Lacey Kaye

OMG.

IT. HURTS.

Here’s the story, with special directors’ commentary at the end:

As you may or may not know, 2008 is the Year Lacey Becomes Awesome. I decided this in March and have been slowly working toward it. Kayaking and entering a 5K are part of this, as are losing 50 pounds, taking a dirt bike riding course (finally!), sky diving, learning to snow board and [edited for content].

But I digress.

So I’d been thinking about buying a kayak, but I couldn’t figure out where to put it. My condo would never let me keep it outside. Even if I decided to keep it in my office, it would still have the additional problem of how I would cart it out to my car and lift it up onto the hood - and can you even put a kayak on the hood of a Ford Focus?

So that was sort of a disappointment. Then Lisa got a cute little VW bug and I was totally jealous. But my car is in perfectly good working condition (knock on wood) and it gets 33 mpg - pretty hard to beat, even these days.

So then I was driving to or from work the other day, and I realized if I had a motorcycle, I could use the carpool lane. And a motorcycle gets excellent gas mileage, while having the added bonus of being Awesome. Even though it’s only drivable 6 months of the year, that would still be pretty darn awesome. So I was toying with the idea of getting one when yesterday happened.

Of course, I had plans to go home and write and get lots of sleep and do all the things I said I was going to do. But then Sara imed me and she said she was going to her boot camp class and did I want to come? Well, I had to work out anyway, so I was like, sure! I’ll try it. Sounds fun. So I went and when I got there, another girl was just coming in. A super-cute Asian chick in a motorcycle jacket and boots. Sara asked what she rode and they were talking, and then Sara said her husband wanted to get her a new bike because hers was too slow.

So I was like, Oh? You’re selling yours? And she said no, probably not; her husband (Jeff) doesn’t believe in selling bikes. He just wants her to buy a bigger bike so she can keep up with him. Then Sara said, why? Do you want to get one? And I was like, as a matter a fact, it has occurred to me that I would love to have a motorcycle.

So she invited me to come ride hers, which I did - before I chickened out! hehehehe

Sara gave me her helmet and a very basic run-down of how a bike works. In her mind, this was not a problem. In my mind, it was a cluster waiting to happen. But I (stupidly) sat on the bike and did what (I thought) she said. As you have probably guessed by now, I released the clutch too fast, sending the bike popping forward at what seemed like a careening speed, and then instead of gripping the clutch or braking, I opened the throttle, which made the bike lurch forward (and I mean speed down the street instead of stop, not just give a little buck). This made me panic (as the houses were whizzing by and I’m holding onto the bike for dear life), which only seems to have resulted in my opening the throttle even more, until finally, when I was sure I was going straight down the hill with no way to stop, the bike suddenly STOPPED (because I apparently finally figured out how to brake with my right hand instead of hit the gas with my right hand - why would those two be on the same hand?! well, I guess your foot does both brake and gas, but still…) and when the bike STOPPED, it slid to the right and I went down on my right side. The bike landed on top of me, demolishing the right turn signal and bending in the foot brake (foot brake?! Now you tell me!). No dents or scratches to the bike, thank God, but I wasn’t so lucky. My right arm is cut, bruised and burned from the fall (I was wearing a t shirt, jeans, and sneakers) and my right knee is banged up pretty good. So is my ankle, though it’s a lot less banged up than my knee. The helmet sustained a large scrape right across the visor.

So they’re running down the street laughing and screaming and going OMG OMG OMG!! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?! and I’m going THE BIKE! THE BIKE! OMG, I’M SO SORRY!! And so after we looked at the bike, Sara took me in to bandage up the bleeding cuts on my elbow and give me some ibuprofen, and then Jeff brought me right back out again to actually learn how to ride. Which, it turns out, while not being quite as exciting as crashing the bike, was pretty damn fun, too.

I’m signed up for a novice licensing course in September. By then, I should have a bike of my own to crash

Bonus Commentary

Jeff Says:

I have to admit, Lacey went big on this one. My memory is a little fuzzy because of all the excitement, but I’m pretty sure she pulled a bit of a wheelie at the start and I know she went into a front tire slide. All and all, it was a pretty ballsy move.

Sara Says:

Wow! So, uh, Lacey’s Family and Close Friends: Please don’t think we’re (I’m)  trying to endanger Lacey’s life. Really, it was spectacular but it’s not like she was any where near a death experience. Plus the healthy benefits from the 2 hour boot camp class before the motorcycle ride probably added to her life-span, so see, I’m a GREAT friend.

Lacey’s Mom: Please still let Lacey come out and play with us. We’re really not bad influences! (hehehehe! Evil Laugh)

I just crashed a motorcycle.

Rock.

Today, I became an XS. That’s right - I bought my first ever XS anything. I actually bought three XSs: two tank tops and a running skirt. And to help you understand what a milestone that is, when I first went and bought an official running outfit, I bought the pants, not the shorts. The shorts! Scary! Nope, I got the yoga pants and matching long-sleeved jacket. The jacket, especially, smoothed out the unsightly bulges created by the super-tight tank.

The tank has been getting looser every week, and Seattle finally decided to warm up enough that I’m dying out there in my pants. But wear shorts? Never! To even think! Ack!

I had another problem. I’m for Florida and then San Francisco and then Vegas, and I have no summer gear. In fact, I own thirty suits and almost nothing else. (I’ve been slowly increasing my going-out wardrobe, but it’s hard because I’m so picky.) Today I made the “mistake” of walking into Target, telling myself I would just look. Just a peek…it couldn’t hurt, right?

Well, Target has TONS of shorts right now. And I own exactly 0 pairs of shorts. Make that owned. I start my foray amid the racks of board shorts, which have long, tube-like legs, and then go for the narrower yet still long Bermuda shorts. I stay far, far away from the hot pants. The kind I used to wear back in high school. The kind Jessica Simpson has pretty much cornered the market on.

Let’s backtrack for a moment, shall we? When I went to college, I gave all my short shorts to my brother’s girlfriend. That was almost 10 years ago. I’ve missed them ever since, but seriously. When was I ever going to wear them again? They look like doll clothes, and I don’t even own any long shorts. I’m pants all the way. But just before I started working out last  year, I mean really, really hard, I realized something. I realized two things, actually. The first was that *I’d* given her those shorts. Me. As an adult. As in, today I look at her and I think, “No way.” But at some point, I was that thin. Because I gave her those shorts she looked so great in at Christmas. Cue motivation alert.

The other thing I realized, as I’ve said somewhere here before, is that the guys at work think the picture of my mom on my desk is totally hot. They also usually think it’s me in high school. Hehehehe. So I realized, wait a minute. If I could lose the weight, I could potentially look as cute as my mom.

Which brings me back to today. To date, I’ve lost almost 30lbs. It’s been a slow loss, but it’s come with life changes, so I’m happy to be patient. Even if it’s slow, it’s entertaining*, and that’s skipping all the mind-bending shenanigans that have gone on in my head while coming to grips with the changes in my self-esteem. Although, mind-bending shenanigans are probably what prompted me to try on the tiny shorts in the first place.

* pause here to say I have thoughts on this; expect a blog post about it on Thursday at manuscriptmavens.com

Ok, it’s not entirely true mind-bending shenanigans melted my sense of self-preservation, but it’s really, really, really close. What didn’t hurt is that the dressing room had a 360 degree mirror, and I happened to catch a glimpse of myself from the rear. And after staring for several long seconds, I concluded…hey…it’s not so scary back there anymore.

Must be all the running. I’m up to 10 miles a week.

So THEN I tried on the shorts. And then I screeched and did a happy dance. And then I promptly bought a pair in every color, and a sexy shirt to match. Now all I must needs do is locate my wily nemesis, as my powers of enchantment grow stronger every day.

MUAH HA HA HA HA

Julia Quinn used truthiness in The Lost Duke of Wyndham. Does anyone else find this hysterical?

Over the last month, I’ve done exactly one productive thing. Unfortunately, that productive thing wasn’t writing a book. In fact, in the last six months I’ve done almost nothing productive when it comes to writing a book. I’m not okay with that, but that concern is for another post.

Long-time readers know I’m a process engineer. I’m devoted to studying and improving productivity and output; it’s my passion. I never thought I could go at it, though, with the same sort of single-minded determination I used to use to write novels. Engineering seems so…black and white. I guess I was just waiting for the right opportunity.

A month ago, I became head of a project that meant big time savings for my organization. It had the potential to improve communication between various orgs, and almost assuredly would create higher morale and job satisfaction for my minions and minions everywhere. The only problem was I had 3 weeks to pull the whole thing off, including implementation and beta testing. During those three weeks, I received requests for the same program to be implemented at other sites — that would be the program we hadn’t even written yet.

And I have a life.

Suddenly, I felt very, very kindred with Maven Erica My phone wouldn’t stop ringing. My email was full of bug reports and frequently asked questions. I had one week to get 100 people up to speed on a user interface that had never been tested and was barely developed. I had three devoted coders working around the clock to keep up with the changes. I was making phone calls and shooting off emails to organizations I’d never contacted before and presenting the concept to managers I desperately needed to have buy in from.

It was so, so awesome.

The energy was amazing. Apparently, I thrive on God-awful deadlines. Who knew? And seeing all the shocked-yet-hopeful faces when it was announced the project had eliminated the need for the daily afternoon meeting we’d been having for thirty years — quite literally, priceless.

I wonder if we’re authors because we like to see what’s in our imagination come alive. I can equate every step in this project with the same sort of ephemeral buzz I get when writing. First, we had a workshop to talk about the future state [of the meeting we ended up eliminating, w00t]. That was like when I get together with the Mavens and brainstorm the concept of a novel. Then I was locked in a room with three bright, enthusiastic coders ready to tackle the logic to create the software — that was like storyboarding. (We even had food.) Then we banged out a draft just to see if the concept worked; I don’t need to draw this part of the picture for you. Then we fine-tuned it, and then, knowing it was buggy as hell, we released it into the world to have beta testers help us locate and smash them. (Contesting and beta reading, anyone?)

It was and still is hard to come in every day to my inbox and realize the interface isn’t perfect. It will probably never be perfect, as it’s written in Visual Basic and heavily utilizes Microsoft programs…(sorry, Keira, but it’s true). But when the feedback is positive — wow. Is that a great feeling or what? And when we’re improving job satisfaction, not just because we’re saving faceless money, but because we’re literally helping people have a better day…that’s nothing short of amazing.

The only problem is that during this time, my “life” became about this project. Either I was working on this project or not sleeping because of this project or worrying about this project or out kicking it with friends, valiantly trying to forget about this project. And now, just 2 days from full implementation, I’m still blogging about this project. It never ends!

But I am trying. My game plan this last week has been to come home ON TIME (+/- an hour of over time), work out, take a nap, and either a) play with my Xbox (damn you, Ryu!) b) watch an episode or two of LOST (can you really watch just one?) c) read a book (Lost Duke of Wyndham is on my TBR) d) go to happy hour (no comment) or e) do nothing. Yes, that’s right. Do nothing.

But we had to filter through a, b, c, and d to get to nothing.

YOUR TURN: Do you ever let yourself stop? Do you ever feel like even when you’re “relaxing,” you’re really trying to cram something fun into your day? Do you ever find yourself replacing the joy of writing (Freudian? I just typed “job”) with the joy of something else? (there goes that job again)

The last 3 and a half weeks of silence can be summed up like this:

• 1 impossible project deadline reached
• 40 hours of overtime charged
• 1 quarter of a million dollars in process improvements 
• 250 less meetings per year
• 1 crash-and-burn non-relationship
• 1.5 bottles of wine
• 17 sleepless nights
• 28 miles run
• 3.5 pounds lost
• 4 new friends made
• 1 plasma tv
• 1 home invasion adventure
• 4 Match.com winks
• 2 “skinny” shirts looking fabulous
• 1 dry streak broken
• 1 minion crisis averted
• 1 minion who will never, ever be allowed to go on vacation again (you know who you are)
• 1 level 5 HD Puzzle Fighter milestone smashed
• 3 turbo bitch breakdowns
• 9 pull-me-off-the-ledge-God-hurry-up-I’m-going-over email/IM sessions
• 1 crushing agent rejection
• 0 manuscripts opened
• 1 new laptop
• 1000x my appreciation for my friends

What have you been up to?

This week, I decided to check out online dating. I have several friends who’ve been doing it for years and while I suppose that might mean they haven’t technically been successful (as arguably, were they “successful” they would not still be dating), they’ve had enough harmless fun with it that I figured it couldn’t hurt to find out what it’s all about.

What’s our motto again? Oh, research. Right. Research.

My first order of business was to create my profile. Should be easy, right? I have pictures of me and I know me and I know how to click a check box. The “What is your favorite thing to do?” text boxes should be a cinch. I mean, I write romance novels. I convince higher-ups to fund my crazy ideas <em>all the time</em>. Surely, between those two talents I must be able to write <em>something</em> that will generate a little interest in me.

Never, ever underestimate how difficult it is to write an online dating profile. On the one hand, you’re selling yourself. Should be easy — just list your good points, right? But on the other hand, you’re paying money to find people who like you just the way you are. Why jeopardize that with a varnished version of the truth?

I’ve browsed perhaps 50 men between the ages of 26 and 35 and I have to tell you, I’m surprised at the number of intelligent, well-though-out profiles I’ve seen out there. I’m not sure if this is a function of the type of people who are most likely to a) be able to shell out the money for an arguably overpriced online dating site b) be interested enough in finding a relationship to shell out money for an online dating site or c) meet the education level and income level I’ve narrowed my search to, but I’d say if nothing else, there’s good news out there for women everywhere. Not every single man in the world just lurched out of his Xbox cave, grunting and dragging pin up calendars behind him.

The only downside to the online dating thing — okay, actually there are two — is that if I try to narrow my search to the few qualities I consider absolutely imperative, I match exactly…<em>zero</em> men. Now, that is partly because lots of people don’t fill out all their fields, and you can’t match with a blank field. But that’s also partly because let’s face it, we can’t always get what we want. Sometimes what we think we want is wrong. Isn’t that how every romance novel relationship starts out, anyway?

I’m not saying one needs to settle to find a match (I would never, ever say that), but just that it might be a better approach to look for a little chemistry to start things off. I’m not speaking from online dating experience here, as I just started three days ago. But scanning a list of potential qualities really doesn’t give me the same thrill reading a really well-written, witty, engaging, slightly sarcastic profile (uh, with a hot picture) does.

I have no idea where I’m going with this.

YOUR TURN: Have you ever tried online dating? Blind dating? (I haven’t yet…better put that on the list of things to do!) Speed dating? Are you a stickler for some quality in a mate? What world views constitute no-gos for you? Can I deduct my online dating fee in my taxes if I write a book about it?!

This week, I got a rejection letter that was very nearly a perfect summation of every rejection I’ve ever received. Bummer, yes. HUGE bummer. But never one to focus on the roiling disappointment of a bruised sky when the weatherman predicted sunny all week, I dug out my telescope and located my silver lining through the rain. A thin lining, perhaps, but definitely something to celebrate.

Nowhere in the 1-page (typed, single spaced) Rejection Letter to Eat All Other Rejections did she mention my hero was too weak to take on my heroine. WOOO HOOOO! Party time! What a nice hurdle to have finally overcome. I know exactly who to thank for that, too, and I’m sure the long-time MaveFave I’m referring to knows who she is, too.

What I loved about her advice and what made it so easy to take is that she “got” my concept and worked with it, instead of telling me (as so many others have done) that I needed to can my beta hero and go with something a little more saleable. Double bonus: not only did she come up with a solution, but she came up with a mindset that I, as the writer, could easily slip into while working on said revision. She said, “Whenever X happens, he needs to think Y. And then he needs to act on it.”

Action. Right.

So thanks, Steathly Ninja MaveFave, and thanks to the Mavens for holding my hand through the Revision Letter to End Every Writer’s Dreams.

We all read blogs, talk with fellow writers, devour books on craft, and listen to RWA conference lectures over and over — to name a few of the more obvious resources at our disposal. What I’m wondering is, how often does any of that affect our technique? Do we read others’ how-tos and test out the ones that appeal to us, or do we mire ourselves in “I could never do it that way” and “that would make me crazy”?

(Un)specifically, my family recently had a huge email thread on exercise going. Exercise is one of those things we all know (and have always known) we should do, but most of us don’t do it. I bet there are as many ways to implement exercise into one’s regimen as there are people in the world. My brother pointed out that many of us benchmark what other people are doing and try to implement that routine with disastrous results. He hypothesized that it can be more self-defeating to try to do it someone else’s way than to not do it at all. It’s a matter of ownership. As long as I’m not trying to do it your way, I’m doing it my way (which may be not at all). But as soon as I try to do it your way, I’m inherently not doing it my way, and my brain (often) immediately starts fighting back.

He suggested it might be more productive to think about and truly understand your personal goal and your reasons for wanting to reach it than to ask around and find out what other people are targeting and how they are working to reach it.

Now, you may be thinking that this post is, in fact, yet another example of how someone does something in a way that doesn’t feel natural to you…just sit back and enjoy the irony I happened to think his opinion was an interesting take on self-improvement. Do you copy the NYT author who writes 4 pages a day, or do you seek out your own internal rhythm and work with it?

One last thing before I head off — and this is totally unrelated, so bear with me, but it was a huge epiphany for me and I’ve been dying to post it forever: In the last month or so I realized something about losing weight. I’m serious here…even though it’s simple math, the logic escaped me.

They say you need to burn 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week. That has always made losing 20 pounds seem insurmountable to me. But then I realized what was wrong in my thinking. You don’t burn 500 calories a day this week and 1000 calories a day next week, i.e. keep off the 500 you lost last week plus take off another 500 calories this week. You just trend at -500 calories <em>and the old calories never come back</em>. Obvious, right? But if it were truly obvious, people might not have so much trouble keeping the lost weight off. In other words, you don’t have to necessarily work harder to lose more weight. You just have to have patience…<strong>lots</strong> of it.

/End remedial anatomy lesson

YOUR TURN: Which do you prefer? Doing things your way or benchmarking others? A little of both? Do you like to have a starting place then adapt it to your personal groove? Am I the only one who ever made losing weight more complicated than it has to be?

Here’s a fun one: define vixenating. Most entertaining answer* wins a free book!

*As determined by the person who wants to know