My writers group is awesome.

Playing on the iPod: I know it's David Arkenstone, but I can't even tell ya what album.
Meters swum today: 1750

So the gang and I met over at Aunt Sally's yesterday to discuss mental illness, "Lifetime" Movies of the Week, British comedy, the foolishness of suing massage therapists for damages, and of course all things literary. I'm reminded again how totally outclassed I am. Kellum brought part of the index to his dictionary of mythical beings (yes, folks, we read the index to a dictionary). It was fascinating. I kid you not, it really was cool. He's indexing concepts, such as "tree of life" (26 entries) and "pocket full of sand" (okay, I made that up, but it should be in there) as well as groups of people (the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea, just by way of example) and the various deities and folklorish permutations that tend to hang around with them. This is the 4th edition, by the way, and will be available through Lulu Press shortly. Details here as soon as I have 'em.

Jackie, on the other hand, is morphing into the female Gordon Lightfoot I wanted to be in high school. She brought her guitar and sang a couple of new songs for us. One of 'em was about lonely college girls who go looking for studly Renaissance men who can quote Shakespeare while skinning freshly killed grouse. There was another one about "this game I play in my head until I get over you" which I'm not going to quote because it's sad. She's got an amazing voice, she can actually play that thing with the six strings, and now she's composing on top of it. Good God, people, after all this I gotta drag out the latest chapter of Spellbinder and leave everybody, uh, spellbound. I say it again, I am totally outclassed.

I never thought I'd be saying this, but thank God the Olympics are over. I don't think I've worked on the book in three weeks. It's a good thing I already had a chapter mostly finished or I'd have been Spellbinderless. Or it fell out of my binder. Or something. Anyway, looking forward to things going somewhat back to normal, or as normal as they ever get around here anyway.

Just one more thing about the Olympics though: Whose idea was it to sing "Whole Lotta Love" at the closing ceremonies? I mean, okay, the next Olympics is in London, Led Zeppelin is a classic British band, at least one member (Jimmy Page, who's not aging well) is still alive to show up and play the guitar, the title is nice, but did anybody on the committee actually look at the lyrics?! Or does "Way, way down inside, I'm gonna give you my love/I'm gonna give you every inch of my love/I gotta whole lotta love" translate into Chinese as, "Peace, love and understanding"?

Seriously, if you were the city of London, and Beijing was singing to you, "Shake it for me girl, I wanna be your backdoor man," wouldn't you be a little worried? I'm thinking as long as they're trying to present the new host city in such a good light, why not sing "London Calling" by the Clash? Or "London You're A Lady" by the Pogues? Okay, the Pogues are Irish, but there's always "No Place Like London" from the Sweeney Todd soundtrack (the feel-good movie of the Christmas season, make no mistake). In fact I can't think of too many songs by great London acts that would be less appopriate, except maybe "God Save the Queen." Or "Hungry Like the Wolf". Or, hey, how about "Honky Tonk Woman"?

I just gotta ask...

Meters swum today: None. Day off.
Playing in the background: Olympic gymnastics. Over and over and over.

As coverage of sporting events goes, this Olympics rocks. Three thousand hours of coverage. Six channels. Online video feeds. Featurettes, "meet the athlete" flashbacks, cool graphics that explain exactly why Michael Phelps is God's gift to the 50-meter pool. But they forgot one feature. So this is my open letter to NBC:

GUYS, WHERE'S MY COMMENTATOR MUTE BUTTON?!

Look, sometimes it's halfway entertaining to have these idiots nattering in the foreground. Sometimes they even have decent information, like, "What is curling and where did it get started?" But, once the event starts, could they please just shut the hell up? Please? Pretty please? There'll be plenty of time to yammer on about the finer points of knee action and double half pikes (whatever those are) during the lengthy series of instant replays that somehow end up taking three times as long as the actual event.

The gymnastics commentators are the worst. Dear God, don't get me started. Oops, I already did. Here are five statements that need to be immediately banned from competition commentary, upon pain of a severe wedgie:

"That was huge!"
"That's a mandatory .8 deduction under the new scoring system."
"She just can't stick the landing here."
"He's left the door wide open for (insert third world nation that's never won a medal)."
"Oh, that's too bad."

Thank you. NOT. Enough!

Seriously, I want a commentator mute button. Since these has-been psuedo-experts can't shut up about the stuff they were wrong about ten years ago, NBC needs to provide each of us with a specialized remote. One tap of the blue button and Tim Daggett falls silent. I'd pay good money for this. I think most people would.

There's only one proviso. The commentator mute button would not work on Bela Karolyi. Frankly, I'm not sure anything would, short of a sledgehammer.

Ten Golds

Honestly, I don't think there's anything else to be said. Unless it's eleven later.

Retreat!! Retreat!!

Playing on the iPod: "While We Sleep" by Jeffrey Koepper
Meters swum today: 1800 (bonus!)

Sorry for lack of blogitude lately, but between Joan's knee surgery (and she's recovering nicely, thank you, though she's still limping around and making bad cane jokes) and the Olympics (faster! higher! farther! bring on the dancing electric drummers!) it's been a little hectic around here. Oh, and I discovered just how serious my Thing With Food really is. The whole time they were prepping Joan for pre-op I kept wishing they'd hurry up so I could go back to the waiting room and snarf down my peanut butter sandwich. That, plus job stress that's not getting any better, plus Michael Phelps and Dara Torres (did I mention Dara Torres?) and I'm about climbing the walls. Luckily for me, it's almost time once again for the Awakening Heart Sangha's quarterly Day of Mindfulness Retreat.

What is a retreat, you ask. Well, I'll tell you. A retreat is where you go sit in a room with a bunch of total strangers, do very little of anything and stare at the floor. Okay, there's some walking around that goes on, and some "mindful eating" toward midday (that's my favorite part -- see, there's the thing with food again.) And we do some journal writing and stuff and, well, anyway, it's a quiet and peaceful kind of day. I've heard some folks do this all weekend or even for an entire week, without a single news break to announce the Olympic medal counts. And, like going to the gym, I always have a great time once I get there. It's just going that's difficult. If you haven't been showing up for the regular service, and, uh, I kind of haven't, you feel vaguely guilty showing up for the special events. Kind of like being a Christmas and Easter Christian, I suppose.

Anyway, the second I mentioned that there was a retreat coming up Joan said, "YES. GO. I INSIST." Or other words to the effect that I might possibly be driving her nuts. Again, job stress, etc. Plus, last night I had a bad nightmare. I pretty much finished my bad nightmare phase in college and if I get one now, it's because there's Something. In. My. Life. That. Needs. Attention. This was a verybad nightmare. Just briefly it was like something from one of those "Saw" movies (I hate those movies, though I was rather taken with "Hostel," which was suspenseful, clever and honestly scary, I have to admit). People were being buried alive and I could hear them pounding and yelling, "I'm not dead! Let me out!" but I was more concerned with getting away from these freaky people whose idea of a good time was to hurt other people.

Okay, I get the symbolism: Something's getting buried and I'd rather run away than deal with it. Yes, but WHAT IS GETTING BURIED?! Really, my subconscious could trouble itself to be more specific. Couple nights ago I had a dream that this guy was showing me the various ways one could shave a cat. Yes, the symbolism was apparent there, too: "There's more than one way to skin a cat." But, again, MORE THAN ONE WAY TO DO WHAT?!! And, again, nothing specific. How irritating.

You can tell it's time to go on a retreat when I start TYPING IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Yeah. Like that.

Go Michael go! Go Michael go!