A day of doing many things.
1. I read The Trouble with Bright Girls this morning, and it made me go "Oh." The central phenomenon--different kinds of praise affecting kids in wildly different ways--was covered in Nurtureshock. When I read it last year I kind of vaguely identified myself as a kid who got praised for being smart, and not for working hard, and went, "hmm, I guess that wasn't very helpful." But "The Trouble with Bright Girls" really hammers home what that means in the present tense, and I have bookmarked it to use as a pep talk the next time I find myself convinced that writing is just too hard and will never amount to anything.
...Possibly I should just leave it open in a tab and save time.
2. I went shooting! Today I shot at targets from 20 yards for the first time with my new bow (20 yards is the shortest standard distance in competitive target shooting; the range I go to offers targets at 10, 15, and 20 yards, and last week I spent the whole time shooting at 10 and 15 while trying to get a feel for the bow). This also led directly to the first total casualty among my arrows--I had an arrow go into the very edge of the moveable target-backstop, sticking out at an angle. When I hit the target-return, that arrow ran into a pillar between target lanes and got snapped in half. (The pillar is behind where the backstop would stop for 10 or 15 yards, so it wouldn't have happened at those distances.) So right now I'm down to four shootable arrows.
On the bright side, I'm getting the hang of my new bow! And I shot with other people around me, and did not get all flustered when there were other people watching me struggle to string my bow! A guy even offered to do it for me, and I casually assured him I had it, and then got it. \o/ And then I got some reasonably non-patronizing advice about an easy way to tune my bow. So: a successful day of shooting. Give or take my poor arrow. And my poor arms, which are already sore and will probably be useless tomorrow.
3. I went gaming! I learned the Game of Thrones board game, playing House Greyjoy, and confirmed that I am still a terrible strategist. (I won a game of chess once, playing against my computer on the Easy setting which seems to translate to "your opponent is almost too drunk to remember how the pieces move." That is the only success in a game of strategy I can ever remember having.) Still, I met new people--two of whom turned out to be future librarians, in the local MLIS program!--and had a good time. \o/
...Possibly I should just leave it open in a tab and save time.
2. I went shooting! Today I shot at targets from 20 yards for the first time with my new bow (20 yards is the shortest standard distance in competitive target shooting; the range I go to offers targets at 10, 15, and 20 yards, and last week I spent the whole time shooting at 10 and 15 while trying to get a feel for the bow). This also led directly to the first total casualty among my arrows--I had an arrow go into the very edge of the moveable target-backstop, sticking out at an angle. When I hit the target-return, that arrow ran into a pillar between target lanes and got snapped in half. (The pillar is behind where the backstop would stop for 10 or 15 yards, so it wouldn't have happened at those distances.) So right now I'm down to four shootable arrows.
On the bright side, I'm getting the hang of my new bow! And I shot with other people around me, and did not get all flustered when there were other people watching me struggle to string my bow! A guy even offered to do it for me, and I casually assured him I had it, and then got it. \o/ And then I got some reasonably non-patronizing advice about an easy way to tune my bow. So: a successful day of shooting. Give or take my poor arrow. And my poor arms, which are already sore and will probably be useless tomorrow.
3. I went gaming! I learned the Game of Thrones board game, playing House Greyjoy, and confirmed that I am still a terrible strategist. (I won a game of chess once, playing against my computer on the Easy setting which seems to translate to "your opponent is almost too drunk to remember how the pieces move." That is the only success in a game of strategy I can ever remember having.) Still, I met new people--two of whom turned out to be future librarians, in the local MLIS program!--and had a good time. \o/