Diana Rowland — Writing, Life, and the Stuff in between

We got out of class around noon on Friday, so my coworker and I hit the road and managed to make it back home by about 9pm. It was a really good school, but it was long days crammed with info, and by the time we made it back to the hotel in the evenings, all we wanted to do was find some food and then crash.

So, no, we did not make it to the Arch. Oh Well.

Next Saturday is the “Bench on the River” bench press competition in New Roads, LA, so yesterday I made it to the gym by 9am to join the rest of the powerlifters there in the last big bench press workout before the meet. Everyone was trying to settle on what lift they would open up with at the meet, which is a question that is still plagueing me. I can bench 135 raw without too much trouble, but I don’t want to start with that in a meet, because if you miss a lift, you can’t lift more than that on your next try (you get three lifts.) On the other hand, I can probably do far more with a bench shirt, however the shirt I bought still needs probably another month of breaking in (photos tomorrow of the physical side-effects of breaking in a bench shirt.)

In the meantime, I’m trying to get my house cleaned up after being gone for a week. The good news is that my child did survive a week of being cared for by my darling husband. I’m not sure the same can be said for the house.

I’m in St. Louis, attending the Medicolegal Death Investigation course. There are 170 people attending, however, I was a bit surprised to find that there were only a handful–maybe 10 or 12–police officers in the class. It seems to be mostly Coroners, or CO Investigators, with a bunch of nurses and doctors as well.

As for the class itself, so far it totally rocks. It’s a LOOONNNNG day of nothing but lecture, but it’s just incredibly fascinating stuff, and I keep jotting down little snippets of things for story ideas. The mystery writers in my writing group are going to love me…LOL.

The hotel, the Hyatt Union Station, is incredibly beautiful, grand, majestic, you name it. However, I think it’s just a bit bullshit that I have to pay 9.95 a day for high speed internet access, when I can go to a cheap-ass Best Western and get internet for free. Sheesh. So, I’m rationing my internet. I had to get online last night to order a new bench press shirt, so that gives me access for 24 hours. I probably won’t get online again until late Wednesday or something, just so I don’t get totally raped on access fees. (There’s wireless access near the class, but I don’t feel like lugging my laptop there every day.)

I also had grand plans to work out at a Golds Gym near here. Yesterday after class I changed into workout clothes, grabbed my gym bag, And started walking the .6 miles that the Gold’s Gym Downtown St. Louis website and Mapquest said it would be. Well, I got down to where the gym was supposed to be (after walking through a not-fantastic neighborhood with my hand on my gun in my pocket) and discovered an empty building. So, I called Gold’s Gym Downtown St. Louis, and learned that they had relocated another 10 blocks or so closer to the center of downtown. Not too far to walk, but too far to walk there and work out and walk back before it got dark. Oh Well. The extra distance makes it a lot harder, so I think I’m going to have to make do with the gym in the hotel. Bleh.

I’m beginning to get the “Are you alive?” emails, so I guess it’s time for me to do some updating of the ole blog.

Yep, still alive! Nicely busy with work and training and personal life. Work is slowing down a bit now that our three who were in the Academy are graduated, which means that instead of taking call every fourth week, it’s every sixth or seventh week, instead. MUCH nicer. Although, I did get called out a couple of weeks ago even though I wasn’t technically on call. There was a homicide over in Slidell, so the on-call techs were busy with that, and then someone called to report a skeleton in a tree on this end of the parish, so dispatch called to see if I could come out for that.

And, since I wasn’t massively busy with anything, I said No Problem. I figured it was either someone’s leftover Halloween decorations, or maybe some kind of intimidation thing. But, no, it was the real thing: skeletal remains hanging in a tree. (Most likely a suicide, and had probably been there for a couple of years.) So, work remains pretty interesting. And no, they still have not announced who is getting the promotion to Sergeant. [insert eye roll]

This Sunday I’ll be driving up with one of my coworkers to St. Louis for a week-long Medicolegal Death Investigation course. I’m not looking forward to being away from my family for a week, but I am looking forward to the course itself. It’s supposed to be a great course, and it has a good reputation and carries a lot of clout. Besides, it’ll probably give me TONS of writing-related info!

And, finally, after I get back, I’m going to be going down to New Roads, LA on May 6th to compete in a Bench Press competition. I’m still steadily training and losing fat; I’m just not posting the stats anymore. It was good to do it for those first three months, though, because that definitely kept me on the right track. I’m wearing a size ten very comfortably now, and I stll have about 3 months until the contest that I’m debating entering which gives me a lot of time to tighten up a lot more. And then, of course, in August I’ll be heading out to LA for the Writers Of The Future award ceremony, and I definitely want to be in top shape for that!