Random things that motivated me recently...

After sitting in a continuing education class for 8 hours with a bunch of accountants (hey, it could be worse...at least they weren't actuaries), my brain is as numb as my derrierre.

I finally got internet access again by CHANGING rooms. Marriott New Orleans your beds are amazingly comfortable, but your internet connection is worse than the Abbey Inn in St. George. And that is bad!!!

I checked my email and Behold! There was an inspiring one in my Gmail account:

Subject: Choosing Charity

Get to work!!!

That's it. The entire email. Sent by a caring person telling me to get busy and work on my third novel in the Faith, Hope & Charity trilogy. Who sent it? I did. I guess I care about myself, I just forget sometimes.

Lunch was served: A gristle-y (or grisly, depending on how you feel about it) hunk of meat hanging off a short-oval bone. I asked anyone if they knew what it was. No one did. I'll call it "roast beast." They waited for me to try it. 8 strangers, who clearly don't know about my food issues. I scraped off the various veggie-pieces-in-a-strangely-spiced-sauce and took a bite. Eewwww. Iced tea for a drink. Eewwww. Caesar salad. Eewwww. A custard-looking dessert thingy in a teeny-tiny tart crust. Semi-eewwww.

Mixed nuts and Slim Jims for dinner again tonight!

New Orleans is SO wasted on me.

The new PR lady at my publisher--I'll call her PLAMP (it's an acronym, people) sent me an inspirational email that, combined with my own email to myself, made me feel like writing. She forced me to join Twitter. Not really, she just said she would never talk to me again if I didn't. Not really. She wrote that she would not help me anymore. Really. She also wrote:

"NOTHING takes the place of personal interaction with your audience. NOTHING!

Your audience is out there and it is your job to find out where they congregate, introduce yourself, and give them a reason to care.

So audience: I'm looking for where you congregate! This is your notice.

I need to get some accounting-type work done tonight, but the only inspiring emails I get about that are from the AICPA on my birthday telling me I might die and I should increase my life insurance.

My sister-in-law also motivates me. She made me watch "The Biggest Loser" (hmmmmm) and when the trainer dude on there challenged me to exercise during the commercial I did 10 pushups. The man kind of push ups, not the girly kind. I repeated it through two successive commercial breaks. That's 30 push-ups. That's a pretty good work-out for a week, I'd say.

When I was packing for this trip, I packed my workout clothes, because the Marriott has a work-out room. Actually, I packed them because I had extra room in my suitcase and thought I'd delude myself momentarily into thinking I would actually work out after sitting for 8 hours numbing my brain and buttocks. I took the stuff back out and put it in the closet where it belongs. I figured if I felt REALLY strongly like I wanted to work out, I could always do 30 more pushups. Hey, it is a new week.

Wow, I guess I may be a Big Loser after all.