Tony is home! A verrrrry long nonstop back from Paris, and now he's struggling to stay awake as long as possible to overcome the jetlag. I met him at the door with some Welcome Home balloons, a root beer and a new pc game, so he has plenty of sugar and digital entertainment to help him along.

Tomorrow is his birthday! I have a few surprises in store but if I write them here he will read over my shoulder.

Tony is a busy, busy guy in Paris. Meetings and presentations every day, though tomorrow is the Really Big Day for him as far as presentations go. He's not nervous, of course, because he's so used to doing this sort of thing by now. He's also armed with some really cool PowerPoint, and that always helps.

So Tony's plane is about to leave for Paris. We're both bummed that I'm not going, but the timing was just not going to work out.

He has tons of work to do there, and tons of people to renew contacts with, but I hope he finds some time for croissants and hot chocolate at least once or twice every day. How could it be Paris otherwise? And he really will NEED the hot chocolate because it is freezing cold, rainy, sleety and snowing there. Brrr.

Check out the new link on the left hand bar! It's a link to a new page in the Writing section about Rhonda's book.

Click it to see what all the fuss is about (we'll have a nice graphic up soon!)

Finally, finally, a release date: April 23.

(thanks to SuperAgent for finding this out!)

Turns out that everything hurts because I am sick, not just because of overdoing the strength training. And it figures, because Tony is leaving for Paris in a few days. The last time he went to Paris I had mono and was sick the whole time. As I said, it figures.

Brought Gabe to the vet today for his fructosimine test, which will tell us whether we can stay on one insulin injection a day (YAY) or have to switch to two (BOO). Vet will call with results tomorrow.

Bah.

Tony flew to LA and back for the final CSI voice recording. Peterson had the flu but was nice enough to record anyway, so Tony brought him Ghiradelli chocolate as an extra 'thank you'. All went well and now Tony is home for the long weekend...

...but I'm useless because (as usual) I OVERDID IT on my new strength training, working out day after day and not taking a day off as I know perfectly well everyone should. The result: after climbing yesterday I came home and collapsed into a heap on the couch, stayed sound asleep for hours, and woke up moaning and whining that everything hurts. Today I will recuperate and if I'm lucky Tony will not laugh at me too hard.

Another advance check arrived today! This one signifies final acceptance of the manuscript, so it feels as if the roller coaster has finally reached the top of that loonng first hill. Now the good part of the ride (I hope) is about to begin.

Meanwhile, Tony is hopping around like a squirrel getting ready for winter -- the next CSI game is getting closer to release, and that combined with all his other producers and products is keeping him hopping. I'm crazy-busy also, dividing my time between certification-studying and the climb book. Plus a lot of time at the climbing gym together and a new weight-training regime for me. Whew.

Amazon sales rank 1,965,828.

Cool. How'd that happen?

I'll be putting book info up on the site soon. Until then, send me an email and I'll tell you what to search for.

Study study study study study.

I never realized how much complex information you had to learn to become certified as a personal trainer:

"Oxygen uptake increases with each stage of the GXT until the upper limit of CRF is reached. At that point, V02 does not increase further when the test moves to the next stage; the person's V02 max has been reached. Given the complexity of these procedures, V02 max is estimated with equations relating the stage of the GXT to a specific oxygen uptake."

I need more flashcards.

Four months before publication and I'm already Sales Rank 2,358,367 on Amazon. LOL.

Tony is on his way to New York to do a press tour for CSI. He'll be talking to a lot of big-name magazine reps and other media folk. To prepare him, I loaded him up with fruit bars and beef jerky (no food on Jet Blue), cut his hair, and got him a new laptop. The official reason is that his old one was almost nine pounds and giving him shoulder tendonitis -- the unofficial reason is that he's been jealous of my tablet for a year now and it was time he had one of his own.

In the meantime, I'm in charge of the cat -- a much bigger responsibility than it was a few weeks ago! I also have lots of writing (climbing guide) and studying (trainer certification) to do... but I'll probably spend far too much time watching TV instead. Tony set up a second TiVo downstairs and networked them together before he left, so this place has become TiVo Heaven.