*

We went to see Fast 6 (Furious 6?) on Wednesday. So much fun. Heists and fast cars, they go together so well. I kinda want to watch the whole series now, because this movie mentions things from earlier movies - not that you need it to get what's happening.

*

I'm playing an MMO called Neverwinter at the moment. Set in the D&D world of Ferun. I prefer it to a lot of MMOs I've played. The controls are set up like a shooter, mouse-look and crosshairs (which are a circle in this case). You use abilities by pressing the mouse buttons (and Q,E, and R) and it makes combat so much easier. And so much more fun. You have to dodge attacks, aim at enemies - it's not a case of trying to remember a rotation of abilities and having 20 different keys set up. It lets you get on with playing the story rather than playing the mechanics.

I don't think I have much other news.

Archery

I've been down to the range twice since my bow arrived. Yesterday I was just remembering how things work, and shot well enough, but was wrecked after 3 ends (15 shots). Today I loosened the tension on the bow and only brought one arrow with me, forcing myself to take it easy.

I was trying new things - stance, follow-through, focusing on my target instead of sighting down the arrow. It was kind of cool, actually. Over the 40 minutes I was out I could see myself improving. The times when I remembered my steps of shooting (anchor, relax, focus, follow-through) I was only about a foot from where I wanted the arrow to go.

Now, I consider this excellent for someone who wasn't using any reference point on the bow for aim. All I did was stare at where I wanted the arrow to go and relax my body so it moved where it wanted to. My arrow landed exactly where I was looking on the x axis, but up between 1 and 2 feet on the y axis. At one stage it went clear over the whole target and had a slight run in with a rock. It got a bit scraped up, but the vanes are fine so it's all good.

I think the people shooting on the target next to me thought I was a bit crazy. They offered me extra arrows and everything. But they were friendly.

I can't wait to go again. I'm so obsessed. I'm going to have mad callouses on my fingers from pulling the string.

I Bought a Bow

Look, look! I can post again without feeling like a stranger on my own blog. Yeay.

So, this is a little random. And of course it needs a story to go along with it. We went out for brunch yesterday and I decided I wanted to go to REI (they are having a sale and I wanted to see if I could pick up a wicking string top; I couldn't, but that's not part of this story). After REI we went to the games shop and on the way home we ended up going north on the 101 instead of south.

"You know what's up this way?" I said. "Bass Pro." Yes. Bass Pro, a fishing, hunting, boating, really crazy-american (sorry Americans, but face it, you do have a penchant for going over the top with things) outdoor shop. That place was an experience - taxidermy animals all over the place, antlers lining the walls, a massive aquarium in the middle of the giant shop. I was pretty cool, but pretty frightening at the same time. I suppose hunting is such a small thing in Ireland that seeing a whole shop dedicated to it was odd.

Anyway, we just went up to see the place, because we'd been told it was worth seeing. I kinda wish I'd brought my camera, but I would have looked weird taking photos and the security people probably would have given out to me.

So, this all brings us up to the point of my story. They had a load of archery stuff upstairs (down from the racks and racks of guns and rifles) and I got all nostalgic about archery. There's a range here in Chandler by the dog park and I always look in wistfully when we pass. So we looked at bows. Not seriously, because they were all over $200, but I can't say I wasn't tempted.

That evening, as I was importing old posts into Blogger, I came across a post where I wrote about the archery class I did back in '06 / '07. And I'd written the name of the bows we used. And out of curiosity, I went on Amazon to see if they sell them. And they do...

So, I think the title of the post says all that needs to be said at this point. Well, except that it's bright blue and will be here on Wednesday and that Chandler Archery Club is giving a one-day lesson in June. they run lessons through-out the year too.

Blogger Finally Set Up

Right. Call me crazy but I just spent six days transferring my Livejournal to here. And it's not even my entire Lj - it's not even half of it. The posts only go back to 2006, where my Lj goes to 2001. But with 500-odd posts taking this long, I don't even want to think how long 1600 would take.

And how did I do it? Why did it take so long? Because blogging services hate each other. I had to use wordpress as an intermediary. But it all worked out splendidly - tags and comments came over, which is pretty cool. I'd been willing to settle for posts alone, but this is way better.

So, farewell, Livejournal. We've had fun, you and I. But you've lost your way. You want to be a social media outlet first and a place for lowly writers to rant about their lives second. I can't say I won't miss you, but at least now posting updates is fun again. And I'll still be checking my friends page, and I may even set up some kind of auto-post-to-Lj when I post here thing, if I can be bothered figuring it out.

Into Darkness

We went to see Star Trek into Darkness last night. A kind of spur of the moment thing; Liam had this idea that it was out on Thursday (even thought the posters said Friday), checked the cinema website, and sure enough it was on.

Go see this movie!

If you enjoyed the last Star Trek movie at all, you will love this. Everything about it is perfect. But I think my most favourite aspect was the characters, and specifically the antagonist. Talk about amazing character development. Here is a bad guy you respect, who you care for. He's not simply a man out for destruction - he has a worthy goal. It just happens to clash with Kirk's worthy goal.

I'm playing scenes out in my head just thinking about it, and Abrams really did a masterful job with this. Everything ties in to everything else so well.

I really hope he does another one.

Short Story Submission

I just dithered for about half an hour over sending an email. Now, I'm pretty good at dithering over emails in general (Have I spelled everything right? Does it make sense? Do I sound like a fool?) but this email was special.

It's the first time I've submitted my writing in the hopes of getting accepted and paid for it. Imagine it - me, published. My heart does a little dance and I can't help smiling when I think of it. And then my brain steps in and reminds me that there will be hundreds of other writers submitting, and that my story doesn't stand much of a chance of being accepted. But still. It's exciting. And now I need to forget about it until August, when they announce the line-up.

Until then, it's back to Zachery and all his troubles. Though, I really enjoyed* writing this short story and am considering writing more. But I need to give Zachery some attention first. He gets very angsty when I leave him alone for too long.


*It's so easy to say I enjoyed it when it's finished. You should have seen me agonise over it when things weren't working out. I even gave up at one point, but my subconscious wouldn't let me off that easily. It continued to work though the snarly knot I'd made of things and drove me back to the story so it could see if its solution worked.