Back to life, back to reality

I had more of a post-camp hangover this time around than I have in the past. While the first 2 camps were absolutely fantastic, they were 2 days longer than this most recent one, so I was just fried by the end of them. This camp was 5 days--long enough for us to have a blast, but not long enough for me to become desperate for sleep and lose control of my faculties. I think we have a winning formula now; we scheduled in enough rest time that we protected ourselves against ourselves and our own penchant for overtraining, and the 5 days was enough to get some stuff done but leave us wanting more. At least, that's what happened with me.

So I've been back at my "normal" life for a week now, and it's groovy too. But I miss the ladies. The camaraderie. The double entendres. (Okay, I get the last two at my academy. But it's different when it's just us chick(en)s.) Felicia, Alaina, Emily, and I (and Kelly, one of the assistant instructors) debriefed the camp last Saturday and have some cool ideas about how to take it into the future. Because it looks like there is going to be a future; we are talking about places and times to have other camps.

I can't tell you how gratifying it is for this camp to be successful, for so many reasons. First, it seems to be helping people. Second, *I* get to help people. I have the knowledge base and the teaching skill now so that I can actually positively affect people's grappling. Third, all this helping is going on within the context of this sport I love so, so, so much. And it's nice to be around people who not only don't need it explained to them, but who share the love, sometimes in scarier and more intense ways than I had imagined possible. Especially members of Team Estrogen.

So I'm thrilled that there's momentum behind this whole endeavor and that it enables me to give back, not just to the chicks who come to camp, but in other ways to my own academy and to grappling in general. I returned to the scene of the crime (BJMUTA in Valencia) on Thurs to discuss next steps with Felicia and Alaina (who has not yet returned to Toronto). We assigned ourselves some tasks and then spent a hilarious 2 hours performing a task that probably should have taken about 20 min: opening a bank account for the camp.

In our defense, our banker was Sheik, who happens to be full of hilarious stories AND a martial artist himself. We love Sheik. So we wasted a good hour and a half of his time opening a bank account, shooting the breeze, and, in my case, drinking 3 cups of coffee. And I don't drink coffee. I had been concerned about the drive back from Valencia to my corner of SoCal, because I was feeling a little sleepy, so I figured a cup of coffee would give me a boost. But then we stayed longer and longer and I drank more and more coffee. By the end, my heart was pounding, and I was definitely blabbing.

So now we have a business bank account! We're sort of official!

I hit the training hard this past week; I'm on a schedule of working out 5 days in a row, one CrossFit workout and one grappling session per day, and then taking the weekends completely off. The weekends are when I become "that person," who does absolutely nothing. I think about things I need from the kitchen right now AND things I might need an hour from now so I only have to get up once. I drive to the drugstore that's a block away. I groan like a senior citizen. I eat only soft, gummable things. Pap, mostly, and any food that comes in "sauce" form.

Okay, I'm not that bad. But I give into the weary, and it's lovely. I slept for 11 hours on Friday night/Saturday morning, and I'm definitely adding that to the to-do list on a regular basis. I visited some CrossFit pals and cheered them on as they did a new warrior workout called Stephen (it's unfortunate when there's a new warrior workout b/c it means there's a new casualty of war--I know; there are many every day, but the new workouts drive that home in a unique way). While they did the workout, I sat on a plyometric box and drank water. I cheered every now and then, and then I examined my fingernails, and then I stretched, and then I hugged some people I hadn't seen in a while--from a seated position, of course--and then I congratulated everyone on a job well done. And then we all went and ate!

I also continued my internship at Team CrossFit Academy this past week; I may have mentioned that in addition to working out at TCFA, I have been interning there since November, helping out with classes and learning more about how to be a good instructor. I'm getting great guidance from Eric, Vanessa, and Kellie, and learning to teach CrossFit well is as humbling as striving to improve at CrossFit itself. Particularly with the barbell work, so of course that's what Eric has me work on all the time.

Eric and I had a meeting the other day to discuss my progress. I have a pretty good sense of what my weaknesses are and what I need to work on; in addition to just content knowledge about lifts and terminology, my main goal is presence/confidence. Apparently Nicole Carroll, who has been a CrossFit instructor and athlete for many many years, talks about how it's important for you as an instructor to come across with the "big you." In other words, as I develop confidence and become a better coach, I'm not going to be another Eric (I'd have to work for decades to even get into the same galaxy as Eric anyway). Instead, I'm going to be the biggest, most present version of myself.

So that's what I'm working on. It's intangible and odd and challenging, but I feel like I'm making progress. I also have physical requirements to meet, and I'm slowly knocking those out too. But this CrossFit stuff is very much like jiu jitsu in that the lasting lessons/takeaways have relatively little to do with how to perform a correct squat, and relatively lots to do with how to be a better person--the biggest me I can be.

I'm struggling with making the time to write. I'm writing here, in my blog, though I haven't written since last Sunday, but I'm not working on creating a book deal. I thought I was still smarting from being dumped by my agent last summer, but I really don't think that's it. It's just that things conspire to fill the spaces in my life. In good ways. But I intend to be more diligent about it; the writing truly is important to me, so now I need to demonstrate that to myself, to others, and to the universe.

I've been wondering lately if part of my block against making the time to write is that I don't want to encounter the quiet place in my mind. If there are things lurking there that I don't want to face. So of course that means I need to face them. Add to to-do list: meditate. Or at least get quiet. Turn the radio off in the car. Turn off the TV (but not Judge Judy). I intend to have a much better year this year than I did in 2009, so I want to be all proactive and shit about it.

So maybe it's time to go be pensive. Oh, and I forgot it was Superbowl Sunday until about 10 this morning. Congrats to the Saints! And now, back to gumming my dinner.

This much fun should be illegal

and probably is. Okay, lots of ground to cover, because it's been a busy and most awesome week.

First, the ADCC gi trials. I think I mentioned that I tied for 3rd. I wish I had won my semifinals match, but I made one mistake that my opponent capitalized on, getting a reversal in the last 30 seconds of the match for the win. Well, what can you do? In my case, you can congratulate her, enjoy the rest of the tournament and chat with your friends and opponents, eventually cheering for divison winner Lana Stefanac (WOO-HOO!!). You can go out with your teammates (who include my coach Johnny Ramirez, who won his division and is getting an all expenses paid trip to Abu Dhabi to compete there in April!!! WOO-HOO!!) and friends for bacon gorgonzola sliders in Santa Cruz. You can hang out with Darren and his awesome family, playing Fact or Crap. You can give Darren a hard time for dressing metrosexually. You can commiserate with Danny, who flew out to SoCal from Chicago, spent literally about 36 hours on this coast, and then flew home at 6am the morning after the tournament in time to start a shift at his job as an EMT.

In other words, you can have a blast anyway, and just resolve to do better next time. I really feel like I have turned a corner vis-a-vis competing. It's very important to me to do well in competition, and I'm going to train my ass off in the coming months to prepare for the PanAms and Mundial. But I'm also going to be happy, and beating myself up before and after tournaments is not conducive to that. I really do think it's possible to be happy and intense, and I'm going to work on that this year. Plus, Johnny thinks I did really well--I did some things right, and then I made the aforementioned mistake. So my instructor is happy, and besides myself, he's really the one I have to please.

We returned from Santa Cruz late Sunday evening, and then first thing Monday morning we started women's grapplecamp.

Ah, chick grapplecamp. In the immortal words of Erasure (which I think I have invoked before), how can I explain, when there are few words I can choose? I remember in college I wrote a paper for my American Poetry class contrasting the rhetorical styles of Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot. I argued that both Whitman and Eliot felt hamstrung by the tools at their disposal--the English language--to convey adequately the ideas and feelings they experienced. Each of them used a different technique. Whitman used what came to be called "catalogues of images," where he repeated a concept in several different ways, using sweeping language and what may have seemed to be repetition, but was actually elaboration on a theme. Eliot, on the other hand, used an "imagist" technique, where he employed just enough words and phrases to create a picture for the reader, where every picture was a carefully crafted whole--no word extraneous. He even sometimes implied his point, or described the opposite of what he meant, because that was more descriptive than actively stating his ideas.

Wow, that was a walk down memory lane. It was a damn good paper, as I recall. The point is, now that the 3rd grapplecamp is in the history books, it's becoming more and more apparent that this experience has a profound effect on the people who participate, myself fully included. But I don't know how I can adequately describe the effect to people who weren't there. In my case, the limitation is not the tools I have, but rather my relative ability to wield them. Whitman and Eliot were geniuses bumping up against the limitations of communication. I am a reasonably intelligent mat rat who likes a good poop joke. So I'll try my hardest to do justice to this amazing "thing with legs" called Women's Grappling Camp, but I make no promises.

As it was with the first camp just under a year ago, we were excellently hosted at Big John McCarthy's Ultimate Training Academy (http://www.bjmuta.com). BJMUTA is an MMA enthusiast's Shangri-la, with a cage, a boxing ring, rows and rows of heavy bags, free weights and barbells, kettlebells and medicine balls, and, of course, what looks like miles of mat space. (Also an endless supply of low-carb Monster!). Emily, Felicia, Alaina and I met early to try to get ourselves together and seem organized. And then the campers started to arrive!

Each day Felicia, Emily and I, with the help of Kelly and Nikki, who served as assistant instructors, ran a gi and a no-gi session where we taught techniques and ran situational sparring and free rolling. We held informational round tables on nutrition, courtesy of Krista, health and wellness courtesy of my friend Traver, and eating disorders courtesy of Lily, our inspiring 60-year-old brown belt entrepreneur who runs http://www.catfightgear.com. We had evening discussions about different aspects of BJJ and life--how the choices you make on the mat reflect the choices you make in life, how to deal with competition fears, how to distinguish between issues we face that really are gender-based and issues we face that are just typical grappler frustrations, whether you are male or female.

And we're starting to realize that the true power of the camp is in these experiences, the opportunities women have to get reality checks, understand that they may be crazy for being BJJ-loving women, but that they are not alone in their insanity. And most importantly the women have the opportunity to "do" BJJ the way they never get to at their own academies, which is to say, to roll, kibbitz, hang out, troubleshoot, roll some more, with a roomful of other women. Many of the women at the camp have the same experience at their academies that I have at mine; they are part of the family, and the guys have their back without question or hesitation. And that is a beautiful thing, and I'm blessed that it's true in my case.

But what the guys at my academy, much as I love them, cannot give me, is the opportunity to train with a bunch of other women in a non-competition setting. And at this camp, we all get that opportunity, where the stakes are relatively low, to learn and practice, get frustrated and have breakthroughs, and yes, to cry. It is a women's camp, after all, and as Felicia, Emily, and I not-so-subtly tried to convey, jiu jitsu is about life. And life can be intense, as can jiu jitsu. So some of the ladies got a little catharsis, and who doesn't need that?

On that topic, it's Felicia who said that everyone gets out of the camp what they need from it. And that's not necessarily technique. In my case, I get more and more confidence every time that I actually have some grappling skill and that I can help other people improve too. I become a better teacher. I put my ego aside and really listen and learn. Other people make friends, get ideas for ways to run their own warm-ups or even get a break from a life they are contemplating stirring up in big ways--but just need a little courage to get started on. We all get a little boost in one way or another.

What this means, writ large, is that we can give back to the broader grappling community, which is mostly dudes. When we started the camp, we never meant for it to be exclusionary. It wasn't about hating men and wanting to be our own island. I know I speak for Emily and Felicia when I say that whatever success we have achieved in BJJ is directly traceable to the many, many men who have befriended and supported us, taken an active interest in our development, and taught us how to be better grapplers. The camp enables us to take more of a leadership role in our own training and bring that mentality back to our home academies, hopefully to inspire our other teammates, men and women, to be stoked about women's grappling just like they are about men's.

And it's already happening. When Nikki told her boyfriend, who happens to be Lucas Leite (for those of you who aren't in the grappling world, think Michael Jordan or Wayne Gretzky), about the camp, he asked how he could help. So he came in and taught us a sequence of techniques that have worked for him in competition. And he said that he was impressed with what we were doing, because it meant that women were making a mark in BJJ. My male friends and instructors are always ready to help out. Some of the campers came with husbands and boyfriends who train, and they had to band together and go find other places to play because the women had important work to do. So we as a group are building our confidence and our knowledge base, and we can go back to our academies and participate in the growth and strengthening of this art we all love so much.

I have so much more to say about the camp, about the individual women I met, and about all the laughs and raunchy comments, but I'll stop for now because I'm tired and have other things to do. I need to keep looking for my voice, which is coming back slowly but, as Susan said, I still sound amphibious and primatey. That is glorious, for reasons which shall stay part of grappling camp.

One other side note: check out this video, courtesy of CrossFit Ventura, of the affiliate challenge Matty, Ben, Gretchen, and I won as the Clock Blockers a couple weeks ago. You can see all four of us at :58 seconds, running off to start our first WoD, me and Matty doing pullups and Gretchen doing thrusters at 1:14, the four of us starting our barbell run at 1:52 (we're on the right), my bottom half helping Matty help Gretchen do handstand pushups while Ben squats fater than the naked eye can see at 3:31, and me, Matty, and Ben (Gretchen had left), during our photo op after the winners (us!) were announced at 3:45.

There is also footage in that video of many of my friends lookin' and actin' badass: Eddie, Zeb, Alyssa, Su, Miguel, Karen, Dawn, Sondra, and others. And of course the homage in the middle to Crossley, one of Traver and Eric's students. Check out his fashion choices, which obviously contributed to his stellar performance.

http://vimeo.com/9035698

And as the excitement of the week calms down and I head into another "normal" week, it's fitting to become a bit contemplative. Tomorrow marks the 4th anniversary of the death of Carlson Gracie, Sr., who passed away in Chicago after some kidney problems hospitalized him. Some of you know that I had the honor of training with Carlson, Sr., for the last 4 years of his life and that he tied my purple belt around me when he and Carlson, Jr., promoted me to that rank. I still count that as one of my proudest accomplishments.

I've said before that I only got to "have" Carlson for 4 years; I can only imagine the effect his death had on Carlson, Jr., and his stable of black belts, those guys who trained with him for years and years, and who viewed him as a father figure. He was a controversial, passionate person, and people had very strong feelings about him. I'm grateful that I got to see a bit of the man behind the legend: the man who wouldn't let me help the guys put the mats away because I was "a lady" (little did he know), the man whose record collection included both samba AND Britney Spears, the man who would literally take off and give you his watch or his jacket if you complimented him on them (I saw him do this), and the man whose love of jiu jitsu was so pure that he got as excited about the most beginnerest white belt match as he did about the most highly anticipated black belt world championship final.

So it's the time of year when I remember how blessed I have been in my jiu jitsu life to have had such a remarkable teacher. RIP, Carlson. And thanks to Chuong, from whom I stole this youtube link to a Carlson Gracie tribute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxSe2VqV1qU.

Lots of ground to cover

and it's going to have to wait a bit.

We're going into the last day of chick grapple camp tomorrow. It's been fantastic, even though I lost my voice, which made it a bit difficult to teach. For the third time, we've had a wonderful crop of ladies, some repeat customers and some brand new recruits, who have brought their techniques, their ideas, and their energy. With each camp, I become more and more humbled and gratified that I get to be a part of this. I will write more once I've had a chance to collapse over the weekend.

The ADCC tourney was okay too. I had fun competing, and I ended up tying for 3rd. I wish I had gone farther, but I did some things right in addition to the big mistake I made that my opponent capitalized on for the win in the semifinal. Meh. Live and learn. The big thing is that I need to up my intensity. Johnny took his division, and Lana took mine, and both of them are going to Abu Dhabi in April! Huge congrats to them.

Okay, sleepytime and then lots more grapply tomorrow. I wish I didn't sound like a goose.

Calm before the storm

I'm sitting in my motel room in Santa Cruz, waiting for my teammates to wake up so we can go to the convention center and get this tournament on the road. It's the North American qualifier for the Abu Dhabi gi tournament in Abu Dhabi in April. I'm excited to compete! I'm nervous too, but that's not the overwhelming sensation, as it usually is.

I'm thinking that's partially by choice. I read somewhere that the physiological characteristics of excitement and anxiety are exactly the same; it's our minds that apply certain emotions to them. So we almost decide to feel nervous rather than excited. That's what Randy Couture said once, in a seminar he gave at BJMUTA maybe 3 years ago now--that when he's getting ready to compete, he thinks about how he's excited, not nervous. So I'm gonna go in and smile, and haul as much ass as I can, and be present in the moment.

And I'm going to pee a lot. (Some things never change.)

Abu Dhabi and grappling camp: two great tastes that taste great one after the other

The lifestyle I have chosen enables/causes me to be somewhat self-centered at times. Since I don't have a full-time job, my life continues as normal even during national holidays like Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, which was Monday. I hope everyone had a good one, and that the festivities that took place here in LA, which I missed, were uplifting and rewarding.

It's really rainy here in SoCal, which is freaking out the natives. I have gotten soft where cold weather is concerned, but I can still deal with rain. It's a little harder for those people who are used to sunny days all the time. And admittedly, this rain is a bit more than just rain. There was a tornado watch earlier this week, the 101 freeway was flooded, there is talk on the local news of evacuations, and on my street there are miniature rivers flowing downhill near the curbs because the sewers are overflowing. I also hydroplaned once or twice on the highway today (don't tell my parents). And we are in the middle of several predicted storms; apparently there's one for every day this week. They are supposed to last through the weekend.

But it could be much worse, as I know from the happenings in Haiti. My thoughts go out to those who are affected, and I'm counting my own blessings, which are many.

Coming up this weekend is the Abu Dhabi North American gi qualifier in Santa Cruz. I'm competing, and I'm excited about it. )Check out http://www.abudhabibjj.com/ for details and the bracketing info.) This is a good place to be; as those of you who have followed my trials and tribulations vis-a-vis competing know, I'm usually freaking out. But right now I'm happy and full of anticipation. Several of us from New Breed are headed there (about a 5-hour drive) on Saturday for the competition on Sunday. And then we turn right around and come back Sunday evening, and THEN, the very next day, the third women's grappling camp starts in Valencia.

So it's gonna be a busy week and a half! More to come on all of it.

CrossFit madness

Yesterday (Saturday) I got to spend the day doing some crazy CrossFit stuff with my friends. It started with a meet-up at Matty's place at about 6:30am, where he showed me his Egg Genie, a Ronco product that hard-boils your eggs in a snap. Hard boiled eggs are a staple of the Paleo diet, to which both Matty and I subscribe, so we both probably had a bit more interest in an appliance that facilitates that than normal people. We also ate thick-cut, peppered bacon. Delicious--and necessary for energy, or something. (Work with me.)

Anyway, then Alyssa, Ben, and Emily arrived, and the 5 of us took off for Ventura, specifically for CrossFit Ventura, which hosted an affiliate gathering. People from "boxes" (CF affiliates) all around the area came to support the event, which was a friendly team competition consisting of three WoDs (workouts of the day) for 2-man, 2-woman teams. With my Team CrossFit Academy coach Eric's permission, I joined Matty, Ben, and Gretchen (who came separately) in representing Paradiso CrossFit (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/) in the tournament.

Thanks to Ben, we really did have the best team name: The Clock Blockers. The best part about it is that when people yelled it to cheer us on, they invariably ended up saying something a little bit different--at the top of their lungs. Fantastic.

I had been a little bit nervous about accepting Matty's invitation to be on the team, because Matty, Gretchen, and Ben are friggin' monsters. Matty is a big, strong monster, Gretchen is a lovely, sylphlike monster, and Ben is a sweet, friendly monster. But they are all unbelievable athletes and CrossFitters, and I was definitely the weak link in the chain. No, I'm not being falsely modest. I am totally fine with it, both because they are all such wonderful people and also because they inspire me to do my best.

And apparently my best was good enough, because our team came in first out of something like 15 teams! We placed first in the first two WoDs and second in the third WoD. The first WoD was 3 rounds of a 400m run as a team, and then kind of a modified two-person Fran. When we got in from the run, Ben went to the pullup bar, as did Gretchen, to do 25 and 20 pullups respectively. While they pulled up, Matty and I did thrusters--each thruster took a second off our overall time, and since we block the clock, baby, we wanted a low time. But thrusters also tire you out and make it harder to do pullups, so in the second and third round I did many fewer to make sure I finished my pullups soon after Matty finished his. So we ended up with the fastest time in that event.

Then, the second event was a mile run, with our entire team carrying one 95lb bar. If we put the bar down or tried to hoist it to our shoulders, we had to do 5 burpees each. The name of the game there was just to keep moving and to switch positions when our grips got tired. We had some competition in our heat; the next fastest team pulled into the lead on the first or second lap (we had to run the course was a quarter mile/400m, so we had to run it 4 times). But we just kept right behind them and pulled into the lead somewhere in the 4th lap. They tried to make a comeback, but they dropped the bar and had to burpee, so we pulled away and ended up fastest there too.

The third event was pretty funny: AMRAP (as many reps as possible) in 5 minutes of assisted muscle-ups, assisted handstand pushups, and air squats. Each muscle-up counted for 5 points, each pushup for 3 and each squat for 1. So our strategy was for Matty to help Ben do as many muscle-ups as possible. Ben has muscle-ups on his own, as do Matty and Gretchen (monsters, I tell you) but the goal here was quantity, so assisted was the way to go. (For those of you who don't know what a muscle-up is, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAE6lCIkDNE.

Or just do a search on youtube on "muscle-up." There are tons of videos.)

I explained muscle-ups to my mother and she said, "Can't be done." That's definitely how it feels when you don't have one. But I felt that way about pullups for a long time, too. So I'm hoping to get a muscle-up this year.

Anyway, while Matty and Ben were muscling-up (muscle-upping?), Gretchen and I took turns grabbing each other's legs and churning each other like butter. So imagine I'm upside down on my hands and Gretchen is holding onto my leg and helping to pull me up as I'm pushing up as hard as I can. The best part, though is that when Ben got tired with the muscle-ups, he'd start to squat faster than the naked eye can see. That was his "rest." And then Matty would grab the other leg of whoever was upside down, and that's when things got REALLY fun. The hands of the person doing the pushup would literally come off the floor; I heard that the Claw, who is one of my friend Traver's students at CrossFit Pacific Coast (http://www.crossfitpacificcoast.com/), had enough time to clap in between his pushups.

We came in second on that event, and we won the thing overall! So I'm grateful to Matty, for wheedling me into participating, and to him, Ben, and Gretchen for being such great teammates. It was a fantastic day all around, with opportunities to hang out with some of my favorite people out here on the left coast.

I don't post many pictures these days, mostly because I never replaced the camera I took into the drink with me when I fell in the river back in the summer of 2008, when I got pink eye and went to Durango anyway to visit my friends Jen* and Pat (I haven't been that sick before or since). But there are a bunch of pictures on the Paradiso website (http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/. It's the Jan 17, 2010 entry, called Clock Blockin' the Beats). Here is one of my favorites. It's hard to see us, but it's Matty, me, Gretchen, and Ben, from left to right. Our friend Eric from Pacific Coast is in the red shirt to the left; he was one of the judges and had to run with us to make sure we didn't drop or hoist the bar, or to make sure that if we did, we did our burpees. We didn't actually run this way very far; most of the time we were in single file, but I just like this picture a lot. Teamwork and all that. I've tried a couple times to crop it so we zero in on the 4 of us, but I can't get it to work. Maybe it's too late at night.

So thanks to CrossFit Ventura (http://www.crossfitventura.com/) for a fantastic day, and thanks to The Clock Blockers for helping me go above and beyond what I thought I could do.

A couple updates

First, thanks to everyone who is still reading! That's way cool and I'm thankful.

Second, tell your female grapply friends about the third Women's Grappling Camp, starting on Jan 25! http://www.womensgrappling.org. Felicia, Emily and I will be teaching, and there will be all kinds of other cool stuff going on too! Nutrition, acupuncture, a field trip, and the usual shenanigans.

Third, check out the interview with me and Emily that David Webb conducted at http://www.kombatclinic.com/2010/01/womens-grappling-camps/ about the camp(s) described above! HUGE thanks to David for promoting women's MMA. He's also going to do an interview with my CrossFit instructor, Eric LeClair, to give his readers the lay of the CrossFit land: what it actually is, what its purpose is, how it works, etc. Eric is incredibly articulate and knowledgeable about CrossFit in particular and wellness and fitness in general, so I know *I'M* looking forward to what he has to say! I'll keep you posted.

In other news, I've decided to set aside an hour a day in 2010 to write. Writing is one of my priorities this year, so I'm making time for it. So far, so good! Today I wrote a couple pages and did a little research. Tomorrow I'll be working on some queries to literary agents; you may recall from July that the agent I was working with decided he didn't want to work with me anymore (it wasn't me; it was him, or so he said), so I've been licking my wounds for the better part of a year on that. A family friend, upon hearing that my agent dumped me, asked my father, "Just one?" So that gave me a little perspective. It may be tough to get an agent and a book deal. But I'm prepared to do the work. And I'm in a much better place now than I was a couple months ago, so I'm ready to see the humor in the situation--and to create some where none exists. Bring it!