I finished my story-- on time!-- for spn_heraea yesterday. It crept mightily for over a week, but I finally beat it down! God, my SPN muse needs thrashing-- most of the stories are a struggle to write.

For those who don't know, spn_heraea is an "SPN Olympics" competition of stories written for a series of prompts-- one entry per day by Team Angst and one by Team Schmoop. I could have gone either way, but Team Angst was full so I'm on the Schmoop List-- and we could use your voting help, as the angst automatically tends to seem more vivid/better to most readers (hence the theme of the Olympics). There are many truly fantastic authors participating(including f-list people! Hi!), and now that my story is finished I can read the others. Oh, yes. *happy sigh*

Movies: Saw Mr. Brooks this weekend (current pickings are slim). This was despite Kevin Costner (he's a "meh" for me) and because of William Hurt (awesome in all genres of acting). The movie started off, and I was all "Whee-- Portland!" And then Demi Moore showed up, and I was all "Uh-oh." But she did all right, and the most iffy part of the movie (William Hurt is the alter-ego of the serial-killer Mr. Brooks, and they... have conversations. Really) actually worked really well. Costner was very flat and not that believable as a serial killer (which is why the alter-ego is needed). Marg Helgenberger was pretty and that was basically her role. And the daughter in this story... I don't know what was up with that. Her storyline was unbelievable, and she had a disturbing and overly-sexualized sort of behavior with her father. Creepy.

What stays, after the film, is William Hurt! And Portland! The rest kind of fades off, which isn't a suprise...

Books: Finished both The Eyre Affair (fun!) and Od Magic this weekend. The latter is one of Patricia McKillip's books, an author I really like aside from her annoying insistence on using the word "loose/loosed" where other people use the word "release/released." Truly pretentious, and I wish she'd quit it. But I love her prose (some people hate it), and I do love her as a Fantasy author. So many of her stories deal either with crossing the lines of Reality/Unreality or with how different people see the same situation in different ways (both favorites of mine). This particular book has wonderful descriptions of a man with magic talents who doesn't really understand his gifts. He communes with plants/stones/nature and becomes part of them, losing vast amounts of time, and from this he learns things that there is no language to explain. This fascinates me.

Gardening: Argh! Trying to plant the backyard, and all those times I told contractors not to dump gravel in the garden area... La-la-la-la. :( Some areas had concrete removed but the supporting gravel left behind with dirt packed over it! I'm spending more time separating rocks out and rehabilitating the dirt than actually planting. Meanwhile, the temperatures went from Spring to Scorch overnight. :(

Running: Last week's run bombed out at about 3 miles because I went too fast and overheated. Monday night, I went out in low-90s heat (with fortification-- ice water, wet rag in sports bra, and cooling-pad on neck) and made myself go sloooowly. Four miles! Whoo! Especially in the heat, which is where this summer's headed. Only one more heat-beating measure, which is to soak the shirt before going out. Yick. I'm saving that for the high-90's heat. :(

How's everybody? Lost in reading Big Bang fics?