Scribituri Te Salutamus

(I have no idea if my Latin's correct or not--what I'm trying to say is, "We who are about to write salute you." I would ask Meghan of Squirrel Bait, but she's never replied to one of my messages up until this point, so I won't try now.)

(I wonder what "We who are about to diet salute you" is in Latin.)

Linda sent me mail and said when I needed a mental health break to call her. Yesterday she needed one bad: another student who read her script told her to toss everything after the first act and do an emotional drama rather than an action-adventure tale.

Yow.

But, as Linda put it, everyone's going to have an opinion about our stuff, about how they would have written it. Everyone we send it to. You just have to be sure of what you wanted to write, or you'll be rewriting to please a million masters and end up with...well, what we get on our cineplexes each week. But at the very least, we should be paid to destroy our own work that way.

Well, after a full day of playing with it, I eked out about 10 pages. They're not great pages--they are definitely calling for a rewrite. But it's good to get them out once.

I watched Basic Instinct tonight. Goodness, what a silly movie. Certainly gives the appearance of being complicated, but it's just silly. Tons of sex though. Does Sharon Stone get to wear any clothes in this movie? And does anyone really think that Michael Douglas is attractive? Is there some way to keep Michael Douglas from playing these types of leads?

(Factoids: Both Mitch Pileggi and Wayne Knight are in Basic Instinct.)

Gwyneth Paltrow plays Michael Douglas's wife in a new movie being shot. How psychotic is that? I mean: Yuck. As I've heard a number of places, a 55-year-old man married to a 25-year-old woman is just taken for granted in the course of a movie; if a 40-year-old woman gets involved with a 25-year-old man, that is the movie.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Yesterday: into the gym. I did two sets of my weights instead of just one (as I've been doing up until this point--mainly I wanted to get into the habit of going and worry about how many reps I was doing later on). I did both sets at the same weight. Ha! Boy, am I sore today. Probably what my workout needed, though, to rejuvenate it. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes to get both sets to the same number of reps--yesterday was kind of embarrassing, because whereas I could do 12-15 in the first set, the second set was invariably 8.

Today: 4.2 miles, and I got that damn stitch in my side again, even though I watched my breathing like hawk. I finally found some information using DejaNews as to what it is (from the rec.running FAQ):

Stitches are a muscle spasm of the diaphragm. The cause of the spasm is that the organs below it are jouncing up and down and pulling down as it wants to pull up. The liver being the largest organ is the biggest culprit which is why most stitches are on the right side. A stomach full of food may also contribute to the problem for the same reason. Stitches also occur more often when running downhill or in cold weather.

I do run hills every day--in fact, that's the very first thing I do on my run--and it has been chillier the past few days than even a week ago. (I don't eat before I run, but I do drink 2 glasses of cold water.) What I clearly have to do is

Breathe out when your left foot strikes the ground instead of when the right foot strikes so that the organs on the right side of the abdomen are jouncing up when the diaphragm is going up.

Well, that and doing abdominal exercises, like laying on my back and lifting a book with my abdomen. And crunches, I guess.