Tag: 14

And if I had an aeroplane, I still couldn’t make it on time.

Sara Mazariegos

Getting used to new commutes & a little TMI. It has been rough taking a different route to the office. I get up at 6:40 in the morning instead of 7, which you’d think wouldn’t be that big of a change, but my body disagrees. I’m still getting used to the longer bus ride and the, frankly, terrifying escalator at the different Metro station. And it’s also hard because, between the anxiety and the caffeine, I end up feeling like I need to hit the nearest bathroom. Last week when I went home, I decided to go to the mall near the Metro station to use the restroom and, long story short, I nearly got lost in JC Penney trying to get out and find the restroom in the food court. It was Backroomsesque, especially when I went downstairs into the totally empty children’s department. Horror. Movie.

Anyway. Luis recommended that I stop drinking caffeine in the evenings, which already seems to have helped. *knock on wood* I drink a little caffeine in my cold brews at work (made by Luis, because he is the greatest) and then when I’m home I have some caffeine-free fruity soda now. There’s less of an issue during my commutes if my body isn’t telling me I need to pee at every point along the journey.

I just hope I get used to the journey and stop feeling so exhausted, though.

Seeing John Green again! John announced his tour for his new book (Hollywood, Ending, available September 22nd!) and I thought for sure there was no way we’d be able to go, because Luis’s job doesn’t finish until 6pm and the show’s at 7pm and he’s at home in Rockville (remote) and I’m in D.C., but then Luis told me we could make it work! So I bought us tickets. He’s going to meet me there, possibly a little late, but awwww! We’ve seen John Green every chance we’ve had, pretty much, so it’s great to not have to break the tradition of me thinking it’s impossible and Luis telling me we can do it. I cannot wait to read John’s new book. It sounds amazing. I may be biased, but still! This one is for adults, too, so it’ll be a little different. We literally saw him twice last year. Ahhh! We’re still spoiled.

Sorry, carry on. 🙂

Nail-biting World Cup games. After the game between Cabo Verde and Argentina, I thought the games would chill out a little. But then Egypt said, “hold my Karkade.” The game between Argentina and Egypt was also crazy close, and Egypt hates Argentina and FIFA now. FUN. So fun, these games. When Messi scored the equalizing goal, Luis collapsed and our cat Boo flew across the room in surprise. A lot of haters think Argentina was helped in that game, but come on. No one helped them score three goals in a little over ten minutes. That was all Messi and his team. They’re amazing.

People also complained about England beating Norway (I’m sad for Norway) but they won fair and square. I feel like the cable thing is so minor, and Haaland shouldn’t have pushed the guy. Sigh. And then Argentina beat Switzerland in another insane game with red cards and controversy. It’s been fun to watch these games, but they’ve also all been ridiculous. It’s hard to believe it all ends this weekend! My order of favorites in the top four is Argentina, Spain, England, France. I’d like anyone but France to win, honestly, because France winning is just boring. They’re too good, haha. I feel like people might think the same about Spain, though. Or Argentina. So it’s subjective.

By the time I’ve posted this, one of the teams (Spain or France) will have moved forward and another of the teams (Argentina or England) will move forward a few hours after I post this! This weekend will have a winner. So you have a summation of all that to look forward to next week.

When 14ths aren’t on the weekend. As I’ve said previously, Luis and I try to have mini celebrations on the 14th of every month—not like big, expensive trips or even big expensive meals every time, just little acknowledgments and date nights—but it’s sometimes difficult when the date doesn’t fall on a weekend. They actually usually don’t fall on weekends. When they don’t, we usually Doordash something fancy for dinner together or sometimes watch a movie if there’s time (this likely won’t happen while the Metro is messing up my schedule.) And I like to do something extra special on the weekend before or directly after, depending on the day of the week the 14th falls on.

I put a lot of thought into this, okay?!

This past weekend, we went to a nice Tex Mex restaurant near our house since we couldn’t go to a place on Tuesday the 14th. We also got some delicious Indian food before the games on Saturday. I also got a lot of reading done, which is something I don’t usually have left over time for. It was a relaxing weekend, which was what I needed since I’d been so drained. Then, on the 14th, we ordered Thai and watched The Four Seasons (the show, not the movie.)

August 14th is on a Friday, at least, so we might be able to watch a movie! Even when we have time to do things, we don’t do anything too crazy. 😅 Maybe when the Metro’s back to normal, we’ll go to D.C. to do something fun again. But September 14th is a Monday. Argh. We have time to plan a nice, fancier 14th then, for the future.

Just having fun with writing. Between reading Every Version of You and taking a different commute to and from work, I’ve had some interesting inspiration for my writing. I got an idea the other day while riding the scary escalator in Wheaton station. I obviously didn’t take out my phone to write it down, because I’ve gotta hang on for dear life while I’m riding the escalator to Hell. But I wrote the idea down as soon as I got off the escalator and onto the bus. {The scary escalator was the idea.}

So far, it’s been nice to have fun with writing this story and see where my thoughts take me. I’m following my outline, but it is loose enough that I can play around with things. Pizza has already come up as a plot point. I can’t avoid writing about pizza. Sorry not sorry. At least this time it has more of a reason for being in the story. Sort of like Every Version of You and its lobster. If you read it, you’ll see what I mean.

Wish I could fly like Superman.

Sara Mazariegos

Like millions of other people, we saw Superman last weekend. I am a fan of James Gunn, and I really liked what he did with the characters and the world. Leave it to him to pick a few random side characters as the comic relief/help for the main hero. Nicholas Hoult was also really good as Lex Luther. I’ve liked him in everything I’ve seen him in, including when he was elevenish in About A Boy. And let’s not forget about Krypto. He reminded me of our dog Scout. I was tearful when he first appeared, but thankfully I didn’t cry every time I saw him. That would’ve been very dehydrating.

A big aspect of my job is mail handling. There are a lot of folks who don’t seem to understand how mail works. For instance, you have to let people know your address if you want to get mail delivered to it. It doesn’t just magically arrive because you want it to. I’ve gotten pretty good at forwarding people’s mail to them, but the patient FedEx worker alerted me yesterday morning that they don’t deliver to P.O. Boxes. I’d packed up some mail nicely to send to one, but I had to carefully repackage it to go via USPS. Thankfully I didn’t lose much time on it. I’m trying to do better at not checking the tracking or requests when I’m not at work. I become too invested in each delivery and want to make sure they work out well, but I need to stop caring so much. It’s not my problem once things are sent!

Luis and I went out for a fancy dinner on the 14th, at a place really close to my office. Unfortunately, it decided to storm and he forgot his umbrella, but it was okay. It calmed down right as he arrived at my building to cross the street. Next month, we’re planning to go to another place near my office. One of the perks of my job is that there are fun places around. There’s also a big park full of squirrels, pigeons, and ducks.

I feel like a broken record about this, but writing 500 words each day works so well for me. It allows me to immerse myself in the scenes and think about them when I’m not pressured to write things down. For instance, I wrote 500 words today and now I’m planning what comes next before writing it. In the past, I used to crank out 2,000 words a day and I think a lot of it was with the “gotta fill this quota” mentality I no longer have. I’m enjoying my story more as I work on it, and I think it will help when it comes time to edit things, too because my writing sessions are more focused on the plot and moving things forward. I used to digress and meander in my writing a lot more, largely because I thought, “That’ll get more words!”

This really has become an adventure in learning how to write better. I know a lot of people have this issue with their writing. They get burnt out thinking they’ve got to write as much as Stephen King each day. They think too much in terms of the word count needed to make a novel and not the words needed to make a good one.

I’m going to write 500 more words later, and I know more or less what they will be.

We talk about this whole stupid world and still come out laughing (Ha!)

Sara Mazariegos

The 14th is this Saturday. Luis and I always do something a little special since we first started dating—and got married—on a 14th. I wanted to come to D.C. this time and explore the redesigned Air & Space Museum. But the Mall is going to be full of people and all kinds of militaristic stuff I don’t want to be around. 😞 So we’ll save that for another time (possibly another 14th) and go get pizza and books instead.

We went with his family to another fun escape room in D.C. last weekend. My main mode when I do those things is finding all of the useful parts and giving them to others to actually solve, haha. When a room is open, I look all around for puzzle pieces, flashlights, etc that will aid in getting out of the room. I’m pretty good at doing it quickly. The other day, I opened a combination on a door flap. That felt special.

Luis and I are working on designing a Haunted Mansion escape room in our house. I’m so excited, because—as you know by now, I’m sure—The Haunted Mansion is my favorite Disney anything. He’s been asking for my input and we’ve been using a lot of our stuff to create a fun story. Last year’s Batman escape room was a real hit, so hopefully this one will be, too. Luis even creates videos for them! One of our friends asked who made the Batman one and was amazed that he did. We could start a small business, performing home escape rooms, but it would be complicated because we’d have to go to people’s houses, like birthday clowns or magicians or something. I wonder if that’s already a thing.

Since I’m working on retooling my Nerdfighter novel, I’ve been paying more attention to similar books again. One tough thing in the whole query-writing saga is finding good comp titles. They’re supposed to not be too old or too famous, and they don’t have to be extremely similar to your plot or your characters. They’re mainly meant to have some similar themes or even just evoke similar feelings when you read them, so they give literary agents some good examples of how your book would do in the market.

I read the other day that a comp title can be older than five years as long as the author is still releasing books. I think I’m going to hold the internet to that, because I found a great comp that’s from 2021 and the author has released several books since then. The story in this one just happens to fit my novel the best.

Luis and I will be looking at books on Saturday, though, so who knows? I may come home with a brand new perfect comp title instead.