Requiem for a Dennis the Menace

You know that kid?  A lot of neighborhoods have one: an ever-curious ball of energy who's always running up and down the block, excited about some new scheme to pass away the idle hours of the day.  Ever since I moved to my current neighborhood that kid has been Derek.  I'll see him out there on my way home from work, smashing his trucks into each other, or trying to get in on a game of basketball with some bigger kids.  Occasionally he'll make me a little apprehensive, like the time I saw him messing around with a power drill, or when he decided to take a large shovel and start digging a hole in the dirt of one of the more messed-up parts of the sidewalk.  He's always asking me questions: "Where are you running?", "What are you carrying?", "Is that your daughter?" (referring to my wife, who for the record is four years younger than me).  Often he'll launch right into the next question without even waiting for an answer.  Many times I've wondered what kind of person he'd turn out to be when he grew up.

Last night as I was taking the garbage out one of my neighbors happened to mention in the elevator that there was a memorial for Derek down the street.  Drowned, she said.  Just the previous evening.

Ever since then my life has been a constant stream of images that I'm still trying to process: Derek's teenage cousin explaining what happened in a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone, complete with the exact times of the phone calls, while she carried a small dog in her arms; the memorial in front of Derek's house, with its toys, pictures, candles, and "R.I.P." spelled out in red-white-and-blue wax on the pavement; the cops pulling up later in the evening to make Derek's relatives turn off the music they'd been playing from a car stereo as they gathered to remember him.

He was eleven, and tiny for his age.  It happened in a backyard pool in East Hampton.  He'd run off again, and in the space of a few minutes he was found lying beneath eight feet of water.  According to a news report the police are doing an autopsy, but they don't have reason to believe it was anything other than an accident.

Even though it happened out of town, even though he'd only existed on the periphery of my busy life, I still find myself wondering if there was something I could have done---some advice I could have given.  I hate the part of me that sees this as something that was always a potential consequence of Derek's behavior.  That voice may be trying to make me feel better, but I don't WANT to feel better.  Not just yet, anyways.  Then there's the part of me that's trying to see if there's a lesson to come out of this story, as if anyone's life---no matter how short---could (or should) ever be reduced to something so pat.

Like I said, I'm still trying to process all of this.  I needed to get it all down somewhere though, just to keep it from swimming around in my head in circles any longer.  Now I need to find out when the service is.

Rest in peace, little guy.  I hope you're somewhere now that has more answers to your questions than I ever did.

Race Notes: The NYC Half Marathon

I ran the NYC Half Marathon for the first time on Sunday!  I'd been putting it off in past years because the registration fee is well over a hundred dollars, and the all-Manhattan layout of the course never really gave it the same kind of epic sweep as touching all five boroughs in the full marathon.  I'm always curious to try new courses though, and I figured this one was worth trying at least once.

So how did it go?  First of all it was cold.  And dark: the race started at 7:30, and the sun didn't come up until after 7.  There was still a bit of slushy ice in the water they were handing out along the course.  Also, they were funneling several thousand people through five metal detectors before we got to the starting corrals, which certainly isn't my ideal way to start a day.

But what about the race itself?  It started off fairly quiet, since the first six miles were in Central Park (which still had a fair amount of snow and ice left over from everything that got dumped on us in February).  That stretch was a lot like most of the other NYRR races, actually, with the exception of a part on 110th Street where we went out to a turnaround in the plaza at the northwest corner and came back.

When we exited the park down 7th Avenue at the 10K mark, things started to get more interesting.  There were a lot more people cheering as we got to Times Square, and they had some bands playing.  I wouldn't quite put it on the same level as the marathon in terms of excitement and energy, but it was a definite boost.  That continued as we went along 42nd Street to the west side, with more bands and crowds along the way.

One of the most interesting parts of the race came in the last mile, when we went underground into the tunnel beneath Battery Park where cars usually turn around to go up the FDR Drive.  I always enjoy running in places that aren't normally open to foot traffic, and there was a fun, dark eeriness to that place.

When I crossed the finish line at Wall Street I came in about a minute and a half behind my PR, which I thought was pretty good considering that I haven't been out running much in this frigid, snowy winter, and I had a bad cold a few weeks ago.  The field was a little over 20,000 people.  Overall I'd say it was an interesting and worthwhile experience, but the price tag will probably keep me from making this a yearly habit.

Running Season Is Back!

Wow, it's a beautiful day outside.  It felt great to not have my nose streaming like a faucet this morning when I biked into work.  Tonight I'm planning on doing a long run down through Prospect Park to take advantage of the warm weather and newly-extended daylight.

I'm running in the NYC Half Marathon on Sunday.  Come out and watch me then if you can!  My bib number's going to be 5387.  I'm not expecting to hit a new personal best in the race, and a lot of that has to do with what a miserable winter it's been.  Part of that was the temperature (I'll brave the 20's, but I can't make myself get out there for love or money when it drops into the teens), but part of it was just the constant presence of snow---and worse yet, ice---on the sidewalks.

There were also some personal reasons.  On New Year's Eve I went out for a run and fell flat on my face.  It was the first time it had happened in at least three or four years.  I was shaken, but not too badly hurt.  Then two weeks later I fell AGAIN, and that time things got a little more serious.  I didn't need any stitches, thank god, but I had enough serious cuts and scrapes to put me out of commission for about a week.  Also, about a month ago I came down with a cold, which isn't something that happens to me very often.

I'm starting to wonder whether I'm on the verge of passing my peak as a runner.  Sure, the pavement was torn to shit both the times I tripped, and the second incident was at night on a dimly-lit street, but eventually I'll have to face the fact that I can't keep improving forever, and someday I'll have to be content to just post a good time "for my age."

That's not to say I'm going to throw in the towel though.  Hell no.  I've got a running class that I'm taking with NYRR starting up next week on Tuesday nights, and they've done a great job of pushing me to new heights in the past.  Spring is coming too, which should make getting out on the road a lot easier (give or take a little pouring rain or a freakish cold snap like this coming Thursday).  I just started breaking in a new pair of running shoes last night.  The world is full of possibilities.

I'm Getting Published!

Merry day!  Fire up the blog again at long last!  What?  It's Ash Wednesday?  Well, okay, we can keep the bacchanalia a bit more solemn and austere, if that'll help.

I just found out yesterday that my short story, "ROSEBANK NNL," got accepted as part of a collection that's tentatively being titled Boroughs of the Dead, Volume II.  It's a bunch of NYC-set ghost stories, and the theme inspired me to take a mental visit back to Staten Island.  It was the first story I ever submitted for publication, so I fully expect to get a big head and start lording it over all my friends now (except for the ones who have already been published, including my wife).

Seriously though, this is certainly some great fuel for inspiring me to write more often again.  I've already started on another story for a different anthology.  It may be too weird to ever go anywhere, but at the very least I can use the practice.  I've also still been plugging away at Suckers, my way-too-long-in-gestation vampire novel, although it's been hard to get my momentum back since NaNoWriMo.  I think it may help to give my latest draft a complete read-through, to get me firmly back in the world of the story.

There's still a ways to go before I'm actually, literally (ha ha) published.  The folks behind the anthology are going to send me a line edited version of the story, which I'll then have to approve and sign the contract for.  Then there's the wait until the thing actually goes to print, and possibly another wait until I actually get paid and get a copy of the book.  I remember how long that took in my wife's case, so I'm expecting there to be at least a few months until I can fully consider myself the barest definition of an author.  Nevertheless, I'm excited to see how all of these steps play out.  More news to come as everything progresses!

Walking (with) The Walk

If you've been reading this blog for a while, or just are used to hearing me yammering about my running all the time, you may have heard me mention an iPhone/Android app called Zombies, Run!, which has helped keep my runs interesting by adding a storyline and periodic zombie chases to them.  Now, the same UK-based folks behind that game have teamed up with the NHS and Department of Health to come up with something even more of you may be interested in.

It's called The Walk, and instead of setting it up when you're about to go exercise, you just start it at the beginning of the day, put it in your pocket or your bag, and let it keep track of your activity as you go.  All of the walking/running/stair-climbing/etc. you do during the day counts towards your progress in a story that involves your mysterious protagonist walking across the length of Great Britain to deliver an important package after an EMP blast shuts down almost all of the electronics in the countryside.  Hitchcockian spy antics abound.  As you make progress you unlock audio clips that tell more of the story, and there are a number of side-quests and achievements you can work on to switch things up as you go along.

I'm three days into it so far, and I've really been enjoying it.  It doesn't track my bike riding (the support folks I contacted said that motion's too complicated to monitor accurately), but the pull of the story has gotten me going out of my way to get in a few extra steps here and there throughout the day.  I've even been taking the stairs up and down to my ninth-floor office!  Progress is tracked by time, not by distance, so there's something here for folks at all levels of activity.  There's even an adaptive feature that can lower the number of minutes you need to stay active in order to complete the "missions" that make up the game (a slider in the settings screen lets you take control of this manually, too).

Now that the weather's getting colder outside (it's snowing like crazy here in New York as I type this), getting out and traveling long distances on foot may be a less-than-enticing proposition, but The Walk has me tempted to brave the cold a bit more.  I'd recommend it to anybody trying to avoid spending the entire holiday season curled up in a blanket on the couch (though hopefully you'll have time for that as well).  It's available for iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and it's $4.99, but for the next few days you can get it on sale for $3.99.

Before I go, I should probably mention that buying an app called "The Walk" can prove quite difficult in the vast wasteland landscape of the iPhone's App Store, especially when there's a little show you may have heard of called The Walking Dead that's inspired quite a few apps of its own.  The company that makes The Walk is called Six to Start, so adding that to your search should be enough to narrow it down.  Enjoy!

Thoughts from a Binge-Writing Hangover

I'm back!  November's over, so I don't have my NaNo writing anymore as an excuse not to post here.  (Not that I wasn't finding plenty of excuses before that---this place has been a ghost town over the past few months)  I'm actually happy to be back to writing these entries: I started to miss writing as soon as I finished National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) this year, oddly enough.

Not that I wrote a story so amazing that it inspired me to have tons of confidence in my abilities, mind you.  I finally got all of Songs from Town (my NaNo novel for this year) that I could think of squeezed out of my system, and it had its moments, but I really had to push myself some days.  I ended up on surprisingly few rants, and there was only one major break from reality, so that's a good sign.  Writing did come easier to me this year, I must admit.  I even managed to get ahead of pace on Thanksgiving, which led to a rare lack of panic going into the home stretch.  It certainly helped that my novel this year was disjointed by design, going off to join new groups of characters at will.  I hardly found any characters that I wanted to stick with for more than a single chapter, though, which is unusual for me.  Normally it's the characters that drive my writing, but here they were often just cocktail napkin sketches in comparison to what I'm used to.  And many of them were horrible, horrible people.  I did, surprisingly, manage to tie up quite a few hanging plot strands in the last few chapters, albeit not in very organic or satisfying ways.  To expect that kind of result given how little I'd planned though, would be like betting on a miracle.

My wife was neck and neck with me all through this month, and for the first time I actually managed to validate ahead of her!  I ended up having to write an extra thousand words though, since a whole bunch of the ones I did write were stolen away from me by the validator.  I think it was my predilection for em-dashes that did me in---the words that they connected were counted as separate words in NeoOffice, as they should have been, but in the validator the fact that I didn't put spaces in there came back to bite me in the ass.  Still, I cranked those extra words out without too much trouble.  (I think I'll go back to Scrivener next year though: trying to find older scenes for reference in a ninety-some-page document was a major headache)

It's always a painful process for me to get back into writing after a long time away.  I always vow that I'm going to not take as long before I start again each year, but each year I end up losing track of that vow in the same doldrums that eat up a whole bunch of New Year's resolutions.  At least this past year I got a whole bunch of revising done (though I'm still only halfway through Suckers, the novel I was doing it for), and I started a promising new novel called Delta OUTSIDE of NaNo, which is unheard of for me.  Songs from Town was actually supposed to be a prequel to Delta (which still only has a few chapters to it after I got hung up on where to go next), but it ended up becoming its own creature, with only a hasty, eye-rolling tie-in at the end.  The bits of it that I had before November started were with me long before Delta came around though, so that makes sense.

Now I need to get back to revising.  The holidays are going to distract me all over the place, but I've got a good story with real potential, and I'm not going to let it flounder just because there are so many new and exciting things I could be doing otherwise.  The NaNo folks say that getting that Shitty First Draft (SFD) out of the way is the hardest part, and on some level it might be, but going back through that draft with a fine-toothed comb and taking out the shitty parts can be nearly as difficult, if not more so.  When you actually have to look at your own work with a critical eye again it can be deflating, and I think that in many ways I'm my own worst critic.  That's a good thing to be in the long run, I think, but there can be times of despairing, of thinking that I'll never be more than a talentless hack doomed to obscurity, can be hard to take sometimes.  (Granted, I may at least be doomed to obscurity anyways, but I'm never going to get anywhere unless I at least make peace with that eventuality)  Thank god I have such an amazing wife to get me through all this.  Her confidence in me begins where my own confidence in myself ends, and I always strive to be just as supportive to her.  And she's actually getting results!  The anthology that accepted her short story is supposed to finally be coming out sometime this month, and I'm over the moon for her success.  She's my inspiration and my rock, and together we'll at least get one or two of all our crazy dreams realized.

A Full Life?

My life is full right now.  Full of commitments, full of surprises, full of love.  I can't stand to add anything else to my plate, and I don't want to start anything new until I get something good and firmly accomplished.  There's a bit of a problem with that, because a lot of the things I'm working on right now don't have very near-term goals, or even clearly-defined endpoints.  They all have milestones, of course, but there's always another carrot to chase after the current one's been caught.

Take the Philadelphia Marathon, for instance.  I just started my training for it earlier this week, but it's not my first marathon, and I have no intention of making it my last.  I had a good workout today on that front, too---five and a half miles, averaging an 8:20 pace.  That's just about the best I've ever done in this kind of weather.

I ran from my office, which was something I've never tried before.  I'd originally planned to wake up early, but I was writing so much last night that I got to bed late, and there was no way I was going to turn an already-pushing-it seven hours of sleep into six if I could help it.  So I brought my running clothes into work, thinking I might run at the end of the day.  Looking at the forecast though, it seemed more and more likely that it was going to rain later in the day, so I decided to run right when I got there.  Even that early in the day there was a bit of a drizzle, but it was a good drizzle---more refreshing than soaking.  I ran from DUMBO down to Red Hook along the waterfront.  The route's an interesting mix of parks, heavy industry, and hipsterdom.  When I came back I felt accomplished and ready to start the day.  (I stayed an hour later at the end than I usually did to make up the time---I'm not trying to goof off here or anything)

As far as the writing goes, I set a goal at the beginning of July to revise 15,500 words of my novel by the end of the month (using Camp NaNoWriMo), and I hit that goal exactly at midnight last night.  Now I'm a bit more than halfway through the whole thing, although I still have plenty of work ahead of me (some of the bits that are in most dire need of revising are still to come).

On top of all that, my wife and I are currently trying to introduce a kitten to our household.  She started life as a stray, and she's still trying to adapt to life among humans, so that's one hurdle.  She also faces the prospect of making friends with our existing cat, which currently is feeling like more of a challenge from Existing Cat's side than it is from Kitten's side.  It's only been five days so far though, and we still have plenty of tricks up our sleeves.  Kitten's starting to get more and more affectionate, and she's started playing with her jingle balls all on her own (although she could have chosen a better time than the crack of dawn this morning to reveal that to us).

Work has been keeping me awfully busy as well, with a project that could have a huge benefit to my career going live in two weeks, ready or not.  Right now it's looking a bit too much like "not", for reasons that are beyond my team's control, but we're pushing as hard as we can, and we're still a long ways from giving up hope.

I've let some things slide in the midst of all this.  I've managed to keep up with my progress using Duolingo relearn all the Italian I forgot from high school, but my Japanese lessons on Rosetta Stone have slowed to more of a crawl than I'd like.  I've been neglecting the piano and guitar lately as well.  Most significantly, however, I haven't been keeping up with my share of the housecleaning---that's the one I feel worst about.  It's funny: I generally consider myself a clean, meticulous person, but when I'm focused on a project I still find it all too easy to let that kind of thing slide.  My wife's convinced that she's been a bad influence on me in that respect, but even when I was living alone I never managed to develop much of a passion for keeping everything tidy.  We've used a maid service from time to time, but there's a weird psychology around that: you can start feeling that your home is too messy to invite a stranger into it, even if that stranger's job is to clean the place.  Part of the problem is the clutter.  When there's stuff lying around that you'll lose track of if somebody else rearranges it, you want to deal with that first before getting to the more sanitation-related stuff.  When you don't get around to putting those things away though...

Still, we're making progress even on that front.  We've vowed to have the place in a state fit for company by Sunday, so with a firm goal in mind we've got a fire lit under our ass to accomplish it.  Then it's on to the fifty million other things we want to do with our lives...