aquafortis

How to Make Pizza Without the Crust Sticking to the Parchment Paper

2012-01-20T20:43:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this post for two reasons. 1. So I don't forget that this method worked incredibly, amazingly well, and 2. Because I couldn't find adequate information online and had to do some experimentation based on what little information I did find, and I'm trying to save others a little guesswork.

Okay. So you're having issues making homemade pizza because the crust sticks to the parchment paper, regardless of how much flour you use. When you try to take it off after baking, bits and pieces stick to the bottom of the pizza. But you don't want to bake directly on the stone because often there is topping leakage. (I know, I know; that "seasons" the stone. But let's say your husband really doesn't want to clean the stone afterward when it's got baked-on toppings.) Well, thanks to some suggestions by Gnancy on The Baking Circle, tonight I came up with a method to try. And, lo and behold, it worked perfectly.

Here's what I did:

Preheated the oven to 500 F, with the stone inside and in position. Then after about 30 minutes, I reduced the heat to 450.
Once the pizza dough was ready (depending on your dough recipe) and stretched into shape, I set it on a floured cutting board and brushed it with oil.
Then I put the crust on a nonstick cookie sheet that I had sprayed with plenty of cooking spray.
I pre-cooked the pizza crust for about 4 minutes--putting the cookie sheet directly onto the baking stone. While it cooked, I prepared the pizza peel with a sheet of parchment paper liberally sprinkled with flour.
I took out the cookie sheet, dislodged the pizza crust using a plastic spatula, and set the crust onto the floured parchment paper.
I put the toppings on the pizza, slid the parchment paper sheet onto the baking stone, and then baked it for another 10-12 minutes or so.

After I removed the pizza (on the parchment) using the pizza peel and let it cool for a minute or two, I used the spatula to dislodge it from the parchment and slide it onto a cutting board. It just slid right off. I have never had such an easy time getting the pizza off the parchment paper. And the texture was just fine.

I think the issue stems from the fact that the parchment paper sort of "bakes into" the bottom of the crust and doesn't hold up well at high heat.

In case you're curious, I made an experimental pizza from James McNair's New Pizza cookbook--Tandoori chicken pizza. I was afraid it might be weird, but it was REALLY good. Highly recommended.

Nerd Nightmares

2012-01-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed I was back in Berkeley and getting ready to graduate. It was graduation day that night, but earlier in the day I needed to turn in one last paper for a psychology class by 2pm or it would be considered late. The professor would not accept any late papers and would fail anyone who didn't turn their paper in by the deadline. Back in my room, I got distracted by packing my clothes and things and when I looked at the clock next, it was after 3pm. I panicked, and called the office number I had written down for the professor. He was still there, but was adamant about not accepting late papers no matter what.

I cried and wailed that I had been an A student all that semester, hoping that would sway him to make an exception. He said that it would have been fine if I'd arranged an extension in advance, but I hadn't, so too bad. He said I could still drop the class if I didn't want a failing grade on my record. I was terrified that this would mean I wouldn't graduate, and all because I'd just lost track of time. Also, I wasn't sure what it meant for the graduation ceremony itself, because I was supposed to speak during the ceremony and had my speech all prepared and ready in a folder.

I went to campus to pick up an add/drop card from the building where they kept the forms and such. There were people everywhere, on and off campus, milling around—students and their families parking and heading over to the stadium for the graduation ceremony. For some reason I was with a couple of people I'd gone to high school with. We walked down to the building where I picked up the add/drop card and then over to the building where the professor's office was, so I could try to give him my paper one last time and, if that didn't work, get him to sign the drop card.

I can't remember what happened at that point, but later, I was walking toward the graduation ceremony because I knew my family expected me to be there to speak. I was desperate to keep my dad from finding out what had happened. He kept talking proudly about how I was a salutatorian, and I had to explain to him, no, I'm just a speaker, but maybe if I'm lucky they'll announce the salutatorian list and I'll be on it. I was starting to wonder if the people running the ceremony would even let me speak, given the circumstances. I put my things down in a seat and went to use the bathroom before it got too crowded, but the wall/door between my stall and the audience seating area kept popping open or getting opened, much to my chagrin. Plus, I hadn't had time to change my clothes to wear something nice under my graduation robes, so I was wearing some kind of polka-dot pants and a ruffly sleeveless blouse. I decided I didn't care about that part; I'd just have to forge ahead even if I was wearing weird clothing.

Later, my dad was holding a graduation party for me at his house. We were in some kind of huge upstairs room. I was still freaked out about whether I'd actually graduate or not. At first, there weren't very many people there, and then suddenly, when the musical entertainment went on—a young woman singer—the room grew crowded. I went to get something to eat and drink and sat down in the back next to the wall. Suddenly I noticed what I was eating and drinking: wine, although it tasted like juice; and various slices of pizza with pork products on them—pepperoni, Canadian bacon, etc. I was shocked my dad would decide to provide pizza with popular pork products on it for his non-Muslim guests, and then I got terrified that he'd see what I was eating, or some other guest would notice and be appalled.

That's all I remember.

Just One Resolution.

2012-01-04T22:23:00.000-08:00

"Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." - Mark Twain (source: this WebMD article)

I don't know if I'm going to make any resolutions this year. I'm not sure resolutions are a great idea for me. Not just right now or this year, but in general. You see, I have this problem, which is that I tend to set unrealistic goals for myself ALL OF THE TIME. Then, inevitably, I can't accomplish them, and the less progress I make towards the goals, the worse I feel. And I don't seem to have a good sense of what's realistic in the first place. I'm forever making to-do lists I can't complete—I'll start with a short, achievable list, and then I'll tell myself that this or that MUST get done, or that the short list of tasks is lazy and unambitious, and the list will grow until it's not something I can actually do in a day, or even a few days. And I tend to blame my inability to do all the things on myself rather than a faulty list, and so I feel bad about it.

So perhaps I ought to have one resolution this year and one only:

TRY TO SET MORE REASONABLE GOALS.

Corollary #1: Do not disparage small, achievable goals, or belittle their accomplishment by piling on additional work into my justly-earned free time.

Corollary #2: If I fail to achieve a goal, consider whether the fault lies with me or with the goal as stated (e.g. an unrealistically long to-do list).

Corollary #3: Don't underestimate the time it takes to do things—but don't beat myself up over how long it takes, either. It takes as long as it takes. That doesn't mean I'm slow or lazy.

So. That's where I am when it comes to this year's resolution. We'll see how it goes.

Doo or Doo Not

2011-12-27T18:39:00.000-08:00

This may not seem like the most incredible of revelations, but it has occurred to me (in the shower, from whence all my ideas flow, apparently) that Yoda's famous platitude "Do or do not. There is no try." is basically the same thing as "Shit or get off the pot" (as my Gramp used to say).

What has also occurred to me is that this is quite good advice for those of us who tend to be paralyzed by doubt. The doubt, for me, often comes from too much trying--trying to be perfect, trying to plan everything out ahead of time, trying to be as creative as I can, whatever. Everything becomes effortful, and I'm frozen in place from all of my trying. And, of course, then I'm not DOING.

I'm not just talking about my fiction writing or my artwork, either. I've noticed this also applies to my blogging. I get freaked out by worry that everything I put out into the ether has to be brilliant; I manage to convince myself I don't have anything interesting to write. Then I don't blog. But THEN I feel guilty for not blogging. (I know. My head is a frustrating place to be.)

So while I was in the shower I was thinking, "Y'know, Me, if you took the time you spent fretting about blogging and actually just sat down and wrote something without worrying about trying to be awesome, you'd at least have dealt with the parts of the equation that you have actual control over--the unrealistic expectations and the unnecessary guilt. Oh, and you'd actually produce a blog post, too."

That's not bad, when you think about it. Easier said than done, though, and something I seem to need to constantly remind myself of.

As you can see, though--at least temporarily--I've told myself to shit or get off the pot, and I've made my choice. There is no try.

Baby Steps

2011-11-11T13:29:00.000-08:00

Not much to say at the moment, other than it's been a slog of a week for various reasons and I keep having to remind myself to take it bit by bit, which of course makes me think of What About Bob:

My day is all about baby steps at the moment. Step. Read Humanities book. Step. Make lunch. Step. Eat lunch. Step. Outline chapter to write. Step. Admonish cat. Okay, that's not really a step, but it sneaked its way in there.

My Jerk Boss

2011-10-19T11:37:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days, I've come to an important realization. I've been thinking a lot about how burned out and exhausted I've been feeling, and it occurred to me that what I need is a mental health day. A MASSIVE mental health day.

This is something I wouldn't think twice about at a more everyday-type job with a regular employer. My boss wouldn't even have to know I wasn't really sick. Or, if your boss was cool, you could just tell them you need a personal day. But I work at home--self-employed--and apparently I am a really mean boss. I don't think twice about giving myself weekend work to do; I often force myself to work late into the night until it's time to go to bed; when Boss Me says "jump," Beleaguered Employee Me says "how high?"

And I'm a pretty good employee. Sure, I goof off now and then. Twitter appears on my monitor more often than it probably should. But I work hard. So I think I deserve a mental health day. I haven't had one in ages. So I started making a list of things I want to do on my mental health day: not a to-do list, because mental health days and to-do lists don't mix. Just a list of things I haven't really allowed myself to do in a long time--months, in many cases. And on my mental health day, if I'm wondering what I want to do--if, that is, I want to do anything other than being a TV-sated couch potato--I'll just consult the list. So far, I've got:

play the Wii
play the piano
bake cookies
read in the bathtub
do a craft of some sort (perhaps going back to that knitting project I'm destined never to finish)

Anything remotely relating to or resembling work of any kind does not belong on the list. Even working on my new linoleum block print is not on the list (keyword there: "working"). Now comes the tricky part, though: figuring out when to "allow" myself the mental health day. I almost feel like if you have to schedule the mental health day more than a day or two in advance, it loses some of its power. But I do know it'll have to be soon--and I know I'll be happier (and probably more productive) in the long run because of it.

How about you? Had a mental health day recently? If not, why not? If so, what did you do with it?

Laurel Snyder: On Divorce, and Her Novel BIGGER THAN A BREAD BOX

2011-09-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

Although this post is related to the world of kidlit, I'm putting it here because this is where I usually post Stories About Me, and other things that aren't related directly to my work as a writer or my reviews of books. I suppose these days there's a lot of overlap, so I'm going to cross-post a link to Finding Wonderland in any case. But here's the deal: Laurel Snyder's latest book, Bigger than a Bread Box,

is about divorce/separation. It’s also about a magical vintage bread box that grants wishes, and about a kid adjusting to life in a new school, and about poetry and snack cakes. But most of all, it’s about parents who are having trouble with each other and their daughter trying to make sense of that.

So Laurel is asking us, out here in the virtual world, to share our own stories, our thoughts or impressions or memories, of divorce. She's issued what I think is a very worthwhile challenge:

When I told some people I was going to try this, the response (with the exception of a few voices) was NO! People said it would be too negative. But I have to believe there are people like me, who want to share these memories, these thoughts. That our grownup selves haven’t entirely overwhelmed our childhood memories… Prove me right?

I think what I want to share about my parents' divorce when I was eight is the solace that reading provided for me, because we are, after all, on the topic of books, too. Although the divorce was, overall, a good thing, it was often disruptive and difficult for me to cope with the custody situation, the visitation arrangements, being HERE when I wanted to be THERE, or going THERE when I wanted to be HERE. My relationship with the monolithic entity I previously knew as My Parents, as Mom 'n' Dad, had turned into two separate relationships, with two separate and very different people.

So I think that my desire to be, not HERE, but THERE, was subsumed into reading voraciously for escape, since I was the one party without any control over the situation. Oh, sure, there were drama and tantrums galore on my part, but beyond that, I would often escape into the nearest book. More than that, I'd escape into the same books over and over, books that seem to me now to be achingly symbolic of my desire to physically escape. James and the Giant Peach was one title that got a lot of action. I'd daydream about being James, about hitching a ride inside a gigantic peach and then sailing the seas and soaring the skies with my giant, scary-on-the-outside but lovely-on-the-inside insect friends. A few years later, I'd read and reread Madeleine L'Engle, especially A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and travel through time with Charles on his unicorn on a journey to save the world. Charles had power, and he had the most intense of family bonds to support him on his quest.

I wanted to say something profound here, maybe something about how these books didn't just help me to escape, they helped me to return. But it would be disingenuous, it would be too pretty, too convenient. So I'll just say this: when I was finally old enough to go away to college and start my own life, it felt a little like I was finally James escaping on my own giant peach. And starting on my own adventure was everything I hoped it would be when I was just that pensive eight-year-old with my nose buried in a book. In a way, those books saved me. Words are still saving me. And, though I haven't yet had a chance to read Bigger than a Bread Box, I know that it, too, has that power.

Kudos to Laurel Snyder for tackling the topic, and for inviting us to share our stories.

Yes, I AM Here! Somewhere.

2011-08-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

Well, hello there. Long time no bloggie. What can I say? I blame it on a combination of extreme busy-ness and I-ain't-got-nothin'-to-say-itis. Finally, though, I worked my way through some major swaths of the to-do list and I actually feel like I can justify making a post regardless of whether I have anything to say or not. Maybe I don't! We'll find out.

What have I been up to? Lots of traveling, which most of you are already aware of. I went to the Welsh course for the first time in a couple of years, and celebrated finally stepping down from the Board of Directors. (You can see me on the lower left, a few people in, in the picture on this page.) A couple of weeks later, I went to Seattle to give a teen writing workshop at the Lynnwood Library and visit friends. Just a few days prior to that, I had gone deep-sea fishing for the first time, on a boat that left from the Berkeley Marina and went out past the Golden Gate and into the ocean off the coast. I left with one salmon (see photo) and a wicked sunburn that I still had, slightly, when I gave my presentation, much to my chagrin. Also to my chagrin, I got seasick and barfed over the side of the boat. Twice. But then I felt better and was actually able to eat my lunch and keep it down. Maybe that means I'd eventually get used to the bobbing on a boat thing, although the jury is still out on when and whether I plan to do it again.

And, this past weekend, I went out of town again, on a short visit to my mom and a trip to Las Vegas for my cousin's bachelorette party. She's getting married in November. I feel extremely adult because we're serving as immigration sponsors for the husband-to-be. It's kind of weird to be a financially responsible party, not that we haven't been homeowners for the past 9 years (!) and therefore, theoretically, fairly responsible.

Between all of those outings and happenings, I mostly was just scrambling to keep up with everything else: work, housework, e-mail, whatever. So if I owe you an e-mail, I can confidently tell you that I'm finally getting caught up. FINALLY. I suppose it's helped that my ongoing freelance job of the past two years, that has been keeping me in steady part-time work on a regular basis, has gone away. Bad for the pocketbook, but good for getting caught up on everything else. Currently, the tentative plan is to start teaching a class in the spring semester, assuming something else more appealing doesn't come up in the next month, after which I have to decide for sure. It would be an online humanities class, taking it over from my mom, who is starting to think about retiring in a few years. At her college, which is very small, there won't be anyone to teach that particular class after she retires, so she's offered me the opportunity to try teaching it. (Assuming, that is, that I'm able to get hired.) So basically, I'd be able to make use of the humanities classes I've already taken to get equivalency ASAP--which sure makes those classes seem like a good idea, despite the fact that they made my life insanely busy this summer.

Oh. Oh, yeah. Did I forget to mention Rob and I are enrolled in a second master's program? In humanities? Yeah. We took two 2-unit classes online this summer. The Defining the Humanities: Music class was excellent, though it was basically a correspondence course rather than a true online course. The Defining the Humanities: Literature class was, surprisingly, a pain in my ass. I'm convinced that I got suboptimal grades on my first three papers because (cue MASSIVE EGO) the professor couldn't believe that I actually wrote the papers without somehow plagiarizing or cheating. When I wrote the final paper as straightforwardly and unoriginally as I could, making everything as dull and obvious and BASIC as possible...why, there was my only A paper of the semester. SIGH.

But it's over. And now, I can actually prove equivalency to teach humanities, so I suppose no matter what happens I'll most likely have a new source of regular income by spring. Yay for that!

A Quick Note on Those New Year's Resolutions

2011-06-14T19:38:00.000-07:00

Remember those? Yeah. I had resolutions once. One of those concerned the reclaiming of lost hobbies, and it's that particular resolution whose progress I'm currently reporting on. However, "progress" might not be the best way to describe what's happening. "Regress" might be a better word, since it seems like rather than reincorporating any of my lost hobbies, I have managed to squeeze even MORE hobbies out of my life. Frankly, there's some important actual work that's being squeezed out of my life. I'm not exactly sure where this mysterious time black hole came from, but something is wrong with the fabric of space and time, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, it seems like my hobbies currently boil down to the following:

Sleeping. One might think this is mandatory rather than an optional activity. However, when I ask myself, what do I do in my spare time...it seems like sleeping takes up a good portion of it. What can I say? I needs my 7 to 9 hours.
Eating. As above. Kind of mandatory, but I like it and I have fun doing it, and Rob and I both enjoy eating as a recreational activity (not as in, like, hot-dog-eating contests--more as in eating strange, fancy, or, occasionally, shockingly expensive stuff).
Cooking. It facilitates the eating, so I justify spending extra time on it. It's not unusual for me to spend two hours working on a meal just for the two of us. I don't do that every DAY, but at least weekly. I like puttering around in the kitchen, experimenting and improving my skills. And, again, you gotta eat, right? Since I'm in the kitchen anyway, cooking dinner, I might as well enjoy it, right?
Social Obligations. I am not the most sociable of people--most of you reading this know that I would be reasonably happy not talking to anyone all day except my husband and cats, the majority of the time. It's just that we have somehow acquired at least one to three major social engagements per week and now this is a major time suck.

And that, guys, is pretty much it.

Hey! you shout. You didn't put "reading" on the list of hobbies! No, I did not. At the moment, all of my reading hours are spent on books related to the HUX classes Rob and I are taking. Seriously. I take a pen and notebook with me to bed along with the reading material, just in case, during the 15 minutes I manage to stay awake before bed these days, something strikes me as usable for writing a paper.

Funny how this sounds like a TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL person's schedule. Ah, the life of a part-time college student.

One final parting thought: I've been so pressed for time that I almost considered putting "fiction writing" on the Hobbies list, because I've unintentionally deprioritized it over the past few weeks. THAT is a real problem. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of "I have to do this other stuff over here, because if I don't, I won't get paid/nobody else will do it/the world will explode." And then, suddenly, it's sleepy-time again and yet another day went by that I didn't even come close to having time to work on my novel.

I fear this: the idea that the measure of a real artist is how willing you are to shove everything else aside just so you can work on your art. Food for thought. (And now, I'm off to create food for the body...)

Where Am I?

2011-06-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

That is a GREAT question. The short answer is, I'm home now. The long answer is, well, long. Suffice it to say that the past month or so has been beyond hectic--going to weddings, visiting parents, a trip to Disneyland, summer classes starting (the ones we're taking and the one that Rob is teaching), writing papers, etc. etc. As one friend put it, we're 1 wedding and 1 funeral short of a movie.

That's right--we went to 3, count 'em, 3 weddings in 3 weeks. One per week. TWO of those weddings were in Ben Lomond, which is in the Santa Cruz Mountains, approximately 2.5 hours' drive away. One of those involved a full weekend stay (see details here). Somehow, we managed to cram in a trip to Disneyland last Wednesday, and were appalled to realize we hadn't gone to Disneyland in about 14 years. It was awesome, but I have to say--pardon my French--that shit's expensive now. Somewhere in there I wrote a 5-page paper about James Joyce. Oh, and did I mention that our 10-year wedding anniversary was this past Saturday? We already went away for a few days to celebrate--wisely, we did this back in early May, before everything went nuts. Sadly, I was sick during that trip. Rob was sick during Wedding #1. That's right; germs made an appearance this month, too.

Even without all that stuff, I've been kind of appalled at how little time I have to do things lately. So blogging has fallen by the wayside, except for the YA blog. ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKE HOMER SOMETHING SOMETHING. That's all I have to say.

On Confidence

2011-04-20T19:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I stop to think about it, I'm staggered by the amount of things I don't do because, on some level, I lack the confidence. I'm not talking about risk taking in the traditional sense--I'm not overly worried about the fact that I will most likely never voluntarily go skydiving, for example.

I'm talking about day-to-day things, work or creative projects or bright ideas that go unrealized because I've decided I just can't. Sure, some projects are inherently unfeasible, or impossible given time or money constraints, or just not great ideas from a practical standpoint. But so many others--even some of the ones that allegedly are impractical--fall into the category of stuff that I don't have the confidence to tackle. It even applies to blog posts: I get paralyzed because I convince myself nobody's going to care about what I have to say. Maybe they won't--that's not really the point. But it still has the power to scare me away.

Other things I haven't had the confidence to do: Write and draw a graphic novel. Be in a band (except for imaginary ones). Get over the idea that if I'm not constantly contributing directly and equitably to household income, that I'm somehow failing. Get over the idea that all work-related activities must earn income to be considered "real work." These last two are more substantial problems. (Some might call them actual problems as opposed to minor complaints.)

I feel ridiculous about this sometimes, because I know there's a lot of stuff I have done. But then I think about the things I tried to do and failed, or the ideas I started on and abandoned, muttering "What was I thinking?" And I balk. Again.

I'm in a serious "What was I thinking?" rut right now, which prompted this rather grim train of thought. Here's hoping I claw my way out soon and get some shit done.

HTML to Kindle: An Aggravation Odyssey

2011-03-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

Today I spent several hours making a nifty HTML file of some recipes that I'd scanned out of an old cookbook and converted to text, and then had a hell of a time trying to get the email-to-Kindle service to accept my file. Allegedly, HTML files are JUST FINE, but it seemed like every time I sent it, I got an error message in return. I don't know how much of my aggravation was due to the fact that I had omitted a critical HTML tag and therefore my file would not convert no matter how many settings I twiddled, but I suspect probably most of it. Yes, that's right; it was probably user error.

Still, I'm going to note down the steps I took to get my scanned recipes into a format that looks, if I say so myself, rather nice on my Kindle, and even has a table of contents. Mainly, this is in case *I* forget how to do it later, but hopefully it's useful to someone else, too. I used so many random web pages to compile these instructions that it's not even funny, but Kindle Formatting was one of the most helpful.

First, though, a note on why I didn't just send the PDF straight to my Kindle. Well, I did. BUT the PDF viewer did all kinds of annoying things like auto-rotating and generally making it hard to read. So I tried cutting and pasting the OCR text from my PDF into a Word doc, and then converting that back to PDF, and putting it on the Kindle. It was...better, but I wasn't able to browse to locations, and the spacing was all messed up. So here's what I did that DID work, from beginning to end, in ten not-so-easy steps:

1. I scanned the pages I wanted to turn into a document and saved them as PDF with OCR (optical character recognition) enabled.

2. I copied and pasted the recipe text into a Word document. I then organized the document to be more or less the way I wanted it (removing extra spacing, fixing any errors that the OCR messed up on). Since the ultimate output would be a stripped-down HTML file, I didn't worry too much about font sizes or other font formatting--that has to be done manually later.

3. In OpenOffice (or Word), I did a Save As...HTML file. (Some of the web pages I consulted said that in Word for PC, you should select Web Page, Filtered.)

4. I opened the HTML file in a text editor (Dreamweaver also works) and then the tedious part began. I took out ALL NON-ESSENTIAL CODE, which means basically anything other than <html>, <head>, <title>, <body>, <h1> and other header tags, , , and list tags. Anything referring to font sizes, boldface, or other "fancy" formatting had to go. (Apparently, it can be rendered inconsistently, so I played it safe.) The Find and Replace function really helped here.

5. Then I did some fiddling with removing extra space in the document for my own ease of reading it (I think this can be automated in Dreamweaver) and added paragraph or line break tags where I felt they were necessary. I made all recipe titles h1 headings, any other titles of minor importance h3 headings, and everything else just enclosed in paragraph tags--except for one unordered list, which rendered fine.

6. Between each recipe--this is important--I added the Kindle tag which indicates a page break/section break: <mbp:pagebreak> That way a new recipe would start on a new "page" rather than being continuous.

7. Next, as per the instructions on Kindle Formatting: "The Kindle has built-in bookmarks for the Table of Contents and the start of the book's content. Use the following anchor tags to mark those places in your book: <a name="TOC"/> and <a name="start"/>. Place the anchors right after the page break tag, before any headings or paragraphs."

8. Here's the part where knowing some basic HTML is helpful. Time to create the Table of Contents in a way that the Kindle can read and browse it. It's actually very easy: all you're doing is creating text anchors within the document, just like those you might create on a regular HTML page. Give the TOC its own "page" by separating it out with the page break code in #6. Put anchors in the text wherever you want the Kindle to be able to browse to (in this case, I put them before each recipe title). Then, in the TOC, link to each anchor using whatever name you want (in this case, I used the title of the recipe). For example:

Table of Contents
<a href="#one">OKRA SKILLET</a>
<a href="#two">HERBED GREEN BEANS</a>
<mbp:pagebreak>
<a name="one">OKRA SKILLET</a>
(recipe for okra skillet)
<mbp:pagebreak>
<a name="two">HERBED GREEN BEANS</a>
(recipe for herbed green beans)

Simple enough, if you've done it before in HTML. Thanks to Michael R. Hicks for the tips.

9. Here's where I'm not entirely sure what's required or not, because I was missing that stupid BODY tag and the bounce-back messages from Amazon were not giving me any info about the actual error. So then began some trial-and-error fiddling that may not have been necessary. I read that Unicode UTF-8 can be a problem for some versions of the Kindle. So I went into Dreamweaver and made sure the encoding for the HTML file was set to Western/Latin as opposed to Unicode (in Preferences, New Document). I opened a new file and copied and pasted all the HTML into it, and voila, I had my file in Western/Latin encoding.

10. I e-mailed my HTML file as an attachment to my free Kindle address using the subject line "Convert," and lo and behold, there it was, table of contents and all. Evidently you can also use some basic CSS with the Kindle, though I didn't try that this time.

Embarrassing Things I Wrote in the Past

2011-03-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I wrote a lot of things in the past that I find embarrassing now. It's just the way things work. But today's is quite special--after Tanita posted her college-era letter to her future self over on Finding Wonderland, I remembered an essay (yes, ESSAY) that I wrote, completely of my own volition, at age 13 (it's dated June 20, 1990), differentiating the types of people who annoyed me. Evidently the old joke is true: there are two types of people, those who divide people into types and those who don't. Ha ha. Clearly my 13-year-old self was obsessed with dividing people into types. Or I was really mad at someone. Anyway, here it is for your reading amusement. Let me just note, for the record, three things: 1) I was REALLY CRANKY when I was 13, and 2) I'm glad I never have to be 13 again, and 3) I am really not this person anymore. Um, I don't think. Then again, I did draw all those Common Species of the Literary World Cartoons...

INSIGHTS - DIFFERENCES (by Sarah, June 20, 1990)

There are many different types of people in the world. Those, like me, who choose to have friends may have certain standards that these friends must live up to, certain characteristics of their personalities.

One main thing about people is that they may change. As friends mature, their personalities and viewpoints can drastically be altered. It is then when one sees more readily certain types of people.

One of the most common types is the fakers. People who pretend to be someone they aren't. There are some identifying attributes to these people's outside personalities. For one, you often see them "kissing up" to people in prominent places. Don't get this confused with the harmless type of kissing up, as with being truly kind to people, or being indifferent to people one doesn't like. [Editor's Note: I was obviously unclear on the concept of kissing up...]

--NOTE: I am not classifying people in a false way because, from experience, I tell you this is true-- [I find this side note HYSTERICAL.]

Fakers can readily be told from others when kissing up--it sounds phony somehow. [Way to be specific.] The other most prominent attribute of fakers is that they often take up the characteristics and likes and dislikes of someone they adore or admire. For example, an obsession with a rock group can mean instantaneous liking of anything associated with the hometown of the group, i.e. sports teams. Also, wishes to be "in" can result in pretending, to satisfy the admired person. Another example of this is people who take drugs just to be cool. [...as opposed to people who take drugs for other reasons?]

Another group of people are those who are undependable. You cannot trust them with personal items, as they may lose or damage them. They may not call back, and one is never sure what to expect from an undependable person, which is why this is so short. [ROFL.] They are quick to forget anything previously said, whether a promise or an argument, as if it never happened.

A group often synonymous with undependable people are short-tempered people. If you are truly miffed at them, they stomp off in a huff, grumbling to the heavens. ["grumbling to the heavens?" Nice one.] On the other hand, if you have just patiently explained something to them which doesn't suit them, they throw a fury of a tantrum, yelling at you until you've even forgotten what it is you said, you're so buffeted.

One group can inadvertently earn their title: the ignorers. Though a number of people may purposely be a faker and ignore their true friends while kissing up to someone, some inadvertently consort with other friends, unaware that they are leaving people out. [Consort!!] These people also have a tendency to "group" at parties. [Because my 13-year-old self had been to SO many parties.]

The worst sort of person is the pain-in-the-posterior, or the persister. [HAHAHA] They commonly attach themselves to people unwantedly, and often persist at personal inquiries best left unanswered. In other words, a gossip. You know the type. Need I say more? [Um, no.]

The victims of one or more of these types of people, the ones who innocently befriended them without a thought towards hidden changes or recessive personality traits are called drifters. With one or two close friends, they seek friendship and are often too hurt by previous people to really open up. They are afraid that people won't like them for petty, insignificant reasons. [This is kind of sad. I had forgotten about that particular fear.] Unwary victims of circumstance, offers of friendship by others are often incredulously met by drifters, who aren't receptive for the sole reason that they cannot believe something good actually happened to them. [I think I just liked the phrase "unwary victims of circumstance."] Thus, it is difficult for this poor group to make close friends, though they are usually well-liked.

This classification of some individuals is to suit the needs of the author only, who is not to blame for bitter truths. [Best. Disclaimer. Ever.]

The Want-Tos and the Have-Tos

2011-03-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

I had a great conversation this morning with a friend of mine, Brenda, who is in her 70s (I think; she's very energetic, so I'm not entirely sure) and recently had a hip replacement. We hadn't spoken in some time, but over the course of getting caught up, she told me that she's always found it difficult to get around to doing the things she really wants to do because she's so focused on getting done all the things that "have to" get done. She said that she feels like she has to tackle the "have to dos" before she can allow herself time for the things she wants to do.

I realized that I'm much the same way. I set all kinds of priorities, many of them arbitrary, and most of them woefully inattentive to what I would actually like to be doing. Ultimately, it seems to lead to stress about what I have to do, but what's worse, I get stressed out about what I *want* to do, too, so that even those things seem like a chore. Or they seem like an unattainable reward--unattainable because I feel like I'll never tackle the "have to dos" to my satisfaction.

I haven't figured out a solution to this yet. I suspect the answer lies in simply taking time for the things I want to do, and not worrying about it. Letting it go. This sounds so simple yet it's so difficult. Both parts of it are difficult. I even tend to feel I must prioritize my "want to dos"--I want to make new artwork, so that should take priority over playing a video game, practicing the piano, or (here's a brand-new one) knitting a hat with ear flaps, all of which I also want to do. (Here's one hat I'd love...probably too difficult for my rudimentary skills, especially if I want to make it big enough for me...)

And where does exercise fit? Is it a want-to or a have-to? If it's a have-to, is it more important or less important than, say, working on writing, or attending to my freelance work?

Questions like these rapidly cause me to spiral into completely unproductive paralysis, so clearly my current method of addressing the issue is inadequate.

At least I did manage, a couple of weeks ago, to take time to sit in on Rob's class and do some figure drawing. The first two images (sets of 3 drawings apiece) were done using only my thumb dipped in Speedball ink. The third image was done using a Tombow pen, plus a brush and water. Currently the Tombow pen is my nemesis; this was the only acceptable drawing I did that day with the pen.

I'm hoping I can use one of these sketches, or another sketch, for a new set of artworks that I'm rather excited about. They'll incorporate block printing, found text, and other mixed media alterations. Finding the time...that's the problem.

Overachievers

2011-02-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

So, Rob and I have both decided we're going to apply for another master's program, because we're both overachievers like that. The one we're looking at is the HUX Humanities distance education program at CSU Dominguez Hills. It's a job security thing, too. With an emphasis in the art area, Rob will be qualified to also teach art history-related humanities classes--a useful competency to have, just in case the cuts to the California community college system get REALLY bad and there aren't as many art classes available. It makes him more useful.

As for me, it also makes it possible for me to teach basic art classes at the CC level, should that ever become necessary. And it might. Right now, with a BA in Art and one additional year of graduate study (a Post-Baccalaureate certificate), I'm just slightly underqualified. I do have an MFA--but it's not in art. In less lean times, that would probably be enough for me to teach part-time--basic drawing, for instance. These days--not so much. But with the Humanities MA and an emphasis in art, I would be a much more qualified candidate.

Not only that, it just looks like a damn cool program. I mean, the likelihood of me teaching ANY class is low, unless there seems to be no other option for work. But I'd be jealous of Rob, just watching him do it. There's a class on Frank Lloyd Wright, for cripes sake. A class on female coming-of-age in world literature. (Yeah, obviously I'd be taking a few lit classes, too...) AND, you have the option of doing a creative thesis rather than an academic one.

So we've got all our transcripts ordered, and we'll be working on our essays soon and filling in our applications. I'm looking forward to it. I like learning stuff, and school is one of the things I can equivocally say I'm very good at. Not exactly a marketable skill, though, since nobody's going to pay me to do it. It's one of those things that, as a child or teenager, makes you a high achiever with great potential and possibly even a prodigy/genius type, depending on your level of success. As an adult, nobody cares if you're good at school. (Sad, but true.) Still, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Plus, as Rob pointed out, we're actually applying to a program where GRADES MATTER--very refreshing, after going through the whole art school/MFA program thing where the only thing that really matters is whether or not they see potential in your creative work.

There Are Books, and Then There Are BOOKS

2011-02-09T14:04:00.000-08:00

Some books, when I sit down to read them, are so impressive or intimidating or amazing that they make me never want to write again. They make me question my entire career decisionmaking process (not that that's too difficult). Obviously, that's my problem, though, not the books' problem. It's not the author's fault that they're so awesome—in fact, I'm sure they put a ton of work into it and deserve it. Anyway. There are other books, though, that, when I sit down and start reading them, make me excited in a different way—make me want to open my notebook or my word-processing program and start writing, too. They make me eager. They make me gleeful. I'm reading one of those now: Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors. I'm only a few pages in, but I'm getting that I-want-to-write-right-now feeling.

I'm not sure what the difference is, or even if there IS one—it could be as simple as a difference in mood on my own part. Or maybe it's that the writing resonates with me in some underlying way—the style? The tone? It's hard to say. It's not as though those books that make me want to give up entirely DON'T resonate; they do. But they usually, in some way, make me feel like they're "up there" at the top of some pinnacle of awesomeness, and I'm "down here" just trying to muddle along, and when such incredible works exist, why should I bother when I could never do half as well?

And of COURSE it isn't the case that the books which make me want to eagerly start writing are not also awesome books. They're great books, too. It's very hard to put my finger on what the difference is, which is why I guess I have to assume that it's me and not the books. Does this happen to anyone else? I can't help thinking that if I could figure out what the difference is, what it is that makes some books spark that need to write, maybe I'd realize something important (or at least interesting) about my own writing.

Catching Up

2011-02-02T18:44:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I've been so neglectful as to not blog here for nearly a month. Not only that, I'm sorry to report that so far I have made zero progress on any of my New Year's resolutions as delineated in my previous post. Not that I've been lazy. Nope. Just exhausted, and busy.

Fortunately, I have high hopes that, from now on, I'll be not only blogging more but perhaps even reincorporating things like artwork and exercise and hobbies and (gasp!) FUN. Rob's art exhibit went up in the MJC campus gallery last week (see photo at right), which means he doesn't have to spend every waking non-teaching hour out in the studio, which means I get more help around the house again and get to see him more (although, time-management-wise, those might cancel each other out). And, after this week, I won't have such a conglomeration of book-related activities keeping me occupied.

One of those book-related activities was my first ever school visit yesterday, to Oakdale Junior High. I read parts of my book to two groups of kids in the library, talked a little about how I got published and the writing process, and answered questions. My favorite question might have been "what's a good first step to take if I want to be a writer?" And, I loved the girl who came up to me and said she's writing a novel, too. That's some ambition.

I was at least 15 or 16 before I tried to start writing a novel, and I certainly never finished any of those "early works" (well, all 2 of them). I think the first one was the ill-fated cyberpunk reinterpretation of The Nutcracker--entitled, of course, NetCracker. Or possibly it was the other untitled cyberthriller about the guy with the cyber-hand who is assigned to infiltrate a high-tech corporation, who meets and teams up with a teenage punk girl with a genius for gadgets and a penchant for running away from home. I even outlined most of that one in great detail, and wrote at least 30 or 40 pages. It starts with the rather cringe-worthy line "The sweat ran down Ian's body in rivulets as he staggered out of the room where he had just passed his physical endurance test." Eww.

Still, I suppose those are probably better than my other attempts at the time--the one-act play about a waiting room that was a metaphor for death; the SOOOOPER lame vampire-lust short story that nobody, I repeat NOBODY should ever read; or the one simply titled "MYSTERY" that seems to be a pseudo-Victorian tale set in Drury Lane, London and riddled with Dickensian stereotype characters like the former street waif Tommy and the unfortunately-named Jenny Robinthwaite. I might have been 13 or 14 when I wrote that one. It boasts such great lines as "Ask me not why" and "Sleep now, you scalawag" and "I've never seen a better fight in my life!"

Amusing as my early writings seem to me now, I wonder what would have happened if I'd had a chance to meet an author when I was younger, to ask questions about what it was like to be a writer and how to get there. Probably nothing, since I was pretty darn focused on being an artist, but still. Maybe I would have spent more time on it. Or, on the other hand, maybe I wouldn't have taken so many risks with my writing, tried so many odd (some might say ridiculous) ideas. I mean, there's nothing like education to make you suddenly wonder what you're doing wrong. So maybe it worked out for the best after all, eh?

New Year's Resolutions 2011

2011-01-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

That's right, even though my brain is currently semi-mushy due to cold viruses scurrying around and rewiring connections so that nothing really makes sense, I have in fact been pondering New Year's resolutions. This mostly took place prior to getting sick, so the resolutions are generally doable and more or less make sense. I think.

The only obstacle I'm seeing to these resolutions, currently, is logistics, but I'll think about that when my brain is working again.

1. Start going to the gym regularly again. I've been exercising with reasonable regularity, mostly going out running with Rob a few times a week (2 or 3 miles each time, usually), and also using the exercise bike, but, as always, the craziness of the holidays threw a wrench into the works. Well, wrench begone!

2. Do more artwork. I have not been leaving enough time to really work on my visual art lately, other than the occasional figure drawing session. I even have very specific ideas for a new body of work I want to start experimenting with, but haven't had the time, and when I've had time, I haven't had energy. This must be remedied.

3. Start brand-new novel project that I was supposed to start during NaNoWriMo but didn't. Speaking of specific ideas, I have some good plans for that project, too. (In case you were wondering, it's the much-hyped steampunk-ish novel that I was talking about months ago.) I still have a lot of world-building to do, but I'm itching to start writing.

4. Re-incorporate at least one long-lost hobby into my life. Over the course of the past year or two (coinciding quite neatly with my freelance business and writing work picking up) the following beloved hobbies have fallen almost completely by the wayside except for the occasional token foray: playing video games, knitting (I hardly knew ye; I have yet to finish a knitting project), practicing the piano, learning languages and (this one is really more chore than hobby) sewing. It's mostly due to lack of time and energy, although I should also add that there's nothing worse for the self-esteem of the amateur musician who plays for enjoyment to have friends who are professional classically-trained musicians.

Sadly, I'm seeing a running theme with all of these resolutions, and they all depend heavily on improving my time management skills. Therefore there's an unspoken resolution #5: Become a whiz at time management. I don't seem to be very good at it, and I'm constantly misjudging the amount of time it will take me to do things, and the amount of energy. I usually underestimate how long things will take me to do, and I also tend to assume I have infinite energy reserves to boot, such that I won't need a break between tasks but can simply jump to the next one. And I almost never factor in time to deal with unforeseen stuff.

So I'm not sure how this will all happen. I'm hoping some time will magically appear once Rob is done spending all his free time in the art studio preparing for his show at the end of the month. That should free up at least a few hours a week in cooking and cleaning time, if nothing else. So...one hour more of exercise, one hour of artwork and one hour of hobbies? That sounds a little sad. Must think of a better strategy...

Put It In My Veins

2010-12-10T22:22:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it amazes me how much drawing is like a drug. I haven't had time to do more than the occasional sketch or doodle over the past few months, so tonight, going to a figure drawing session that Rob organized on campus for his students, I was pleased nearly to the point of mania that I was finally able to take a break from everything else I've been doing and exercise the old drawing muscles.

And it IS like a drug. Really. I'm an addict. It doesn't even have to be a GOOD drawing session for me to think, AAAHHHHHHH, that's the stuff. Fortunately, tonight was pretty good. Not outstanding, but good, considering I'm a little out of practice. I've seriously been jonesing to do some artwork for months now. Luckily, I was at a good breaking point in the revision, having just struggled through rewriting a chapter that seemed to have nothing right with it and everything wrong. Now, I'm hoping it's more good than bad.

Anyway, here are a few of the drawings I did tonight. The two using Conte pencil on toned paper are just 20-minute sketches, and the large charcoal drawing (left) took a little over an hour. I'm pretty happy with how that one came out, considering it took me 10 minutes just to get started because I couldn't figure out what medium I wanted to use and because the pose was surprisingly challenging. But I loves me some vine charcoal. Once I got started, it flowed pretty well.

I'm looking forward to getting back in the habit again.

My Virgin Ears

2010-12-09T18:47:00.000-08:00

Strangely, I have not listened to an actual audiobook yet. Nope, not once. There's no one particular reason I can point to. I tend to prefer listening to music on my iPod, but I'm not anti-podcast, for instance. I like books. (That's obviously not the problem.) It's just that I have an uncanny ability to forget about the possibility of audiobooks when I'm planning for a long car trip. I'm not in the habit, so I don't think about it until it's too late.

Well, NO MORE! I have officially checked out my very first audiobook from the library: White Cat by Holly Black, narrated by none other than Jesse Eisenberg of The Social Network movie fame. It's a book I was interested in reading, so I'm hoping I get just as much enjoyment out of the audio version. And it's just a slight bit longer than my drive down to SoCal is likely to take, I think, so it should be perfect. It was a pretty exciting day for library pickings, actually: Magic Thief Book 3, Northlander Book 2, POD by Stephen Wallenfels, Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus (YAY YAY YAY), and the first book in a new series by Herbie Brennan (author of the very funny Faerie Wars books) called The Shadow Project.

Not that I'll have a huge amount of leisure reading time for the next few days, buried as I am under articles to write, art appreciation essays to grade, and a big revision I foolishly thought I could get done much more quickly. I don't even want to THINK about Christmas shopping yet, although I did get a little of it done already. There's not even any time to shop online. My so-called free time is generally devoted to cooking ('cause you gotta eat) and cleaning (just enough to not feel like we're living in a pigsty) and sleeping (because that is non-negotiable). Every time I check something off the list, I want to celebrate with great jubilation.

Oh yeah. No celebrating for at least 5 days.

A Poetic Interlude

2010-11-29T18:17:00.000-08:00

To be perfectly honest, I haven't blogged lately because I've been experiencing extreme blog performance anxiety and existential blog-related angst. What if I don't have anything interesting to say? What if nobody cares about [insert random topic here]? Is it even worth blogging when there are so many other blogs out there with far more profound, useful or entertaining content than mine? You know, the usual.

So, while I recover from this funk (and, let me tell you, this particular type of funk is a lot less fun than it sounds) I offer you a couple of poems I wrote when I was a kid. These were written in one of many partially-filled journals I used to jot things down in. People seemed to really like giving me journals and diaries when I was young, and I had a tendency to use maybe the first ten or twenty pages and then put them aside. I was not a good diary-keeper, though I tried. Entries were usually along the lines of "Dear Diary, today I went to the dentist. I got McDonalds afterward. On Saturday I had to visit my dad. We went to a movie but it was boring." Not even very descriptive.

Mostly I preferred the less diary-oriented blank books, in which I doodled, wrote random poems and stories, and practiced weird styles of handwriting. (When I was older, this changed to song lyrics and increasingly angsty poems.) Anyway, I was rummaging in a box in the garage earlier tonight and found a couple of these journals. One poem, appropriately enough, was about Thanksgiving. I wrote this when I was about nine:

Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a happy time,
A time to stuff your face;
Thanksgiving is a thankful time
To say a prayer of grace.

That's my punctuation--no after-the-fact editing. Apparently my unholy love of the semicolon had already started. And I really liked rhyming poetry.

I also wrote this strangely prophetic untitled poem about being an author. I had no intention, as you know, of actually being a writer until about ten years ago. However, at age 10 or so when I wrote this poem, I did already love the act of writing. Evidently the career didn't appeal quite so much.

If I were an author, I'd wonder who
I would dedicate all of the books I wrote to.
Maybe my mother or father or uncle or aunt or cousin or....WHEW!
Or who I would write all my books for...
I don't think I want to be an author any more.

I find this highly amusing.

Writer's Block

2010-11-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

One of my blogging friends recently talked about a corollary or, perhaps, expanded definition of writer's block that includes the difficult-to-ignore feeling that one's writing, to put it plainly, sucks. That the suckitude is all-encompassing and inescapable. And that feeling of suckitude keeps you from writing.

I'm very familiar with this species of writer's block. I guess if you're prone to it in the first place, it never really goes away. And I wonder how other people deal with it. Sometimes I have a deadline, so it's a matter of B.I.C. - Butt In Chair. I have to do it. It's my work and somebody needs to see it by a certain date. Then, it's like homework: there's just no getting out of it, and if it sucks, too bad. It still has to be done.

Other times I spend days or weeks in a funk; that seems to be my preferred M.O. I eventually get over it and want to write again; eventually get to the point where I'm willing to risk the suckitude. Why? How? Who knows? I guess because ultimately creating stuff is the only thing I really want to do, no matter how hard it is or how much it sucks sometimes. I can't help it. It's just what I'm meant to be. Nothing else will do.

Self-Aggrandizement Sure Takes Up a Lot of Time.

2010-10-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

I guess I'm spending all my time lately on things like new websites and Facebook "pages" and networking and book-related junk. I did an uber-long blog post over at the YA blog recapping a conference I went to over the weekend--I seem to be doing most of my posting there lately, as well as at the Cybils blog, where I'm the blog editor. I'm blogging a lot. Just not here.

I'm hoping to remedy that. I think I'm making progress on my Gigantic List O' Random Crap that needs doing. I usually put blogging here at aquafortis fairly far down the list, sadly, but again, I hope to change that. Unfortunately, I get all exhausted and antisocial when I've been doing a lot of networking-type stuff and might disappear from the virtual world for days at a time. Sometimes I DON'T EVEN TWEET! Shock! Horror!

Anyway, speaking of horror, here's a great link if you're looking for some Halloween reading: a friend of mine, Colleen, got a good scary story published in Strange Horizons. I keep pushing it on people because it's such an awesome piece. It's not TOO scary. You know me and scary: we're like two peas in totally separate pods on completely different planets. But I read and enjoyed this story, so there you go.

More soon. I swear.

And You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here?

2010-10-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Every so often, when I think about the fact that my first novel is about to be published, I get this feeling of surreality. I think to myself, this is not how I would have pictured my life if you'd asked me fifteen years ago, when I was an undergraduate in college, or even ten years ago, when I was working at my first (hmm, and last) full-time salaried job.

It's not like I suddenly woke up one morning as a Type-A, high-powered stockbroker, or a doctor or a trial lawyer, and wondered to myself, "Who am I? WHO AM I??" It's just that it didn't even cross my radar that I might pursue a writing career—at least, not until that job ten years ago at IGN.com when I started doing some on-the-side freelance humor writing and thought to myself, "Remember how you always loved writing? Yeah. Maybe I could do this every day. Perhaps I should think about looking into this further."

In retrospect, this logic seems flawed, as I ended up transitioning from one unlikely, competitive, low-paying career goal (art) to another equally competitive, difficult and low-paying career goal (writing). But you have to understand—in 2001, when I quit my job at IGN and decided to go back to graduate school for creative writing, I was still coming off a massively career-shifting and aggravation-inducing year of post-baccalaureate study at the San Francisco Art Institute. After spending all my spare cash applying to 13 art MFA programs (in those dark days of 1998, you had to send most places slide carousels of your work), I was offered only one option—a year of post-bac study—so I took it.

Moving even further back in my career planning, when I started undergraduate school as an Art Practice (and Psychology—but that's a story for another time) major at Berkeley, I had this general idea that I'd end up in illustration or design. But then I was confronted with the dichotomy that is High Art vs. Low Art, or Fine Art vs. Commercial Art, or whatever you want to call it (great post on this at Yat-Yee's blog). I learned, in my fine-art-oriented program, that words like "commercial" and "illustration" were bad things when applied to fine art, so I did what I needed to in order to succeed in the milieu I was thrust into—or I tried, anyway. I didn't exactly banish my entire aesthetic; I just focused on art for art's sake.

In further retrospect, I think my idea was that I'd enter grad school, get my MFA, and then go on to work in illustration or design or whatever other art-related job I could find. I didn't really have a clear idea of what that might be, but I knew I wasn't interested in teaching, which is what most MFAs end up doing. (Or they end up in a mindless day job so they can make art at night.) But since I didn't get into an MFA program--after tons of effort, I might add—I was a little lost after finishing my post-bac year. I was like, now what? I don't feel ready to plunge into the art world. I was traumatized by various unpleasant experiences in my graduate department. Rob was still struggling with the politics of the MFA program there. I was also feeling embittered by the fact that I'd finished my BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, etc. etc. and it hadn't seemed to do me much good career-wise.

So I ignored the dilemma and applied for work. It seemed like a good time. The internet boom was…well…booming, and we lived in the Bay Area. Entry-level positions abounded. I got one marketing job, didn't like it, and quit after two weeks, when I was offered the IGN job.

Which brings me back to the writing. Inspired by my manager Mike, who also wrote articles for the site and was going to transition to a full-time content writing job, I offered myself as a freelance writer. Sadly, the internet boom stopped booming, I got a new set of bosses, and I wasn't able to make the transition to full-time writer. But it got me thinking. Why put up with the constant fear of layoffs, the excruciatingly dull morning marketing meetings and the recurring chastisement for my occasional lateness to said meetings when I could REALLY be doing something with this desire to write?

Not having any formal creative writing training beyond some childhood enrichment classes had never stopped me from writing before, but I figured I needed some more learnin' before I tried to actually get published, or get a job as a content writer, or whatever. I applied to MFA programs, and lo and behold, I got into one this time. (A much better acceptance rate, too—one out of two. …What was I thinking?)

By that time I was starting to think about being a freelancer full-time—writing, design, illustration, whatever. And that's a pretty good description of what I do now. That's how I got here. So I guess that answers that question.

C'mon...You Know You Want to Read It

2010-09-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

My litany of excuses for not blogging, that is. I was supposed to follow up on my last post and everything. I fully intended to for a few days there, too. Then I got busy. It's not as though I haven't been blogging--after all, I've put up close to twenty posts over the past two weeks on the Cybils blog, and I did manage a post or two over at the YA blog recently. I did some other webmastering duties at other sites. And I even worked on a couple of major (to me) web design projects--namely a new personal/professional site and a Latte Rebellion site to accompany/pimp my book.

Speaking of the book, that's been keeping me busy, too...I got an advance review copy of it at the end of last month, which got me excited, just in time to receive my next (and final) round of edits. Not long after I finished those edits, I got a phone call from a member of the publicity staff at my publisher, and had a discussion about things like going to ALA and doing a book launch and contacting media and other stuff that left me flabbergasted yet excited. I talked to a couple of friends here in town, who have teacherly and librarianly connections, about talking to classes or holding a library reading when the book is launched in January. Today I got my galley proofs, and my next task is to review them and e-mail my publisher with any changes. It's a whirlwind that comes in gusts--lots of stuff at once, alternating with periods of waiting.

Oh, and I've been doing lots of writing, mainly articles interspersed with a little work on another fiction project. So lately it's seemed like every spare second has been taken up, because of course there's other stuff happening in my life besides work. Nothing particularly notable, except Rob's return to teaching classes after being on sabbatical for a year. That's been a smack upside the head for both of us. So if I seem to be a bit dry and dull at the moment...I guess I am.

I did have two odd conversations today, though. One was remarkable because it's highly possible the exchange consisted entirely of lies, and the one person I could guarantee was lying, was me. Packing up my car after shopping at Trader Joe's:

Random Large Dude: (paraphrased) Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help out, I can give you my address, my phone number and everything, but me and my family are trying to get to Vallejo.

Me: What, like on the train or...?

RLD: No, we've got a car, but it's (broken down/ran out of gas/something I can't remember).

Me: I'm sorry, I don't have any cash on me.

Now, that latter was, sadly, a lie. I didn't have any cash I wanted to GIVE him. I only had a twenty. And pennies, which would be rude. But I still felt bad. And then, as I got in my car and drove away, I told myself, he could well have been pulling a scam and just lying about the family, about Vallejo, about the car, about everything. He looked normal enough, if startlingly obese, but who knows? All I know is, he could have been lying. I was definitely lying. And that felt weird.

***

The other strange conversation I had was with my sister-in-law. I think she's in New York this week, visiting friends, but I wasn't thinking about that when she called earlier today. I picked up my cell phone.

Me: Hello?

Sis-in-Law: Hey, It's [REDACTED].

Me: Hey, how's it going?

SIL: Good! Listen, what do we push, D or F? We're here!

Me: ...[long silence]...Wha?

SIL: What button do we push, D or F?

Me: Um...what do you mean?

SIL: What? I'm outside!

Me: Outside MY house? Right now? [I look out the front window. Nobody's there.]

SIL: Yeah, we're coming up the front stairs and don't know if we should push D or F.

Me: ...Uh...you do realize you're talking to Sarah, your sister-in-law?

SIL: Oh no! Oh! How funny. Gotta go.

This struck me as highly comical afterward because I had been so INCREDIBLY confused by what she was saying to me. It didn't make any sense to me whatsoever until she started saying she was outside the house, and referred to front stairs, which I don't have. Only then did it occur to me that she was probably talking about apartment buzzers and thought she was talking to someone else.

It was very surreal, but also funny.

About that Fasting Thing...

2010-09-05T22:41:00.000-07:00

Especially if we've known each other since my childhood, you'll know that me deciding to observe even one single day of Ramadan is a highly unusual occurrence. You'll probably remember that I did not always get along well with my dad while I was growing up. I fasted a few times (not really by choice) when I was nine or ten, and was frustrated by the fact that I didn't have much say in the matter.

I was also confused about it. When I was small, when my parents were still married, neither was particularly religious. Oh, we observed holidays from two sets of religions, and pork was not a part of our diet, but that was about the extent of it. I have clear memories of me, my mom AND my dad gathered around the piano, singing while my mom played Christmas carols, just as I have clear memories of my mom exasperated at the insane amounts of traditionally butchered halal goat stored in our freezer after the observance of Eid. Me? I liked extra holidays. I was a materialistic little 1980s child, and more holidays meant more presents. (Incidentally, my dad's not in the picture above...I assume he was the photographer. It's my aunt, uncle, cousins, mom and grandfather.)

So when my father remarried—I was about nine—and started to become a more observant Muslim, that change reached into my life as well—when it was his visitation weekend, I went (reluctantly) to Sunday school and mosque. And on a couple of occasions, yes, I did observe the fast. But as soon as I was old enough to really assert my opinion, I refused to do it any more. I stopped going to Islamic Sunday school, avoided going to mosque as much as possible. By the time I was twelve, I was able to choose when I wanted to visit my dad, and although the frequency of visits didn't decrease by much, I was able to avoid having religion forced on me by anyone.

I'm still not a religious person. Neither is Rob. I generally feel like it's one of those cocktail party, polite company no-no subjects, along with politics. As for tomorrow's fast, we're not doing it for religious reasons. I'm not doing it to make my dad happy, although he is pleased we're making this small attempt. (I'm not sure how pleased he would be at our less-than-strict implementation. We're not going to adhere to the letter of every rule. More on that tomorrow.)

Why ARE we doing it? I guess it's complicated. I'm not doing it to connect with my dad, though it might help me do that a little. If I'm being honest, it has very little to do with that. What got me thinking about it was actually Rob's cousin Patrick. Patrick posted a Facebook update about how he's fasted a few times in the past to express support, kinship and solidarity with Muslim friends. And seeing him say that was very freeing for me. I had this realization that I don't need to let my own conflicted feelings about my relationship with my dad get in the way of me making a connection with my heritage, even if it's a tiny one, just for one day.

And I've felt really strongly about that heritage lately, with Muslims apparently being personae non grata in certain circles and Islam being denounced left and right. Like in the days after 9/11, yet again I'm afraid for my Muslim family members here in the U.S. I may not observe Islam, but I don't want anything to happen to my family and I want them to be able to practice their faith with dignity and respect. There's so much misunderstanding and disinformation circulating right now, which I suspect stems primarily from the fact that a lot of people don't KNOW, or haven't bothered to get to know, any actual practicing Muslims.

I'm not going to go off on a rant about that, though it would be easy to do. I'm just going to conclude by saying that this is going to be a very interesting experience for both Rob and myself. I'm hoping that it reminds me a little of where I come from, connects me with that a little more, even if my usual M.O. is to forge my own path, something that isn't likely to change. And maybe others will be encouraged by what I've decided to do—or at least take my words to heart—and open themselves up to their Muslim friends and neighbors a little more. I'm going to sound like a hippie here, but mutual understanding means we as Americans truly can be a "we" as opposed to an "us" and a "them."

Breaking News: Wimp Survives Hike

2010-08-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, our friend Travis—an experienced hiker—invited us to go on a full-moon trip up to Yosemite's Half Dome. Yosemite by moonlight? Awesome. Hiking? Cool. We said yes, even though I was a bit on the fence about it. After all, we were going to be driving to the park at 8:30 at night, arriving a few hours later, hiking until nearly dawn and then hiking BACK. A round trip of over 16 miles. And people have DIED on this hike. (Usually in storms, though.)

Some might call it gorgeous, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, etc. It would also be fair to call it a brutal and grueling death march. In fact, I almost titled this post "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," with apologies to David Foster Wallace. But that wouldn't be fair. Because it really was awesome, and you get views of the park that would be impossible otherwise.

And we saw a fair amount of wildlife (thankfully, no bears this time—who wants to run into a bear in the forest at night? Not me.). In the dark, we saw at least three scorpions (yikes) and a few bats, and in the day we encountered a few marmots, tons of ground squirrels and oodles of lizards. A beautiful Steller's jay. One coyote. An elk (or was it a mule deer?) Unfortunately, some extremely aggressive mosquitoes as well, who scoffed at my bug spray.

We started down in Yosemite Valley, where we parked the car, readied our backpacks and put on our headlamps. (Note: Don't buy headlamps at Sports Authority because they will suck.) We hiked up to the Vernal Falls Bridge, where we branched off onto the John Muir Trail for a few miles. We continued steadily uphill for about 8 miles, navigating rocky terrain and hoping no bears jumped out to consume us or steal our PB&J sandwiches. Quite a few people were out hiking in the moonlight, but not many were INSANE enough to start from the valley floor. Most normal people camp partway up, at Little Yosemite Valley, and then hike the rest of the way. Not us.

We stopped for a small meal at the top of Nevada Falls, where the John Muir Trail meets up with the Mist Trail. Then we continued on up, up, up. It got much more strenuous as we gained altitude (Half Dome is around 8,000 feet up), and we had to rest frequently. As a result, we missed checking out sunrise from the top of Half Dome, but we did catch some amazing views of it from the hills just below. It was morning (about 8 am) by the time we got to Half Dome. I wasn't sure I was going to make it—we were all (except Travis) in major pain and suffering massive sleep deprivation at this point.

Then, when I saw how steep the cables were leading up the side of the dome, I was convinced I couldn't do it. But after a good rest, I was able to summon the mental fortitude, don my gloves and creep slowly up. And, much to my surprise, climbing up the dome and being rewarded with the awesome views at the top was my favorite part of the ordeal. It was actually WAY easier to shinny up and down the side of the dome than it had been to dodge rocky debris and climb half-broken giant stairs on the way there. And it was definitely easier than hauling my aching body back down for 8 miles, including a couple of miles of brutal Mist Trail action.

The worst part of THAT was the fact that we had been hiking for about 15 hours by then, and were completely spent and in pain, and had to dodge a million other hikers who had way more energy, plus numerous rude tourists. By that point, I was not going very quickly. My eyes were tired, my balance was fading, and my legs were trembling like crazy. It was a good thing we all brought plenty of Advil.

Oh. Did I mention it was 99 degrees when we were hiking back? Fortunately, we stopped at Little Yosemite Valley camp on the way back and plunged into a large pond there, refilling our water bottles, too (Travis brought a most excellent water filter pump). And, slowly but surely, covered in sweat and dust and dirt, we made our way back down via the Mist Trail and down into the valley, where we hobbled to the car, drove to Curry Village and rapidly consumed cheeseburgers and fries. On the hike, we brought what I would say was just enough food—PB&J sandwiches, dried apricots, craisin trail mix, beef jerky—but we should have brought more. It seemed like Rob and I were hungry every couple of hours.

Then we had to rush home to meet an overnight houseguest, which made everything just utterly crazy. We were in pain the whole day after the hike, but not immobile, which is good. I think we're both still exhausted from the whole thing, especially the lack of sleep (and if you know me, you won't be surprised that I didn't sleep well the night before the hike, either). But. Overall, I'm glad I did it. I may not do it again—at least, I definitely wouldn't do it again without camping in the middle. But I'm amazed that I made it. It was a very humbling experience. I'm not entirely out of shape, but this is a whole other level of physical conditioning.

I'm here. I'm alive. I can still walk--and in fact, today, I'm not in much pain at all. This feels like a minor miracle. And, I decided at some point during the hike that a character in one of my future novels will need to experience a grueling trek on foot. This made me feel considerably cheered.

More pictures here.

Dubious Advice from My Teenage Self

2010-08-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

A few days ago my mother e-mailed me a scanned copy of the salutatorian speech I wrote and delivered at my high school graduation. My grandfather had kept a copy (that's his handwriting in the upper right) and my mom recently unearthed it, apparently. Note the top-quality dot-matrix printing, ha ha.

Reading it, I was shocked by how similar my writing voice was to its current incarnation—despite the fact that, at the time, becoming a writer was not even on my radar. I enjoyed writing, and I always have, but as you probably know, until about ten years ago I fully intended to devote my career to some form of visual art.

The other thing that struck me on reading my sixteen-year-old self's words was the fact that I still seem to be struggling with some of the same writing-related issues 17 years later. Despite a few specific details, the speech is almost painfully generic. And even now, I feel like one of my weaknesses as a writer is tendency to fall back on cliché and genericness.

But there are a few things I love about it, too. I love the fact that I inserted a pause specifically in order to "look cosmic." I love the fact that I pretended I was tearing up a fictitious "bad" speech I'd allegedly written in favor of delivering these, er, nuggets of wisdom—a rather theatrical segment which I had to argue for keeping, and was only allowed to perform on condition that I word it carefully so as not to appear controversial (cf. the "this is the speech I could have written" part). I also love the fact that my dad took a picture* of that moment and captioned it with a post-it note ("now you are tearing your speech!").

In some ways, I hardly know what to think about it. Part of me can't help noticing what a risk-avoider I was, in the sense that I could easily have performed my speech with my originally intended wording on the day of graduation with little or no repercussion. But then, in some ways giving a speech at all is a risk of sorts. So I guess it evens out.

*Could not find the picture despite repeated searching. I know it exists, because I remember seeing it in a box a few years ago. Which box? Who knows?

The Flashbacks, the Horrible Flashbacks

2010-08-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

I had a bunch of weird and disturbing dreams last night. (Yep, it's gonna be one of THOSE posts.) In the one I remember most clearly, I was back in college as an undergraduate, and it was the first day of classes. I went to my first class, a morning class in a big lecture hall that looked like one of the auditoriums in the Berkeley Life Sciences Building. I hustled back to the dormitory dining hall for lunch and felt lucky that I made it--it was after 1:30 and they were getting ready to close. I grabbed a couple of unappetizing-looking slices of cold pizza and some sort of apple pastry that strongly resembled a McDonalds apple pie.

Then, as I sat down and started eating, I was suddenly outside in Sproul Plaza and realizing that I was supposed to be heading to another class that started at 2:00, and I was going to be late. There was no way I was going to be able to make it across campus in time. Maybe they wouldn't notice me walking in.

I checked my schedule printout and saw, to my horror, that this was actually the third class meeting because it was an "early start" class (whatever that means) and it had already started meeting a couple of weeks before. I was sure to be hopelessly behind, and I despairingly decided that I would have to drop the class. Then I noticed that the class didn't have anything to do with my major after all, and was on some trivial and unrelated subject. But I was still going to have to find another class to add to my schedule.

Then the dream changed to something I can't remember clearly now, but I know I was still on campus, and our friend Jess's wife Alyssa was there distributing beverages out of a padded cooler.

Then, later in the night/early morning, I dreamed that I was in a shiny metal rowboat trying to paddle upriver while avoiding all sorts of obstacles like rocks and rapids. Seems like a horribly belabored metaphor, doesn't it? I thought so, anyway. Eventually my boat arrived at a visitors' center alongside the river. I went in. My mom was there for some reason. Can't remember the rest.

Stupid stress dreams.

On Caution

2010-07-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

By nature I'm a cautious individual.

So cautious that I talk myself out of taking risks as often as I talk myself into them. It may seem like I'm sending out queries, entering writing contests, but that's nothing compared to the contests I haven't entered, the agents I haven't queried. It may seem like I manage to do a fair amount of artwork still, compared to the free time I (don't) have, but that's nothing compared to the ideas I'm too afraid to begin because I'm not sure they're ready, not sure they've percolated in my brain long enough, not sure I can do them justice. Not sure they're worthwhile or that anyone will care.

So cautious that I tend to keep my distance in personal relationships, because I don't want to get hurt or I don't want to hurt someone else or I don't want to acquire an annoying stalker like that one ex-boyfriend back in college. (Two months of relationship, six months of stalking! What a bargain! Plus, as an added bonus, pages and pages of letters!) I'm very skilled at it. You might not even know which me you're talking to, the surface me or the one hiding underneath.

So cautious that I'm often second-guessing whatever I say, do, or even write. It's enough to drive a person nuts. Please bear that in mind the next time I say something goofy or weird...which could be any minute now.

So cautious that my blog posts sometimes never make it out of my head and onto the page, let alone onto the intertubes for posterity, for fear that they're not clever enough, or not my best work, or whatever.

All of which makes it a little counter-intuitive that I've always had my eye on vocations that include a good deal of throwing caution to the winds...

The Creative Person's List of Laments

2010-06-30T23:47:00.000-07:00

….Because we creative people have the amazing magical power to create neuroses out of thin air!

I may not be as helpful or clever as Merlin Mann, but hopefully this is reasonably entertaining. I enjoyed writing it, although I'm vaguely embarrassed at how many of these neuroses—er, laments—I have personally indulged in on repeated occasions.

So You've Got a Bouncing Baby...Whatever That Is

1. I'm not even sure this is a very good idea in the first place. Perhaps I: am getting old / killed too many brain cells in [insert college name here] / should have been a [insert more lucrative career here]. (select all that apply)

2. I'm never possibly going to finish [project title].

3. I'm never going to finish revising / perfecting [project title].

Once Your Project Is Done. Or IS it?

4. Is it really done? Maybe I should just tweak this word / sentence / line / stray pencil mark.

5. It's not done. I never should have sent it off to that literary magazine / editor / agent / contest / juried show.

6. Another rejection? I'll never find an agent / a gallery / a publisher. (See #1. Repeat as needed.)

Break Glass In Case of Unexpected Non-Rejection

7. They're never going to like it as is. They're going to ask me to completely recreate my drawing / painting / sculpture / main character / plot.

8. Nobody's going to read / notice / like my book / poetry / artwork.

9. My work will never be as good as [insert name of more talented and accomplished colleague] or [name of ridiculously successful professional in prime of career].

10. The reviews and sales figures will only prove my unsuitability for this career / lack of creative ability / mediocrity / insanity.

When It's All Over...Lather, Rinse, Repeat. And thank your lucky stars you're doing this instead of anything else in the world.

Son of Figure Drawing: Escape from Monster Island

2010-06-23T22:16:00.000-07:00

Just kidding. No monster island. But I am happy to report that the first ever figure drawing session held in our home art studio was a success. It's a closed session--just five of us total for this first one (not counting the model), and honestly, that's as many as can comfortably fit in the room along with enough tables and easels and chairs for everyone. Anyway, Rob's idea behind the private sessions was to have more control over poses and timing than is usually available with the sessions that are open to the public in our area.

It ultimately costs the same amount per person, but it's much more comfortable for us, and also affords us the chance to focus on whatever type of drawing we want to do that day as opposed to what's set by the organizers of the open session. We've been hoping to set this up for a while, so it was satisfying to actually set a twice-monthly schedule and hold the first session. Next time, we iron out the kinks and really get down to business. Honestly, though, I can't complain much because I got two good drawings out of it. It took me about half of the three-hour period to get warmed up, but once I did, the results were pretty fair. I'm looking forward to producing some useful sketches in the near future, and maybe even a few finished pieces. I've been wanting to put my artmaking time on more of a regular schedule; this should really help.

Me As Pathetic Victorian Child

2010-06-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Among other things that have been keeping me pretty well occupied lately, I finally started the laborious long-term project of scanning old childhood photos into digital format. I'm putting some of them into Flickr (sorry, you won't be able to see them unless you have a Flickr account and I've marked you as a friend/family), including this one of me in London in 1981.

We were visiting Hampton Court Palace with a friend of my Mom's and her nephews (pictured). I look a bit disgruntled in my frilly dress. I have no idea why my mother put me in a frilly dress, but there you go. I guess I can blame it on the 80s, like the socks-and-sandals look I'm also sporting, and the bowl-cut/pageboy hairdo.

My parents had met in London, and lived there before I was born. On this trip, we were touring around England and Wales, visiting old friends of my parents and sightseeing. I actually have quite a few memories from the trip, thanks to a travel journal that my mom kept. She'd write in it with me every evening, jotting down about a page about the events of the day. Back in Southern California, I would read it over and over again for years afterward, cementing some of the memories in my mind.

That day at Hampton Court Palace, my mom wrote, "We saw some lovely costumes from 'The Six Wives of Henry VIII' (BBC Production), and the king's kitchen, the beautiful gardens full of trees and flowers and interesting rock paths; and best of all, we went into a maze!" The hedge maze is nearly all I remember now of that day--scary but fun, with kids running and screaming down the rows, gleefully getting lost and finding each other again.

I have one other memory of that day, something that was significant to my child-mind but seems so ordinary now--finding a strange but interesting rock on the ground, somewhere amid the otherwise-unremarkable gravel of the paths. It looked broken, split open like a tiny hemisphere, with the broken side showing both dark greyish-brown as well as a lighter beige center. I remember showing it to my mom, who was sitting on a bench. She let me keep it as a souvenir. I'm not sure what ultimately happened to it, but I kept that for years with my other mementos of the trip--which included other stones, beach-smooth ovals from the ocean at Tintagel (where King Arthur was born, according to legend). Apparently I really liked rocks.

Eat This

2010-05-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

I don't really post recipes here, mainly due to the fact that there are plenty of other bloggers who do a much better job of it than I do. Not only that, I'm not the most creative cook. I love working with other people's recipes, and I will customize them to some extent, but in our house, Rob is the one who invents recipes. I'm the one with a cookbook fetish.

However: occasionally I do come up with something worth saving, and this one might be the best yet. I liked it enough that I'm going to share it here. But first, here's the story behind the recipe. Last night, we ate a completely vegan meal. This isn't entirely unheard of in our house, but neither of us is vegan. We're not even vegetarian. I'd call us equal-opportunity eaters. But we do love vegetables and try to consume as many as possible, so the menu I settled on last night was pita chips, beet hummus, and some sort of vaguely Middle Eastern salad. The beet hummus was really tasty (though I ended up adding about a tablespoon of olive oil to increase the smoothness) but I was very proud of myself for inventing this salad. Sorry, no picture. The salad was consumed before I thought of busting out the camera.

Cucumber-Mint Salad

2 large or 4 small servings

1 cucumber, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and sliced thickly
1 tomato, diced
4 radishes, thinly sliced
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 avocado, diced
2 tbsp mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp parsley, chopped

Dressing:
juice of ¼ lemon
olive oil
pepper

Combine salad ingredients and toss. Whisk dressing ingredients and drizzle over salad.

Mythbusters Volunteer Recap, Part II

2010-05-08T12:03:00.000-07:00

Those of you who read my Mythbusters Volunteer Recap Part I, written way back when in February, were clearly anticipating with glee the eventual Part II, in which I could write about what actually happened without releasing any spoilers. Well, several months after the fact, and a couple of weeks after the airing of the episode—entitled "No Pain, No Gain"--here it is. The story of

HOW I VERY PROBABLY BECAME KNOWN AS "THE PROBLEM VOLUNTEER"

So, in Episode I, I talked about my arrival at the studios. After they processed all the volunteers—all women, that day—we waited around in the front room and the hallway to get called in for an individual debriefing before going down to the workshop to participate in the experiment. First things first: everybody met with their house EMT, Sanjay, who asked a few health-related questions to make sure nobody had any heart conditions or anything that would prevent them from taking part. Sanjay is now on my list of awesome top-notch individuals, for reasons which will become clear later in the story.

After talking to Sanjay, I waited around some more, feeling totally out of place among the volunteers—though not due to driving distance, for once. There were volunteers who drove in from San Luis Obispo, so my measly 90 miles seemed like nothing at all. When they called me in for the debriefing, I went into the office where they sat me in the ejector seat from a previous episode and explained what would happen during the experiment. At this point, they also attached a microphone to my sweater.

They told me it would be a pain tolerance experiment, involving submerging my hand in ice water for as long as I could tolerate the pain, up to a maximum of three minutes. I was to tell them when it first started becoming painful, then I was to sit there with my hand in the ice until I couldn't stand it anymore. Then they asked, "do you still want to take part?" Of course, I said yes. EMT Sanjay (not to be confused with Dr. Sanjay) would be standing by to look us over after we finished. We'd be given one of those post-skiing hand warmers to squeeze, to thaw out the frozen hand. It was all straightforward. Anxiety-producing, to be sure—if you're me (not a big fan of being on the "hot seat," here)—but straightforward.

And then I was descending the staircase into the workshop famously shown in Mythbusters episodes from time immemorial (okay, slight hyperbole)--the intriguingly labeled boxes on shelves lining the wall, the worktables and tools, the special chair set up with the glass bowl of ice water for me to be tortured with—and, oh yeah. About eight or ten associated producers and camera crew watching my every move. Cripes.

I got my picture taken with Adam and Jamie—a very cool thing they set up for the volunteers—and proceeded to sit in the, er, cold seat. Time ticked by. Not a lot of time ticked by before I decided that, yes, OUCH, this hurts. And it kept hurting. OK, ouch. Ouch, ouch. Ow. But eventually I got to a sort of plateau where it hurt a lot, but didn't hurt any WORSE. So I sat there for a while, wondering when I should take my hand out. At some point, I realized it just DID NOT feel good. I felt weird. So I thought I'd take my hand out. Not so much because of extreme pain, but because my body was unhappy with me for putting it through this discomfiting situation.

At this point, I was having center-of-attention anxiety and failed to look at the timer to see how long I'd lasted. Probably no more than a minute and a half, but I guess I'll never know for sure. I stepped off the chair, they thanked me, handed me a hand warmer for my hand (which I now could no longer feel), and I walked off camera and into the next room where the EMT told me to have a quick seat.

Here's where I became the problem volunteer. There I was, sitting in the chair, minding my own business, squeezing the hand warmer, when suddenly I felt a tad bit woozy. I felt my hand loosen around the hand warmer, my eyes closing. A moment later, EMT Sanjay was talking to me, asking me very calmly but very concerned, "did you go out on me for a second there?" Me: "Uh, I guess I did. That was weird." "Was it the pain?" "No, no, I doubt that. It wasn't really excruciatingly painful." Not to mention, this was quite a bit after the fact. "Do you have anxiety issues?" Oh. Huh. "Yeah, I guess that could be it."

So we're talking, and he has me relax in the chair for another minute, and then I pass out AGAIN. Just momentarily, not completely—I never dropped the hand warmer or fell out of the chair or anything like that. It was more like I had temporary narcolepsy. For the record, I've only ever completely fainted once before—over 12 years ago—so it's not like this was a regular thing. So then Sanjay busts out the oxygen mask, which is really embarrassing with other volunteers walking through and getting their uneventful post-experiment cursory examinations and me sitting there in the chair with a breathing apparatus. He monitored my blood pressure for a minute or two more, but at that point I was feeling a lot better, I could feel my HAND again, and I was more than ready to flee in humiliation.

Fortunately, this was all off the record, not captured on camera for posterity. Sanjay finally let me go, with strict instructions to go to the cafe next door and eat a sandwich—we figured part of the problem was the fact that I'd eaten breakfast in the car around 7 am and then nothing at all for the next five-plus hours. So, to sum up: Sanjay kicks ass. The Mythbusters rock. And I am apparently a wimp when it comes to not eating for hours and then subjecting myself to physical strain and anxiety.

Although, as a post script, a doctor I mentioned it to suggested that it may have also been vascular...um...something. A reaction to the actual warming-up process having to do with blood vessels suddenly constricting, or un-constricting, or something of that nature that I don't remember because I'm not a medical professional. That made me feel a little better.

So there you go. How I became the problem volunteer with temporary narcolepsy. But hey: at least I looked normal in the TV broadcast. Not only that, I had more screen time than I ever expected—I wasn't even relegated to the montage. Not too shabby.

"I'm Not Dead Yet."

2010-04-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

Monty Python quotes aside, I'm still here. I've just managed to mostly intimidate myself out of blogging by making it seem like an agonizing and mountainous chore. That, and I've been trying to avoid doing anything extraneous that would distract me from finishing my revision. Which, by the way, is DONE. Almost. I'm having Tanita look at it and let me know if I've committed any egregious no-nos before I give it one last once-over and send it back to my publisher.

I've also been spending a lot of time writing such gems as this and generally getting caught up after being away for a week and a half. I have a new freelance project that involves social bookmarking, so I am now far more familiar than I ever wanted to be with a handful of social bookmarking websites. If you want to find me on Digg, Mixx, Propeller, Reddit, or Mister-Wong, just look for MeddlingScribe. I may or may not accept your friend request, since I need another online social outlet like I need another hole in my chest cavity, which is to say, I really don't need ANY. (I'm not counting my belly button, since it's not technically in my chest, and it's not really a hole per se, but I digress.)

Anyway, tomorrow I anticipate additional article writing and what-not, but while I'm still here and have your attention (or is it BLOGGER which has MY attention? oooooooo trippy), why not donate books on behalf of Native American teens? Operation Teen Book Drop is LIVE and all you have to do is buy a book or two on Powells.com. Check out details here. Also, please enjoy these photos of Kilauea Volcano by day and by night:

Art, Work, and Other Time Drains

2010-03-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

It's been busy around here. That's for sure. My absence has been long and filled with not only toil but also some much-needed relaxation and getting away from it all. The Big Island of Hawaii is a great way to do that, since it's in the middle of the ocean, far away from EVERYTHING.

The week before we left, Rob and I went to another of the local figure drawing sessions and I did these two pieces. The one on the left I did using Walnut ink, a reed pen, and a brush for wash. For the one below, I used a combination of vine and compressed charcoal. Neither is my best work, but on the whole it wasn't a bad drawing evening. In any case, it's all about practice, practice and more practice.

Not unlike with writing, which has comprised most of my workload lately.

I've had my hands full, actually, which is a pretty good thing. Plenty of articles for All Star Directories, like this one, but also working on my latest novel revision for my publisher. Of course, as I go through and edit the manuscript, I keep finding little things I want to change, and it's taking a lot more time than I thought it would because I have now entered the land of the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist.

I've also reached a point I never thought I would reach: I'm officially sick of even looking at this project. Until a couple of weeks ago I was still totally in love with it, but now I only have eyes for its flaws, which is a difficult place to be mentally. I've gotten to that point much more quickly with most of my other projects, but it took a lot longer to get sick of this one, and I was hoping that day would never come. But still I'm plugging away, and hopefully I'll feel better about it once this round is done.

And yep, we're back from our trip to visit friends in Hawaii. I'll post about that later in the week. Plus photos. I promise.

Some Non-Controversial Book Cover Discussion

2010-02-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

Sooooo...I heard back from my publisher. Needless to say, this was an occasion of great excitement and celebration, perhaps even minor squealing and drunkenness (figurative and literal). At any rate, I found out the next steps in the process: I'll be doing another round of edits (which I expected), not quite as drastic as the last round but fixing lots of small issues. Due May 3, so obviously the original publication estimate of April no longer applies, but I was just happy to hear my book was still on the radar.

Then, I was asked to generate some alternative title ideas for the editorial staff to consider, which was an interesting task considering I am CRAP at titling anything. Plus I liked my existing title. Fortunately, I get to keep my title (The Latte Rebellion), which is good considering the alternatives I was able to come up with (a few choice examples were Beyond House Blend: The Official Autobiography of Agent Alpha and Skin Deep, Coffee High, so it's no wonder the existing title seemed fine by comparison). So that's one reason I'm quite happy right now.

I was also asked--and this occasioned more happy spazzing on my part--to generate some ideas for the book cover. It's not common for an author to get much say in what the cover looks like, so I was basically overjoyed to have input. I looked at a lot of existing covers, including those pictured here, and evidently the cover artist they've chosen has a good idea of what to do, so...it's just a matter of waiting to see what she comes up with.

What was extra funny about this is, a couple of months ago I had a very vivid dream having to do with the title and cover of my book. I dreamed that my publisher had decided to change the title to Deep Woods (which, incidentally, has zero to do with ANYTHING in the book) and had sent me a sample of the cover, which looked a lot like this sketch here only in color, lots of dark browns and greens and ambers: the main character, her back turned, regarding a crow on a branch; the main character with two shirtless guys (was I thinking about Twilight, maybe?) in the lower foreground; everything framed by two trees at the left and the right and looking an awful lot like the cover of a DragonLance novel.

I think, in the dream, I was appalled.

Fortunately, I don't think I'm in any danger of my book looking like this and I now can be certain there will be no utterly random retitling. Reason to celebrate.

Found First Line Experiment #1: Speculative Politics

2010-02-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

What's the Found First Line Experiment? Well, I just made it up, sort of. It's vaguely based on a writing exercise I read about in Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. I clicked into Google News, picked the third article down, took the first line, and wrote a story starting with that line. I'm trying to post more creative explorations here, and also trying to do more "fun" writing experiments that I can use to simply let go and enjoy myself...and why not share some of the results? If you decide to try it, too, leave me a link.

***
Not every rookie political wannabe gets to have his campaign announcement on national TV. It's why I felt lucky. Not charmed; not privileged; but lucky. I didn't have any famous family members, I wasn't part of any East-Coast old-money political dynasty. I wasn't involved in the city council or the school board. I'm not even very telegenic. I'm told I have big pores.

What do I do? Well, I used to teach. I volunteered at hospitals on the weekends.

So when they picked me, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

They put me up there behind this podium that was draped with dark blue and affixed with the Grand Seal of the United Western States. I felt like I'd won a contest. In reality, it was more like a random drawing. The way they do things these days is supposed to be the most equitable method of leadership selection yet to be devised.

We've gone through some seriously kooky changes to our election process over the years, but get this: after you pass a citizenship test, you get enough names on your petition to meet the minimum and you get one entry; every 2,000 names after that earns you another entry. Into the hat, as it were, though it's really more like a silk-covered box printed with the humpback whale emblem. Political party is not a consideration. Five different names are drawn and those are the ones eligible to campaign. No exceptions. No write-ins. And no backing out.

Once the campaigning starts, it's no holds barred. Any strategy is perfectly legal as long as you can pay for it and don't get caught breaking any Western State laws. You can even, say, bribe a doctor to certify another candidate is legally insane and not fit to lead.

The bright stage lights hanging above the podium made my eyes water, but that only helped my cause, mistaken as they were for tears of emotion. I was grinning like a fool, and maybe I was one. Because once you're on the road to campaign glory, it's assumed that you wanted it enough in the first place to throw your hat into the ring.

I guess the only problem was, I didn't want it enough.

I scratch my day-old growth of beard, stare out the window onto the perfectly manicured grounds, and sigh as the orderly hands me my morning pills. The television in the common room is announcing that Fergus Smith is the new President of the United Western States. The screams of triumph from his supporters sound like the discordant and chaotic jabbering of the deranged.

And I may not have a choice about it, but I can't help thinking I'd rather be in here.

Mythbusters Volunteer Recap, Part I

2010-02-02T16:11:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post my Mythbusters photos for quite a while now. I've been informed that, with good reason, they would like us NOT to post the photo we got to take with Adam and Jamie, because it was in the room where the experiment took place and they don't want to give anything away prior to the airing of the show. So I'm also not going to say much about the experiment itself until then (though, if you know me well enough to e-mail me about it, I'll probably tell you one-on-one). Anyway, just the lead-up to the experiment itself was a novel experience. After responding to their Twitter call for volunteers, I was selected to be part of a group that would be experimented upon on Wednesday, January 20.

That morning, I left the house at 6:30 a.m. in order to ensure I could get to San Francisco, specifically the edge of the Mission/Cesar Chavez area, by 9:30. This may sound like overkill, but it turned out I needed that entire time (plus a little) due to the fact that it rained heavily throughout the trip and didn't let up until I got there (of course). But it was worth it, of course. Once I arrived, I knocked on the door of what appeared to be a sort of warehouse, which houses the Mythbusters/M5 Industries offices and workshop. In the photo above, you can see the check-in table and a few of the other volunteers (there were about 25 of us). We got name tags and proceeded to wait in what seemed to be the kitchen/break room area until we were called down for our turn to participate in the experiment.

While we waited, we were asked a few inevitable questions such as our ages--at which point I found out, happily, that I was NOT the oldest person there by a long shot, though the group was a bit skewed towards 20-somethings. Also, we were asked The Ethnicity Question. That's always been a fun one (or not) for me. As a child, I enjoyed giving the most complicated possible answer by going into excruciating detail about every single fraction of my ethnic makeup. Now I try to suit the answer to the situation, usually going for less rather than more detail. But this wasn't a multiple choice situation, just the check-in guy going around and writing the answers down.

So I opened my mouth and said "Pakistani, Czechoslovakian, and Caucasian." And then realized how that sounded, after everybody else was all "Caucasian" or "Scandiavian" or "English and German" or whatever nice and simple answers they were lucky to be able to provide. The guy kind of laughed and said "Cool," and then I was glad I hadn't given him the really detailed answer but instead just went for the largest fractions. For a second I thought I should have given him one of the mashup ethnicities that Rob and I came up with--Pakislovakian or Czechistani--but figured I sounded weird enough already. He didn't need to know that anything my maternal grandmother said about her heritage is suspect except for the Irish and probably the English parts, nor did he need to know that the Pakistani part actually originated in India but has quite a bit of Arab blood mixed in, too.

Despite the fact that discussing my ethnicity makes me sigh sometimes, and also that my answer to that question at the Mythbusters studio probably made me "the weird volunteer," I had a good time. As for the experiment itself--I'll just have to give you a post-airdate debriefing, during which you'll find out why I'm also probably now "the problem volunteer."

Check Me Out

2010-01-19T12:48:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed that the blog has a new look. That's what I did most of yesterday instead of, well, possibly more productive work. But I'm happy. I really wanted to make this blog more of a home for my creative burblings as well as occasional random thoughts, so now there's a nifty menu up top where you can check out some artwork posts, some creative (and not-so-creative) writing, or just browse my day-to-day blathering. My sidebar widgets are much improved, though still under construction (gotta revamp my link lists in particular) and I'm ridiculously pleased with the new graphics. I have to give props to the excellent Blogger Templates site and the template that I reconfigured to create this new look--it doesn't look much like the original, but I REALLY needed someone else to put the Blogger code together because I'm sure as hell not going to do it. Tinkering, I can do, and did.

So...enjoy. I'm planning to post a bit more creative work here, show what I'm working on on a day-to-day (or at least week-to-week) basis, and hopefully encourage myself to do more.

New Ideas

2010-01-17T22:47:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm still behind on my promised photo post...I scanned in a few that needed scanning (that's right--in the early 2000s I did not yet own a digital camera) so I'm almost there, I swear. In the meantime, I'm wrestling with a new idea that may or may not be either wise or a good use of my time but nevertheless, it's tugging at me. Ever since writing my first found poem as part of the New Year's Poetry Challenge (a challenge I have yet to complete...) I keep coming back to that form in my mind, especially after Tanita sent me this link. I keep wanting to write more. I'm not even sure I'm doing it "right" or creating anything particularly meaningful, but I've written one other since then and it's fun. It's intriguing, like a word puzzle. A brain puzzle. Finding some hidden meaning in somebody else's writings. I of course wish I'd thought to do what Austin Kleon is doing, but it's a bit late for that.

What I AM thinking about is creating a blog that would be a sort of found poetry experiment, using articles (as I have been) available online. I have minor concerns about legal issues that might arise, though I would hope that providing a link to the articles I use would help to prevent that.

Alternatively, I could just post them here. But this poor blog is already a cluttered mishmash of random crap, so I'm thinking a separate space would be better. Maybe some artwork to go with the poems, from time to time. Not that I have any extra time for extra stuff. It would be an occasional diversion. IF I decide to do it. I get a lot of ideas I don't really have time for...Plus the "what's the point?" monster rather quickly shows up in my head. Of course, the answer is, just for fun. For enjoyment. To see if it leads anywhere interesting. I might just make it a poetry/flash fiction blog in general, so I can keep the formal writing separate from this very casual rambling that I tend to do.

We will see. Or not, as the case may be.

The Zeroes in Prose, Part II

2010-01-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

I promised youse the rest of my noughties, and here they are in all their prosaic glory. (God, I enjoyed writing that sentence.)

2005
My nephew Miles was born. I started sending out proposals for the novel I'd started writing as part of my graduate thesis. More of my friends started blogging, and I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for jobs on Craigslist, if my blog entries from that year are to be believed. I also started co-blogging with Tanita on what is now Finding Wonderland.

During the year, I tried to juggle temping with getting my own freelance business going. Meanwhile, Rob was awarded tenure at the end of the spring semester. I went to his summer color & design class for fun and a refresher, and also took a mixed media painting class. In the fall, Rob turned thirty. I established contact with my half-sister in Australia—or rather, she found me in the process of looking for her dad, that is, our dad. I participated in National Novel Writing Month for the first time. I got a lot of rejection letters, but on the more encouraging side, I got third place in a short story contest. I also was elected vice-president of the Cymdeithas Madog Board.

2006
Nice new kitchen linoleum was the latest step in our house renovation saga. I started some early forays into the heady world of being paid for my article writing, though I still had to juggle the writing with temping. I also got runner-up in another short story contest, started some (paid) freelance research work and became (unpaid) graphic designer for a local small theater.

Early in the year, I found myself in the awkward position of having to take over a bit earlier than anticipated as Board President. At the same time, I was the main local organizer for bringing a 75-person Welsh course to California in the summer. Unsurprisingly, I started getting hives again due to stress of epic proportions, which only ended after the course did.

In May, we took a trip to China with Rob's uncle and aunt. We got Tivo and celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary (not necessarily in that order). I met some Irish friends when I joined an online Flickr fiction writing group. In the fall, I joined a gym for my physical health and I started seeing Dr. Yoda (not his real name) for my mental health. I participated in the Cybils for the first time, and during National Novel Writing Month, I started writing The Latte Rebellion. I got to be on a local NPR program and talk about it, which was super cool—my first (and only, so far) radio appearance.

2007
I got Adobe Creative Suite. (Yes, this was a major event.) We went to Hawaii's Big Island to visit friends there and enjoy the 70-degree "winter weather." I started cartooning again, for the writing blog this time. I turned thirty, and felt every single one of those years when I enrolled in an indoor soccer class. My second nephew, Avery, was born, and we attended our second summer Pig Roast (which we'd helped organize this time). We started getting our CSA vegetable box. I was a bridesmaid in two different weddings. We got our second cat, Zelda. I got busy with a lot more freelance work, which was gratifying, and did a lot more blogging. I continued as President of the Cymdeithas Madog Board, and then stepped down in the summer. I visited New York for the first time, and Venice, Italy. Our massive household construction project commenced.

2008
Kicked the new year off with a Mars Volta concert in San Francisco. My dad ditched his Quizno's franchise (an ill-advised get-rich-quick-in-semi-retirement scheme), de-stressed considerably, and started coming to terms with my career choice. I took a Spanish class. I started doing a bit more painting again, and then slacked off...again. I did some more freelance work—graphic design, mostly—and got some more writing rejections, as well as a few actual article acceptances. My younger cousin graduated from college, which made me feel old.

Our local soccer team, the San Jose Earthquakes, was reinstated, and we became what my sister would call "soccer tragics." In the summer, we went on a lot of rafting float trips with the boat we'd purchased the prior year. Our college friend Beth got married, and we went to Seattle to attend the wedding. I played Rock Band for the first time, and signed up for Twitter. We drank an inhuman amount of sake in celebration of Obama's presidential victory. The quality of my blog posts improved, though their number drastically decreased. My final blog post of the year said, "I don't want to make any unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky resolutions, like resolving that 2009 is the year that I'm going to land a literary agent and/or a book contract."

2009
I landed a book contract, no thanks to my pessimistic soul. Prior to that, though, I did a huge revision of my novel, followed by my query, tentative interest, and another huge revision. Rob started teaching figure drawing, and I went to his spring semester class so I could get some drawing practice. I also participated in a ten-artist collaborative print project, and wrote my first poem in years. I fought my way out of some major emotional doldrums (a regularly recurring battle for me). Reviewing my blog tells me that I formulated a lot of good intentions which I later forgot about.

I spent most of the summer working my butt off on the post-publisher-interest, pre-novel-acceptance revision—rekindling my confidence that perhaps I was indeed in the right line of work—and on a new freelance article writing job. Rob started his sabbatical for the 09-10 school year. We saw the King Tut exhibition, and saw our friend Jess for the first time in a couple of years. I got the novel acceptance and a contract, and waited on tenterhooks to find out what would happen next. Our transmission in the Honda busted, costing us over 4 grand before we left for Italy and Spain for a month. The Euro also kicked our asses. We came back and had a very modest holiday season, during which I wrote a few more poems.

...And then it was 2010.

Potentially embarrassing photo retrospective to come in a later post.

Interlude: Temp Jobs I Have Known

2010-01-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

Any look at the previous decade of my life would not be complete without some small tribute to the many years I spent working as a temporary secretary. This list is by no means comprehensive. Some temp jobs I've had are too boring to relate; others are so forgettable I've, well, forgotten them. But here, in order of most recent (about a year and a half ago) to least recent (circa 1996), are a few gems.

Stanislaus County Office of Education (various jobs)
City of Modesto Wastewater Treatment Plant and Composting Facility (reorganized an entire file system that hadn't been touched since the 1980s)
Front office support at a school for problem students
Frito-Lay (didn't actually happen – I showed up and nobody knew who ordered the temp)
Stuffing envelopes with fliers advertising various strains of bull sperm for artificial insemination
St. Mary's College (Letters & Science Dean's Assistant – pretty posh gig)
Corporate Interior Services (bookkeeping assistant for office furniture supplier)
Roche Molecular Systems (severely underappreciated receptionist)
John Muir Health Network (helping draft medical group contracts)
Aetna U.S. Healthcare (stuffing and labeling envelopes)
Licensing Office, City of Westminster, London (mostly typing letters, scribbled by a boss with abominable handwriting and a tendency to call people "wretched peasants")
Phaidon Press, London (assistant to a high-strung woman, also with execrable handwriting, who was unable to keep a secretary for more than two weeks)

The Zeroes in Prose, Part I

2010-01-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

Soon to be followed by the Zeroes in prose, part II, and the Zeroes in pictures. This was an interesting exercise--it's amazing how much you start to forget when you're constantly busy, moving on to the next thing and the next. I feel like I should do this more often, this documentation thing.

2000
I turned 23 years old. Also, Y2K happened and nothing imploded.

We were living in El Cerrito. Rob continued his harrowing grad school experience at the San Francisco Art Institute. I'd been working in San Francisco at IGN.com, mainly putting together e-mail newsletters about dudely topics like video/PC games, comics, wrestling, and so forth. This was the heyday of the internet boom; there was an IPO party, I got to attend E3, we were encouraged to play video games at work, and I produced immortal gems of quality writing such as this, while still being paid a rather unremarkable salary. It was a perfect distraction from the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life in the immediate term.

Then the internet bubble burst. In the summer, we took a trip to London, Bath, and the South of Wales. When I got back, there'd been layoffs. The company reorganized and I found myself in corporate marketing; instead of a cool nice-guy boss I suddenly had to report to Scary Bitch Woman; and the whole atmosphere changed. I wrote for the site in my spare time, but I realized I'd never be able to make it an official part of my job. But that got me thinking about writing...

2001
An eventful year. During the early part, I hung on at my job as Rob finished grad school. I enrolled in my first fiction writing class, an online workshop at UCLA Extension. I also started writing freelance articles about Welsh language for Suite 101. By March, I couldn't stand to be at my job anymore, and quit a few months earlier than I'd planned. I went back to temping. Then Rob completed his MFA in printmaking and applied to some teaching jobs. We both agreed that if he got a full-time job with benefits, it would be a good time to tie the knot, since I was now without any health insurance. (Yeah, I know, we're incurable romantics...ha.)

One day that summer, when I was working a temp job at St. Mary's College, I got a phone call from Rob. "Will you marry me?" he said. "YOU GOT THE JOB!" I squealed. We got married (some might say "eloped") with one witness at the Marin County Civic Center, a Frank Lloyd Wright building where the movie Gattaca was filmed. Soon after, we moved to Modesto, and Rob started teaching at Modesto Junior College that fall. I did some more temping, and enrolled in another writing class and a lit theory class at Cal State Hayward with the intention of preparing for grad school in creative writing.

The morning of 9/11, we were asleep, in the rental house we'd moved into just a couple months before, until my mother-in-law called and told us to turn on the news.

2002
We rang in the New Year in Paris—a wedding present from my mom—and witnessed the changeover to the Euro in near-frigid temperatures. Rob continued his first year of full-time teaching. I applied to the only two graduate creative writing programs within reasonable driving distance, a calculated risk, and was admitted to Mills College for the fall. I also got braces, using my new and snazzy insurance. In the late spring we went to Japan on a shoestring budget, staying with our friend Beth (who was teaching in Osaka) and visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nara, Kobe, and Tokyo. In the summer, I was elected to the Board of Directors of Cymdeithas Madog. We also went house shopping, hoping to buy before the market really went sky-high. We were fortunate, and we hadn't spent thousands of dollars on a wedding. I had a small inheritance from my grandfather, who'd died in 1997, which was just enough for a down payment. We moved across town, and I started grad school. During finals week of my first semester, I started getting hives.

2003
The full-body hives (plus occasional random facial swelling) lasted six months, cause unknown. My braces came off in May, a couple of months early because I'd been good; not long after, I took a course of steroids, my second semester of grad school ended and my hives went away. The most likely cause seemed to be stress. In the summer, I went to my 10-year high school reunion, where I was inexplicably voted one of the "Least Changed" since high school. We continued never-ending house renovations. I became Board secretary. I kept writing for Suite101 and in the fall, continued grad school. I took classes with YA author Kathryn Reiss, and a group study on crafting graphic novels. I started working on my master's thesis project. I think this was also the year my grandmother died, my mom's mom; we weren't close. The housing market started to really spin out of control.

2004
The first half of the year I was focused on finishing grad school and writing my thesis project. In May, I had a brand-new MFA in Creative Writing and was officially a Master O Fart, as Rob likes to put it. May is also when I started up this blog in rather unspectacular fashion. That summer I joined a writing group with some other recent Mills graduates. Also that summer, Rob and I dusted off our role-playing dice and joined a game with a few other faculty from the Junior College.

There was some minor travel: I went to Ottawa, Canada; we both went to Mexico City and, from there, to Celaya, Guanajuato, for our friend David's wedding; we also drove 11 hours to Seaside, Oregon to reunite with college friends at a beach house. Rob had a solo art show at the MJC gallery. I did some mind-numbing and poorly paid temp work in environments such as the wastewater treatment facility, while stressing about finding a long-term job and trying unsuccessfully to get published. Somehow, George W. Bush got re-elected. I ran a 5K for the first time...and the second time.

A Toast to Non-Blogging

2009-12-27T22:43:00.001-08:00

This is just a little something to tide you over until I a) stop being sick (stupid Recurring Head Cold From Hell) and b) think of something interesting to say. As you can see, I was too lazy to even ink it in before scanning, so you get a pencil drawing with minor Photoshop enhancements. Bully for you! As is usual with my blog cartoons, click to view larger.

New Year's Poetry Challenge, Day Five

2009-12-15T23:17:00.001-08:00

Still a day behind. Oh well. This one was fun: Write a found poem using the front page of your local paper or an article from a magazine you have around the house. I was immobilized on the couch by a cat on my lap, so I cheated slightly and used National Geographic online. I used this article on Alaska Coasts Melting. I wasn't going to use this article--it's fairly short and repetitive--but I couldn't resist the town of Lonely.

Leaving Lonelytown

Swallowed by the sea
near the town of Lonely
Remains of the ghost town

a century on shore
buried underwater

perpetually frozen earth
melting
erosion patterns
drifting
reshaping

the findings
document human settlements
At least one has already been lost
another will soon be gone

unusual landscape
especially vulnerable

a picture of a whaling boat
massive amounts of ice

a natural process
melting so fast
a shift in the forces
plans can be devised

not just the ice
according to the research
but it would be unusual.

Like I said, this was fun...I could definitely do more of these.

New Year's Poetry Challenge, Day Four

2009-12-14T22:41:00.000-08:00

Let me just say that I'm really having fun trying out this poetry challenge--it's a nice change of pace for my brain. I don't know how well the "loose narrative" approach is working, but who cares? I can always string them together differently later. Yesterday's prompt was: Think of your kitchen table or your coffee table. Write an ode, a celebratory poem, about one object on your kitchen/coffee table. If your kitchen/coffee table is clear, then write about the table itself.

I picked an object on the coffee table that I then loosely interpreted, and then it turned into less of an ode and more of a something else. I also thought I would write the ode using Sapphic meter but that's also sort of loosely used, particularly in the last line of each stanza. And, again, I'm trying to write not so much from my viewpoint as that of a character I'm attempting to convey through the imagery of the poems. So, whether what "happens" in the poem is "true" is up for interpretation.

Toolbox

Box of paints in small metal tubes, my mustered
lineup of hues, red, orange, yellow, green, blue--
Tones of rare earth, cobalt and zinc, iron, ochre
My bright chemistry.

Unseen layers visible, dreams made too real
Fears and horrors rendered, reduced to mere brush-
strokes and lines. I have that finesse. But I can't
paint out the past.

Pink, dilute with water, I dab, then dry brush
Dark-leaved trees—the place where I sat with you, yes,
Where this painting hatched, where the colors, light, dark,
shone and became fact.

Little paint box is simply a tool, gentle spear
Tickling essence out of the mortal shell—small
beast is served to please human senses, bright splash
on taste buds, swallowed.

New Year's Poetry Challenge, Day Three

2009-12-12T21:11:00.000-08:00

What happened to Day Two? you ask. I didn't want to post it. It isn't that I feel like I wrote a terrible poem, but I definitely feel "meh" about it. However, I should note in the interests of continuity that the prompt was to write a poem about a house in which we grew up without using the words "house" or "home." This might be useful information, since I'm trying to write my poems in a loosely connected fashion. In order to encourage this (and just to set an arbitrary parameter), I'm also using the last word of each poem as the first word of the next one.

Anyway, today's prompt was: Write a poem for, about, or to Wendy Toftmyer. The qualification to this prompt was: "Note: I don't know any Wendy Toftmyers. I made up the name for the purposes of this prompt. So, apologies to any real Wendy Toftmyers who may be out there." Here's the result...again, bearing in mind that the last poem was (loosely speaking) about a childhood home.

Dear Wendy

Invisible ink in unnoticed hands
Will an invisible envelope still arrive?

I watched you swing too high
I watched you climb the oak tree
I watched you eat dirt

We haven't spoken in years.
I hardly spoke, even then.
You talked for both of us.

I did not eat the dirt
I climbed the tree with trembling legs
I swung close to earth.

Before I left the empty house
You stood quiet, both feet on the ground.
I never wrote.

I still have your necklace
An invisible heart in a box.

I think I wasn't sure whether to be autobiographical or not in Day Two's poem, which is why it's not really working. This one is not autobiographical, on the whole. I guess you could say it has some metaphorical or symbolic truth.

I'm also thinking I need to write funnier poems at some point in this process. It's all gloom and doom, or at least pensiveness, so far.

Distractions: New Year's Poetry Challenge

2009-12-10T14:42:00.000-08:00

Besides the inevitable and regularly occurring philosophical debates with myself (see below), lately I've just been waiting on tenterhooks to find out what's going to happen next in the novel publication process. Most of the other stuff I do is merely a distraction to keep from futilely checking my e-mail every seven seconds. I'm also restraining myself from sending annoyingly codependent e-mails to my editor in the hopes of finding something out. So in the meantime, I'm working on revising a different manuscript (about a girl who acquires the ability to hear thoughts) and I've also decided, for better or for worse, to try out a New Year's Poetry Challenge.

As you know from previous posts, I don't write a lot of poems. But when a friend (who is also a local poet) sent me the invitation to participate in the challenge--30 poems in 30 days, inspired by daily prompts--I decided to say yes. And this is truly a challenge for me, but I'm looking forward to composing language on a closer level, to indulging a sheer love of words themselves. I may or may not post them all here, but I thought I'd put up my first day's effort.

The prompt was: Write a winter haiku. I started by looking at some internet information about the history and structure of haiku, and then I put it away and wrote this:

Winter Haiku

Leaves hunch under frost
Her fingertips cannot reach
Through the cold window.

There is a structural ambiguity with subtle differences in meaning that I rather like. I was reminded that every word is so important in a haiku; it's a very distilled form and rather intimidating.

I can't remember the last time I set out to write a serious haiku, but my vague thought was to set the scene for a loose poetry narrative that I will try to follow as it meanders throughout the month. I might go back and accompany each one with artwork, and perhaps make an artist's book in the end. I have no idea where it's going yet.

I'm Totally Normal. Abby Normal.

2009-12-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

The more time I spend pursuing a career, a life's work, that's in the creative arts (visual or written), the more I realize that another major task for me is reconciling myself to the idea of living life in a not entirely linear fashion. What I mean by that is, creative pursuits don't always lend themselves to a straight road. It's not uncommon, I'm finding, for people to meander a bit.

Perhaps this will be a bit clearer if I provide some contrast. Take my parents. Though they are very different from one another in a myriad of other ways, they are both a bit linear, especially when it comes to how they see working life. This is not necessarily a bad thing, not at all. In fact, I envy them. For them, this is how life generally works: Kid is bright and shows potential. Kid goes to college and majors in chosen field. Kid becomes knowledgeable in said field. Knowledge leads to degree or series of degrees; degree leads directly and immediately to reliable and long-term employment in field of study. Success and stability are achieved in all acceptable societal measures of such.

In the arts, this just isn't always the case. But it's taken me a while to come to terms with that fact that it's not a sign of wrongness or failure, but simply NORMAL. The more I look at authors' book jacket or website bios, though, the more I recognize kindred spirits, the more weird jobs I find, the more--not flitting about, but doing a lot of other things to earn money so that you can pursue your art. And I realize that it isn't necessarily dilettantism that has caused my longest-held salaried position to be less than two years in duration. I look with a sense of relief at the biographies of other YA writers, like Jessica Day George or Jennifer Allison, both of whose bios I recently read. I look at my stepdad, one of the smartest and most creative people I know, and the fact that within his working career he's been a carpenter, an adult ESL teacher, an optician, a high school biology teacher, and a bit of an artist, too--in his retirement, he's making pottery using molds and a homemade kiln. I have to remind myself that it shouldn't be a source of embarrassment or shame to not hold the same job my entire life, to not have a "real job" in the same way that others see it. I AM doing my "real job." Every second that I live.

Warning: Weird Dream

2009-11-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

If reading about other people's dreams bores you, this is your official notice to go do something else for a while.

Anyway, last night--or, rather, sometime this morning--I had a whole series of bizarre and vivid dreams, possibly due to having taken allergy medicine before bed last night. Strangely, most of them were like one long dream continuous in terms of LOCATION, but the people I was with kept changing. I was in a shopping mall type of place in Sacramento--odd in itself since I hate the mall and I only make it to Sacramento every couple of months or so. I was in the food court and we were with our friends Ross and Jay, and we were wending our way to the opposite end of the gigantic food court in order to find a specific chicken restaurant.

Then, suddenly, Rob and I were sitting down at one of the food court tables--it was a very LONG food court that had the different food stalls/restaurants on either side and then a section with tables and booths down the middle. Everything was very crowded. Now, instead of being with Ross and Jay, we were with a different friend, Travis, and we were ordering beers from a chain microbrewery. I had been hesitant to sit at the table because someone had piled a bunch of backpacks in between the table we wanted and the adjoining one, on the benchlike seat, and I wasn't sure if that meant they'd claimed both tables, but we sat down anyway. I ordered the seasonal beer which was supposed to be a Hood River summer brew, but they'd already switched to the fall beer, some kind of ale, which Rob and I both ordered.

Then the dream changed a bit, and although I was still in the weird Sacramento mall, I was with my mother, and my (in real life, deceased) maternal grandparents. I had to drag them along with me on a visit to my publisher, who for some reason had a Sacramento office attached to the mall. They had asked me to come in and take a grammar test. I was somewhat frustrated at having to drag half of my family to the meeting, but had resigned myself to having to introduce them to my editor.

I went into the front part of the offices, which had several shelves of their titles which you could purchase, along with a reception desk and a few stools where we sat to wait. As I waited for someone from the back offices to come retrieve me, I noticed several strange things. One, it seemed like almost everything in the shop area was either white or red, and very modern/Ikea-looking with stark and simple design. Two, I realized that maybe I wouldn't want to actually introduce my editor (if he was here) to my grandfather, since my grandfather wasn't really alive any more.

When I woke up, it occurred to me that SEVERAL things about this were weird. For one thing, in the dream, I realized my grandfather was dead, but NOT my grandmother, although in reality she is equally dead. Another weird thing is that they were both there in the dream, when in life they had divorced in, like, the 1950s. Also, I don't know why I dreamed about my grandmother since we weren't at all close, though that could explain why my grandmother was almost totally silent in the dream (which I don't think was characteristic of her). I do dream about my grandfather somewhat regularly; though he died when I was 20, he was a major part of my life growing up and we lived with him for several years after my parents divorced.

Now that I think about it a little more, grandparents might have showed up in the dream because I started reading The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam (by Ann Marie Fleming) before going to bed--it's a memoir of the author finding out about the life of her great-grandfather. It is most excellent so far, and might be the source of the inexplicable dream grandparents.

Holiday Chemistry

2009-11-26T17:52:00.000-08:00

It always amazes me how much baking is about chemistry. (And yes, I'm just starting right in without any rationalization of my long absence, and no, there's not gonna be one, so there.) I set out to make my first lemon meringue pie today, which I'm going to serve tomorrow evening to Rob and our friend Fumi. I was daunted by the intimidatingly lengthy instructions in the Joy of Cooking, which included a lot of finicky specifications for timing, temperature, and the interactions of both. But I'm not a bad baker, on the whole, so I thought I'd try it, despite only having semi-success with meringue cookies in the past. Apparently I learned from my mistakes, since the photo above depicts my good(-looking, at least) pie. What remains to be seen is whether the bottom of the meringue is, as the cookbook put it, "slippery" or if it's nice and set. I have to say the lemon curd part tasted awesome. I'm not entirely sure about the crust, either, which I prepared using a different method ("pat in the pan") than I normally do. I just didn't feel motivated to slave over a bowl with the pastry cutter. We'll have to see how that went. I'm hoping good ingredients help--organic local eggs and Meyer lemons.

Even though we're not having our big dinner with all the trimmings until tomorrow--or the family dinner with my in-laws, which is Saturday--I still feel the holiday spirit. (How can I not, with that pie staring at me?) I called my mom. I called my dad. I even called my aunt & uncle, and had a chance to talk to my cousins (and put up--hopefully relatively gracefully--with my aunt pestering me about babies). This is a lot of phone calls for me. Making phone calls to multiple relatives always says "holidays." Also, I haven't done a lick of "real work" since midafternoon, which is pretty good for me these days. Instead, I started playing Twilight Princess on the Wii, made a pie, and continued labeling photos from our trip. It's going to take ages to actually sort everything and upload a good selection, but for now, you can check out Day One in Rome. If the chemistry continues to be right--and I'm adding a little red wine to the mix--tonight will hopefully be relaxing, tomorrow should be a tasty food extravaganza with a roast duck, and Saturday...well, there will be hyperactive nephews aged 2 and 4, but plenty of turkey and thankfulness, if I may indulge in a sappy moment for a moment.

Our Fall Vacation: The Strange Minutiae

2009-11-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

So I've been collecting some random, odd details of our trip in a notebook so that I could share them here--strange little things I've noticed, or weird (but non-earth-shattering) things that have happened to us while we've trekked around Italy and Spain. This is the post I've been planning for a while--not an informative and useful day-to-day account like Rob's been posting (and yeah, I'm kinda jealous), but bits and pieces, along with a few more photos. Hope you enjoy.

In both Italy and Spain, we often found rather surprising numbers of cats--semi-tame, I suppose--living in public monuments like Rome's Sacred Area or wandering around Montserrat or gathering around plastic water containers left for them at Tarragona's under-construction Roman amphitheater.
Speaking of cats, when we were in Montserrat on a rather steep (but still paved) hiking trail up to a small historic chapel, we saw a young woman who had brought her cat along on a hike. Of course, a cat's not going to follow in quite the same way as a dog; she occasionally had to stop and call it coaxingly, at which point it would come trotting leisurely along. While she checked out the interior of the chapel, it waited patiently for her outside. I'm pretty sure our cats wouldn't go for that kind of thing.

Speaking of animals, we saw flocks of green birds that appeared to be small parrots flying around both Parc Guell in Barcelona and in the gardens of the Real Alcazar in Seville. A bit unexpected, but very cool.
Speaking of animals again, we discovered that there are fish living in the various canals of Venice, something we hadn't seen during our 2007 trip there--and these fish are lurking under just about every boat if you check the less-busy canals.
In Spain, a "Ferreteria" is a hardware store (attributable, I imagine, to the Latin word for iron). However, I keep thinking it might be a good place to buy ferrets and ferret supplies.

In Barcelona, we somehow spent an inordinate amount of time searching for our evening meals. We started to joke about how we had to spend at least 45 minutes walking around before we could actually find a place to eat. This was sometimes due to misremembering where a restaurant was that we'd seen earlier (thus prompting some wandering in order to find it) or sometimes because we just couldn't settle on a place we liked. Pretty silly. However, this hasn't been the case in Seville or Madrid.
There are a lot of Roma (Gypsy) in Spain, especially in the South. I actually often wasn't sure who might be Roma and who might be South Asian, since there are plenty of both in Italy and Spain. It occurred to me that that's yet another ethnicity I could probably pass as; since the Roma did originate in South Asia, it's not farfetched. Sadly, the situation of many Roma seems to be quite poor and disadvantaged, and they appear to have been extremely ghettoized in Granada, where there's a large Roma population.

You can still smoke in most bars and restaurants in Spain, much to my minor annoyance. My sinuses do not like it. Fortunately, we seem to have chosen reasonably well-ventilated eating situations--I remember one really stuffy restaurant in Shanghai where I felt almost too sick to eat, it was so smoke-filled.
English-language 80s music is very popular in Spain, at least in public places like restaurants and on buses. On the bus from Barcelona to L'Escala, we heard "Private Eyes" by Hall and Oates, and on the way to Ronda from Seville, we heard "Man-Eater" (again by Hall and Oates) as well as 70s mega-hit "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" by Rod Stewart. Tonight in our restaurant in Madrid, La Casa del Abuelo, we heard "Papa Don't Preach" by Madonna and "Maniac" by Michael Sembello (the song from the Flashdance movie). It's a little hilarious.

That's it for random observations for tonight. You can check out a few more photos at my flickr page.

Random Observations and Tales from the Road, Part I

2009-10-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

Our trip so far has involved some nature as well as city life. We've managed to hike around a bit, in mountains, forest, and beach. It's nice to get away from a high density of humans for a while, to take a break from being the talker. Since I'm the one with some--well, a little--knowledge of Spanish, I have to do things like ask for tickets to Tarragona at 8:46 or inquire whether the patatas bravas have mayonnaise on them (which is anathema to Rob but surprisingly popular here).

So the occasional breaks have been nice. It was especially nice on Tuesday, which started in Figueres at the Dali Museum. Figueres was a somewhat depressing town in the sense that its main attraction seemed to be the Dali Museum and little else. And then there was a highly disturbing incident at the bus station while we were just arriving to wait for our bus to Empuries (environs pictured below). As we walked up, we saw a teenage guy and girl, part of a large group of teenagers, having a verbal altercation, perhaps a spat of some sort. Then it got ugly as the guy actually smacked the girl in the face with an audible pop. She looked at him in shock and brought one hand to her nose. After a moment, another guy came to her defense or at least tried to keep more from happening, and the first guy just wouldn't calm down. Meanwhile, the girl's nose had started bleeding all over the place, and by now the station guard had come out and taken the guy by the arm. After Rob and I found a quieter spot MUCH further down the platform to sit, we noticed the police and an ambulance show up--thank god. With no small amount of pathos, this was also followed by the cleaning lady coming out with a mop and bucket.

As you might guess, we were pretty glad to head out to a totally different town after that. But first, we had to survive the Bus Ride of Doom. Obviously the driver knew what he was doing, but tearing around really winding roads at extreme speeds, in a BUS, seems a little scary to me. Rob and I kept cracking up a bit hysterically when we'd careen to one side or another, which the locals probably thought was a little strange. The bus driver then dropped us off on a semi-deserted road at a stop that was little more than a sign on a pole. Fortunately, another helpful sign informed us that the ruins of Empuries were just up the road, but it was a little disconcerting at first. After only about 10 minutes' walk, we arrived at our site, which contained both Roman and Greek ruins overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

Speaking of the Mediterranean...I'm finding it continually disconcerting that the sea is to the east and not the west. Having grown up entirely on the West Coast, where the sun SETS over the ocean, I find it funny that it doesn't do so here. It's also disorienting. I keep thinking that I'm facing south with the coastline to my right, when I'm actually facing north. It's just ingrained in me to feel that the ocean is west of me.

Well, enough observations for today. (For more stories, check out Rob's blog.) Tomorrow night we're taking a night train--the so-called "Trenhotel"--to Seville, leaving at around 10 pm and arriving around 8:30 the following morning. This should be interesting. Allegedly we have our own bathroom in our cabin.

Tuning in Momentarily

2009-10-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say that I posted more photos at my Flickr page. I wanted to do a post with some random stories from the road, but after putting the photos up I am now too tired. So far, Spain has been a bit of an adventure for several reasons, not the least being my extreme stress at my rudimentary language skills, all of which seem to flee my brain when faced with an actual situation in which I need to use them. But my Spanish is better than my Italian (which mainly consists of critical memorized phrases) and so we're managing pretty well.

Barcelona is a big change from Venice, our last port of call. A very new city, comparatively, in the sense of having a lot of new growth and a vibrant nightlife; very clean and effective public transit; an easy-to-use Metro system; and a COMPLETELY INCOMPREHENSIBLE AND CRAZY train system. It seemed to make sense in theory, when looking at online schedules, but when faced with the actual chaos of the train station with its gazillion ticket windows, several different types of ticket machines for different types of trains, etc. etc., I just about had a breakdown trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. But we just rolled with it, and managed to obtain what we needed somehow.

Italy, Week One: Rome and Naples

2009-10-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

So I've been terrible about blogging about this trip. I know it. But even with excellent internet access here in Rome (hooray for hotel wi-fi!), I end up so tired at the end of the day that I only have energy to check e-mail, make sure nothing has exploded and keep my inbox under control before collapsing into bed.

Why so tired, you ask? I guess we're the types of travelers who have to try to use as much of the day as possible in seeing and experiencing as much as we can, since who knows when or if we might return. In practical terms, this means getting up as early as 5:45 a.m. (though usually around 6:30 a.m.) and returning to the room about nine in the evening after dinner, completely spent after walking for something like ten hours.

But oh, the sights we've seen already--some of them shockingly empty of people since it's kind of supposed to be the rainy season. The only truly tourist-crowded places we've been to were the Trevi Fountain (just a quick cruise by to say we'd seen it) and the Spanish Steps (ditto). Even the biggies like the Forum and Colosseum weren't too bad. Of course, that day we got rained on three separate times, which may have been a factor in the lack of crowds. But we came prepared with umbrellas and raincoats, so mere water falling from the sky was not a deterrent. Plus, even when it rained pretty good, it was nothing compared to when we got caught in the daily monsoon while visiting the pyramids of Teotihuacan outside Mexico City, or the time we went on a rainforest hike on Hawaii's Big Island and it rained so much that the soap started bubbling out of our clothes.

I don't think anything I can say can really do Rome justice in such a small space (and with me having so little energy) but I do love traveling to big cities, I love Roman ruins and beautiful artwork, and so far this trip has all of that. Plus REALLY tired, aching feet.

The Organic Satan Company

2009-09-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

This morning, my alarm went off and then I dozed off again for about 15 minutes, during which time I had a very strange dream. In the dream, I was at a party that I'd helped set up for, one that evidently had my dad and stepmom involved since lots of my Pakistani step-relatives were there. I was wearing a shalwaar kameez that I hadn't worn in years and I was convinced was really out of fashion (something that could very easily happen in real life), and glittery red shoes that strongly resembled Dorothy's ruby slippers. As the guests arrived, I greeted Yasmeen Auntie, my step-cousins, and my step-grandmother Amijan, and various others, all dressed up much more nicely than I was, of course.

While wandering through the sprawling beige-carpeted house where the party was being held, I passed through a room with a TV blaring. The channel was MTV, and they were showing a video by a band called The Organic Satan Co. As I'm sure you can guess, this was an aggro rock band, and the lead singer, a guy with short spiky hair, was chained to the floor of the stage--a very minimal dark gray stage set with no adornment--and screaming the words of the song while glaring up at the camera.

Shortly thereafter, I woke up. But I can't get The Organic Satan Company out of my mind. It would be a GREAT name for a band. Or maybe a literary magazine, or a comic book, or a new novel. P.S. YOU CAN'T HAVE IT. IT'S MINE! SEE THAT COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE? Sorry. Mine.

But I still have to figure out what to do with it. And what does an Organic Satan Company do, anyway? Do they sell organic Satans? Or is it a company selling organic items and run by Satan? I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. Stay tuned.

Self-Conscious Blogging

2009-09-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'm too self-conscious to blog.

It's true. Lame, but true. I'll question every word, every sentence, every thought. If I write about what I've been doing lately, I'll fret that it's dry and boring, a mere laundry list of daily minutiae. If I write about my innermost thoughts, I usually end up deleting them or being as embarrassed as a teenager getting called on while daydreaming during class. (Yes, of course that happened to me. My AP/IB Biology teacher had some kind of radar.) I have a weird arbitrary boundary when it comes to divulging my true and deep feelings--up to a point, I'm really not worried about what people think about any of it, but beyond that line, I'm very guarded. And I'm very good at keeping those things under guard, such that even some people who know me well might not know as much as they think. But basically, every time I sit down to write a post, I worry about crossing that line, and I get a little uncomfortable. So there you have it.

In other news, of the laundry list variety, I can hardly believe it's less than a month until we leave for Italy and Spain. I haven't been out of the country for more than 2.5 weeks or so since 1996, when I was in college and spent a summer in London. We'll be away for a month this time, two weeks in each country. Neither Rob nor I has ever been to Spain, so we're excited about that, but perhaps most of all I'm excited about seeing Rome and environs. I love visiting world-famous cities (I love traveling, period, really--nature's good, too) and I've never been to Rome. The Clipboard of Fun is rapidly taking shape, though it's really more of a Spreadsheet of Fun right now. I made my shopping list of assorted crap I gotta buy before we leave, like fun-sized toiletries and a bottle of vitamin C to protect us from swine flu (since the vaccine doesn't come out until after we leave).

A couple of things put a small damper on my excitement. One was that the transmission went out on our Honda, which we ended up having to replace (the transmission, not the car) at a cost I'm embarrassed to repeat. The other is that I'm having a hell of a time getting our overnight train tickets from Barcelona to Sevilla. Rail Europe wants me to wait until only 2 weeks prior to our trip and only sells certain ticket classes, Renfe website keeps saying esta bloqueado every time I try to choose any kind of ticket class, which seems bizarre, and the Renfe U.S. agent wants to charge a somewhat ridiculous booking fee but I'm willing to pay that in order to put my mind at ease, except they're encountering some weird booking problem, too. Perhaps they, too, are bloqueado. If they solve the problem, though, I'll happily pay the extra 40 bucks, since I don't want to try to call Spain and argue with someone in my doofus Spanish.

Still, though, I'm excited. I'm also working my ass off on freelance work so I can try to chip away at this transmission payment.

Music and Art

2009-08-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

If you're following my Twitter feed or correspond with me in any other way, shape or form, you'll no doubt already know the big piece of news--the offer on my YA book. All I can say right now is YES!!, which seems inadequate to what I actually feel, but will have to do. More info later.

On a separate note, yesterday we spent the afternoon and evening in San Francisco, starting things off with lunch at Hotei, where Rob had ramen and I had nabeyaki udon and we both worked up a sweat just eating the hot soup. Our walk in Golden Gate Park after that was a nice cool-down (with mist and cool breezes, unlike the 90-something degrees we left behind a mere hour and 45 minutes away).

The DeYoung Museum's King Tut exhibition, which we saw in the afternoon, was fantastic, though when you consider that they found 5,000 artifacts in the actual tomb, the fact that there were only 130 in the exhibit made it seem like we got only the tiniest taste of the incredible objects. If it comes to your area, you shouldn't miss it, though. Really. I was too young to go to the 1979 exhibition (at age 2, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have cared) so I was very excited to see this one. Plus, I love ancient Egyptian stuff.

After the Tut show, we did some more walking around and then drove over to North Beach--our friend Jess is on tour with his band, Los Tikkilyches, and since he lives in Mexico these days, we hardly get to see the dude, so we had to seize the opportunity when it presented itself. The band was playing at Grant and Green Saloon, kind of between North Beach and Chinatown--a location which presented some excellent dinner options. We ended up at a Basque restaurant we just randomly walked by, and at some point during dinner, we found out that the owner/chef is currently competing on Top Chef. So that was exciting. Plus the tapas were tasty.

So we were satiated and happy by the time we walked a few more blocks over to Grant and Green, and then we were even happier to see our friend Jess and his fiancee and bandmate Alyssa already at the bar getting set up. It was an evening of running into old friends, in fact; the kind that you've known so long it feels like they're family, even when you haven't seen them in years. We saw another college friend there, Jason--in fact, Jason was there the first time I ever met Jess, over 12 years ago at a party in the house Rob and I would eventually move into about eight months later.

We also hung out with Jess's dad and brother, who we'd last run into at a concert in Berkeley last summer, and another former roommate and bandmate of Jess's from a different band, Jackscrew. The band had a great time, and the audience seemed to be feeling it, too, so it was a fun evening. Best of all, though, it was awesome to see Jess after about a year. He was rockin' a goatee that was very nearly a homeless-beard, which made Rob ask him if he'd gotten any change thrown at him on the way over. Jess claimed that yes, someone had given him spare change in Washington Square. This may or may not be true, but it made us laugh.

All in all, the evening was most excellent, with a few pints of Newcastle (for Rob) and Lagunitas IPA (for me) putting the icing on the cake (or perhaps the head on the pint o' beer?) and yet again I do not have documentation since we can never seem to remember to bring our camera when we do something fun, and our phone cameras are truly sucktastic. So you'll just have to hear me now, believe me later.

A Brief Emergence

2009-07-29T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm here. More or less. I spent the past month basically just working my ass off--grading essays for Rob's online classes, plowing into a new freelance project (which was awesome but made me very busy) and working on my novel revision. The novel revision is now largely done, I'm pleased to report. I did the first big pass through the whole thing, moving major scenes, rewriting some new ones, tightening things up, and generally being attentive to those items that the editor suggested I look at. Now I'm at the point where I'm re-drawing the two cartoons which appear at the beginning of one of the chapters, and I'm planning to do two more.

I just wanted to be sure that they're as well-done as possible--I felt like they were a tiny bit untidy, that I could draw them better. And, should the novel get published, I'd really like to see them make it into the final version, rather than having someone else redraw them. As an artist that idea makes me feel pretty squicky, though I realize it's pretty much par for the course to have little or no visual input into one's published work.

Still, I hold out a vain hope that I might have SOME input someday. I used to want to be a book cover artist, actually, for quite a while when I was in high school. If I'd ended up in a different type of art program, I might have, but the Berkeley program was very fine-arts oriented, which means that if someone uses the word "illustration" to describe your work, it is actually an insult. Conversely, if your work is both a) monumentally large and b) incomprehensible to anyone but you, you will thrive. Just kidding. Kinda.

Anyway, I finished that bulky part of the revision, and have one more pass to do wherein I will try to look for anything I missed, and judge how well it's flowing now that I screwed around with the timeline of the story. And after that, I will reward myself by playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on the Wii, which has been waiting patiently for me for several months. Though I've also heard rumors that we may be purchasing Rock Band 2, as though I need any more irresistibly fun time wasters in my environment. Oh well. I should learn to say yes to more fun things now and then, anyway.

Buried in a Dung Heap--er, Rubbish Pile--of Words

2009-06-27T22:25:00.000-07:00

I have been writing like CRAZY lately, and not just because of my revision. Thanks to Beth I have a new freelance job doing some work-for-hire writing, and it's been good so far, but it's been keeping me super busy. Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of people say you should avoid work-for-hire, but a) I need money, and b) I'm not sure I'd necessarily want my name attached to some of these for posterity so I'm not concerned about my future "ownership" of it. Oh, and did I mention I need money? Going to Italy and Spain for a month this fall is not going to come cheap, even though I was an Expedia ninja and we're getting a good deal. Can hardly wait for October now, though.

In the meantime, I have been working on the revision and have also been experiencing quite a bit of revision-related fear. Certainly nothing insurmountable, but definitely annoying. Here are a few choice fears that have come up lately, as I find myself recasting several subplots and majorly revising the timeline:

Fear that I won't be able to do it well enough, despite all my efforts. That I won't put enough into it, or that I'm just not good enough to begin with. This I can generally deal with, because I tend to have an inferiority complex about most things in my life, so this is nothing new. I guess it's probably why I've had a corresponding tendency to try to be an overachiever. (That, and my dad periodically telling me about various more-successful relatives and/or children of family friends, most of whom are evidently either getting multiple graduate degrees or amassing wealth and fame in practical and worthwhile careers like medicine, law, and engineering. Sigh.)
Fear that even though I'm putting my all into this revision, and even though it's going to be a very different (and hopefully better) piece in the end, all the changes and all the differences will only lead to new and interesting types of suckage. I have a lot of trouble overcoming this one, but there's not a lot I can do about it at the moment other than keep plugging away.
Fear that, even if it all works out at this stage and I end up with a published book, at the end of it all people will read it and think, "THIS is the kind of thing that's running through your head?" while looking at me very warily, slowly backing away; or perhaps laughing derisively, or stifling a yawn, depending on the doom scenario of the day. However, this is one of those "fears" that I should be so lucky to have materialize, right? Err....

At the end of the day, though, I'm still incredibly excited about it, and the majority of the time, that helps me overcome the fear and actually get down to work. That, I guess, and my inability to stifle my inner overachiever.

The Verdict

2009-05-29T23:39:00.001-07:00

My thanks to everyone who's sent positive vibes and encouragement my way. I have to say that the outcome of today's editorial phone call was as good as it could possibly--realistically--have been.

Of course, the pipe dream is that an editor will come banging on the door...um, via the phone...and say how much they loved your book and how they want to publish it RIGHT NOW because of its overwhelming awesomeness. But seriously, how often does that happen?

For me, the sentence that sticks with me from today's phone call was about how the editor thought my novel was good, but that it could be awesome. Now, that's ALREADY several kinds of awesome. But I made sure to try to convey the idea that I want to go that route--I want to improve it as much as possible. I don't want to be one of those writers who can't take feedback. I honestly want to make this a part of my career. I can only hope that I didn't sound like a nervous, over-eager, spazzy wreck on the phone (that blighted instrument of torture that makes me sound like a small child!).

So, here's the deal: I received some detailed feedback over the phone--none of which seemed out of left field or impossibly difficult or excessively scary. Some of it will result in major structural changes, but I've done that sort of thing before. It can, theoretically, be done again. Some of it is just tightening up and polishing. It all sounds like positive change that will bring out the core of the novel rather than drifting far away from my original intentions. This was a HUGE relief.

I'll be getting written notes next week sometime, after which I'll buckle down on this thing again and give it whatfor. Then, I'll resubmit it. If I can deliver the goods--and that's what's in question at the moment--then, hopefully, fingers and toes and eyelashes crossed, this could be it. If not...well, I guess then it might be time to think about setting this one aside for a while. There are my other three (!!) novel manuscripts begging for my revision attention, not to mention the graphic novel idea that Rob and I have been talking about, a project I want to work on with short-short stories and etchings, and NaNoWriMo coming up in November (did I mention that this particular manuscript was started during NaNoWriMo? If you remember the local NPR segment that I was on--THAT novel.) Either way, I feel pretty energized. It's one more step in the right direction. I'm very hopeful. Also full of red wine.

Nervous Stomach...and Brain

2009-05-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if my stomach hurts because I ate too much carne al pastor from the random taqueria we ate dinner at, or because I'm nervous about tomorrow.

Tomorrow--in case you didn't see my Twitter feed--is a rather momentous occasion. At 1:00 p.m. I am scheduled to speak over the phone with an editor. An editor from an actual publishing house would like to talk to me about my YA novel. Presumably, anyway. The e-mail said he enjoyed reading my novel, and wanted to schedule a phone call, but he could, I suppose, be calling to talk about the NBA playoffs or the North Korean nuclear situation. But probably not.

So this got scheduled way back during last week--Thursday, to be exact--so I've been pretty much an excited wreck, unable to concentrate properly on anything. I probably ate too much al pastor tonight because I wasn't able to focus on the timely stoppage of eating. And now I'm wondering various things like: Should I re-read my entire novel in detail before the phone call? How can I keep from being a blithering idiot due to general phone phobia and/or social ineptitude? What if I get thrown a conversational curve ball? What if everything is a curve ball due to the fact that I don't know what to expect? Etc.

Mostly, though, I'm excited. I know that this can't be a BAD thing. Editors don't schedule phone calls to tell you why they didn't like your work. I might be up for some heavy-duty revisions--most probably I WILL be--but I think I'm ready for it. I really WANT a professional opinion that's more than two typed lines in a two-paragraph rejection letter. I welcome it. Bring it on.

Writer Seeks Agent/Editor – Must Love Satire

2009-05-11T16:40:00.000-07:00

Fiction writer, female, age 30 – 35, likes young adult literature and long walks on the beach, seeks compatible literary agent or publishing professional for many fruitful years of fun and profit. Open to online correspondence. Long-distance relationships OK.

Me: Hardworking, willing to listen to criticism, learning to love revision and deal with my fear of rejection. Quirky sense of humor tempered by just a touch of cynicism. Have own query letter—it’s got some mileage on it, but it’s got a good solid hook. Willing to experiment beyond the vanilla—I’ve even been known to dabble in marketing. Inveterate blogger. Loves: literary fiction, YA novels, graphic novels, art, food, and traveling. Pet Peeves: long silences followed by impersonal, vague, or befuddling communiqués; constant negativity.

You: Looking to take a chance on somebody new. A diplomatic communicator, but also honest and experienced, and willing to share that experience. Patience and kindness are a decided plus, but I can handle it a little rough from time to time. Must have industry connections. Any age or gender OK (told you I was willing to experiment).

I won’t take no for an answer. Okay, I will, but if I have to sift through a thousand rejections before I find the one who says yes, I’ll do that, too. I know you’re out there. I’ll be looking.

P.S. Hope you’re OK with me sending out multiple submissions; it’s the least you can give me for not complaining about your multiple partners.

Fear of Plot

2009-05-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

I think I have a fear of plot.

Honestly. It's sort of a new-ish thing, but I have this fear that any plot events I might come up with will be boring, trite, or forced.

I could happily spend several pages describing people and their surroundings, their backstories, moving characters in and out as they talk about nothing much of critical significance. It's like the written equivalent to walking on a treadmill--it feels like I've really gotten somewhere, and there sure are a lot of words on that page. But I know in my heart that I need to have them say plot-relevant things, and I need to actually make them DO stuff.

That's the moment where I sit frozen, unable to think of anything that doesn't seem like it came straight out of something I just read earlier that month, or something overdone that I've seen a million times on TV shows, or something based on a classic story structure that everyone will immediately recognize and not want to read again.

For example, I'm writing this new short story that I quite like so far. The narrator is a guy working as a barista in a coffee house. I have this idea that during the course of the story, he actually serves as the vehicle for several mini-stories as customers come in and order from him. When I ask myself what the point of the story is, my brain returns with "something about interpersonal responsibility, the line between observer and actor, stepping out from behind the counter" and other high-minded-sounding drivel. But yes, I do have a point in mind, kinda sorta. But I can't think of actual story events which serve that ultimate purpose that don't seem nauseatingly dull or glaringly artificial.

I've only come up with two possible answers. One is that the premise or the setup might be inherently flawed—that is, maybe I'm having trouble because it's just plain lame to try to put a meaningful story behind the counter of a coffee house. The other thought I had is that maybe I just need to take one of the lame-seeming options and disguise the hell out of it with a cleverly devised disguise of good writing. If I can write well enough, nobody will ever know how lame it actually is, or won't realize until it's too late and they're done reading. Any other ideas? 'Cuz I'm out.

A Detour Into Fiction

2009-05-04T23:16:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted any stories here in quite a while, not since our Flickr Fiction group more or less petered out. But when Tanita drew my attention to the anniversary writing contest put on by the Merry Sisters of Fate, I thought it would be a good excuse to stretch the ol' writing muscles in a different direction. So here you go: a (very) short piece of fiction inspired by the image below (Princess Tuvstarr by John Bauer).

Wild One Waiting

It isn't a path as others might define such things. It is really more of a track, a slight tamping down of brush and bracken that animals might use, wending past trees into the Deep Dark. But if you followed it, you would find no sign of wildlife, no scratches of bear claws on tree trunks or chirping of unseen birds. Not even the remains of small dead things that might have been left behind by a predator. Not even that.

But it leads from somewhere, to somewhere. If you follow it you might find out. Don't be afraid. The Deep Dark won't hurt you, at least not in ways you can see. Look: see how spindly and skeletal the tree trunks are. How sparse the leaves on the branches. There is nothing keeping you from the darkness, not really. You can step past the dry brown brambles and over the mounded tree roots. The fallen leaves are more grey than anything else; no longer green and not quite the rich brown of decomposing living matter. They pose no threat.

Oh, but you won't be alone. Make no mistake. No animals will you see, nor people. Yet you won't be alone. You will feel that someone else is there, feel them as if they were softly stroking the back of your neck, yet when you look back you will see nothing, and dismiss it as an invisible breeze. The shadows will shift as if a cloud moved over the sun, high above in his chariot, too high to send more than a few wan beams down through the latticed branches. Do not make the mistake of thinking you are alone.

And finally, if you walk long enough, endlessly enough, you will find where the path leads. Or rather: the path will lead you where it goes, allow you to the end of the track where the hillocks descend with treacherous angle and frequency to the clear reflecting pool where She sits. She saw you coming. She stroked your neck. She spied on you from the shadows. And now she will have you.

Thanks to the Merry Sisters of Fate for the fun prompt. Let me know if you decide to play too!

Is Anything Ever a Perfect Fit?

2009-04-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

I might only have one more drawing for you after this, at least for a little while--tonight is the last evening of Rob's figure drawing class, and then if I want to keep in practice, I'll have to go to the sessions downtown. Of course, Rob is happy because the semester is almost over; and I'm happy too, because we're both going to be less busy after that. (I've noticed that busy-ness in our house tends to trickle down...)

Then again, though, I usually find ways to fill my time, even if I manage to eke out some free moments. Reading is a big culprit. Today, though, I used some time well, and sent out a couple of writing-related queries. I have this quarterly Excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of queries, and last quarter (Q1 2009) I did well, sending out a pretty decent number of queries--12. I hadn't sent anything out yet this month, though, after having gotten a disheartening clump of rejections around Feb. and mid-March. A few of those were from agents who I really thought might be a good fit--that's always disappointing.

But then, is there ever really a perfect fit right off the bat? I found a new place to query one of my novels today, and it seems like a great possibility: relatively new literary agency, actively taking on new clients, open to unsolicited queries, very interested in YA, interested in graphic novels and multicultural themes...I was excited. Then, after sending the query, I thought about all the other times I sent my work to agents who seemed like a great fit. At best, I got a sentence or two of explanation with the rejection. At worst, it was a friendly but generic "no, thanks," sometimes accompanied by a "not right for us" or "we're not quite enthusiastic enough."

And it occurs to me that there are probably 8 gazillion other would-be published novelists thinking the exact same thing at the exact same time, after reading the exact same online interview: sounds like a good fit. Cue the deluge for poor Mr./Ms. Agent. I'm sure it's not fun for any agent to go through the slush pile. And it's also not fun, as a writer, to feel like you're deluged with rejections. I know I'm nowhere near deluge status yet, though I'm quite well into the double digits. I read this article earlier today, thanks to Robin Brande, about knowing when to quit, and realized I've got quite a ways to go, in fact, to even call my rejections anything more than a trickle. Still, it wears on me. I'm getting rejections from all different walks of the writing world, too.

In many articles about perseverance in fiction writing, including the one I just mentioned, the authors casually mention how long they had to keep at their "lesser" writing projects--often editing, freelance article writing, short stories, whatever--as though these were no problem, no problem at all; just the minor stuff that keeps the writer writing and helps put food on the table. The truth is, none of that feels minor to me, and none of it's as easy as it sounds--the author of the article has that right. And as for when to quit...who knows. I just sort of vacillate between Impractical Career Prospect #1 (freelance art/design/fine art) and Impractical Career Prospect #2 (writing/editing), trying not to hear my parents' voices saying "I told you so" and trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm evidently not a normal sort of person who wants a normal sort of job.

And I keep trying. Even when I don't want to.

The Can't-Do List

2009-04-10T12:41:00.000-07:00

I've noticed that to-do lists tend to be both a blessing and a bane to my existence. I'm constantly making them, and without them I would probably be too scatterbrained to remember all the crap I'm supposed to get done (not a good thing for a freelancer); but at the same time, I find them paralyzing and stifling. Not to mention all the things that I WANT to do but don't actually ever make it onto the to-do list because I can't quite justify spending the time on them, somehow. It's this latter idea that I'm having a real problem with lately.

That is, I'm tired of shoving aside all the things I want to do, all the long-term projects that I really think would be good for me, simply because, immediately after I think I might like to do it, then I think, Oh, I can't do THAT. So I made myself a Can't-Do List. It's a list of all the things I want to do but haven't been able to find time for. Secondarily, I scooped 45 extra minutes out of my day--at least 30 of which is spent either agonizing over what to do next or procrastinating, and the other 15 unnecessarily prolonging my coffee break--which I will use at least four days a week to work on items from the Can't-Do List. Here's the list, with appropriate can't-do notes:

It might be nice to drive out into the countryside to a park and sit at a bench and write or draw for part of the day. (No, I can't do that. I don't have time.)
I think I might like to do a major project like a graphic novel or an internet thing. (No. I don't have ideas that are good enough. I'm not skilled enough. I don't have time to invest on something that big when I have other work I should be doing.)
I want to make some illustrations and send some out and develop a portfolio of samples. (I can't. What would I draw? I don't have a style. I don't have enough skill. I don't have time to make the drawings good enough.)
I want to make enough art to have a show, or at least send work out to juried shows. (But again, see above. No time. Not enough skill. No ideas. Can barely even finish art work I'm currently working on. Have too many other projects that take precedence.)
I would like to make a chapbook of short-short stories with accompanying artwork, but I seem to have run out of steam with those and now I'm afraid to try.
I want to make "found poems" out of found text; even found stories, and maybe accompany them with artwork in a chapbook.
I want to get back into practice on the piano at least a little, and possibly start learning how to play the drums.
I want to try to fit in a little meditation every day or every other day.
I want to make enough handmade books that I can set up an Etsy shop for them.

So my goal is to spend the first 5 minutes of my 45 minutes meditating, and the other 40 on one or two of the list items. It's the 45-Minute Plan, and I'm not allowed to procrastinate about it AT ALL. I have to eliminate the "but I should be doing X....but I should be doing Y..." that takes up so much of my mental space. It's really, really difficult. I'm hoping that making this sort of bite-sized plan will help.

I'm the Shizz, Yo

2009-03-31T12:34:00.000-07:00

Periodically I find myself pondering the elusive notion of "coolness." It perplexes and awes me that some people seem to attain the heights of cool—or, at least, a reasonable amount thereof—seemingly without any effort. And then there's the idea of the relevance of coolness. At some point, one would think, perceived cool would be a sort of high-school notion, something to be left behind, more or less, in favor of judging people by more easily definable attributes like kindness or achievement or intelligence or generosity.

BUT NOOOO, to quote a rather crusty old episode of SNL. The adult world is riddled with a lot of the same posturing and social stratification as adolescence. Now, I've never really been one to worry about gaining approval from the "cool kids," then OR now, but then, I've also never had to worry about being mistaken for cool. Nerdy? Yes. Artistic? Sure. Weird? Very probably. Incomprehensible? On occasion. But cool? That's debatable. And I can't help but wondering what cool is, and how people get there, and why there is a sudden increase in exclusionary behavior—deliberate or not—when they do. Of course, I'm also guilty of creating coolness distinctions where there may be none, so I think it's a two-way street.

I should point out that this sort of cool/uncool distinction isn't always paranoia on my part—I don't usually go around grumping to myself about how such-and-such a cool person won't give me the time of day, so they must think I'm a total loser. Oh, I might joke about it. And I might be paranoid in other ways. But I do find myself just a bit pouty at times about others' coolness, even about the social standing granted by particular forms of success but not by other forms of achievement. (Success has to be measurable by appropriate and easily understood standards, after all.)

And you'd never mistake ME for cool. I don't dress well enough, for a start. In fact, I'm kind of unkempt in general, especially if you expand your view to include items like my house and car. My career is neither exciting nor lucrative at the moment, so I don't have any good small talk for parties, not that I'm very good at small talk anyway.

I've decided the best thing I have going for me is mysteriousness. If I don't say much about what I'm doing, then for all you know, I could be working on something super secret and totally awesome. I could be the world's coolest person, so cool that I'm saving everyone from being blinded by my awesomeness by pretending to be a dork. Uh, yeah, that must be it.

*****

Thanks, everyone, for all the positive vibes. I've been a little better since my last post, though I'm still feeling a bit crisis-y as far as my career is concerned. And I can't help thinking I'm a little old to be wondering what I want to do when I grow up. It's not normal, is it? Then again, I'm not sure normality suits me...

In Touch with My Inner Cameron

2009-03-16T14:47:00.000-07:00

I have this odd quirk that makes me reluctant to write a blog post that will be a huge bummer to everyone’s day. For one thing, I don’t think of my blog as a confessional space, generally speaking. Also, I have a very strong desire not to be that one downer friend, though I suspect I very much resemble Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

On the other hand, if I’m Cameron, that means the rest of you are Ferris, and that’s a good thing, right? So today I decided to yield to my inner Cameron and let the bummer-osity flow. Sorry. Consider yourself forewarned.

I realize I haven’t posted in a while, and I’ve been hesitant to admit even to myself that the reason is probably depression. It’s something I’ve struggled with off and on for at least 15 years, sometimes with medication, sometimes without. I don’t like to stay on medication for the long term, nor do I think my depression is serious enough to warrant that; so the longest I’ve stayed on antidepressants was a couple of years. Also, when I taper on and off the pills--Effexor is the one that seems to work best for me--I suffer from feelings of vertigo until I get used to the medication (or to not taking it). So I’d rather avoid that.

Anxiety has been a bit of a separate-but-related problem, and I wish I could get the good meds for that—but my doctor is stubbornly avoiding giving me Ativan, which works great. He’d rather prescribe the antidepressants. So I’ve been trying to persevere in a non-prescription-medication vein for the past few years. I see Dr. Yoda (not his real name) once a week or so, and I try to get regular exercise and take fish oil capsules.

I’ve not been doing as well as I could be with the latter two. With the capsules, it’s just remembering to do it. With the exercise…I sometimes don’t have time to exercise. Other times, I get in a terrible catch-22 where it would probably really help me to exercise, but I’m to depressed to motivate myself to do it. I lose large amounts of energy. Even just walking around feels like I’m walking through water.

I’m wondering, though, if I need to go back on the serious meds again. I can’t quite seem to keep it together. I haven’t felt much like writing at all, and can’t see the point of doing it. What really worries me, though, is that I don’t even really feel like reading. That is so intensely abnormal for me—ME, the person who almost never goes anywhere without at least one piece of reading material. I mean, my husband made fun of me when we were in grad school because I would put down my required reading and relax by…reading something else. But right now, reading just reminds me of all the writing I’m failing to get written and failing to get published.

Yup, I’m REALLY good and stuck.

But I do feel a little better talking about it. I feel like Rob is too stressed right now for me to inflict it on him, and I haven’t been able to get in to see Dr. Yoda for a couple of weeks, so blogging it is. Thank you for letting me unleash my inner Cameron for a few minutes, along with some unrelated but hopefully interesting accompanying visuals.

The Strange Nature of Online Friendships

2009-03-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

I've noticed that I follow strange unwritten protocols when I'm dealing with friends or acquaintances that I relate to almost exclusively online. I think it's because, without regular face-to-face contact, and without a business relationship or other situational clue to behavior, I'm uncertain as to the nature and depth of these relationships. I don't know what the appropriate level of contact is.

With my blogging and Twitter friends, there are four categories of people. There are those whom I am friends with outside of the online realm, and see on a regular or semi-regular basis. I don't feel the same type of uncertainty at all with this group of people--mostly writers I went to grad school with or other friends who happen to be blogging.

The second category consists of people I haven't met in person--or have only met a couple of times--but with whom I share something in common. Generally these are the people I work with from the Kidlitosphere, whose blogs I read and who take part in many of the same online activities as I do. I am fairly clear on the nature of my relationship with this group of people, too--we have a common interest, we relate on that level and possibly exchange the occasional personal pleasantry if it's someone I know a bit better.

Then there are the people I don't know very well at all--let's call them acquaintances, because that's what they are. I might occasionally post a blog comment or a Twitter reply, but generally, it's a non-real-time, sporadic sort of relationship. No questions there, either.

It's the fourth category that causes me to agonize over every Tweet-reply sent, over every blog comment and unsolicited e-mail: the people I would like to consider in the category of friends but whom I only actually know online and as such only really know a certain side of. If I Tweet in reply or comment on blogs, I always wonder if I'm overstepping some unwritten boundary--for instance, what if I'm in their Category Three and freaking them out because they're wondering why a mere acquaintance is suddenly glomming on? What if it's presumptuous of me to send more than, say, one direct Twitter reply per day? Is it uncouth to send such people an actual e-mail?

And the anxious self-questioning gets even more unrelenting if I send an e-mail or a Twitter reply and, for whatever reason, nothing gets sent to me in return. Not that every e-mail or Tweet requires a reply--far from it; I sure don't need comments every time I post what I'm eating for breakfast--but where does the endless-reply-loop politely stop? Eventually someone has to decide that an exchange consisting of original Tweet-->reply Tweet-->thank-you Tweet-->you're welcome Tweet-->Smiley face Tweet must come to an end. Nobody wants to be stuck in a loop of inane pleasantries.

WHERE DOES IT ALL END? These are the things that I think about when I'm supposed to be working.

Practice Makes...Better, If Not Perfect

2009-03-03T17:02:00.000-08:00

Here are a few more drawings I did during Rob's figure drawing class. The inky-looking one on the right is a thumb drawing, done entirely using my thumb dipped in ink. The two below are enveloping and gesture studies, respectively. Click on the images to see larger versions on Flickr. I'm sort of ridiculously pleased that I haven't entirely lost the ability to draw, despite being out of practice at drawing from the model.

Practicing Obsolete Art Forms

2009-02-07T14:20:00.000-08:00

Etching, or intaglio, is just one of those weird old-school methods of artmaking that you don't necessarily think of right away when you think about printmaking or about visual art. But Rembrandt and Goya were masters of the craft and its expressive language, and studios like Crown Point Press continue to ensure that contemporary artists working in fine print media are known and respected.

Although I can only wish that one day Rob or I might be associated with Crown Point Press beyond just having gone on field trips there, I CAN be proud of our homegrown operation, Imp Press. Now that we have a studio of a respectable size such that two or even three people can move around in it at the same time, we've enjoyed getting back to work on what we love. I almost feel like it's a fetishistic act. I so much love the mere process of touching and smelling the ink, tearing the paper to size, cranking the wheel of the press. Call me crazy.

The following print was produced for a group project, which I'll describe in more detail in a later post. I got started a little late due to holiday circumstances beyond my control, but the first thing I did was look around the studio for copper plates I could use. I happened to luck upon a plate that was already of an appropriate size and already hard-grounded and ready for line etching. In order to perform a line etch on a copper plate, the plate must first be polished and de-greased, and then the edges beveled so that the plate does not cut the paper or the blankets on the press. Then, a waxy substance called hard ground is melted and rolled onto the surface. Once it hardens--a matter of minutes--it is possible to draw lines on with an etching needle, also known as a Whistler twist (see my profile photo).

The surfaces exposed by the needle get etched away when the plate is submerged in acid (see later photos). Once the hard ground is cleaned off, it's time to ink the plate. Ink is carefully taken out of a metal can like the one in the background of the photo at left, using a putty knife. Then, using a chip of matboard or a plastic squeegee thingy, ink is drawn across the surface of the plate and gets squeezed into the little lines and divots left by the etching.

A piece of cheesecloth or tarlatan is used to wipe off the excess ink from the surface and evenly distribute it inside the etched lines. (That's the crumpled inky wad at the top of the photo.) Small pieces of phone-book paper can also be used to further clean the surface, or you can hand-wipe it with the side of your hand. The result is shown at right: an inked plate that is ready for printing.

Further down the page you'll see a photo of the press in our studio, which is a Conrad etching press with a star wheel and composite press bed. The machinery is geared so that it's relatively easy to crank a print through with the required pressure (well over 1000 pounds). The results of printing the line etching are shown at left. I did a few prints so that I could use a pencil to draw on one of them, to figure out what shades of value to use in the aquatint. Aquatint is the method by which areas of tone can be etched onto a plate--flat areas of color as opposed to just lines.

To create an aquatint is a semi-toxic process that has to be done in the garage. First, finely powdered rosin (like the rosin dancers or violinists use) is dusted evenly over the surface of the plate. We do this inside a cardboard box, using a dust mask. The rosin is sprinkled out of a shot glass that has had a double layer of nylon stocking stretched over the top. Then the rosin is melted into a fine layer of tiny droplets using a butane torch. You can see the rosin melt almost all at once when it reaches the right temperature, after a couple of minutes--it's sort of magical to watch the surface change in sheen suddenly, in a matter of seconds.

With an aquatint, the droplets of melted rosin form a pattern that's almost like the Ben-Day dot pattern seen in old newspaper photos. The space between the dots is etched down and when it's inked, you get a relatively flat area of color. To create light tones, you etch for less time; for darker tones you etch the plate progressively longer. To preserve your light tones, it is necessary to "stop out" those areas so that they do not etch. Stop-out is a tarry mixture of liquid hard ground and asphaltum that is painted onto the plate using a brush. Above, you can see a partially stopped-out plate ready to go into the acid. The acid is ferric chloride, actually a heavy salt, and it is relatively fume-free and non-toxic but it's a horrible nasty iodine-like color so you still don't want to touch it.

When the etching part is finished, I take the plate outside and clean off the stop-out using mineral spirits and a rag. (This is where all of our old clothes go in our house.) Then, the rosin is cleaned off using denatured alcohol, and I ink up the plate as before. I will need to pull a few test prints in order to see if I need to make any alterations to the plate: areas that are too dark can be burnished to be lighter, while areas that lost detail or are too light can be scratched at with a drypoint needle (a direct method of intaglio that does not involve etching).

Since it turned out that I did some major screwing up at various points in the process--it's been a little while since I did an etching, and this was my first time doing one using our new setup--I had to do quite a bit of both of these techniques. Shown at left are some burnishing tools. Rob even has a burnisher that was blessed by the Pope (long story) but this isn't that one.

Above are four progressive states as I carefully burnished and drypointed this baby to a reasonably finished condition. The messy print in black on the top left is what came right out of the acid. The background is way too dark, and there are some "washed-out" looking spots resulting from me getting stop-out on areas where it wasn't supposed to go. I burnished the background quite a lot, added some drypoint to darken up the blacker areas, and ended up with the print at the top right. I also changed ink color at this point. The bottom two prints are just me evening things out and fussing with details.

Then, it was time for me to print the final edition. I needed to print 20, and I decided to use some tan Rives BFK paper that I had left over from making holiday cards. First I had to tear the paper down to the appropriate size of 8x10--in printmaking, it is traditional to tear paper using a heavy metal straight-edge rather than simply cutting it. It creates a nice fuzzy edge to the paper instead of a mechanical-looking one. Then the paper needs to be soaked for at least 20 minutes in a tub of water. When the paper is wet, it softens, and this helps it to a) not tear under pressure, and b) sink into the detailed surface of the plate. The plate is put on the press, then the paper is blotted dry on a towel and placed on top of the plate. A pair of felt blankets cushion and also help press the paper into the inked lines. In the above photo, taken right after the print was cranked through, you can see the raised part of the paper where the plate was pressed into it. (Ignore the unfinished painting in the background, please.)

The resulting prints are then placed into blotter paper and dried flat under a heavy board. We have a drier set up to hasten the process; once the paper is dry to the touch, it can be moved to the drier, which is basically a stack of blotters set up with a fan and a wind sock sort of thingy. And there you go. When they're dry, I'll sign and number them. That was a long explanation, but at least a few people requested pictures and the pictures require some description. I promise to tell you more about the group print project itself later...

Not a Poet

2009-01-30T20:12:00.001-08:00

I appreciate everybody's interest in my poem. I hope it doesn't disappoint. You have to realize that I write almost exclusively prose, and have done so since college. I write articles; I write young adult novels; I write fairly bizarre literary short stories. I draw; I paint; I make prints. But poems? Gah. No clue. Beyond my ken and my ability both, though I appreciate poetry massively. Anyway, here it is.

A Poem about Why I Don't Write Poems

It could be a poem,
But I'm not a poet.

Even the words on the page correct themselves after I write them.
There could be an egg buried in the sand, but who would know?

There could be words,
But who would want to read them?

A poem is being naked in front of everybody. It says, this is me.
There are no layers of story or paint to protect it.

Give me something in return for my nakedness.
It is embarrassing to give this to you for free. I expect a fair bargain for stripping my layers away.

I gave you not just me
But me, bare, open to the sky.
I cracked an egg and let it slip slimy onto the page.
Tomorrow I might wish I hadn't.

You listen:

It doesn't hatch by itself. It doesn't break by itself. It spills mystery onto the blank white until a vine slowly grows, twining around a ruined foundation and reaching for the sky.

I sit naked at the root in a broken eggshell, forced to let go.

Strange Days Have Found Us...

2009-01-28T16:37:00.000-08:00

Today has been a little odd. First, as I was driving from Costco to Trader Joe's, running necessary but irritating errands, I suddenly remembered a bizarre dream I had last night. Normally my dreams are a bit strange, but often they're too chaotic to remember properly, and I don't write them down upon waking like I really ought to. Anyway, I only remembered a piece of this dream.

In the dream, Rob and I were going to have a baby. I was giving birth in a standing position, and then a nurse or midwife held the baby up for us. It took me a moment to realize that the baby had eight limbs instead of the usual four--it was the size of a normal infant, but it had four little arms ending in tiny fists and four little legs dangling down, like some bizarre human-octopus hybrid. I was strangely calm and accepting of this.

That's all I remember. I hope that isn't a prophetic dream telling me we're destined to have freak children. Any kids we might or might not have would probably be weird enough just being born into a family with two artists for parents, and not because we've been eating the cadmium red. (Which we haven't been. Just a joke.)

The second weird thing that happened today was in Trader Joe's. I was buying some groceries and a case of two-buck Chuck when the cashier asked me for my ID (argh). I showed it to him, and the following conversation ensued:

Cashier (peering at me suspiciously): Are you sure this is you?
Me: ...
Cashier: It's not, like, your sister or something?
Me (flatly): I can take my hair down if you want. [My hair was in a post-gym ponytail, while my ID picture has my hair loose.]
Cashier (completing transaction): No, it's OK. It's just you look really young. (Said in a tone that was somehow apologetic and still suspicious at the same time.)
Me (flatly and insincerely): Thank you.

What I really hated about this was that HE made ME feel uncomfortable, like I didn't have any right to buy my case of wine, so then I felt embarrassed and nervous and probably acted like a nervous kid illegally buying booze. Not that it doesn't say 1977 right there on my driver's license, with a picture that is clearly me and actually DOES LOOK like me. The point is, I was made to feel weird about buying something I have every right to buy and have had the right to buy for almost 11 years now. And, I swear to you, I'm pretty sure I look at least 21. I don't look like a minor, unless you are very very old. I know cashiers are required to card you if you look under 30, and that's fine, but they don't have to make me feel self-conscious about it.

Anyway, rant over. It was just a strange situation because I don't think that the validity of my ID has ever been questioned before. Here's hoping I have a much more conventional remainder of the day. Writing...blogging...ahh.

Revisiting Resolutions

2009-01-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

Today, as I folded the laundry about a week later than I would have liked, I realized that I've fallen off the wagon as far as my 2008 New Year's resolutions are concerned. One of those was to get out of the habit of leaving the baskets of clean laundry to languish in the living room until I needed the baskets for the dirty laundry the following week. I actually did really well on this resolution until a couple of months ago. Then somehow I stopped being able to find the time to do on-time folding of laundry. Granted, this is not a particularly huge problem. Housework only takes priority insofar as routine maintenance needs to be performed (i.e., dishes, laundry, occasional vacuuming and tidying) and is generally of the keeping-the-house-from-being-a-complete-shithole nature, not the anal-retentive, must-keep-surfaces-immaculate nature.

However, as you can see from the images, one resolution from this year that I'm so far managing to keep is practicing my figure drawing. These are from the second session we attended, and they're somewhat better than the ones I produced in the first session (which I've deemed not good enough for public viewing). The drawings up top are one-minute gesture poses using graphite, and the ones just above are 30-minute poses, the large one charcoal and the smaller one graphite on toned paper. I still need practice, though, so I'll be going to Rob's figure drawing class from time to time. I'm realizing that the figure drawing class I took way back when was less technical in terms of learning bones, muscles, etc. and more focused on using various media, which is fine, but also means I don't have as much knowledge of anatomy as some artists. Rob is teaching that to his students, so I'll probably absorb some by proxy.

Re: my other resolutions for this year, so far--well, I thought I was halfway to my goal of losing 5 pounds, but evidently it was all negated this weekend when I was visiting my parents. My dad routinely tries to get me to eat more, MORE! and has the added quirk of possibly not knowing what a vegetable is. Meanwhile, my mom is strangely fond of breakfast/brunch, so when I'm at her house, I end up eating a lot more in the morning than I normally do, as someone who generally only has coffee and toast or fruit first thing.

The morning meal often also consists of unwanted personal conversation with a cafe waitress, since my mom is one of those people who will start conversations with just about anyone. This means that the waitstaff at her favorite haunts will know far more about me than I would normally divulge to random people. There's also a lot more talking than I usually want to do in the morning, as someone whose preferred method of communication pre-coffee is mainly caveman-like grunts and pained moans.

Anyway, I did go to the gym for an hour today, though, so I'm still holding out hope for the pounds going away again. The meditation resolution has yet to materialize (or immaterialize, as the case may be). I have a meditation CD that my therapist, Dr. Yoda (not his real name), kindly gave me, and I keep meaning to listen to it. Haven't yet. It's been a couple of weeks. I'm hoping to get to it before our appointment this week so I don't seem like a complete slacker. Wish me luck.

Fine Time - A Music Meme

2009-01-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

I must thank Interactive Reader Jackie for this most excellent time-waster of a music meme. The meme is structured as follows:

Take your iPod in your hand:
1. Put your Music on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

The songs form the answers to a series of ridiculous questions about the, uh, meme-ster. It's hard to resist a music meme, so here I go...with a rather lengthy disclaimer: Since I have a really lame iPod Shuffle that only contains songs I've deemed suitable for working out at the gym, I've used the shuffle function on my iTunes computer software instead. Also, I've skipped past any songs in the playlist that are "Rob's songs"--i.e., music that I don't tend to listen to on my own. I hardly think that a song I don't actually listen to would in any way be relevant to this meme--not that randomly shuffled songs are going to provide answers to the mysteries of life, anyway.

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Modern Love - David Bowie. ("But I try....I try..." Okay. Maybe.)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Here's Where the Story Ends - The Sundays. (Huh?)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE?
We Live Again - Beck. (Dude! That's not bad.)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
It's Over - Tom Waits. (HAHAHAHA!)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
The Hussein Skank - Skankin' Pickle. (Jeez, I hope not.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Sugar on My Tongue - Talking Heads. (Are we taking the song literally? Food? Sex? I guess it doesn't actually matter.)

WHAT IS 2+2?
Ma and Pa - Fishbone. (Yeeeeah. Ooookay.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Money - Pink Floyd. (Gosh, that isn't very nice. Unless we're talking about Rob, in which case "Money" is one of the songs I remember him learning on the bass early in our relationship.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Karma Police - Radiohead.

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Make Believe Mambo - David Byrne. ("Havin' sex and eatin' cereal/Wearin' jeans and smokin' cigarettes now..." HA!)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Christine - Siouxsie and the Banshees. (So I want to be a goth? A strawberry girl? I don't get it.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Long Way Home - Tom Waits. (Oookay.)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Vaka - Sigur Ros. (If that means they think I'm from a faraway land and speak in an unintelligible language, possibly.)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Get Up Offa That Thing - James Brown. (Sweet! Except we already got married, and there's not a lot of music when you elope.)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Breakdown - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Post Cold War Politics - Fishbone. (I am laughing my ass off here.)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Buena - Morphine. (Well, since the song sounds like it's about a stripper, I might have to call this a bust. And no, I'm not known for abuse of opiates.)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Sleep on the Left Side - Cornershop. (Since I'm not sure the lyrics make a lot of sense...I dunno.)

WHAT’S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Think I'm in Love - Beck. (Har har.)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
A Little Respect - Erasure. (Death by synth-pop! Oh noes!)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Burning Inside - Ministry. (Yes, spontaneous human combustion WOULD be regretful.)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
The Ballroom Blitz - Sweet. ('Kay.)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Israel - Siouxsie and the Banshees. (Yes, the situation in the Gaza Strip does make me want to cry. Go figure.)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Time Bomb - Rancid. ("Black coat, white shoes, black hat, Cadillac..." Or not. See wedding-related question above.)

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
When I Live My Dream - Seu Jorge. (So...I respond in Portuguese?)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
My Problem - Dance Hall Crashers.

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Nightshift - Commodores. (Evidently I'm not alone.)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Untitled 6 - Sigur Ros. (If I could go back in time, I would...become an Icelandic musician?)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Salvation - Rancid. (Evidently, what hurts is the growing divide between the rich and the poor.)

WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
Fine Time - New Order. (Yes, I did have a fine time doing this, thanks for asking.)

I hate tagging people for memes because I'm always afraid they'll be annoyed. So I'll let you choose for yourself. If you decide to do it, leave me a comment.

Thirty-Something-ish

2009-01-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

As I get closer to the 32 mark--a little over two months away--I've started thinking a little about what it's been like, being "in my thirties." (Actually, to be entirely truthful, this was more of an in-the-shower kind of musing than a profound and repetitive pondering.) It's something that seemed so far away for most of my life. Even when I was in my twenties, thirty sounded pretty old.

But there have been some pluses to being over thirty. Although I'm still sort of baffled whenever I get carded for buying alcohol--and this still happens more often than not--I DO find it incredibly amusing to see the look on people's faces after I whip out my ID and they look at my actual birthdate. Yes, that is a 7, as in the 1970s. Yes, I played with an Atari as a child, and not one of them fancy 2600 models, either. I played a text-based game called Zork on the Commodore 64 and distinctly recall wanting to throw it out the window. Yes, I remember who Oliver North is. I am Old Skool.

As I get a little further into my thirties, though, I'm also noticing a distinct feeling of...let's call it an underachievement complex. I wonder if this is something that affects people who were overachievers when they were younger. There are days when I feel like I'm wallowing in lost potential. I'm more likely, of course, to have one of those days if my dad happens to call to tell me So-and-So is going back to school to get a second master's degree (that actually happened--So-and-So, in this case, is already a medical doctor and is exactly my age). I know my dad does it to get my goat.

And believe me, my goat is well and truly gotten. I probably could have arrived there without his help. After all, I'm notoriously good at comparing myself unfavorably to other people. And it seems very easy for me to list all the accomplishments I've failed to check off, rather than the things I have done. The latter seem truly trivial; the former, staggering. I know it's a lost cause, a pointless mental quagmire, but I can't help it. I don't even feel like I've accomplished many of my personal life goals, but then those always seem to change in the face of reality.

Here's the thing, though: I don't think I truly regret anything I spent my time on, getting to this point. Sure, there are a few minor "whoops, shouldn't have done thats," but it seemed right to spend a year at art school, just as it seemed right to decide that I should work for a while afterward before deciding whether to return.

Yet I still have mixed feelings about where I am now. And I don't feel like I should be having mixed feelings. Which is the other thing I'm noticing about my thirties: I'm still too young to even take myself seriously, evidently, but I'm too old to be cool, too old to be a prodigy or a young overachiever, and too old to pretend I can go back to change anything.

**************************

One thing I can change, though, is my woefully imperfect novel manuscript, which I swear I am now about to continue doing.

A Netizen's Lament

2009-01-13T15:46:00.000-08:00

I've got a serious problem.

Yeah, Web 2.0, I'm talking to you. We've had a good thing going for a little while now. The past couple of years have been pretty great. I got to know you on more than a superficial level, and it was a whirlwind courtship. I took your Facebook movie quizzes. I commented on your Flickr photos and explored your many Wikis, cruised the ins and outs of your group sites and dutifully threw myself into your blogosphere.

Oh, you helped me get connected in ways I never imagined. And you and me--we were tight. We had our trysts daily, sometimes multiple times a day.

And then, Web 2.0, you started to wear me out. It was just all too much. I think, Web 2.0, that things are getting a little too deep--or maybe not deep enough at the same time. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. But your apps are feeling a little stale. Your Twitter has its delightful moments, but your Ning is a little bit out of control. I can't even tell you how many logins and passwords I've amassed because of you, how many of your RSS feeds are languishing unread. Some days I can't even bear to look at you.

Do we need a break, Web 2.0? Do you really need to know my status every moment of every day? I mean, you brought so many people together; but instead of feeling integrated, I feel more and more fragmented. I just don't know what to do. Yet I can't seem to wean myself off of you entirely. I'm dependent on you. I'll admit it. Without you, a huge part of my life would be missing. You've changed me and everyone else around me.

The question now is: How will YOU change?

New Year's...Somethings.

2008-12-31T22:46:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year when I start thinking I ought to formulate some New Year's Resolutions. The problem is, I have trouble wording them just right. I don't want them to be so prosaic that they're merely goals rather than resolutions--e.g., it would be sort of a letdown to say that I resolve to finish revising my novel manuscript for The Latte Rebellion, since I plan to do that anyway and have for months. It's really not even a goal anymore, just an item on the to-do list.

Likewise, I don't want to make any unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky resolutions, like resolving that 2009 is the year that I'm going to land a literary agent and/or a book contract. It's a recipe for disappointment, since that's not something I really have full control over. I guess the aim is to land somewhere in between, with something that I can see as more than simply a goal but something to reach for, to strive for, that IS achievable.

I also tend to feel like a New Year's Resolution should have something to do with self-improvement, in a broad sense. Now, I'm looking at my post from last year about the subject and evidently I was all about the "sensible" goals. My main focus was on the laundry, and not letting baskets of clean laundry languish unfolded until the following weekend, when I needed the baskets for the new loads of dirty laundry. I was relatively successful in this, with only a few lapses--I've generally managed to get the clean laundry folded within a few days of having done it. Not too bad. However, my semi-secret ongoing resolution to lose five pounds (believe me, these are unimportant pounds, but still) remains unattained despite a few years of attempting it. I would still like to lose the five pounds, but there is a caveat--if I do not lose the pounds but convert them straight to solid muscle, that is also acceptable.

Clearly, I still need to think about this resolution thing, but I do already have one entry on the list: I resolve to make another valiant attempt at semi-regular meditation. I need all the non-pharmaceutical anxiety/depression reduction methods I can possibly incorporate into my life. So that's a big one. I'd also like to get back to drawing more regularly, which I evidently need to do judging by the quality of my work at the figure drawing session we attended last night. The writing resolutions I'll save for the other blog, maybe tomorrow.

Ow. Yum. Argh. Sigh.

2008-12-24T16:44:00.000-08:00

The above title is the approximate sound of the inside of my head today. My back hurts from cleaning the house, but we ate some awesome food; also, my mom and stepdad are staying with us for a visit and the house is therefore a bit more action-packed than usual. I did manage to kick back a little over the past few days and play a video game--something completely and entirely and wonderfully unproductive. Sometimes it's difficult to begrudge myself the down time, but I really do need it, as proven by past episodes of hives that won't go away and other such fun stuff.

Anyway, speaking of begrudging, I haven't seemed to be able to justify the blogging time lately (except for the writing blog). It's been a very busy month, and I've been mentally and physically exhausted. A New Year's resolution for me is to do more quality blogging. If quality blogging means that I have to set a regular day and time and stick to it, then so be it. One part of that resolution is to ponder the desired purpose of this blog, and how best to achieve that. Right now, I just post whatever whenever, without much regard for structure/subject matter or potential interest level. And I suspect that the latter could be improved by addressing the former. So, we'll see.

Gluttony: My Favorite Deadly Sin

2008-11-26T15:48:00.001-08:00

...though I'm also quite fond of Sloth and Lust. Anyway, I'm trying to give some love to my poor neglected blog here, so I've decided to post our menu for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner. It's just the two of us, plus Rob's mom and dad, so (believe it or not) we're trying to keep it relatively simple. ("Relatively" being the operative word, of course.) Rob's parents are bringing the wine, the bread, and the pumpkin cheesecake. We're making:

Roast goose (which we've done a couple of times before in past years)--allegedly free-range--with bread stuffing, to which I'm adding water chestnuts and apple.
Gravy. Of course.
Mashed sweet potatoes with caramelized leeks and butter (this is sort of an experiment)
Green salad.
Brown rice mixed with wild rice.

I'm very excited, though I'm still attempting to thaw the goose, which is sitting in water in the sink. The goose requires day-before prepping--you have to dip it in boiling water for 1 minute to dry and tighten the skin and then let it sit in the fridge for a day. I realized earlier that I already passed the 24-hours-ahead mark for that, but oh well. I don't think a few hours will be critical in this case. I need to wait for Rob, though, who is a lot less grossed out by raw poultry than I am. I don't know what's worse--the moist and flabby texture, or the grease it leaves on my hands. Still, it's worth it for the sheer gluttony which we will gratefully exercise upon this meal's consumption.

And, of course, there's the thankfulness. That's there. I just hate sounding sentimental.

Behind on Life.

2008-11-24T17:52:00.000-08:00

Ever feel like you're falling behind on life? That's me, right now. I just managed to post something on the YA blog and realized that was only the tip of the iceberg as far as blogging is concerned--I've been neglecting this one, my Welsh blog, and the reviews blog, mostly through the flimsiest of excuses. Too much work? Ah, c'mon. That's never stopped me before.

I do have too much work, though. I'm caught in another downward spiral of inferiority feelings and self-recrimination for a) failing to publish any fiction this year, b) failing to garner enough paid work to feel like I'm contributing adequately to the household, c) actually losing some paid work for various reasons, and d) still managing to have way too much on my plate to reasonably accomplish in the time available to me. How does this happen??!!?

Anyway, wallowing makes me even less likely to blog, as does the fact that at any given moment I'm actually either working or attempting to force relaxation upon myself by reading or watching TV (and I'm usually not able to do these very well when I'm worrying about what I'm not getting done). But for you, my wonderful and loyal posse of readers (all five of you), I will stop wallowing. I will get to work. And when I finish working, I will blog you into oblivion. (Whatever that means.)

NaNoWriMo Lives!

2008-11-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to say onward and upward! I added a NaNoWriMo widget to my sidebar so everybody in the world (well, all five who read my blog) can keep track of how far behind I'm slipping. I made an okay start, but I'm definitely about a day and a half behind where I ought to be in terms of average daily word count.

Today's not going to help, either, as it's Election Day and we're planning to hold a small party with a few friends. The party will involve a drinking game--we shall toast in celebration for each blue state won. Since this could incapacitate or even cripple the majority of humans if we were taking shots of hard alcohol, we decided we're going to take shots of sake instead. So before too long, I have to go procure said sake (after carefully calculating ounces required per person and so forth).

I still need to post about Halloween, too--as can reasonably be expected, I successfully added another entry to my list of confusing costumes, thus continuing what is evidently a personal tradition now. It's not intentional, I assure you.

Write, Write, Write

2008-10-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a surprisingly productive writing month for me. I got a short-notice writing assignment for the Mills Quarterly, which turned out quite well considering the brief time frame (I had about 2 weeks to do it, which included going after some quotes from multiple parties).

Then, on Monday afternoon I finished the first draft of YA novel #4. I was hoping to finish it a little sooner, but really, the important thing is that I finished it before the end of the month--for next month is National Novel Writing Month, and I plan to use it to get novel #5 underway. This time I'm thinking about a dystopian piece, with a slightly older teen narrator--18 or so. I want to do a story with a male narrator, but I'm also considering two narrators that switch back and forth. I don't know yet. I'm also not sure what the circumstances of the dystopian setting will be--climate change, radical governmental shift, alteration of social structure as we know it, etc. I'm not sure how far in the future this will take place, nor am I certain even of the ultimate point of the story (other than the obvious cautionary aspects of any dystopian fantasy). But I'm pondering...

Links R Us.

2008-10-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

In the absence of actually having anything to say at the moment (seeing as it's late at night and my brain has stopped working for the day), why not enjoy these links?

Firstly--and this is part of the reason my brain's not working--I found this rather useful page, complete with amusing photographs, upon trying to get a song out of my head. The song? Hall and Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True." Why? Saturday Night Live's Election Special. (It starts about a third of the way through the clip.) Now, it's not that the skit wasn't funny, or that I don't like the song (or at least enjoy it for its cheese value); it's that the shit kept me awake at night. This happens to me occasionally--an "earworm," as they call it, will annoy me while I'm attempting to sleep. I likes me my sleep, so this is extremely irritating.

Anyway, via Twitter, I think it was Elimare who drew my attention to James Gunn's PG Porn starring the cute Nathan Fillion. As it states on the site: "How many times have you been watching a great porn film – you're really enjoying the story, the acting, the cinematography – when, all of the sudden, they ruin everything with PEOPLE HAVING SEX? A bunch of times, right?" Uh, right. Anyway, watch the "Nailing Your Wife" video. Highly amusing.

Wasting Time

2008-10-06T18:28:00.001-07:00

Holy Jebus, there are some nasty mixed drinks out there.

So, I'm looking up mixed drinks that I can make with Bacardi 151, because we happen to have some in the house. Also, we ran out of wine and beer and I'm too lazy to go to the store right now. And look! I found "30+ appetizing drink recipes." Only I find this assessment somewhat disingenuous when I find out that a Jamaican Ass-Kicker is Bacardi 151 mixed with Jolt cola.

Other interesting libations: Parappa the Drunk Rappa, which, besides bringing back memories of a really frickin' old video game, also made me want to vomit just reading it; Dick in the Dirt, which sort of made me feel icky even before reading what it was; and The Shanaynay, which, despite the catchy name, sounds pretty ghetto. I mean, seriously, lemonade powder?

I'm either going to have to go with the old standby of rum and Coke, though all we have is Diet Coke Plus, and moreover I don't really like cola; or I'm going to have to stop being such a wuss and just gulp it down; or I'm going to have to check for something more appealing in the really high-up liquor cabinet. (That's the other thing: the Bacardi 151 is within my easy reach.) Or I could just not be such a booze hound. That would work, too.

Downstream

2008-09-23T15:40:00.000-07:00

It almost didn't begin at all.

We packed up the car, bought beer and snacks at the grocery store and tucked them safely in coolers, and drove an hour and a half to Rancho Cordova. That part went as planned.

At Rossmoor Bar, the landing point, we met up with David, our kayaking guitar-virtuoso friend, and parked our car. Then Rob and I piled ourselves and the food into David's Jeep, which was already loaded with our inflatable raft, paddles, life vests, and David's kayak on the roof. On to Upper Sunrise (I think) where we kicked in the four-wheel drive and parked on the gravel road next to the river. There were only a few other people parked there, unlike at the height of the summer. We unloaded everything onto the riverbank, and unrolled the raft, only to realize that we had failed to pack the raft plugs. Plugs are these handy items that allow you to effectively inflate the raft and keep it from deflating.

Feeling like jackasses, we drove about eight minutes back out of the park to the raft and kayak store, which, luckily for us, was open on a Sunday. We bought plugs. We drove back into the park (hooray for all-day passes) and pulled up to our chosen spot yet again, passing deer and wild turkeys as we meandered along the road.

This time, the launch was a go. We took turns spraying on sunblock and inflating the raft with the battery-powered pump, and then tossed the three small coolers into the back. David was sporting a new life vest, helmet, and kayak, because he received $1000 of kayak store credit for saving a guy's life earlier in the summer. Meanwhile, we were sporting the nifty Intex boat that we got brand new on eBay a couple of summers ago. And off we went.

The weather was beautiful: in the 80s and sunny, hardly a cloud to be seen. The water level was a bit low, and the water itself a bit cold, as usual--that happens when it's mountain runoff. In midsummer heat, it's refreshing. Late summer...well, we didn't do any swimming this time. Mostly we floated slowly downriver, drinking beer and eating cold fried chicken, bananas, and pita chips. David tested out his new kayak. We all tested it out a little--my first time in a kayak. I went in a lot of circles. It turns out you don't have to paddle very hard in a kayak compared to a raft.

Not that we paddled much in the raft; a bit more than usual because the current was very slow, and we had to be a little more careful to avoid rocks because of the lower water level. At times I felt like a gondolier, poling the boat with the paddle, the river was so shallow in spots. We saw minnows, crayfish, herons, egrets (which, as it turns out, make horrible noises), vultures, and a dead salmon. Earlier in the summer, we saw otters.

We stopped at our usual "play spot" for a rest, and skipped stones. Now my arm hurts. No professional stone-skipper am I. I can usually get at least two bounces, though; sometimes up to four.

Between the three of us, we managed to polish off a 12-pack of Heineken Light (the choice of canned beer at the store was limited, and they don't allow glass on the river any more) and two tallboys of Sapporo in about 3 and a half hours. The problem is, we're of the philosophy that "we brought all that beer with us; now we HAVE to finish it!" It's like a challenge, or some bizarre beer-related guilt trip.

And so went our last (probably) rafting trip of this year. I just hope we remember to hose all the fried chicken crumbs out of the bottom of the boat before we pack it away for next summer.

Oh no, I'm in the B-52s!

2008-09-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

Oh. Wait. Scratch that. I'm a B-52.

What military aircraft are you?

B-52 Stratofortress

You're a B-52. You are old and wise, and you absolutely love destruction. You believe in the principle of "peace through deterrence" and aren`t afraid to throw your weight around.

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Kudos to Liz B for one of the strangest quizzes I've ever taken. I think my results may have been affected by the fact that I said fascism was the most effective form of government (given the choice between communism, fascism, and "pure" democracy). Dude, it's an honest answer - they didn't ask what was the BEST form of government, or the most noble. You gotta admit, when you oppress an entire population and bend them to your will, it's pretty damn effective.

Facebook Follies

2008-08-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

Let me say this right now: I am not one of those people who will add people to my Facebook friends list willy-nilly. I don't ask every person on my friends' friend lists, and I generally only accept friend invitations if I actually know you--that is, if we've worked together, or we've been friends at some point in the past or present, or if I've communicated with you regularly in some capacity. Since this includes a rather wide range of people, including my online and blogging friends, I have a decent-sized friends list.

However: even if we have something in common such as going to school together or having friends in common, I might not add a person on that basis alone. And I surely am not going to add someone whom I remember but didn't actually like.

This is what happened to me this past week. I get a friend request from somebody whose name seems vaguely familiar. We don't have any friends in common, but out of curiosity I click on their profile. It turns out, yes, the person went to my high school, as I was starting to suspect. Then, the more I thought about it, I realized that yes, I did recognize the person's name, and, what's more, I couldn't stand 'em.

In fact, the one extended conversation I even remember having with this person was a rather confrontational one about religious beliefs. As I recall, they were the ones to bring the topic up in the first place, in an argumentative fashion. Since I generally follow the attitude that religion and politics are no-nos in polite conversation--and did even in high school, though I was more willing to debate politics at that point--this was clearly not a situation I was happy to be in. From what I remember, this person started asking me about my religious beliefs. I told them, well, I'm kinda sorta Catholic (which was true at the time). The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Teenage Zealot: Oh. Catholics aren't really Christian. They don't even believe in the Bible.
Me: Yeah, they do--they just don't always take the Bible literally.
TZ: Well, they should take the Bible literally. Anyway, it doesn't matter, since you're all going to go to hell anyway.
Me (having entirely lost patience): Well, half my family is Muslim and Islam says that Christians are all going to hell, so I guess I'll see you there.

Oh snap. Admittedly that's a pretty weak retort, but it was all I could come up with on the spur of the moment at the age of, I think, fifteen. Witty comebacks have never been my specialty, despite reading all the Mad Magazine Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

So, yeah. Needless to say, I did not accept this person's friend request. Getting the request in the first place was a sort of WTF moment, unless they just don't remember who I am and...are maybe adding people willy-nilly.

It's About Time, Eh?

2008-08-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

Yep, I finally put up some new blog graphics. I don't quite want to say I "redesigned" the blog, since all I did was replace the preset template graphics with my own (taken from a segment of a painting I did a while ago, which I then fiddled with in Photoshop). But it has a new look, put it that way. Not new enough to have to change all the text colors--I didn't have THAT much time on my hands.

Wanna know why I didn't have that time? Because I signed up for Twitter. Hooray for yet another goofy time-wasting activity! Hooray for yet more bombardment of the interwebs with my daily trivialities! MY MANY YAWN-INDUCING MINUTIAE WILL BE THE DOWNFALL OF SOCIETY! BWAHAHAHAHA!!! PREPARE TO BE BORED! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.

By the way, if you want to read any of the yawn-inducing minutiae, I put a widget in the sidebar. Why am I so unproductive today? One reason is I'm unmotivated and bummed because I lost a design client a few days ago--evidently it just wasn't working out and I wasn't giving Client X what they wanted, though I was a) doing exactly what they asked for and b) doing it for a much lower price than I normally charge. Oh well. So I decided I should spend time on non-work-related activity, though I did put up a few book reviews, which I guess is technically work-related.

Oh. I'm also bummed because I gained five pounds for no apparent reason, and they haven't gone away yet. I'm hoping it's five pounds of muscle, but in case it's not, I'm going to go hop on the exercise bike now. Okay. Now I'm considering worst-case scenarios and hoping I don't have a five-pound tapeworm.

12 Movie Meme, Part II: The Final Meltdown

2008-08-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

You've no doubt noticed from Part I of this movie meme that my taste tends toward the pedestrian rather than the intellectual, the mainstream more than the obscure; though I like to think I don't gravitate towards complete garbage. Anyway, a film buff I ain't. In fact, there are tons of great movies I haven't seen yet. The problem with a) not having a clearly defined day job and b) doing creative work is that it tends to suck up all of your time and attention, which doesn't leave a lot of room for stuff like movies. (Of course, somehow I find time to watch way too much TV, but that's because you can arguably--if not very effectively--work at the same time.)

Anyway, here's Part II--from the real to the surreal.

Day Seven: Blatantly Propagandistic but Inconveniently True Documentaries

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) This is really just one of those movies that everyone should see, whether you hate Michael Moore or not. I happen to enjoy his work, especially when taken with a grain of salt and a sense of ironic humor. It's always very revealing to see how various people react to him in his movies. We had a rather profound experience watching this one--it was one of the select few movies that we went to see in the theater, and we saw it on Independence Day. It was not a huge audience, but the people who were there were profoundly moved, sometimes to tears.
Super Size Me (2004) Disgusting, disturbing and hilarious. Watch Morgan Spurlock eat fast food, get fat, appall his doctors, alienate his girlfriend, and lose his sex drive, after 30 days of eating fast food. Truly epic.

Day Eight: Eccentric Historical Characters Day

Amadeus (1984) This one freaked me out a little when I was a kid--I'd never envisioned the time period of powdered wigs and frilly dresses as also containing rampant sexual innuendo and frequent farting. All that aside, it's a fairly striking movie about one of my favorite classical composers (though Immortal Beloved, with the fabulous Gary Oldman, is also great). AND it contains Jeffrey Jones, the evil principal from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Go figure.
Topsy-Turvy (1999) A strange fact about my childhood is that I really liked Gilbert and Sullivan. We're talking about when I was six or seven years old. I'd come back from school and stay at my grandfather's house until my mom got off work. My grandfather had this huge set of LPs with highlights from all of Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas, and I would sit there listening to them, following along with the lyrics. To this day, I know a lot of the songs by heart from HMS Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance, my two favorites. The movie focuses on their production of The Mikado, which I actually saw in person once.

Day Nine: Alliterating Anglo-Indian Heritage Day

East Is East (1999) There aren't very many movies specifically about Pakistanis, and this one hit really close to home because of the theme of a Pakistani father who immigrated to London and married an English woman. When his children get to a certain age, he decides he's going to go all traditional and arrange some marriages...and is sorely disappointed to find that his children consider themselves British. This one made me laugh AND cry, sometimes at the same time. Om Puri puts on an incredible performance (a similar, but much more depressing, movie in which he plays a key role is My Son the Fanatic).
Bhaji on the Beach (1993) A touching movie about generational differences among the women of an Anglo-Indian family, by the director of Bend It Like Beckham--which is arguably my favorite of her movies, but is less...uh...educational, I suppose, and more fun. It really was a toss-up, but I would have felt like a dork putting Bend It Like Beckham on this list. Even though it made me cry. I almost never cry at movies, just on principle.

Day Ten: The Labyrinth of the Human Mind. WooOOOooo!

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) This is one of the most incredible movies I've seen lately, both emotionally and visually stunning. I'm a sucker for surreal and disturbing symbolism, apparently.
Being John Malkovich (1999) John Cusack and Catherine Keener are excellent in this movie. It's just such a bizarre, surreal idea - finding a portal that leads into John Malkovich's head, and then deciding to turn that into a moneymaking venture. Plus, after Pan's Labyrinth you really need a bit of an upper.

Day Eleven: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Est Magnifique!

Delicatessen (1991) I love just about everything Jeunet does, and this is one of his lesser-known movies but it's no less bizarre and hilarious. Again, it's got that dystopian fantasy feel that I like, and that surreal aesthetic that I also like, plus a liberal dose of humor and the best sex scene ever made.
Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) I know everyone's seen this one by now, but it's one of my favorite movies. The music is fantastic, Audrey Tautou is adorable, and the story is good and quirky and very French. Dominique Pinon, who is in many of Jeunet's movies, has a funny minor role.

Day Twelve: Always End on a Laugh
Also known as "Unexpectedly Interesting Use of Musical Enhancements Day," since I have the soundtrack to both of these.

Office Space (1999) This Mike Judge movie is one of my favorite comedies, possibly because I spent a fair amount of time working in offices. It's got an all-star cast of not really huge but really funny comedic actors, like Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, and John C. McGinley (of curret Scrubs fame)--the only really "famous" person in it is Jennifer Aniston, and she is not the focus of the movie. There's also the gangsta-style fax machine execution and the fact that this movie popularized the term "pieces of flair."
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) Not everyone liked this Wes Anderson/Bill Murray movie--and yes, it was a bit bizarre. But I guess that's what I liked about it. I love Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett was amazing, and it's got possibly my favorite movie soundtrack ever - Seu Jorge doing acoustic-guitar, Brazilian-style covers of David Bowie songs (here's an example).

So yeah, I'm finally done. It's Meme-tacular!

I'm supposed to tag 5 people now. I really hate doing that. Please don't feel obligated to respond. But here you go: Gurrier, Neil, Seren, Writegrrrl, and Chloe, you're on.

12 Movie Meme, Part I (aka How to Drive Sarah Nuts in Three Short Days)

2008-08-05T20:01:00.000-07:00

I've officially been tagged by Ordovicius for the 12 Movies Meme. Aside from wondering what Lazy Eye Theatre has against Diablo Cody (I liked Juno! Although it didn't make my list, as you'll see...) I found this to be an intriguing, and soon afterward, aggravating, meme. Not unlike the "good mix tape" analogy offered at the original site, this is the sort of thing that will slowly drive me nuts as I change my mind, tweak the list, rack my brain, shuffle things around, etc.

So, bear in mind that this list is in no way definitive of my movie taste and in fact leaves out quite a few movies that I really, really like and/or consider to be important. Also, bear in mind that, like Taliesin meets the vampires, I totally cheated--if he gets to posit a vampire room and a non-vampire room, then I hereby present you with

TWELVE NIGHTS OF DOUBLE FEATURES!!!

That's right! Bow down before my cheatiness! ...Also my indecisiveness. Because this is so long, I'm breaking it up over two posts.

Day One: Inexplicable Childhood Obsessions Day
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) There are two movies which I was obsessed with as a child--we're talking age 8 and below--and this is one of them. I drove my parents nuts asking them to rent this one and #2 below over and over and over. So I think they must have played some key formative role in my personality, no? Er...maybe? Anyway, The Phantom Tollbooth is a great satirical book, too, by Norton Juster.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) This was the other movie I was obsessed with as a kid. I still have a VHS copy. It features a very young Angela Lansbury, an absolutely hysterical scene with David Tomlinson playing soccer with cartoon animals, and suits of armor coming to life and fighting Nazis. What's there not to like? Okay, maybe this is why I'm so weird. Oh. Also, evidently it was directed by my husband.

Day Two: 1980s Dan-Ackroyd-Related Comedies Day

The Blues Brothers (1980) Do I really need to explain why this movie is on my list? Let's just say that every time Rob and I are driving around and we see a police car somebody has to say "We got rollers." I also like this one: "How much for your women? How much for the little girl?" More great quotes here. This movie also has an excellent Carrie Fisher appearance and some fantastic guest musicians.
Ghost Busters (1984) Cheesy theme song aside (though I did enjoy it at the time--gimme a break, I was seven), this is another hilarious movie. It may be worth your time just to see Sigourney Weaver floating in mid-demon-land intoning "I am the Gatekeeper. Are you the Keymaster?" Bill Murray and Rick Moranis also have great roles in this one.

Day Three: Gratuitous Inescapable Teenage Angst Extravaganza

Better Off Dead (1985) In my defense, this one isn't even a John Hughes movie. Although poor Savage Steve Holland seem to have since been relegated to directing inoffensive pubescent-children's programming...Anyway, this lesser-known John Cusack movie is funnier and somewhat less overtly derogatory of Asians than other 80s teen movies (remember Sixteen Candles and Long Duk Dong? I rest my case...). It also inspired an episode of South Park--the one with the ski montage.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) No, you really couldn't escape without a John Hughes movie. This one's always been my favorite, although I did enjoy The Breakfast Club, National Lampoon's Vacation, and Weird Science. Matthew Broderick is perfect, Alan Ruck as his buddy Cameron is genius, there just is no better evil principal, and then there's Ben Stein: "Bueller...Bueller..."

Day Four: Lesser-Known Hayao Miyazaki Movie Day

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind / Kaze no tani no Naushika (1984) Not only is this a really cool sci-fi story (adapted from Miyazaki's original manga series) but it's also got a strong female protagonist as the hero--something you see in most of Miyazaki's movies. The voice casting on the English dub is also quite good and features Uma Thurman and Patrick Stewart.
Porco Rosso / Kurenai no buta (1992) This is actually more of a love-during-wartime story--the only sci-fi/fantasy aspect is the fact that the guy has been cursed with a pig's head. A bit different for a Miyazaki movie.

Day Five: Bow Down Before Terry Gilliam and Acknowledge His Awesomeness!

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) I remember watching this one at my uncle's house not too long after it came out, and flipping out at how great and surreal and unlike anything else it was. I didn't see it again until many years later, but I enjoyed it just as much--if not more--than the first time. Excellent role for Eric Idle, a surprise visit from (or to) Robin Williams' giant head, and a very young and rather naked Uma Thurman.
Brazil (1985) - European Version Excuse me, but anything I was about to say has just been driven out by the blowing of my mind due to the fact that I just found out Tom Stoppard co-wrote this movie and I had no idea. In any case, it's really hard to describe this movie but it's a bizarre dystopian fantasy of a future ruled by bureaucracy. Fabulous Jonathan Pryce performance. The European cut makes a lot more sense than the American version.

Day Six: Futuristic Techno-Fantasy Day

Akira (1988) This is just a great anime action sci-fi thriller with some outstanding artwork, particularly in the scenery of Neo-Tokyo. Great creepy hi-tech atmosphere and particularly influential for cyberpunk fans. Also, the story is rather interesting philosophically.
Blade Runner - Director's Cut (1982) Too many things I like about this movie to list them all. Great casting, amazing artistic vision, the book it's based on is excellent (if significantly different from the movie)... I even still loved it after dissecting it to bits in a college Rhetoric class I particularly hated.

Part Two to come tomorrow, hopefully...

Breaking New Musical Ground

2008-07-24T19:42:00.001-07:00

I had a couple of new musical experiences the past two weeks while I was away. The first was at our friends Peter and Chloe's house. One of the many awesome renovations to their place was an entertainment room in the basement, complete with huge projection screen, comfy couches, and...Rock Band on Xbox. That's right, I was a Rock Band virgin, and I am no longer. I tried guitar, drums, and vocals. (Bass is Rob's territory. :)) Not that any of the instruments truly resemble their real-life counterparts, but it was fun. In the past, I've discovered that I'm pretty good at fighting games because I have a talent for button-mashing; now, it turns out I'm pretty decent at Rock Band because I can button-mash in rhythm. Woo! Actually, the drums are cool because it's sort of like a tiny set of electronic drums--and you even sit on a stool and use your foot to work the bass drum pedal. It's quite a workout.

The other new musical experience I had was at the Welsh course: I was drafted to be the piano accompanist on one of the pieces sung by the choir (Myfanwy). They had to be really hard up to do that, since I hadn't practiced in six months or so. How did this come about? Well, the person who is often our accompanist wasn't able to make it this year. Someone came forward to try, but wasn't comfortable playing with the group or in front of a crowd (oddly enough, that exact thing happened to me on one of my first Welsh courses).

So, I ended up playing the easier song, and another of our Board members (who happens to be a professional musician, just not on the piano) played the harder song, thereby dividing the labor. It was a VERY EASY song or I would never have agreed. I slipped in as many extra practices as I could, and decided that I'd be happy if I were able to play it through at the noson lawen (talent night) with three or fewer mistakes and no stopping due to freak-outs.

I managed to succeed, with only a couple of mistakes. However, it was one of the most terrifying experiences (anxiety-wise) I've ever had. TERRIFYING. It turns out it's very difficult to play the piano when your hands are shaking from fear. I'm far less frightened of speaking in front of a crowd than I am of playing music. But then, I spend a lot more time talking than I do playing the piano. I'm in much better practice. Plus, I had to play WITH a group of people who were singing, and it was therefore imperative that I mess up as little as possible.

The difficult part was following the choir director--looking up from the music often enough to make sure I was in time with his direction, without totally screwing up in the process. I was also thrown off by the fact that there was a little bit of sound delay--it took a teensy bit of time for the choir's voices up on the stage to reach me where I was sitting at the piano. So I constantly felt like I was ahead of the singers, even though I was relatively in time with the choir director. That alone almost caused a freak-out.

But I learned a lot. I learned that Sarah should avoid being an accompanist.

Yeah, I Still Exist.

2008-07-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

I've never had a particular need or desire to see the actual bridges of Madison County (in Iowa)--not having any interest in either movie or book--but that's where I found myself last week. The Welsh course often finds itself in odd locations (like, in this case, Indianola, Iowa) due to the need for affordable facilities and willing organizers. Iowa's not so bad--in fact, my grandfather was born and raised in Cedar Rapids, though it doesn't speak well for the place that he ran away to join the Navy when he was 17.

Anyway, as the plane descended towards the Des Moines Airport, I could see the remnants of floodwaters marring the landscape; but Indianola, 15 or so miles south, didn't seem to be part of the affected area. The Welsh course itself went well. My class was excellent, and the mid-week field trip to the bridges, though not particularly exciting, afforded a few nice photo ops. Also, I'm STILL NOT PRESIDENT. Yay!

Rob and I both had a great time in Seattle attending Beth and Mark's wedding, and visiting with Peter and Chloe, friends of ours with whom we shared a house after college. Peter officiated the wedding, and I have to admit...it was VERY DIFFICULT to not giggle. (Sorry, Peter.) After knowing him for so long, it was just too hard. Having said that, he did a beautiful job. But still...let's just say when you've seen someone say and do the things that Peter has, it can be hard to picture him presiding over the solemn ceremony of matrimony. When you're talking about someone who once caused another housemate (upon extreme videogame-related frustration) to yell "Die, Peter, die!"...Anyway.

It's always weird to come home after a long way away, and it's always a bit strange to come back after the Welsh course because I feel like I'm living in a different world for that one short week. I'd actually really like to try a one-week intensive course in Wales sometime, though I'm not sure I can either a) afford it or b) figure out the practicalities vis-a-vis Rob. (When the Welsh course was in Wales in 2000, Rob spent the day while I was in class hiking around and seeing a bunch of scenery which I subsequently did not get to see. That was kinda bunk.)

I'm glad to be back, though. Besides the obvious stuff, one thing I really missed was GOOD FOOD. Dorm food in Central Iowa is not good. I was also disappointed by the ironic lack of tasty corn. We only got corn a few times, and of those times, twice it was canned corn, and the other two times, the corn was horribly overcooked and mushy. I guess I'll stick with my California corn. And California leeks...and tomatoes...and cling peaches...and callaloo...and Yukon gold potatoes...

A Tiny Rant

2008-07-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know this isn't a real blog entry...I'll get to that later.

I just needed to have a teeny-tiny rant about EMBEDDING FILES INTO WORD DOCUMENTS. That rant is: FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T DO IT. If you're sending me graphics, send me the original graphics files, pleeeeaaaaazzzzeeee. Same goes for sound files. ESPECIALLY sound files, which I can't cut and paste out of the .doc and into an empty Photoshop file.

That is all. For now.

Oh yeah...I'm almost done with this site. Don't laugh. I does what the customers wants.

Head Above Water...Just Barely

2008-06-18T00:29:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of work on the Guys Lit Wire website, and that finally tapered off; but now I'm trying to finish up a site that's giving me some trouble because the clients want a very colorful design and I'm trying to keep it somewhat reasonable to my sensibilities (draft here). I'm rather proud of the image gallery, though...

I also had a flurry of potential new jobs (if two can be counted as a flurry), both of which did not pan out, but then I got an article assignment for a local magazine that's affiliated with the Stockton Record newspaper. I feel like it's fairly high-profile, and they've been great about communicating with me compared to the Modesto Bee and all the times I tried unsuccessfully to submit queries to them.

Anyway, there's that, and the poster design for the next play, and a bachelorette party this weekend in Portland, OR, and somehow Rob and I got comp tickets to this fundraising dinner for History San Jose on Thursday night, and my mom is coming up on Monday for a night, and I think we're supposed to go rafting on Sunday afternoon literally right after I get off the plane coming back from Portland. What the hell happened this week?? Did I mention that article above is due on Wednesday? How does this happen?

Test post - pay no attention

2008-06-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still messing around with this crap. It's not as fun as it looks like.

Hangin' on the Telephone

2008-06-10T17:50:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned this before. I'm pretty sure I have, since I have an existing tag called "I Hate the Phone." But yeah, I hate the phone. Specifically, I really hate making phone calls. My feelings about making phone calls vary, but they range from mild annoyance to sheer terror.

I had one of the (thankfully rare) sheer terror moments today. I have to admit, I worked myself up into it over a period of a few days. Here's the story: I responded to a notice on my grad school's alumni e-mail list--a fellow alum was looking for an editor to tidy up a novel manuscript for a friend. She was moving out of the area, and he was looking for someone who could help with grammar, syntax, and formatting, since English is not his first language (he's Italian) and he's also elderly (in his 80s).

I thought it sounded like an interesting project--a semi-autobiographical WWII novel called I Due Villaggi that's already been published in Italian. I called the alumna and she was very nice and encouraged me to give him a call. She said the guy is very sweet but a bit hard of hearing and difficult to understand over the phone due to his accent, so he'd probably want to meet in person to talk about it. He lives in Oakland. Fine. Whatever. I can go to Oakland.

But then the anxiety started. At first it was just the usual mild stress at having to make a phone call to a stranger about a job. Not that big a deal. As a freelancer, I have to do that periodically, and I find it stressful, but...working is good. Then I kept thinking and ruminating about the fact that he's in his 80s, and hard of hearing, and possibly difficult to understand; and I started having these horrible visions of not being able to make myself understood if I called, or not being able to understand anything he said, or having my brain freeze up and not being able to communicate clearly.

Normally, when I have to make a phone call and I'm anxious about it, I have to just eventually decide to DO it--and by the time I hit that "dial" button it's too late to NOT do it, if that makes sense. At that point I just have to suck it up and get it over with. But if I've managed to get myself overly anxious about it, I start to feel like the worst possible scenario I can think of will in fact pan out, or at the very least, my brain will implode. Today, I could hardly manage to convince myself to make that call. ONE phone call to a person I don't know for a job that I want, okay. TWO phone calls to people I don't know, one of whom might not understand me and I might not understand them--well, that's just panic-inducing.

Part of me almost would have preferred to call the alumna back and tell her I couldn't do the job after all, but the other part of me realized how utterly ridiculous that would be. I did manage to make the call. It took me a few hours to work up to it, and some considerable self-bribery with coffee and a long reading break and the promise of having gotten it over with.

As it turned out, I could understand the guy just fine 98% of the time. I mean, my mom taught college-aged ESL students for 15-plus years. I'm used to deciphering accents. Hell, a good portion of my family and stepfamily are from different countries and have accents. Evidently, in my anxiety, I had forgotten these important facts. Also, he seemed to be able to hear me OK, for someone in his 80s, for cripes' sake. I'm still anxious because I'm supposed to call him back in a couple of days to arrange an in-person meeting, but for some reason that stresses me out less than a phone call. Go figure.

"It's about 300 pages," he said, when we were talking about the project. "Does that scare you?" "No," I said, laughing. And no, it doesn't--it doesn't scare me nearly as much as having had to make that stupid phone call.