Fiction Fragment Fridays: Nowhere to Hide

Although I finally have a bit more of my Final Fantasy novelization written, I’ve decided to hold on to it for a little while longer so that I can build up a little bit of a back log. Instead, today I thought I would share a scene from my (hopefully) upcoming zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide. I’m hoping that sharing a piece of my manuscript with the world will help motivate me to finish up that last round of edits that need to be finished before publication.

This short excerpt is from the end of the first chapter of the story. By this point there has already been one well-publicized attack, but no one yet knows that the doctors involved in the postmortem investigation found some pretty disturbing details. Our main character, Nancy, and her best friend Terri-Lynn, just want an ice cream from the local Dairy Queen when they happen to stumble across attack number two…enjoy!

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Nancy thought she heard something – a whimper, perhaps – from back behind the kitchen. After considering for a moment she lifted a leg and began to slide herself across the counter.

“What are you doing?” Terri-Lynn hissed.

“Shh!” Nancy shot back with a finger to her mouth. “I’ll be right back.”

Walking through the abandoned kitchen was strange and surreal. The fryers were still running, the fries in the bottom of the baskets burned black as coal. A burger was in the heating tray, waiting for the rest of the meal that would accompany it. A mop was propped up against the wall, having been slid across the floor between late-night orders.

The whimpering sound was coming from a broom closet. Nancy turned the handle slowly, paused for a second to take a breath, and then pulled the door open. A young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, was sitting on the floor. She had her back pressed up against the far wall of the closet, as far back as she could make herself go, and she was sobbing into her hands. When the door opened she looked up at Nancy with huge, glistening eyes. “Don’t hurt me!” she squeaked.

Nancy tried her best to smile a warm smile. “I’m not going to hurt you, hon,” she assured the girl. “It’s okay, I’ll help you.” She offered a hand and after a few long moments the girl removed one shaking arm and reached for it.

Nancy had enough time to process that the girl’s shoulder was bleeding through her crisp, white and blue work shirt when a shriek echoed through the store. Terri-Lynn came running toward them. Nancy stared at her with her heart in her throat and the young Dairy Queen employee shrank back into the closet. Terri-Lynn had tears brimming in her eyes and appeared to be holding back a violent gag. She tried to speak as Nancy raised her eyebrows at her, but she could only gesture frantically toward the industrial freezer in the back.

The young employee grabbed at Nancy’s hand as she began to walk toward the freezer. “I-I had to!” she sobbed miserably. “H-he attacked me! H-he bit my arm!”

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 39

Since I did a brain dump yesterday, I don’t really have anything to start off this post with. But, I do have a number of October-based mini-goals to share as part of my accountability this week, so let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

This past week was no better than the last several weeks of reported nothingness. If anything, it’s been worse because I’ve been having some pretty strong and continuous cravings for all the bad things ever made; chips and pop are a particularly strong one. In fact, the bad habits of the past couple of weeks have caught up to me and I’ve actually gained a couple of pounds. I’m not absolutely certain, but I think I might have officially broken my highest ever weight, and I’m not happy about it.

Cue October Mini-Goal Numbers 1 and 2:

#1. Focus on eating better, including eating some kind of (half-decent) breakfast each morning, abstaining from pop, drinking more water, and making healthier suppers.

#2. Do some kind of exercise every day. This is probably going to mostly be going down on my treadmill for a while because I’ve reached a point of being so out of shape that most forms of exercise make me gasp and feel like I’m going to throw up, which I believe is counter-productive.

I’ll try my damnedest to do each of these for 31 straight days and see if it makes some kind of difference for me.

Editing Goal

As mentioned yesterday, I’ve been at a bit of a standstill the past week as far as my zombie manuscript goes. Much of this can be attributed to being busy working on the daughter’s room and a variety of other things, but a good bit of it is good old fashioned “I don’t wanna!”ness.

I’m not a fan of editing. I pretty much hate it with a fiery passion. But it has to be done, and I would like to have it done before NaNo starts so I’ll be distraction free for starting something brand new.

Enter October Mini-Goal #3: Work on editing for at least one solid hour a day. Lock myself in a room where the hubby and bubby can’t get at me if I have to. Think about nothing but the story for that hour. Go longer if possible and/or if my head hasn’t exploded by the end of the hour.

1,000,000 Word Goal

This past week has been pretty shabby. It’s been the worst week in quite a while, actually. Since I didn’t really do any editing stuff at all, and since I’m not currently working on anything new while I’m trying to deal with all the editing, the only actual writing I did was blogging, which only came to a total of 3433 words. I’m terribly disappointed in this. Terribly disappointed.

Enter October Mini-Goal #4: I don’t want to dedicate too much time to writing new stuff because what I really want to be focusing on is finishing up my zombie manuscript, but I also don’t want to completely demolish my word count in the process. Thus, for the 31 days of October, I’m going to try and write one blog post every day. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to post a blog post every single day this month; my posting schedule will remain as is, but the posts I write on off-days will help me keep ahead of myself moving into NaNo month. See? Sometimes I can plan ahead!

And now that I’ve written these four mini-goals down, hopefully I’ll be able to hold to them. I want you all to yell at me if I don’t, okay? Okay. 🙂

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 38

Have you ever noticed that in life there occasionally come these little moments – moments that don’t mean a hill of beans to most people, but which affect you in a way that you can’t really explain (or wouldn’t want to)?

Last night was one of those moments for me as I began to tear apart my daughter’s room. She’s going to be 3 years old in December and we’ve been thinking for a while that the nursery theme (two shades of yellow, plus white, and a bunch of Winnie the Pooh decorations) don’t really suit her. She never got into Winnie and half of what she owns is pink, so we finally sucked it up and bought the paint to redo her room. I’m excited to make the room more “her”, but it was also very sad and strange to tear down the Winnie border and the wall decal quote that I spent months trying to find, and to toss aside the pictures my husband make in Photoshop specifically for that room.

Moments in time, hmm?

And while you’re feeling a little bit of empathy for me, try to skim past the following segment:

Health and Body Image Goal

I refuse to comment this week, other than to say that I’ve felt like crap so I haven’t been doing anything, and I feel like crap for having not done anything.

Editing Goal

I’m about two thirds of the way through the third chapter of my zombie apocalypse, which puts me almost a fifth of the way through the whole thing. It’s been a little slower going than I was hoping because I keep getting distracted by a million other things (see daughter’s room, above), but I can’t complain too much. As mentioned in yesterday’s post I’m a little more than frightened about how happy I’ve been with the story thus far…as insane as it seems, thinking that my story is actually good sets off warning bells in my head. Ah, the brain of a writer.

1,000,000 Word Goal

A lot of my words this week have been based on the editing I’ve been doing, but I’m okay with that. Some of it has been blogging as well, so that’s fine, right? Right. All total I wound up with 13054 words for the past week, and I also surpassed another milestone, bringing my yearly total up to 330121 words. I’m definitely confident that I’ll at least hit half a mill before the end of the year, which is still way more than what I expected to wind up with when I made the goal. XD

And now that that is over with for another week, it’s time to go prepare to paint. Wish me luck in keeping the tears back!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 37

Before I get down to business this morning (business meaning typing out my accountability post as fast as possible so I can clean my house because oh-my-god-what-have-I-been-doing-the-past-few-weeks-it’s-so-messy-in-here!) I wanted to mention something. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting an unusual (for me) number of likes, follows, and comments on my posts. By comparison my blog is still pretty weak in that department, but it gives me a little thrill of cheer every time I see one of these notices pop up on my phone, because it lets me know that people are reading. And there is nothing more frustrating for a writer than thinking that she’s talking to herself. So a big “HIYA!” to everyone who has been stopping by the blog lately, and I hope you keep stopping by and giving me those little like/follow/comment thrills. They keep me alive…you want to keep me alive, right? 🙂

Health and Body Image Goal

Words can not describe what a piece of crap I feel like when writing about this every week. I keep coming up with excuses (although I still stand by my convictions the week my back felt broken), but in reality they’re just excuses. I could set an alarm every morning and abide by it whether the baby kept me up all night or not. I could force myself to go down to the basement and give my all to an exercise video. I could drag myself outside with the baby and go for walks or something else otherwise more physical than sitting at my computer most of the day every day.

But I don’t. And I feel like a lazy bum because of it. I need some motivation badly. For some reason just wanting to feel better about myself doesn’t seem to be cutting it. I need to, like, post pictures of myself when I was at my best all over the house or something, but I don’t think that would amuse my husband very much. Heh…any ideas, people? My lazy-ass self is at your mercy!

Editing

I have something to report! I have something to report! Ha!

So I finally, finally have been getting back to work on my zombie apocalypse novel. This week I mostly went back over what I had already done earlier in the year, but I still feel like I got something done because it had to be transferred over into a Scrivener file, and I also made a fairly significant change to part of the opening that I feel makes it work a little better. As per yesterday’s post I’ve also been going through and researching some things that I believe will make the story feel more realistic to knowledgeable readers. I’ve been lucky enough to have been offered assistance by two awesome people who have experience in the fields I need help with, so I think I’m going to be able to make some great changes that will make the story all that much better. Onward and upward!

1,000,000 Word Goal

I mentioned that my word count would probably go down a bit, what with focusing more on the editing aspect, and it did, but I still managed to eek out a reasonable 13526 words. Over the following weeks of editing I’m going to be counting some of my edited words since I’ll be taking a lot of time to transfer them to a Scrivener count, and will be changing and adding stuff as I go along. Hopefully those words will help keep me going at a decent speed throughout the following couple of months.

And that’s my report for today! Now, off to rampage through my disgusting domicile!

Traveling on The Artist’s Way

Despite the fact that I haven’t yet finished reading Kristen Lamb‘s Rise of the Machines, yesterday I decided to start reading The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. I’m a glutton for punishment, and somehow don’t feel like I’m torturing myself enough if I’m not trying to do eighty things at once. Viva la insanity.

Shown above: Me, almost all of the time.

So the book is meant to be a 12-week program, with each week focusing on a different aspect of creativity (and the resurrection thereof). There are exercises and the like for each week as well, with the intention that you pick and complete about half of those suggested. I haven’t gotten to this part yet because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a number of small sections that occur before the program begins, and I wanted to give some attention to those first.

There are two different introductions in the book, one of which explains how the author came upon the idea of helping artist’s rediscover their creativity. In this intro she talks a lot about a “Great Creator”, which may or may not be God. This put me off a bit at first, but she is actually quite open and tolerant, and speaks about how it doesn’t matter whether you really believe in God or the “Great Creator”, just as long as you can believe in the idea of creativity being something that you can give yourself to. Because of the way she speaks, you can tell that she believes in a higher power guiding creativity, but she also makes it perfectly clear that she doesn’t expect everyone who uses her program to believe in the same thing. It’s a refreshing notion because I’ve heard it said before that atheists can’t be creative because they aren’t spiritual. It’s nice to know that someone as prestigious as Julia Cameron isn’t a bigot. I’m just sayin’.

Then the book moves on to talk about some “basic principles and tools”. Specifically, the author talks about two tools that she is absolutely adamant that we use on a regular basis, throughout the program and forever on afterward.

The first tool is called “morning pages”. I’ve seen these discussed on other blogs and websites, but this is the first time I read about them from the person who created them. Put simply, “morning pages” are three pages written each day (preferably first thing in the morning). It doesn’t matter what you write about, and actually it’s better if what you write about isn’t “real” writing. Rather than focus on prose, for example, morning pages should focus on whatever is in your brain that needs to get out. For all intents and purposes, it’s a diary with a minimum page requirement. The idea is to get all the nonsense out of your brain (even if that nonsense is nothing but negative thoughts and whining) so that it’s out and gone and it can’t bother you while you’re working on your real writing (or drawing, or acting, or whatever your art may be).

I’ve actually been doing morning pages for a while now, though not on a daily basis, which Julia Cameron insists upon, so I’ll apparently have to work on that. I’ve also not been doing the pages freehand, which Cameron suggests. I’ve been instead using 750Words.com, which was actually created for this exact purpose. The webmaster of this site also read The Artist’s Way, and after determining that three pages of his long-hand worked out to approximately 750 words, he created the site. Though I occasionally do enjoy writing longhand, I prefer to utilize 750Words.com because of the speed factor. It takes me a heck of a lot longer to do three pages in longhand than to type it out on my laptop, and time is something I’m all in favor of saving. With that said, I’ve signed up for the August Challenge on 750Words – the challenge is to do your 750 words every day for the month, so hopefully that will be motivation to make sure I do my “morning pages”.

The other important tool that Cameron insists upon may be a little bit more difficult to work in. It’s called “Artist Dates”, and simply, they’re dates with yourself. That’s the long and short, really. You have to take an hour or two, once or twice a week, and go on a date with yourself. Go for a walk, go to the beach, go bowling…just go do something fun and/or relaxing, with the caveat being that you have to do it by yourself. No spouses, no kids, no family or friends of any kind. In the book Cameron talks about how you will resist doing these dates, how you will find every excuse in the book not to do them. She’s definitely right. If even half of her readers are the tiniest bit like me, there are a lot of artist’s out there saying, “Are you kidding? I can hardly find the time to bathe by myself, never mind taking myself on solo dates every week.”

And yet Cameron insists that these dates are important, if for nothing other than keeping yourself sane. I can see her point; how can one be creative if one can’t even find an hour a week to do something fun by oneself? That’s not saying that I’ll do them, but I’ll make an effort, if Cameron thinks they’re that important.

So it’s with those two “tools” in my mind that I move through the rest of this week. Starting this coming Sunday I’ll read the “Week 1” chapter and start working on the exercises. If those exercises happen to involve writing of any sort, I’ll share them on this blog. Here’s hoping that the book will help me as much as it’s supposedly helped many other artists!

Have you read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron? How did you find it? Did it help you “rediscover your creativity”? Do you have any suggestions for someone just starting the program? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 29

Before I get on with the accountability today, I want to mention a couple of things.

First, a huge hug to the new followers I’ve been getting on this blog and on Twitter. I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been doing lately that suddenly has people sneaking in out of the shadows toward my sites, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome, thanks for coming, and I hope you stick around! 🙂

Second, on a whim I recently tried Googling myself, and I was quite amused to find that the first three results were actually me. I rather don’t need my 9gag profile popping up on Google, but I was happy to see that the second result was this blog and the third was my 750Words.com account. It’s a good sign when your real persona pops up on Google, right?

Third: a call out for info and/or advice. I’ve Googled this problem many times but I can never seem to find anything that quite matches my issue. I’ve been having trouble sleeping again (it seems to happen for several weeks at a time, a few times a year), and the issue as far as I can describe it is that I spend an inordinate amount of time in dream sleep (REM sleep), meaning that my rest isn’t, well…restful. I’m waking up feeling like hell even when I sleep 9 or more hours, and it’s very wearing. I’ve consulted my doctor before and his only suggestion was to try antidepressants, which I thought was a little silly and insulting since I’m pretty damn confident that I’m not depressed. So since I can’t seem to find any information on my own, I thought I’d ask here on the off-chance someone may know something or suffer from similar. Help?

Okay, on to the accountability.

Health and Body Image Goal

If I’m totally honest, I’ve plummeted miserably on this one. I’ve been doing no form of exercise and have been eating rather terribly. It doesn’t help that I’m experiencing sleep issues, as mentioned above. I keep trying to convince myself to get up a little early in the mornings (before it’s scorching hot out) and do my zombie runs, but I haven’t been able to manage it because I’m so damn tired. I need some motivation, terribly, and that’s a fact.

Editing Goal

It’s been a surprisingly busy week so I haven’t managed to sit down at my laptop for very long periods of time, but I’m still (slowly) plugging away at my supernatural romance. Really, really looking forward to finishing so I can submit it to a publisher and move on to my zombie apocalypse.

1,000,000 Word Goal

It hasn’t been a great week, but I did manage to get a few words in. Between blogging and a return to 750Words, I managed to get in 4802 words this week. I’m hoping to ramp it up this week through a series of ideas I’ve compiled, one of which is to use 750Words.com in the mornings to empty my brain of the dreams I’m plagued with every night. It might be a pro-bono situation…I get extra words, and maybe writing down the dreams will make them go the hell away. Starting this Sunday, as well, I plan to start reading The Artist’s Way and work my way through the 12-week process, so look forward to that.

29 weeks down, 23 to go. Here’s hoping the remaining 23 start to look up a little!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 25

It’s (more or less) official; my job is over and we’re all headed home after this shift. I’m not too depressed about that because it means I get to go home and enjoy the summer with my family, and there will definitely be more work in the future. That said, I have to inform you that the last week of a job that you know is over is absolutely painful. I’ve been spending my time scanning documents that have to be saved and transferring over changes that have been made between the master books and the working copy books, and it is unbelievably mind-numbing. At this time one week from now I may be a drooling puddle of goo on the floor.

Cheery today, aren’t I?

Okay, let’s get on with it then, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

I’ve been eating pretty well, I can tell you that. I don’t know if it’s sheer willpower or if my stomach (the organ, not my flab-belly) has been shrinking and I’m just not as hungry as I usually am. I have been scoffing on peanut butter cookies in the evening (OMGSOGOOD), but aside from that I’ve been eating good foods and decent portions of them.

On the exercise front I can’t claim as much success. Believe me, I do want to be going for my zombie runs, but I’ve been a little gun-shy since last Thursday. That morning I got up to go for a run and before I made it out of the building I almost doubled over with pains in the gut. I ended up nearly sprinting back to my room and staying there the entire day. I still have no idea whether it was a stomach bug or food poisoning, or what, but I’ve been a little nervous about venturing too far from a bathroom ever since because I still don’t feel quite right. I know I have to buck up eventually though, so tomorrow I’m going to try running on the treadmill in the ladies gym (which is only about thirty seconds from a bathroom) and see if I can’t build my confidence back up.

Editing Goal

I’ve regressed back to the days of getting nothing done…dammit. I do plan on doing some editing before the end of this shift, I swear, but I’ve gotten a little caught up in the writing aspect, as documented below.

1,000,000 Word Goal

This week I rediscovered a little thing called 750Words.com. It’s nothing fancy, just a daily challenge to write approximately 750 words on your personal section of the site, but there’s something strangely motivational about it. In three days on the site I managed to rack up over 8000 words alone. All together, through a variety of blog post planning, writing exercises, and a little bit of good old fashioned freewriting, I managed to write 13421 words this week, which if I’m not mistaken makes this my best week yet this year. Not too shabby, hmm?

I hope to focus more on writing (and editing) in the coming months while I’m temporarily out of work, and I plan to use 750Words.com for a little boost of motivation. You should check it out…it’s very simple, but it somehow makes you want to achieve the goal. I’ve joined the monthly challenge for July, and I hope to have more success with that than I had with Camp NaNo. 🙂

Until next week! Ciao!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 22

This is going to be a quick one, my loves, because I’m doing some last minute packing because I’m ~comin’ home!~ 😀

Health and Body Image Goal

Still going strong, though I’m very glad to be going home because I am so sick of chicken salads and salmon with rice, it’s SO not even funny. Get some variety, Wapasu! Geez!
I also had to take a short break from running (much to my chagrin) because I’ve got a bit of a case of shin splints. Turns out that running on very firmly hard-packed dirt in a pair of $20 Walmart sneakers isn’t very good for the tibias. Go figure. I decided to splurge a little bit and ordered myself a very nice, well-rated pair of Saucony running shoes, so hopefully after a couple more days my legs will feel better and I’ll be back at it with the proper gear.

Editing Goal

Nothing this week because I was super busy, but as previously mentioned I am newly motivated to get my manuscript in a readable condition so I can do a beta-reading novel swap with a writer friend of mine. I’m thinking I’m going to bite the bullet and transfer my digital manuscript to my tablet so I can edit more quickly and easily while I’m out West. Keeping my fingers crossed on this one…I’m so used to editing on paper that doing it in a digital copy might actually slow me down even more.

1,000,000 Word Goal

Excellent week, this week, thanks to fan fiction! Returning Hope really bolstered me up, and yesterday I plucked out a couple of blog posts for the rest of this week, which all together brought me to 10453 words. Woo! If only I could do that every week. 😛

Okay people, sorry to post and run, but it’s my last day so I’ve got to get busy with my traditional travel-day hyjinx of tormenting all the people who are not on their last day. Ke ke ke ke ke…

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 21

Okay people, in all seriousness…how is it Tuesday already? I was just thinking that it feels as though this shift has been dragging on terribly long, but here it is half over. What happened? It must be all the (wait for it…) writing and exercising I’ve been doing. 😀

Health and Body Image Goal
I have been doing awesome this week, all modesty aside. First of all, I’ve been eating quite well. There have been some things that I probably could have done without – like raisin bread and M&Ms – but for the most part I’ve been excellent. I’ve been making salads with spinach and skinless chicken, using lemon juice instead of dressing; I’ve been melting controlled portions of cheese over broccoli for snacks; I’ve even forced myself to have salmon a few times (and it wasn’t half bad, which leads me to believe that the camp cooks are serving us “salmon”). I’ve been so good that when my usual “cheat night” came up I looked at the bag of chips and bottle of pop and said, “You know what? No. I honestly do not want this.”
In addition to the healthy eating habits, I’ve also been running diligently with the help of the Zombies! Run! app. I’ve only skipped one day so far and that was only because I woke up in the middle of the night with a leg cramp that nearly had me crippled for the rest of the day. But I was right back at it the following day! Look at me go!

Editing Goal
I can’t honestly say that there’s anything to report for this week because there definitely isn’t. But the good news is that I have recieved a pleasant kick in the ass from a friend and fellow writer who has suggested a novel swap beta-reading. In other news, I now have major motivation because I can’t possibly let anyone read my manuscript in its current state! Edits away!

1,000,000 Word Goal
It’s been a pretty good week, I have to say. Writing fan fiction definitely allows me to write a little faster, and as such I’ve managed to pluck out 9041 words this past week. That’s more than 1000 a day, so I’m pretty happy. But the real news is that I checked my yearly total and I’ve surpassed a hundred grand! I’m settled right now at 108,481! It’s only a little over 10% of my original total goal, which brings home the idea that I am totally not going to hit 1,000,000 words, but still…a hundred grand! That’s more words than I could have imagined writing in 5 months before I made this goal! And to me that is definitely success. 🙂

Zombies! Run!

Due to a combination of late flights, loud fellow passengers, massive amounts of turbulence, and a very strange inability to sleep even though I was already running on less than five hours of sleep from the night before, I had a really bad day yesterday. Thus no post yesterday.

Along those lines, I have something simple and a little different for today: an app review!

I don’t usually review apps. I rarely even rate them in the App Store. This one, however, amuses me so much that I feel I need to mention it.

Zombies, Run! 5k Training is exactly what it sounds like. It’s an eight-week program of roughly half-hour recordings that use the threat of zombies to train you to run 5k. It works on the same concept as other apps such as Couch to 5k – that is, a “trainer” tells you when to walk, when to run, occasionally when to sprint, and slowly builds you up to being able to run faster and longer. The thing that makes Zombies, Run! different is that the recordings you’re listening to tell a story.

The welcoming recording starts with a helicopter pilot talking to you as she flies you into a zombie-surrounded township. You’re headed there for some secret mission that even you don’t yet know the details of. En route a mysterious party fires a rocket launcher at your helicopter, sending you and the pilot to the ground. Once on the ground one of the township’s citizens – Sam, the communications operator – calls you over your radio to tell you that you’ve got to get moving…there are zombies headed your way! From there on you are lead through the zom-infested world by Sam and the other township citizens and deemed to be their new “Runner 5” (the old one had a, uh, accident).

The whole thing is just so amusing, I can’t even tell you. The recordings are very well done, the voice actors convincing, and the storyline fun as sin. I find myself constantly wanting to keep going so I can learn more of the story, and the “threat” of zombies is a surprisingly excellent motivator to run and run hard.

If you’re even more ambitious, the makers of Zombies, Run! 5k Training also have a follow-up app simply called Zombies, Run! which has a ton more stories and extra content.

Both apps also link to zombiesrungame.com, which allows you to share your progress and any maps you may have created by running with the GPS option on. The site also houses any info and “items” you may have come across throughout the course of your missions. It’s a nice little addition that makes the game aspect that much more fun.

In conclusion, I highly recommend either of these apps for someone who loves games and/or zombies and needs a little extra motivation to get moving and get into shape. A real jewel amongst a pile of boring fitness apps. Two thumbs up!