So, I tried acupuncture…

Posted on by

Here’s the deal. Life finally caught up with me.

I felt exhausted all the time. I put on weight, I slept way too much, my joints ached so badly that sometimes it was hard to get out of bed, and my head always felt fuzzy. My stomach always seemed to be upset, and my mood was foul.

One problem that I knew I had: I’d started a really bad habit while my father was in the hospital three years ago. I was “comfort eating,” usually at night. I really packed on the pounds–and couldn’t get rid of  them. It was about this time that some of the other symptoms started to show up, so I decided maybe I could fix the problem by eating better. (And by ‘I’, I mean ‘we’. My husband always gets dragged along on these little adventures…)

So, we started eating breakfast every day. I know, this one sounds like a no brainer — but my husband and I were both terrible about eating n the morning. So, we started, with breakfast in the morning, and then a decent lunch and dinner. That helped, a bit. We weren’t eating as much junk food late at night, and my stomach wasn’t always upset. But, it only helped a bit, so, after I read Wheat Belly, we cut out wheat.

I was a bit apprehensive about starting this, because we are literally surrounded by wheat products everywhere. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I didn’t even miss the Christmas cakes and cookies. Much.

But still, I wasn’t feeling good. I was still sleeping way too much, couldn’t get the energy up to exercise with any regularity, and found that my mood, generally speaking, was still foul. On top of it all, my skin condition (I’ve had it since my mid twenties) was absolutely out of control. again. (I had been told by doctors over the years that this is stress induced, for the most part. I was also told “just get used to it.”) At this point in time, I was using a really expensive salve and lotion combo, plus antihistamines (for the itching) so I could sleep. I  drugged myself every night — and then was barely able to function every morning. This was on top of the feeling exhausted and gaining weight and being depressed and the joint pain.

I did the “give me every blood test known to man” with my doctor, to make sure I had nothing that needed medical attention. (There was nothing, past slightly elevated blood pressure and a confirmation that the skin condition had indeed gone crazy) And then I decided to try acupuncture.

I talked to my husband about it, and he said he’s support me, just as long as I NEVER suggested he try it. (And now you know his limit. No wheat? Fine. Needles in his body? No frigging way.)

Acupuncture–if you look over this link, it appears that there isn’t much point in it, past the placebo effect. Yeah. All right. However, I knew some people who had tried it, and seen some positive results.

So, I went here., and signed up for a three month course of treatments. Was I scared? Yeah, actually, I was.  They stick needles into you, after all! And sometimes it hurt. For some reason, the spot on my hand between my thumb and pointer finger was always painful. (It felt like she was punching the needle in, sometimes. She didn’t, of course. But it felt like it.) Interestingly, this was the hand with the worst joint pain. Huh.

The top of my feet hurt too.  (Seriously. Talk about tender. )That’s because there are tendons and bones–and not much meat. And then there was my forehead, that always seemed to bleed. And my elbows and wrists and knees and stomach and legs and… a lot of other places. (Right next to the finger and toenails is nasty. I don’t know why, but these were the needles that creeped me out.)

Oh, and I had to figure out how to lie still for half an hour. The first time, I was so tense, I’m amazed I didn’t cramp up everywhere!

I got this done twice a week for three months.

It wasn’t like this three month period was stress free. It wasn’t. I had some hard decisions to make, and I made them. Then I had to dealt with the aftermath. I also had to deal with getting sick in the middle of all of this. (Yeah. Got the flu. The “puke” part hit while I was getting an acupuncture treatment, believe it or not. I apologized for coming in sick, and she told me not to be foolish. “This is not a spa,” she said. And then she gave me Chinese medicine and told me to go home to bed–and the flu cleared in just a few days.) Then there was Christmas, and our 30th wedding anniversary. Fun, but stressful. And then, the warm weather came, and with it snow mold. My allergies kicked into high gear, and I thought I would lose my mind when many of the symptoms that had gone away returned. (Plus the itchy eyes and the stuffed up nose and the thick head, and all the rest. “I can fix that,” my acupuncturist said. And she did. But the needles in my face were quite unnerving… I could see some of them, you see.)

Through all of this, I kept going, twice a week, for three months.

Now the big question. Did it work?

Well, here’s the thing. It is not the only thing I”ve been doing. I’ve also been taking Chinese medicines, plus vitamins and fish oil. (The acupuncturist advised it, and I went along with her advice.) I also researched my skin condition (since I was trying to get rid of the salves and drugs and other stuff my doctor prescribes) and removed nightshades from my diet.

In other words, I changed a lot of things while I was getting acupuncture. So, I can’t really say that the acupuncture did anything for me.  However….

Here is what I see. My skin condition is better, I am sleeping more deeply and feeling well rested when I get up.(And I’m not using the salve/antihistamine combo anymore, either.)  My joints don’t ache. (I did not realize how much they did ache, until the pain started to fade, and then disappeared. ) My back and neck don’t seize up on me if I do a really long writing stint, and don’t stretch after. (I have had back problems since I was eighteen years old. Seriously.) I have a lot more energy. Oh, and my mood is no longer foul. (It ain’t great, sometimes, but at least it’s not always the blackest of black.)

Did acupuncture do this? Maybe. But to be honest, I think that it’s a combination of everything I’ve been doing.  The food choices, and more exercise, and taking fish oil. And the acupuncture.

I say if your doctor can’t figure out how to make you feel better, then give acupuncture a try. It sure has less possible side effects than most of the drugs we have to deal with!

I also received cupping as part of my treatment. That bruising? It’s real!

How do you decide what to write on your blog, part 2

Posted on by

A few days ago, my website went down. I received a really scary error message that I didn’t understand. (They are all scary when you don’t understand them!) So, I frantically contacted Ryan McFadden weeping “please fix it!”

I couldn’t have my website go down. Not after I decided to actually start working on the thing again! That was too unfair… but then I remembered another blog I’d started years ago, and abandoned (mostly) for this one. If it was still up and running, maybe I could use it. So I checked.

And what do you know. There it was.  I laughed really hard about the last post I’d made — something about not buying anything for a year, which I’d failed at, miserably, just so you know — deleted that post, and started cleaning it up.  Just in case this website never came back again.

Later that day, Ryan found the problem with my website, fixed it, and I was back in business. That was a wonderful thing — but that was when I realized I’d answered my own question about what to write on this website… and how I could use the other one.

I have decided to keep this website for my writerly stuff. Let you know what I’m going to be doing a workshop, or what new thing I’ve learned about writing, what weird stuff my dog is doing (hey why not?) and other interesting bits I’ve found that relates to my writing life.

But that other blog? I can use that for my bitching and whining about how the world is, and how it should be changed. I can get all ranty if I want because sometimes that stuff drives me crazy. I can post links to stuff I find that has no interest to anyone but me (possibly) and I can go all Rocky Road if I want to.

In other words, I can have balance. I need a place to vent, but I also need a place to talk about writing. So, let’s make them two different places.

How many others out there have different blogs for different parts of their lives? If so, how did you decide to do this? And the biggest question — does it work for you?

I guess I’m going to find out whether it works or not, in the next while.

Let’s talk about bios, shall we?

Posted on by

I’m excited to announce that another collaborative anthology is coming out. Yay! It is called “The Puzzlebox” and it’s being published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing in August 2013.

However, we’re putting together the website for the book, and I’m having a hard time deciding what should be included in my bio.

I always have a hard time with my bio, to be honest.  Since it’s for my writing, I know to include writing stuff. But what about the rest? Do I talk about my kids? What else I do? The life I lead? The causes I support?

I did a little research, just to see how writers I respect have handled this.

Chuck Palahniuk

Robert J Sawyer

Christopher Moore

Janet Evanovich

Huh. As many different bios as people. Robert J. Sawyer’s is chock-a-block full of information about his professional life. Christopher Moore’s is seriously short and to the point–but directs you to an FAQ section that gives you more. Janet Evanovich’s is quite personal. She lets us into her life, and through her life, we learn about her writing career. Chuck Palahniuk’s bio was written by someone else–but it follows a simliar pattern to Evanovitch’s.

So, which is the “right way” to do this? Or is there a right way?

More research was needed. I googled “How to write a biography” and picked the top hit. (Yep. THAT’S the way I research.)

This is it. Written by Pete Kistler, on the Brand Yourself Blog.  He suggests writing a small medium and large bio to use in different situations, making certain that you are clear about who you are, what you do, and how people can contact you. All right, makes some sense, but it didn’t look like any of the authors I researched used this method. (except Moore, who then threw in the FAQ section.)

Also,  it feels a bit–should I say it out loud?–dull. If I write a 250 word bio that just gives my name, job, high points in my career and contact info, doesn’t that cut out a chance to introduce people to my writing style as well?

I dug a bit deeper, and found this.  Same blog, written by  Meg Guiseppi. She suggests using narrative to make your bio pop. She also says “Everyone loves a good story.”

Ah. Telling a good story. That feels “righter” to me.

So, I’m going to use the suggestions in Meg’s blog to write my biography. I think I’ll do a longer one, and put it on my “About Me” section of this blog–and I’ll do a short version for the “Puzzlebox” website. (I’m not the only writer in the anthology, so I better leave some space for the others!)

I’ll post it next week. If you want to give me some feedback, please feel free. And if you have suggestions on what should go into a biography, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

 

How do YOU decide what to write in your blog?

Posted on by

This is one of the biggest things that keeps me from blogging regularly. I KNOW I should, but when the day looms–I can’t think of a thing to write.

One time I tried using an idea I’d found on a writing blog. Can’t remember whose blog it was, and it’s probably better that way. What I do remember is that this blogger felt it was better not to be too controversial. Apparently some publishers don’t like controversy, and you don’t want to do something stupid, like talk about real issues that could potentially rile people up, if you want to be published.

In other words, it’s better for you and your career if you’re — you know — vanilla.

I carefully wrote out a list of topics I thought I should be talking about, so I could just, well, pick one and write about it at blogging time. (I had categories and everything! Look at me go, being all organized and stuff.)

However, one day I looked at that list and couldn’t pick one topic that I actually wanted to write about.  I wasn’t feeling particularly vanilla that day. So instead of writing ‘something’ that really said nothing… I wrote nothing.

I found that happened a lot, to be honest.

Here’s the deal. I have lots going on in my life. Some of it’s vanilla, and some of it’s not. There’s writing. Rewriting. Being rejected. Rerewriting. Sometimes even being published. Dog training (or my pathetic attempts). Reading. Movie and CPAC (and other TV) watching. Exercising (!) Hating the snow and cold and planning various vacations around that hate. Dealing with (sometimes) mind crippling bouts of depression. Fighting my other demons (fear, avoidance, anger, etc). Cooking and baking. Dealing with the dying, and dealing with the living. Trying to remember the last time I fed my goldfish. Trying to figure out why I wrote 70,000 words in a novel, and then just stopped. Trying to remember the name of a song that has been going through my head for literally years.

This is just a small list. How do I pick from a list like that?

Maybe I could write about how to write. (Or how to beat down the demon of avoidance so that instead of doing that one more load of laundry, you actually write a thousand words.)  Or maybe I could write about how to train a dog. (Or, how NOT to train a dog.  Just do the exact opposite of nearly everything I do, and you and your dog will be fine!)

Exercising is boring but necessary (sort of like evacuating your bowels), so I will probably never blog about that. And those vacations I plan around the snow and cold hate? I hardly ever actually take them, so what’s the point of blogging about that? (Maybe I could fit this under my “demon” category. I even avoid going on vacations!)

Depression is depressing. When I’m in the throes, I can barely get out of bed. Don’t know if I’d be writing about that. But maybe I could.

And then there’s the stuff I see out in the world that makes me insane. The racism that is wound so tightly into the very fabric of our country, most of us don’t even see it. The lies we are fed by our various levels of government, and how hard they work to keep us from catching them in those same lies. The insanity of the rampant consumerism of the first world. (I mean holy shit how many televisions does one person need???) What we are doing to our food and our land and our water, all in the name of the bottom line. (And the lies we are being told about same, so the bottom line stays healthy.) The fact that a lot of people are being kept alive long after they should be allowed to die.  And my personal favourite: that it’s only a matter of time before nature rears up and kills half of us off. (More than likely with a disease that we think we’ve controlled.) What about that?

Huh. Guess you can see why I would sometimes have trouble with a topic list that is vanilla.

I think what I’ll do is start a new list. And this time, it won’t just be vanilla. I’ll keep going with the stuff that’s kind of funny (dog training, ear worms, and fighting the avoidance demon) but when I need to, I’m going to write about the other stuff (everything that makes me insane, for example.) And I’ll keep a bit of a diary of potential blog posts from all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Then, I’ll have plenty of grist for the blogging mill — and if I’m not feeling vanilla that day, watch out! Rocky Road, here we come!

I’d love to hear how others handle this issue, and I’ll keep you updated on how my new and improved list idea is working out for me. (Actually, you should be able to tell from the blog itself, so come back, check it out, and tell me how I’m doing.)

Oh, and the song? I found it. Good grief. I’m being haunted by a television show from my past. Shall we all sing along, forever? I know I can.

 

Trouble at the dog park, and what we learned… about ourselves

Posted on by

Buddy, the 3 legged Border CollieRemember this little guy? Cute little Buddy, the three legged border collie. Well, he doesn’t look like this anymore. He looks more like, well, this…

292900_10151477165805389_774623248_n

 

As you can see, a bit of attitude there. And it doesn’t just happen in our kitchen, either. It happens at the dog park, with other dogs, too. Darn it, anyhow.

He’s been going to the dog park since he was about six months old, and both he and my husband had a great time.  (I don’t “do” the dog park. for 2 reasons. 1 – I’m antisocial. And 2 – I get nervous around a lot of dogs. MY dog picks up on it and goes into “defender” mode, which doesn’t work for anyone. So, I don’t go.)

Fast forward a year and a bit. Now all of a sudden, Buddy prefers to hang out with the people and acts like a dick around the other dogs. And pit bulls — don’t even get me started on the pit bull situation! (He pisses them off no end.  Way too assertive for a pit bull’s sensibilities, and it’s been that way since he was a puppy. We should have guessed that eventually to dog park would become problematic… however we can be quite thick, at times.)

A couple of weeks ago, Buddy got into a fight that looked like it was going to go badly Buddy started it by nipping at a young dog while the young dog’s owners were petting Buddy. Their other dog — older and bigger and much stronger — decided to tune Buddy in, but instead of backing down, Buddy decided to fight.  Not the best plan for a three legged dog…

The next time he and my husband went to the park, he bit another puppy. (Same reason. Buddy was being petted by the puppy’s owners.) Yay. Buddy was brought home in disgrace, and suddenly we had a dog with an issue.

So, we decided to ground him.

Grounding is an excellent resource we found when our first dog decided he was higher than our daughter in our little pack. (That was a nasty bit of business, and quite scary. I never would have thought Bear had it in him, but he did.) We grounded him for a couple of months, and he learned his place.

The biggest thing we learned from the Bear experience is that our daughter was inadvertently giving off submissive signals to the dog. That’s why he thought he was above her in rank.  And I think my husband was doing the same thing with Buddy.

Actually, I don’t think this. I know it. From what I’m learning about the dog park, Buddy was treating my husband like crap. (Refusing to give up balls and toys.  Jumping at him and pushing him around.) In other words, Buddy was treating my husband more like another dog than his master.

Which explains Buddy’s attitude out at the dog park. Oops.

My husband’s problem is, he feels sorry for Buddy because he only has three legs. However, that has to stop, or he’ll never get control of that dog.  So now my husband’s  being taught tough love, and the dog is grounded.

I hope it works.

The biggest issue we have is, Buddy is naturally more assertive than Bear was. And he’s smart. I’m starting to think he might be too smart for us. (He does what we ask, for a while, but then the tests start. And if we don’t catch them (that hesitation when we tell him to sit, for example) we lose a lot of ground.

I don’t think he’ll be able to go back to the dog park — but I hope we can teach him that he’s just above the goldfish in our little pack — and that he can’t act like a dick around either my husband, or other dogs.

I hope this works. I’ll keep you posted.

Have a dog with an attitude? This is one way to sweeten his disposition, and get him back on track. http://mysmartpuppy.com/problems-and-solutions/youre-grounded-quick-reform-problem-dog

 

Has it been over a year? I believe it has….

Posted on by

I received a message from a friend on Facebook about the last entry on this blog.  It was a nice comment, and I appreciated it. The only real problem is — she was complimenting me on something I’d written over a year ago.

I haven’t written anything here in over a year. A year!

So, what happened? I was still working. Even harder than I was before, truth be told. I was still writing and editing and re-editing and rewriting — again, even more than I was before. I was using Facebook, and was trying to get a handle on Goodreads. I’d tried — and abandoned — Twitter a number of times. I was traveling back and forth across the country, mostly for work. My three legged Border Collie needed a ton of attention, and so did my husband. Oh, and did I mention I was writing? My plate was full, and something had to fall off. Unfortunately, it was this.

When I realized how long it had been since I’d written anything here, I almost thought about letting it go. Just leaving it the way it was (a mess) and quietly kicking it to the curb. However…

I’m not ready to do that. So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to really think about how I want this website to look and what I want to say in it.  I will probably be “beta testing” a number of things here, so if you like something I do, please let me know.

After I “make it look pretty and functional” and have decided what I want to talk about, then I’ll start writing in it again. And I think I’ll use some of the advice from Anne R. Allen’s Blog. (borrowed from “Writer Beware” on Facebook. My thanks for the link.) Looks like she knows what she’s talking about.

I think I’m glad to be back. The next few months will tell the tale, though.

The 2nd Circle is out… On to the 3rd!

Posted on by

I remember believing, when I first thought in any real way about being a full time writer, that I would sit in a room, completely bare except for a computer. Big windows would face (more than likely) the ocean, and I would always be dressed in light cotton dresses.  My feet would be bare — but my toenails would be painted.  Ditto my fingernails.  Done professionally, of course.  My hair — perfect.  Jazz music would be floating in from somewhere (maybe even a real jazz quartet, just outside my window) and whenever I wanted it, herbal tea or a glass of really good red wine would materialize by my hand.

The room would never get messy, the dog would never eat the hand-edited manuscript (before I had a chance to put the corrections onto the master in the computer, that is) and I would NEVER have to drop everything to “run something” out to my husband. (Did I tell you he ALWAYS works in teeny towns and hamlets that are all monumentally hard to find, even with a map? Well, he does.) I would take a holiday, probably to the south of France, after every book is done. Oh, and every word I write is gold, so I hardly have to rewrite.

That was my dream.  Kinda nice, isn’t it?

Reality is a bit messier than that, but it’s my own fault.  I thought putting out a 10 book series in a year and a half sounded like fun.  I didn’t think about how many deadlines that actually is. (10.  It’s 10.)

My office doesn’t have windows (the outside is distracting), and it has a lot more than just a computer in it.  Right now it is a blizzard of paper (some of it chewed, and not all of it by the dog) from the final edits of the last book, plus half-read books I keep meaning to get back to when I have the time.  I usually don’t remember to take my coffee cup back to the kitchen, so there are three used cups crowding my desk, and I just push them up, a little closer to the edge, so the new one will fit.  When things slow down, I’ll clean my office. At least, that’s what I keep saying…

I haven’t been to have my nails professionally done in three years.  I just hack them off, and tell myself “next time.” I pull my hair back in a ponytail, and my work clothes are pajamas.  I wear big fluffy socks because I keep the place cold — meat locker cold — while I’m writing. I find it’s better for my brain.

I try to remember to eat.  Heck, I try to remember to brush my teeth, because the writing has become all consuming. If I get sick, I lie in bed, counting the minutes until I can haul myself back to my computer.  I don’t have time for sickness. You see, I have to write. I’ve got this deadline…

When I finish a first draft, it doesn’t sit in a drawer for a month.  It dashes off across the country to be savaged by a guy who takes great delight in telling me why my story isn’t working.  (With any luck, while he’s ripping and tearing, I have enough time to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Not usually, though.  Usually, I’m ripping and tearing at his  — or someone else’s — story.) Then I rewrite, and with any luck, turn it into something readable. Then I go over it again, for nits and logic and continuity. And then the grammar and spelling. And oh, did I realize every character in my story has a name that starts with A? It’s confusing. Change them. So I do.

And then, when it’s finally done, do I get my holiday in the south of France?  Nope.  That’s when we start the really hard work of putting everything together so we can get the book out. This goes on while we are discussing what will happen three books from now, and what, in detail, the next book will look like.  Oh, and I start my next story in here somewhere, hammering out an outline and a scene by scene so I can think about it while I’m driving out to Somewhere Distant Alberta to deliver a Something or Other to Husband dear.  (At least I have the opportunity to get dressed!)

This is the reality of full time writing at my house.  And I signed up for it!

So, I’ll keep cutting my own nails, and pushing the coffee cups to the side, and trying to remember when I say I’ll do something that has nothing to do with writing. But if I forget, please forgive me.

I have this deadline, you see…

 

September — even better than summer!

Posted on by

I love September in Alberta. It’s like the gods of weather saying, “All right, enough dicking with you, weatherwise.  As your reward, we give you September, in all its glory!

OK, so maybe that’s a little over the top, but I do like this month.  It reminds me of working the fields with Dad when I was growing up.  September was always frantic but beautiful, with the huge screaming blue sky and the acres of crops and us scrambling to get everything done before time ran out and winter set in again. School was an afterthought, something we did until we could get home and work the fields.

Sigh.

The character I’m writing about right now has never been on a farm, much less worked one.  She had a crappy life – and is now being dealt a crappy (but eventful) death, thanks to yours truly.  I wish I could figure out how to give her one day out in the sun, working the fields.  She understands working hard to get what you want. (All right, so she’s a career criminal, but whatever. She does work hard at her craft. Trust me, I know!)  I think she might even like it!

She’s not going to get it, though.  I can just tell.

(Just so you know,  I’m working on a story for The 2nd Circle, the second edition of The 10th Circle Project, which will be out in November of 2011.  See you then!)

 

The day after the online launch of The 10th Circle…

Posted on by

The champagne’s gone.  (And yes, it was actual French champagne and everything, thank you darling husband)  The house is still a wreck.  The dog has given up on me.  And….

We’re on to Round Two.  It’s like Billie Milholland said on Facebook this morning, “There is no rest for the wicked.”  Or for people who are putting out the next edition of The 10th Circle on November 1.

That’s right.  November 1st of 2011.  Two months.  We’ve got two months to finish stories, tie together story lines, figure out who lived and who died. (And how…) And more importantly, what will happen next in this wild world we’re making from scratch…

I was going to take 2 days off. Take a shower (I didn’t realize I should be penciling these in my daytimer!), clean my kitchen and maybe do some laundry.  Get my house and life back on track.  But when I mentioned this idea to Ryan late last night, there was a LONG pause, and then he said “I don’t think so.”

“One day?” I asked, ever hopeful.

“Nope.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I sighed.

He was nice and waited until I got up this morning before he loaded me down with the “to do” list for today.  It’s a long one. (But I’m determined to have that shower!)

So now we’re back at it. After all, we’ve got stories to write and worlds to build for The 2nd Circle.

The cool thing?  I can hardly wait!

(If you want to know more about the project — and about where to buy “The 1st Circle,” (besides Amazon) please go to The 10th Circle website.)

10th Circle — the race is on

Posted on by

The “to do” list is long and the time is increasingly short for the 10th Circle Project launch date, which is September 1, 2011.  I’m missing summer and my dog is out of control, because I simply don’t have the time to devote to him!  (Yeah.  Get a Border Collie puppy.  Should be fun.)Buddy, the 3 legged Border Collie

However, the Project is shaping up nicely. I’m excited, and I hope you will be, too.

Can I talk about any of it?  Well, kinda.  As those of you who were at the prelaunch celebration we put on at When Words Collide 2011, we are pulling out all the stops for this project.  It is a serialized shared world ebook experience — and I don’t think you’ll want to miss it!

Think “Chinatown” meets “X-Files”  in ten editions.  Sort of.  There will be science and there will be crime.  Lots and lots of crime.  Lots of deviousness and lots of back stabbing.  A bit of romance — because who can LIVE without romance, right? — and a bit of humour.  (Maybe not in the first one — after all, we have to blow some stuff up, first.) But mostly, you’ll be seeing crime.

The First Circle ebook comes out September 1st — and the schedule will be a new ebook out every two months.

Yes, you read that right.  Every two months a new ebook will be produced, and all of the stories will be based on what came before.

That, plus all the extras that are being developed for the website will make this a very interesting experiment.  Can we keep it up?  Can we make it exciting?  Can we keep from killing each other?

Who knows?  All I know is, the dog is running wild, I can’t remember the last time I cleaned my house, and I’m really glad I don’t live in either Hope or Glory.

Those two cities are going down!

10th Circle launch date:  September 1, 2011.  Come to the website for the grand opening.  But watch your back.