| Friday September 27th 2002 My apologies to IE users - this is supposed to be Arial font. It looks fine in Netscape (shrug). The Dragonboat racing began on a fine 8:30 morning last Sunday. We were the first race of the day, and got off to a fine start - or so I thought, except it felt like we were hardly moving. Six practices went to naught, the other boat finishing several boatlengths ahead of us. We were pretty depressed as we all piled out, trying our best to keep our chins up. So we headed home to relax, til our second and last race of the day that afternoon. In the interim, every other team who used our boat lost. Consistently. All of them. So the organizers thought it wise to inspect the boat. Zebra mussels, all over the bottom. Other boat - nothing. Aha. Second race - won it by a hair, and we earned it too - got myself good and wet with all the careless, frantic paddling. Our team finished 11th out of 16 - not so bad, I guess. But I doubt I'd do it again. Just a little too much work and too little fun for my taste. Wednesday was my first night back at writing critique class. Seems we have another interesting bunch of students, only one other a veteran from the summer like myself. I'm working hard just to find time to critique the submissions others have made, never mind come up with something of my own, but I'll get there. We're expected to submit two stories over the course of the semester. One I'm intending to be a story I submitted this summer already, now entering its third draft. The other I've already written a first draft of, but it needs serious work to bring out the main point. Still, better than having to start something from scratch. All of my time lately has been LA's to command. When she calls, I happily drop whatever it is I'm doing and we chat til my phone dies. I think it's finally going on strike - darn thing refuses to recharge. I'll have to buy a cheap non-cordless one to get me by, I guess, nice part being it'll never quit. Bad part being I can't stroll aimlessly around my apartment as I'm prone to doing when talking on the phone - or maybe that's a good thing too. I'm working on linking my old diary pages together more efficiently; you'll see extra links in everything prior to July linking to the next and previous entries, and I'll get the others up to par too, bit by bit. Just another pet project for me to work on when I find the time in my increasingly hectic schedule. Not this weekend though - I'm going back to see LA! |