fidelity video

So during my morning crawl through the variety of agent, publisher, and writer blogs I'm subscribed to on Google Reader, I came across this video, and it made me cry. The song is awesome (Regina Spektor's "Fidelity"), even if I usually don't like female singers (yes, I'm a misogynist).

Note: if you don't like the gays or gay marriage, don't watch it (although theoretically it's aimed at you).

and all your weight, it falls on me, it brings me down

The endless rain outside definitely made it easier to stay holed up and productive today. While I did venture outside to meet Katrina at a cafe, I generally spent most of the day writing. However, I wasn't significantly more productive than I was yesterday -- I wrote 5529 words, which is about 1300 words more than yesterday, bringing me to a grand total of 32,511 words / 146 pages.

I was on a roll and should have kept going tonight, but I made the mistake of second-guessing whether I want Madeleine's dead French parents to be a comte/comtesse, a marquis/marquise, or a duc/duchesse. The first draft is currently full of notes to go back to research the actual facts later -- as I've mentioned before, if I start looking for answers to what types of gloves Madeleine would have worn in spring of 1812, or what the order of precedence would have been at the duke of Harwich's dining room table, I can waste all my writing time. But the question of Madeleine's title is really bothering me -- so far, I've had everyone call her "Miss Vaillant," and I like the idea that Ferguson is the only person outside her foster family who calls her Madeleine, but if she's the daughter of a French comte/marquis/duc, she would theoretically be called Lady Madeleine anyway. Except I can't find a damned website with French forms of address anywhere -- I'm working off the assumption that the English would have given her similar precedence as daughters of English earls/marquesses/dukes, but I can't be 100% sure. Damn.

So, I wasted an hour in search of that information, and failed yet again to find it. By the time I emerged on the other end of Wikipedia, dazed and surly, I decided that the moment for getting back into my book had passed -- I'll go to bed and pick it up again tomorrow.

But, Madeleine and Ferguson shared their first kiss today! In the story, they were in a cool, moonlit garden behind a London ballroom; in real life, I was at Leland Tea Company with Katrina, who read a line over my shoulder that mentioned moaning and expressed mild shock (ha). Katrina and I had a good time, although I ultimately had to abandon her so that I could do my ritual Sunday call with my parents. Ironically, I interrupted their enjoyment of the first episode of the new season of "The Amazing Race" to force them to talk about my various vacation options. As expected, my father was a bit more excited about this than my mother was, since he's been to many of the places I'm considering. Hawaii is winning right now, likely because it's rained here for two days and I'm in the mood for some sun and sand -- but we'll see if I can get the days off before I commit to anything.

Okay, no more blogging; after all, it's a bit ridiculous that I'm exhausted from writing and so turned around to write a ~500-page blog post about that fact. So, goodnight, and happy presidents' day!

i left my heart in san francisco

I was very naughty this morning and skipped my writing class. While I am really enjoy the class, I didn't feel particularly engaged in this week's reading, and I also want to use the three-day weekend to accomplish as much as possible with my romance novel. Given that after my previous classes I've had no desire to write romance the rest of the day, I didn't want to waste today. And, in addition to all of those excuses, I was feeling lazy today, and decided to indulge because I've indulged my laziness so much less in the past few months than I used to.

I wasn't really that lazy; I still got up, showered, and was out the door by 9:30am. I walked down to Union Square during one of the breaks in today's rainy weather patterns with the intention of exchanging some jeans at the Gap (I accidentally bought a pair that was meant for girls who are 5'8", which I am clearly not), but I couldn't find the style that I wanted, so I guess I'll just get these shortened. Instead, I bought some new pajamas -- I haven't had any new pajamas in a couple of years, and these were on sale and super cute. Then, I went to Samovar in Yerba Buena Gardens, and had my favorite (salmon quiche, fruit, a scone, and English Breakfast tea) while brainstorming what I want to incorporate into Ferguson and Madeleine's story.

I wanted a masala chai, but I was getting antsy to write, so I walked back to Union Square, hopped on a bus, and came home (with a brief stop to buy fresh milk for the tea binging that I knew would have to fuel my writing). I spent some significant time this afternoon figuring out the timeline and continuity and birthdays of all the main characters in my books -- it's important to get all of the ages consistent now, because the same characters will show up in multiple books, and it wouldn't do at all to have one person age five years between books when another person only ages two. I also did a bit of ridiculousness and tried to match characters to zodiac signs -- for instance, I think that Amelia was a Taurus and Malcolm was a Scorpio, while Ferguson is an Aries and Madeleine is a Pisces. Not that any of these signs are particularly great together, but it was an interesting "thought exercise", as they say in the business world, to pair up fictional characters with traits that the different zodiac signs supposedly embody. And, giving them concrete birthdays helps with the continuity so that someone doesn't accidentally stay twenty-seven for sixteen months (although I personally wouldn't mind if that happened to me).

I also did some completely unnecessary procrastination in the form of trip planning. I do want to take a vacation, I don't want to spend a lot of money, and I want to go someplace where I can both relax and do a ton of writing. So I started looking around -- and weirdly, it seems like I can go anywhere I would want to go in practically the whole world for a week in March for ~$1500 for combined flight/hotel. I'm serious -- places as different as Paris, London, Hawaii, Tokyo, Prague, Buenos Aires, and even Cairns, Cape Town and Singapore, all for ~$1500. Not to say $1500 is nothing -- but that is *insanely* cheap for a flight to Australia + five or six nights in a hotel. Ditto for Tokyo, Cape Town, and Singapore, all of which are on the other side of the world. Hawaii is where I really want to go -- I would like to get some sun, work on my (totally nonexistent) tan, drink some fruity cocktails, and spend a week writing by the ocean. But Paris or London would be good for research, while Tokyo and Singapore would be both interesting and fun (since Alaska Matt is in Tokyo and Joann, Sarah, Jay, and others are in Singapore). And really, if all those other places are that cheap, it seems silly to spend the same amount to go someplace in the United States, even if that someplace is a tropical paradise thousands of miles away from here.

So we'll see -- I have to get permission to take the time off first. And yes, Vidya, I want to come to Boston -- but I'm saving that trip for next quarter, when my company will pay for me to go.

Anyway, after all that, I still managed to write 4295 words tonight, for a total of almost twenty pages. That puts me at 26,976 words so far, or about 30% of the way through the book. I would like to write another 10,000 words this weekend -- with Monday off, it's doable, although I don't exactly want to go back to work completely exhausted either. But I'm so lucky that I'm not seeing anyone, or else I would have wasted tonight with the whole dinner and romance thing -- instead of the dinner and romance thing I had, which was a peanut butter sandwich, a big glass of wine, and a few hours of making up a romance between two fictional characters. That's only sad if you let yourself think it's sad -- and I don't, because right now I wouldn't have it any other way.

It's bedtime -- happy Valentine's day!

so long to devotion

I totally failed on the short story front. I read the third short story that I was supposed to read for the class, had no idea what to write in response, and ended up falling asleep on my couch. So now it's midnight, and I decided that while I am going to go to class tomorrow because I get a lot out of the sessions, I'm just not going to do the assignment. I would rather continue to sleep tonight so that I can get other stuff done tomorrow, and the likelihood that I can come up with something good after midnight tonight, edit it, print it, and be able to stay awake on the drive back to the city after class tomorrow is pretty low. At least one person in every class so far has failed to produce anything, so at least I'm not alone even if I feel like a loser.

Oh well, the weekend awaits, and since I have Monday off as well, I'm prioritizing writing over all social activities with the intention of getting an epic amount of Ferguson and Madeleine's story on paper. Now, though, it's bedtime! And I'm still dreaming of Hawaii...

it's good to see you now with someone else

This is hardly even a four-minute post -- I suddenly realized that I desperately need to go to bed. I slogged from 8am to 6:15pm, ran to Whole Foods to buy a cake (the Whole Foods in Mountain View is like a gigantic temple to organic excess), and then went to Terry's place for dinner. She hosted me and Lauren (aka Subz) -- tomorrow is Subz's last day with our (now formerly) mutual employer, which is v. sad for me but great for her. So the three of us caught up over dinner, and Terry and I preached the gospel to her in terms of the advent of new media and what online content and delivery is going to do to revolutionize every known creative space. Which reminds me -- I'm tempted to buy the new Kindle, but given how little I currently read since I'm focused on writing, it's probably not the best immediate investment.

So dinner was excellent and I'm really glad we all got together -- but when I got home, I messed around on the internet looking up tickets to Hawaii and Paris, since I'm daydreaming about getting away (bad bad sign), and now I'm not going to get enough sleep before I have to get up tomorrow morning and go into the office to repeat today's stream of meetings. Yay. But I may repeat today's epic victory in terms of sandwich selection -- while they technically messed up my sandwich by failing to run it through the oven and leaving off the bacon, I switched my usual sandwich up and got great results. I swapped out the usual turkey for some roasted chicken, and asked for honey mustard instead of dijon, and it was a completely different experience. So if nothing else, dreaming of that sandwich will get me into the office tomorrow where my willpower might not. Goodnight!

sometimes i get nervous when i see an open door

This is a four-minute post. Work wasn't bad; I slogged from 8:30 until 6 before driving back to the evil city and sitting down to work on my book. However, I decided not to write tonight. Instead, I resubscribed to Publishers Marketplace (an industry site that offers tons of information about the deals agents are making, in addition to general news and gossip about the publishing world -- for the exorbitant price of $20/month, which is why I'm not subscribed all the time -- although now that I think of it, I pay for my Netflix subscription and barely watch movies anymore, so maybe I should cancel that and keep Publishers Marketplace instead?). I did some research, targeted some agents, and sent out four more queries tonight.

I have much less faith that any of these agents will be interested in my work -- the agents I targeted in this round are some of the top sellers in the romance genre, and so they're unlikely to be especially eager to take on an unpublished writer. However, I decided that I should at least try them. E-queries are free, except for the blood spilled from my fragile heart upon getting rejected, and if I succeed with one of them, they have the potential to have a bigger impact on my career than an agent who may not have quite so many killer instincts when it comes to selling my book.

So, we'll see what happens. But, I didn't intend to spend three full hours at this task, and now it's time for bed. I have an eight a.m. meeting tomorrow, blah, followed by a day of slogging, followed by dinner at Terry's place -- and in an uncharacteristic failing on my part, I volunteered to take dessert and then didn't have time to bake, so I'm going to have to procure some tasty treats tomorrow instead. I'll keep you posted on the agents -- but my four minutes are up, so it's bedtime!

eye on the wheel, another on my heart -- i know this road, it goes back to the start

I'm deep into the danger zone. I was physically at the office today from 7:30am until a little after 7pm; my last meeting ended at 5:45 (fifteen minutes early, score), but I spent some time talking to Joy. Then I got waylaid by the head of the Boston office, and it was nice to catch up with him, although I also walked away with an action item. Then I drove home (fast!), ate some pizza, and watched an episode of Craig Ferguson while working until now. Craig was a little annoying -- Craig himself wasn't annoying at all, but there was some dude in the audience with a very noticeable laugh and it was all I could hear, which drove me crazy! Too bad, since I usually like having Craig on in the background when I'm slogging.

But someone needs to hit me over the head and remind me about balance. I think I'm doing pretty well balancing work and my book right now, if you think it's fine that I've completely sacrificed my social life. But there's a lot that I want to accomplish at work as well, and during weeks like these, when I see all sorts of opportunities and also am in a position to take them on, it's hard to smack my own hand with a ruler when I'm reaching out for something interesting.

Oh, well; true to form, my week will get less busy as it progresses, and I also have dinner plans with Terry and Lauren (aka Subz) on Thursday, which will be fun. Then I'll need to spend Friday night writing a short story for my class (bleh), and then focus on the book during the weekend. Maybe someday I'll get a vacation, but I doubt it. The only vacation I get these days is my bed -- and with the rain falling on the window over my bed tonight, it will be quite nice. Goodnight!

[pick your own song lyric tonight]

I spent today slogging, with a break from 8:30pm until now to read a couple of the short stories for this week's short story assignment. Again, I have no idea what to write; I've read two of the three stories (all by Alice Munro), and I have to say that I'm not particularly interested in either her style or her storylines. Maybe that's harsh -- but as bleak as THE ROAD was, I think that I was naturally more in tune with Cormac McCarthy's style than Alice Munro's. I could surprise myself, of course -- after I read THE ROAD last week, I thought I had no idea what I could possibly write in response, and then the next day the story came to me quite easily.

But the slogging before the story-reading was quite productive. I had meetings almost straight through today, and since I was out on Friday, I felt the need to catch up on emails. I made it through everything on my list, which was excellent, and hopefully I can stay caught up through the rest of the week so that I can write both my short story and some of my novel without going insane. The one fly in the proverbial ointment is tomorrow -- I have a 7:30am meeting, and then I have meetings almost straight until 6pm. The kicker is that the person who scheduled me for the 7:30am meeting is the same person who scheduled me for the 5-6pm meeting -- who deliberately books meetings to start and end 10.5 hours apart? Bleh.

This is totally boring, so it's probably fitting that I couldn't come up with a title. So, it's bedtime, and you can hope that tomorrow I'll be more interesting (but since I'll have been at work for almost eleven hours, don't hold your breath).

when your chips are down, when your highs are low, joyride

Today was a nightmare if you think that Sundays are meant to be relaxing -- I did three loads of laundry, changed my sheets, vacuumed, and then wrote 5500 words (~22 pages) of Ferguson and Madeleine's story. I took a break to talk to my parents, but that was basically all I did. I persevered even though I wasn't particularly in the mood; my stomach hurt this afternoon, which resulted in me canceling on a writing date with Tom because I didn't want to drag myself out of my apartment into the wet San Francisco afternoon.

Really, all I wanted to do today was take a break. Adding a continuing studies class to my already packed weeks, regardless of how much I feel that I'm learning from it, is taking its toll on my ability to feel refreshed and rejuvenated merely by getting eight hours of sleep, or taking five minutes away from my stream of meetings to let my tea steep properly, or watching the occasional Craig Ferguson episode while answering some emails. Luckily the class is totally worth it, and it's already half over -- but the next three weeks could be a bit painful as a result.

Despite my desire for a break, I didn't really take one. I'm committed to getting through a first draft of Ferguson and Madeleine's story as quickly as possible, and that means I need to write whenever I have opportunity, and this weekend's opportunity was all consolidated into today. Overall, I think it went pretty well, even though I had to keep resisting the urge to go back and start rewriting the first section. Now that I have one hundred pages (100 pages in 3 weeks!), I have enough of an idea of how I want the beginning to go that there are things I would change about what I've already written. I just have to remember that I still have 300 pages to go, and given how frequently my ideas change during this early phase, there's a strong chance that something so drastic would change that I would have to rewrite the beginning again even if I went back and fixed it now.

So I'm going to keep slogging ahead. I would love to have a first draft by the end of March. That's super aggressive, though -- I need to average 9472 words a week, and so far I've averaged 7561. That means I could be finished by the end of April, though, and that's totally respectable. Finishing a first draft by the end of April would let me put it away for a few weeks, then pick it up again at the end of May and spend June and July turning it into a second draft worth of being shared with my beta readers.

Just thinking of all of that exhausts me, though, particularly since I have to a) stay employed so that I can eat, which means I need to do great things at my day job, b) stay in touch with my friends and family so that I don't turn into a crazy cat lady someday (I already own the right sweater -- I'm wearing it right now, it's an oversized grey thing that comes to my knees), and c) keep trying to sell AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE. Yay.

Sorry this blog post is not the post upbeat in the world, but luckily for you, it doesn't end in a depressing story about a suicidal anorexic. That's something we can all celebrate. Goodnight!

do you think you're better off alone?

Today was fabulous. Class was once again absolutely excellent; under the influence of a bit of wine, I've decided to post my story at the end of this post, so read it before I overanalyze and change my mind!

After class, I was starving, and for some reason I thought of Fratelli Deli in Palo Alto. The place wasn't the best sandwich place in the world, and it was run by some people who looked like they had never even met anyone named Fratelli, but I liked it. Turns out that Fratelli Deli has been replaced by some upscale French-type sandwich place, continuing the trend of upscaling Palo Alto to the point that no one can actually live there. My sandwich (portobello mushroom, sundried tomatoes, and mozzarella on a baguette) was nice, but I've never had a sandwich served with cold green beans (which I ate) and beetroot slaw (which I avoided). It was good and all, but I kind of miss the griminess of the old world.

I proceeded to Borders, where I bought four books (THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy; LISEY'S STORY by Stephen King -- a hardcover marked down to $6.99, score; GLITTER BABY by Susan Elizabeth Phillips -- a rerelease of one of the early novels in her career; and THE CONVENIENT MARRIAGE by Georgette Heyer -- one of the few Heyers I haven't read, and given the title's similarity to my own, I couldn't resist). Borders is clearly struggling. Even if you haven't read the dire predictions of their bankruptcy, the empty shelves speak volumes (ha).

When I got back to the city, I decided to walk down to Union Square. I picked up some "essentials" at Sephora (the mascara, lipstick, and dry shampoo were replacements, while the blush and eyeshadow were additions -- serendipitous additions given how pleased I was with the results of using them tonight). Then I bought two pairs of jeans at the Gap before walking back to my apartment and spending some quality time showering, playing with my makeup, and watching a couple of episodes of "Scrubs" before dinner.

Dinner was fabulous. Actually, I didn't like my food -- the lasagna that I ordered wasn't particularly good. In fact, nothing that I had tonight, other than the wine, was particularly good -- the vodka cranberry that I had at the bar while waiting for a table tasted way off, which is surprising since a vodka cranberry is supposed to consist of exactly two ingredients, and the lasagna was pretty meh. But the company totally made up for it. Adit, Priyanka, Katrina, and Katrina's roommate Patrick were all in attendance, and I believe that a lovely time was had by all. We discussed Katrina's dating shenanigans, Adit and Priyanka's outing to Angel Island, some Civil War reenactment stuff, the lone Asian kid in my high school, and Adit's idea for me to write "choose your own adventure" romance novels. Tonight was supposed to be the night that we got together for port, but since port parties are always epically bad for all involved, we keep putting it off. We're now recommitted for three weeks from now -- chances that one of us will back out are high, but I'm staying in until I hear otherwise. But it's a good thing that we didn't drink port, given that Adit felt like he had been roofied -- port was probably the last thing that any of us needed.

Okay, it's well past my bedtime. Tomorrow is the only day that I get to sleep in, but I don't want to sleep in too late because I want to write 5000 words of Madeleine and Ferguson's story, and that's not gonna happen if I'm asleep. Wish me luck!

But finally, today's short story is reproduced below for your reading pleasure (or displeasure -- the story's rather bleak, given that our assignment was a creative response to Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD -- I've only read the first 50 or 60 pages, although I bought the full book today, but it's possibly the bleakest thing I've read since, well, ever). And no, I don't have an eating disorder -- although I was totally *starving* after reading the story to the class, and stayed hungry the rest of they day. Weird.


"The Poisoned Apple"

When she woke in her bed in the middle of the night, she would place a hand on her abdomen and feel the familiar planes. Through the thin cotton of her gown she ran her fingers across her ribs, counting each in turn. Then back down to her stomach, where she splayed her hands across her shriveled, sunken belly button. Her stomach was quiet, the ominous quiet of a battlefield before dawn, of an executioner pulling on his mask and picking up his axe.

She lay there through the endless dark, closing her eyes only when the nurse came in to check her IV. The nurse hummed to herself as she swapped one bag for another. She curled her hands slowly into fists but stayed silent. Silence was safest. She had seen girls talk, seen them open their mouths to their shrinks. And then the shrinks responded, coaxing, commanding, their words like shovels forcing food down the girls' throats.

But she knew their tricks. She saw the results of their efforts walking the halls, the rank smell of meat on their breath assaulting her over the harsh chemical disinfectants and the pervasive odor of stale urine. Don't be fooled by their sweet smiles and their apple-green eyes. They will make you one of them, and your belly button will grow until it swallows you whole.

Her mother used to try their tricks on her. Used to beg her to eat some bread, or to drink a Coke, even as she nervously lit a cigarette with her own skinny fingers.

I swear I don't know what to do, her mother said.
There's no need to do anything. Just a few more weeks and I will reach my goal.
Is your goal to kill yourself? Because that's what you're doing.
You're just jealous because you never made it as far as I have.

Her mother slapped her. She embraced the fresh, sharp blossom of pain in her cheek. Her belly never hurt like that anymore. It had gone to wherever demons go when a strong and perfect will conquers them, leaving only a lingering void behind.

She turned on her side and watched the drip in the green glow of the machines. The poison flowed through the sterile plastic tubing, down the pole to the needle that a nurse had shoved into her arm and sealed over with gauze and tape. There was no getting away from the poison. She could pull it out, but they would come and hold her down and put it back. Force puddings and fruit juices on her and try to make her talk.

Her arm was white and the angry blue of the vein throbbed against the skin as the poison flowed in. It flooded her even as she struggled against the surge. Her heart pumped faster with her rage, sending glucose to every part of her body. She wasn't the fairest of them all, not even a little, with the pockets of fat still clinging to her thighs. But shrinks hate girls who try to attain perfection. They hated her even more because they couldn't break her will. So they drowned her in glucose, poisoning her in her bed and waiting for the demon to grow strong enough to eat her up.

She thought that if she had been Snow White, she would have seen through the wicked stepmother's tricks. She would have known that the apple was poison and thrown it far away into the woods. And then she would have married a real prince, not one who could only score with dead chicks, with stupid princesses whose stomachs were stronger than their wills.

Another drip. Another thread of poison working its way towards her heart. She traced her finger up the vein. I can cut out the poison. I don't need a prince to pull the apple from my throat.

She fumbled through the trash on the wheeled bedside tray and found a pointed nail file. It was a reward for gaining two pounds, said the shrink, her mouth glistening like a cherry and her apple-green eyes glittering with malice. She would draw the demon out, dig the poison from her veins. A drop of blood ran down her arm, but she needed more. She kept gouging. The trickle became a river of poison spilling out onto the sheets. The beeping started, but the sound faded as the tide picked her up, and she hoped that this time it would be enough to sweep her away.

give my regards to soul and romance, they always did the best they could

I suddenly have a smashingly violent headache. I brought it on myself -- I did way too much work today, and the only time I left the building was at nine a.m. to run to Whole Foods for some milk, cheese, and more frozen enchiladas. Some vacation, right?

But, I'm quite pleased with myself, despite my aching head. Other than a quick videoconference from ten to eleven, I didn't do anything for my day job. I made myself a ridiculous lunch -- a tuna melt doesn't sound ridiculous, but it was just Midwestern enough (with the Miracle Whip and the homemade sweet pickles that my mom sent back with me over Christmas) to be an abomination in this, one of the great food capitals of the world, and just California enough (with the white albacore tuna packed in water and the English muffin instead of white bread) to not look anything like the tuna sandwiches of my childhood. It was totally delicious, though.

Then I made myself a huge pot of tea, kept it warm on the teapot warmer my parents gave me for Christmas, and sat down to write the story for tomorrow's class. I'm pretty happy with it, but it was kind of draining to write -- I was going for bleak, even though I didn't want to copy the post-apocalyptic theme of THE ROAD verbatim, and I somehow came up with an unrepentant anorexic who attempts to kill herself at the end of the story. So, I succeeded on the bleakness, even if I didn't succeed in matching Cormac McCarthy's amazing artistry. Perhaps I'll post the story tomorrow after class, but for now I want to leave it alone.

So that took several hours. I took a break to eat some popcorn and read the latest issue of the ROMANCE WRITERS REPORT, which is the Romance Writers of America magazine that I get with membership. Then, I got back to business and wrote the second assignment for class, which is a brief literary analysis of McCarthy's style. I didn't spend a ton of time on it because I had bigger fish to fry and I'm taking the class for fun, but I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's discussion.

I spent the rest of the night putting together the submission packet to send back to the agent who requested more material yesterday. As I mentioned, she wanted the first three chapters, a synopsis, and a market analysis. I already had the chapters and the synopsis, so that was just a matter of printing the stuff. But while I have thought a lot about the market that my book touches and how I might market it, I've never written any of it down. So, I spent an hour or two writing that, stewed over my cover letter for a bit, and then burned an absurd amount of time printing envelopes, labels, etc. and making sure that everything was perfectly straight and clean.

But now that's done, and I can mail it tomorrow after class. And other than a couple of short, pressing things for my day job, and the three hours I have to spend in class tomorrow, I have the rest of the weekend three to play around with Ferguson and Madeleine and see where they take me next. Yay.

Now, though, I think I'm going to watch some television -- I need to unwind before I go to bed. My subconscious listened to me last night when I asked for nightmares to fuel my short story; while none of them (that I remember) were about eating disorders, I did wake up at three a.m. with the vivid memory of a dream in which one of my lungs had collapsed and I was gasping for air. Weird. Goodnight, friends!

don't you know the kingdom's under siege

I just finished the reading for my creative writing class, and I have no idea what I'm going to write in response. This week's assignment was the first thirty pages of Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, which won the Pulitzer in 2006 and is currently being made into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen. Whenever it comes out, I'm seeing it even if I have to go by myself -- Viggo Mortensen in a post-apocalyptic world is like a nightmare-dream come true for me.

But really -- wow. I've never read anything by McCarthy (he also wrote NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, which was one of the hits of last year's Oscar season), but now all I want to do is go out and buy THE ROAD and finish it. Instead, I'm going to have to somehow craft a creative response to this, when it's so far away from my writing style (and by 'away' I mean both 'apart from' and 'above' -- it's far more literary than romantic, but he is also just incredibly talented and I would kill to write like him). So hopefully I'll have some nightmares tonight that I can turn into a suitably dark, metaphor-laden story in time for Saturday's class.

However, ignoring the fact that I am screwed for class, I did have some exciting news -- I got another request from an agent to see the first segment of my book! This request came from one of the agents whom I queried via snail mail last week; I've checked my mail every day this week even though I usually let it pile up, and I was rewarded tonight with a letter in my SASE asking to see a synopsis and the first three chapters. She also wants to see a market analysis, which is a bit weird -- so I need to come up with something about the book's target audience, initial thoughts on marketing, etc. before I can send it back to her. I put it aside for tonight, though, since I knew I need to do the reading for my class, so I'll get back to it this weekend.

Other than that, I have nothing of real interest to report. I'm taking tomorrow off, which is fantastic, but I think I'm going to go to bed right now despite the fact that I technically don't have to wake up early tomorrow -- it will be better for me if I still get up early, drag myself out to a coffeeshop, and write my story assignment even if it kills me. Wish me luck!

my sign is vital, my hands are cold

I wrote several paragraphs about writing tonight, and suddenly realized that it all belonged on the Sara Ramsey blog. So check it out if you're curious -- it's all about historical research and the problem of differentiating between real history and the "history" that has built up over thousands of Regency romances, and whether to use the real history or stick with what readers now commonly acknowledge and expect to see.

The rest of my day was pretty uneventful. My commute was not pleasant, so I was ten minutes late to my first meeting, but since it was a redux of my least favorite meeting of the week anyway, I didn't mind so much. I was in a bit of a rebellious mood anyway today, which is why I wore pigtails to work for the first time in a v. long time. As one of my coworkers pointed out, there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to my dressing schemes: last Friday, which I had intended to take off and during which I had only one meeting, I wore a cute skirt and blowdried my hair, while today I had a meeting with a director whom I don't know well (the one I was ten minutes late for), several manager meetings, a 1:1 with my boss, and three performance reviews, and I wore jeans, silver sneakers, and pigtails. Go figure.

But work was good, and I left at 6:30 so that I could do some writing tonight. Instead, I wasted time and wrote less than 400 words. Tomorrow I won't be able to write -- I desperately need to read the stuff for Saturday's class so that I can write a short story for it on Friday. Bleh. I guess Ferguson and Madeleine will have to keep waiting to find their bliss, but I swear it will happen soon! But now it's time for bed -- since I'm taking Friday off, there's a lot I want to get through tomorrow so that I don't have to work this weekend. Goodnight!

first, do no harm

I fell off the wagon straight into a pile of emails and eleven hours in the office today. I had an eight a.m. meeting and was basically in meetings until 4:30pm (with a long enough lunch break to run next door and get my favorite Tuesday special -- baked potato w/sour cream and bacon, mmm). Then, I stayed in the office until a little after seven putting together three performance reviews for tomorrow, getting through a *lot* of email, and writing my Q1 goals. Just ignore the fact that I'm already a month into Q1 so that my focus on goal-writing still sounds impressive.

But, I feel good about how much I got done, even if I didn't end up writing tonight. By the time I got home around 8:30pm, I was a bit too wiped out to write, although I did write a post for zee romance blog (and wrote a post that I saved as a draft and will post in a couple of days -- no need to use all my content tonight when I can spread it out). Tomorrow looks like meetings straight from 9am to 5:30pm, but because I did so much today, catching up should be easy and hopefully I'll be able to either write or work on my short story assignment like a good girl tomorrow night.

I shall leave you with this: Doug sent me an email last night saying, "Dude this book just screams Sara Wampler." He was referring to this: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES. WTF?!?! I love me some Jane Austen, and I definitely love me some zombies, so the idea of taking PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and adding in a zombie epidemic is inspired. Yay!

high on a hill was a lonely goatherd

I saw the most amazing thing tonight. I watched an episode of Craig from last week, and he opened the show by doing a puppet performance of 'The Lonely Goatherd' from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. They performed the entire song, which was strange. Even stranger, the Julie Andrews part was voiced by a unicorn puppet, while the other voices were supplied by a frog, a shark, and a lion. The puppets were right in front of the camera, but they were clearly arm puppets (not marionettes). I can't explain why I thought this was so funny, but I watched it twice!

Today was a return to my old bad habits; I had an eight a.m. meeting (which I was really late for because I left late, traffic was bad, and I forgot that I needed to stop and get gas, and the first gas station was out), had meetings straight through until almost 5pm, and then I drove home, defrosted and ate some potato soup, and worked from 7pm until now. Granted, the worst of my old bad habits would keep me working for another couple of hours, but I draw the line now and demand eight hours of sleep unless there's a true emergency.

This is a good reminder, though -- I had intended to work on my book tonight and didn't because I had too much pressing work stuff. So perhaps I need to rein in my pressing desires to find something new/shiny/intriguing, since any attempt would necessitate doing more work, and I kind of like having a manageable workload. I think my antsiness can be traced directly back to the fact that I've been back at work and off of sabbatical for exactly six months today. Six months is the magic moment where I expect to switch things up, and with no switch in sight and no real desire to create one, my nomadic side is getting a little disheartened.

It's all good, though -- my team is awesome, and I just have to keep remembering to focus on the book (in the long run, even if I couldn't tonight). So now I'm going to go to bed -- I'll likely have to work some again tomorrow night, but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to write as well. Goodnight!

now cinderella don't you go to sleep - it's such a bitter form of refuge

I wasn't nearly as productive today as I intended to be. I woke up late and wasted the time between nine a.m. and noon. Then I wrote for an hour and a half, took a bath, and decided to buy groceries. But when I got to Whole Foods, the lines were ridiculous, and the last thing I wanted to do was fight a bunch of yuppies so that I could buy milk and frozen enchiladas. So I came home and talked to my parents for an hour and a half, then walked over to Peet's to get some coffee.

When I got home, I intended to write -- but instead I watched the second half of the Super Bowl. Despite my relative lack of interest in football, I still got caught up in it -- largely because Kurt Warner is an Iowan, and I much preferred him and Larry Fitzgerald to the dude on the Steelers' side who got called for unnecessary roughness after throwing some pretty vicious punches. Also, Kurt Warner has a neck and Ben Roethlisberger doesn't (although I don't have anything against Roethlisberger in general). The game was much more exciting than many football games I have watched, and I got into it enough that I was disappointed when the Steelers pulled it out in the end. Ugh.

But, I managed to recover with some judicious watching of "Flight of the Conchords" videos on YouTube, and then wrote for another hour and a half. All told, I churned out 3537 words today -- bringing my total up to 16794 words, or 77 pages. Good, but not the 5000 words I had hoped to complete. Luckily, I'm taking Friday off -- so while I will need to spend some time this week working on reviews for work, as well as starting the assignment for my short story class, I expect to make some more progress this week.

Now, though, it's quite sadly bedtime. I'm not ready to go back to work tomorrow, but I have an eight a.m. meeting, so I should get some sleep in preparation for the return to the slogging. At least my job doesn't involve getting regularly tackled in a platonic way by large men -- but then again, given how often one of the announcers kept referring to all of the receivers' "big, strong hands," maybe things aren't as platonic as one would think. And I suppose if you're getting paid millions of dollars, getting knocked down repeatedly for a few hours every few days would be worth it. Instead, I'll have to pursue the American Dream through writing, where the knock-downs are to your psyche through repeated rejections, rather than to your body by a bunch of hulking linemen. Sigh.

i saw the devil wrapping up his hands...he's getting ready for the showdown

I had an excellent day, but I'm definitely ready for bed. It was the perfect mix of class, shopping, chores, reading, and family time -- the only thing that would have made it better was if the chores had been replaced by a couple of hours of writing, but I was pretty drained after my class and was in no mood to switch from talking about deep craft and mechanics issues to writing light-hearted frippery.

I'm really glad that I'm taking this class, despite the inconvenient hour and the amount of time that it takes to do the assignments. The teacher is *fantastic* -- it's clear that she has an actual passion for teaching creative writing, and is not just using teaching to finance her writing career. Class ended up going over by twenty minutes because we got into some very long-winded and detailed discussions about point of view, narrative vs. scene, the Catholic influence on Flannery O'Connor's work, etc., and then still had to read the first two pages of twenty people's stories (which took longer than it should have because apparently less than 25% of us read the instructions around using typed, double-spaced formatting with one-inch margins and a readable font size, so some people had two pages of single-spaced, 10-point font text with half-inch margins, ugh).

I felt like I learned a lot in just one class. I'm still vaguely happy with the story I wrote last night, but if I were to rewrite it, I would play around a lot more with point of view, so perhaps I'll see whether this week's assignment offers that opportunity. I left class feeling quite buoyant, decided to have lunch and work on my book at Cafe Borrone, and got there to discover a ridiculously-long line just to order, let alone to start scrambling for a table. So I walked across the street to Stacks, where the waiter flirted with me shamelessly, and even if he was almost forty (he looked younger, but made me guess his age and told me he puts avocado on his face every night), the female vanity that I usually keep under lock and key was still pleased when he asked whether I had been at the Creamery (his other job) recently, then dismissed it because he could 'never forget my eyes'. Ha. 25% tip for you, kind sir!

I wandered around Palo Alto for awhile, window-shopping in my favorite stationery stores, and finally buying a Cross ballpoint pen on clearance for 66% off -- completely unnecessary buy, except I love the pen and can use it forever. Then I came back to the city, cleaned my bathroom, took care of my mail, and did some other random things.

I made the mistake of finally opening the package I got last week -- Kresley Cole's latest book, which I will say without a trace of embarrassment is called "The Kiss of the Demon King". Yes, demons. Not evil demons, though -- just a hot, honorable demon king and an evil sorceress who isn't as evil as she seems. I read the previous five books in the series over leave, and was eagerly awaiting this one -- but knew that as soon as I got it out of the box, I would want to read it in one sitting.

So it was with extreme forbearance that I put it aside to meet up with Katrina, Adit, Katrina's roommate Patrick, Folkman, and three of their other friends for dinner. I did take the book with me, which was helpful as I stood waiting for the bus. This bus runs up Van Ness from Market, through the Tenderloin, toward the bay -- and attracts more than its fair share of crazies, which was entertaining. Dinner was quite fun; Katrina gave me a good update on what's going on with her situation, we had a good conversation about the Minotaur, and the phrase "bone time" was used far more than it should ever be used outside of a seventh-grade locker room.

But by the time Katrina decided to go home and the other people were headed off to a club, I decided to throw in the towel on socializing and come home, where I did end up finishing the book. Now I really, really must go to bed -- tomorrow is the only morning I can sleep in a bit, but I need to write a lot tomorrow, as well as do a bit of work for my day job, so it's time for sleep. Goodnight!

the public don't dwell on my transmission 'cause it wasn't televised

Today was a relatively decent day at work. Because I thought that I was going to take today off, I had kept it blocked off until a few days ago -- resulting in only 1.5 hours of meetings. Miracle! Unfortunately, I left the second meeting thoroughly annoyed, but I followed it up with a therapeutic lunch with two of my team leads (Pete and Lisa), so I felt better and was able to get some stuff done this afternoon before taking off so that I could write the story for tomorrow's creative writing class. And I'm going to take next Friday off instead -- I worked today because I wanted to see a presentation that Pete had to give in the meeting that later annoyed me, but I could use a three-day weekend to write.

I just wrote, edited, typed, re-edited, and printed my short story assignment over the past four hours (in addition to doing a load of laundry, eating some frozen enchiladas, and drinking a whole pot of Russian Caravan tea). I'm fairly happy with the result -- I would never write this kind of story or use that kind of style, but it was an interesting exercise. And I successfully wrote a story that has little to do with me (my worldview, perhaps, but definitely none of my personal experiences) and is not based off of anyone I know personally. So, that was great. It's a bit nervewracking to think of reading a couple of pages of it to the class tomorrow -- I would much rather blog the story and send them the link -- but that's because everyone in the class (with the exception of one of my former coworkers) is a complete stranger and I have a chip on my shoulder about being a romance novelist rather than a 'serious' author. I shall report back on how it goes, of course, and will likely post the story on zee romance blog tomorrow.

So the story is done, and while I still have the smashing headache I had yesterday, it hasn't progressed into a full-blown illness yet. I expect that to happen tomorrow. But I have grand plans to write another eighth of my novel this week, and if I'm going to make that happen in addition to doing another assignment for my short story class and prepping for and delivering thirteen reviews at work, I need to get cracking tomorrow. I also want to waste some time by shopping for some new pants -- almost all of my old pants and skirts no longer fit (in a good way), so I need some new bottoms to tide me over as I continue to make progress toward my goals. I guess it's good for me that I'm going to have to buy clothes during a recession, since everything is always on sale, but I would much rather not be in a recession so that I would have a better chance of selling my book. C'est la vie, I suppose. Goodnight!

i hear the good girls die

Tonight I went to a lecture at Stanford entitled "Death and the Maiden: From Chaucer to Pearl Jam." It was hosted by the Medieval Studies department, featuring a top professor in the field visiting from USC, and the audience was mostly comprised of Chaucer's contemporaries. That's a bit of an exaggeration; there were a few graduate students in medieval studies there, as well as some more middle-aged professors from various departments and a smattering of what appeared to be interested non-academics. But, the elderly population was out in force; to my left was an old man with an elaborately carved walking stick replete with a serpent-head grip, and to my right was a woman who kept falling asleep and waking herself up with the force of her own half-snores. And my favorite quote came from a woman in front of me who, before the lecture, turned to her friend, pointed to the program, and asked "What is a pearl jam?"

Anyway, I'm glad that I went. The lecture topic was fascinating; the lecturer has been researching the interplay between depictions of virgins as holy and inviolate and the (sometimes simultaneous) depictions of virgins as objects of lust at the moment of death. While women in romance novels typically aren't virgins by the end (at least not in the ones I read, ha), there is a somewhat parallel trend in historical romance regarding the woman's purity before her defining relationship with the hero. I may write medieval romances someday, since they've always entertained me, so I took about four pages of notes even if I may never be able to work in much detail about virginal female saints' martyrdoms, artwork showing maidens embraced by Death, etc.

After the lecture, I came home and edited some PowerPoint (trust me, not exactly what I wanted to do, particularly since I have to have a short story for Saturday and I haven't started writing it yet). And tomorrow could be dicey -- around 10am this morning, I suddenly felt that weird, just-slightly-off feeling in my head that usually proceeds some vile illness. I've had a splitting headache the rest of the day, so I'm hoping that I'm not finally succumbing to the plagues that have spread through the office.

The bright spot, though, was lunch with Adit, Katrina, and their friend (and Iowan) Govind, who also works at my place of employment. It took my mind off my headache (even if I blame Katrina for giving it to me, since she was sick when we went out for dinner last Saturday), and we had a generally ridiculous time. There may be port in my future this weekend -- in which case, I would be better off contracting pneumonia.

Okay, it's bedtime if I'm going to make it to work tomorrow -- goodnight!

saw cinderella in a party dress -- she was looking for her nightgown

This is definitely a four-minute post. I want to stay up and keep writing, but I have an eight a.m. meeting that I can't be late for, so I should really go to bed. I didn't work on the romance novel tonight -- instead, I worked on a part of the assignment for my creative writing class. Before we can write our story, we're supposed to write an analysis of what we read, highlighting three components of the author's style. I wrote almost four pages, which may have been a bit of overkill, but I haven't done any sort of literary analysis in a long time and got a little carried away.

I had a flash of inspiration on the way to work today and think I know where the story is going to go, but I don't want to jinx it yet. If it turns out to be any good, I'll post it on the romance blog. But I'm v. relieved to have an idea, even if I haven't started it yet and it's due on Saturday. For once, my road rage and my commute did something good for me -- the flash of inspiration came when I saw someone with a UC Berkeley license plate holder, briefly considered side-swiping them (I would never do it, and perhaps that's too much of an insight into my dark core), and then realized that it was a possible kernel of an idea for a story regarding people's judgments of each other based on superficialities. The story will have nothing to do with driving, Berkeley, or anything else I saw on my commute -- but it was an interesting jumping-off point, and the brainstorming made my commute more pleasant.

Four minutes are up, it's bedtime!

your kiss is on my list

This is a four-minute post. I was really not feeling the whole work thing, and so didn't get there early as I have for the past couple of months, and I left at 5:15 to have dinner with Terry. I was still productive while I was there, and I also answered some emails when I got home, but writing so much last night definitely made me want to sleep more to recover.

Dinner with Terry was good; we went to CPK in Palo Alto, which I love, and I ate an obscene amount of roasted garlic chicken pizza. We discussed Madeleine and Ferguson a bit, and when I got home, all I really wanted to do was keep writing -- but I need to do the assignment for my Stanford class. So, I got through the required reading for the assignment tonight, although I stayed up a bit longer than I intended to do so. This week's assignment is to read four short stories by Flannery O'Connor ("A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Good Country People", "Everything That Rises Must Converge", and "Revelation"), and then write a two-page story (either a complete short-short, or a fragment of a longer story) that is a creative response to O'Connor using at least three of the stylistic choices that O'Connor used in her work.

The interesting thing is that when I'm writing something patently unlike my real life (romance, for example), I have no trouble coming up with characters who have little in common with me and who do things that I would never dream of doing myself. But when I'm writing 'literary' fiction, I am still in amateur mode, basing my work heavily in personal experience. So my challenge to myself is to make this a story in the truest sense of the word, rather than semi-autobiographical. The challenge of responding to O'Connor's style while simultaneously coming up with characters and plot out of thin air is daunting, but I have tomorrow and Friday to accomplish it, so hopefully I'll be fine.

This is slightly more than four minutes, so it's officially time for bed!

close your eyes, clear your heart -- cut the cord

I went to work and successfully slogged all day, enlivened all too briefly with a bowl of the spiciest chicken tortilla soup that I have ever had the pleasure/misfortune of eating. My company is on an even bigger kick of environmental awareness than usual. A couple of weeks ago they had people standing at the tray return areas to teach us how to compost (which involves separating out foods from non-biodegradable products, and we have to do it correctly or else the company can't do composting anymore if our compost supplies are too contaminated). Then today I discovered that they have done away with to-go boxes (which were compostable anyway) and plastic to-go cups (also compostable, since they were made of some sort of corn product). This means two things: 1) it's much harder for me to get food to go from my favorite cafe in the building next door, and 2) I can't take a cup of Diet Coke with me when I leave at night unless I take a reusable glass and bring it back the next day. Some might argue that it also means 3) I'm spoiled, but I refuse to acknowledge that.

When I got home, I ate a pizza, procrastinated for a bit, made a pot of tea (Russian Caravan looseleaf from Peet's -- smoky and delicious) -- and then wrote for an hour and a half. I churned out 1800 words, which is about seven and a half pages, bringing my total for Ferguson and Madeleine's story up to 13,256 words, which is 62 page. At this rate, I could be 25% of the way through the book by the end of this weekend, provided that I don't get wrecked on port or sucked into watching the Super Bowl.

I really want to keep going, but I'm going to go to bed instead -- I have grand plans to get up early tomorrow and go to the gym, which is unlikely at best, but I should at least make it theoretically possible. I also may have to take a break from the book tomorrow to start the assignment for my Stanford class. It hurts to take time away from the book to write something else -- but I think the class will be really good for my romance novel writing even if it's meant for much more high-falutin' types of books. But before I can get back to writing, I have to slog for nine hours tomorrow, so I think it's time for bed!

the songmaker says it ain't so bad...the dreammaker's gonna make you mad

I was insanely productive today. I went to the gym, washed my sheets and remade my bed, bought groceries, refilled some prescriptions, cleaned out my fridge, did some dishes, talked to my niece (happy birthday Sammi!), talked to my parents, paid my bills, put together two query/submission packets for a couple of agents, and wrote 3,089 words of Madeleine and Ferguson's story (the working title is AN INCONVENIENT TITLE -- which could actually work, since Ferguson doesn't want to be a duke, but currently is more of a pun on my first book's title + the fact that I don't have a title for this one). In fact, the only thing I didn't do on my to-do list was vacuum -- and considering that my to-do lists for most weekends are usually overflowing and mostly aspirational, that's pretty good.

I decided to query a couple more agents; of the four queries I sent out two weeks ago, two agents requested partials (which I sent back promptly), and two agents still haven't responded to the initial query letter. Since agents can take up to a few months to respond when they've requested additional material, I'm not holding my breath for a response from the first two. I also set an arbitrary personal goal to have four 'warm' queries out at any given time -- 'warm' in this sense means queries in which the agent hasn't exceeded their self-reported deadlines for responding to my material. Since both of the agents who haven't responded to my queries said that they usually respond to queries within two weeks, it's time to query two more agents to refill my queue. This time, the agents I'm querying require snail-mail queries -- so the wait to hear back will be longer, but hopefully the competition will be a bit less intense since many people seem to be moving to e-queries, and e-queries are so cheap to send that most authors seem to send out dozens at a time.

As for the writing, it was really flowing today. I averaged ~800 or 900 words per hour, so my 3000-word output happened over lunch and tea at Leland Tea Company (the neighborhood tea place that I love; the owner/head dude seems to be on happy pills, but that makes it entertaining, and the tea sandwiches and scones are great), and over another hour-long stint tonight. I have 53 pages or 11,500 words, which means I'm about an eighth of the way through the book. Given that I started it a week ago yesterday, that's awesome progress -- I think it took me two years to get this far with Amelia and Malcolm, and I ended up rewriting almost all of that. If I can keep up this pace (difficult but doable), I could have a complete first draft by the end of March. Then I could set it aside for a proper rest while I go on another binge of socializing, so that I could pick it up again around the beginning of May with fresh eyes and aim to complete the second and final drafts over the course of the summer. Doesn't that sound like fun?

I'm still caffeinated, thanks to the awesome teapot warmer that I got for Christmas from my parents -- it's a glass stand that you put a tealight candle in, which provides enough heat to keep your teapot warm so that you can savor hot tea over a couple of hours rather than hurriedly trying to drink it before it cools. So I drank four or five cups of Samovar's English Breakfast blend -- it has a slightly nutty flavor that you don't usually find in English Breakfast teas, but it's quite nice with milk and sugar. Even with the two small pots of tea I had at Leland Tea Company, I'm nowhere near as caffeinated as I was yesterday, so sleep should come easily. Tomorrow it's back to the mines, where I shall slog my way through endless meetings and try to avoid looking noticeably dreamy as I think about what Madeleine and Ferguson will do next. Goodnight!

are we human? or are we dancer?

Today was truly excellent. My creative writing class started this morning, so I had to wake up at 6:30 so that I could make it down to Stanford in time. I think the class will be hard and a bit intimidating -- for example, we spent today writing two in-class exercises, which we then had to read out loud, and I don't like sharing rough drafts of anything. But the teacher is excellent, and I was pleased to see that none of my classmates seem to be men in midlife crises, nor will they attempt to write lists in excel and attempt to pass them off as stories -- instead, they all seem to be reasonably decent writers. So I'm glad I signed up -- but we'll see if I feel the same way when I have to do my assignment this week.

After class, I spent a few hours at Cafe Borrone in Menlo Park, getting jacked up on caffeine while working on my romance novel and later hanging out with Terry. I had my favorite gouda/turkey/caramelized onion sandwich on focaccia, as well as a glass of wine, a chai, a mocha, and an iced tea, which explains why I felt a bit ill and jumpy the rest of the day. But, I wrote >1000 words -- not great, considering how long I was there, but progress nonetheless. And, Terry came over for the last hour or so that I was there, so we got to catch up a bit before I drove back to the evil city.

I had dinner with Adit and Katrina tonight, and a truly winning time was had by all. We went to some Korean place in the Richmond district, where they serve boiling hot soup that you can crack a raw egg into -- which was a bit over-the-top considering that I also had a whole shrimp, complete with eyes, sitting in my soup and glaring at the egg. Mmm. It was quite yummy, but my caffeine overload had not quite subsided (and wasn't helped by the addition of a Diet Coke), so I wasn't particularly hungry.

But, as far as family time goes, it was quite successful. We had a series of rather ridiculous conversations, and almost decided to adjourn to Katrina's apartment to watch a movie and drink a bottle of port. But, port is not my friend (and in fact has been my companion at the brutal end of some of my worst drinking nights), and so while I'm committed to having port with them next weekend, it's probably a good thing that it didn't happen tonight. Katrina managed to drop me off at my apartment after dinner despite the tears in her eyes from laughing so hard from our shared hysteria, so hopefully she and Adit made it home!

I have big plans for tomorrow -- I want to write 5000 words (since that's 20 pages, it's a major stretch), and I have to run errands, vacuum, clean out my fridge, and call my parents. So I suppose it's time for bed. It's amazing that I can sleep at all, ever, given how caffeinated I usually am -- but I'm ready for sleepy time despite it all (keep in mind that I also had a travel mug of tea and a 20oz bottle of Cherry Coke Zero in class). So, goodnight!

But one more thing. If you like ridiculously awesome stuff, and aren't willing to watch terrible movies with me but can sit through four minutes of procrastination, check out the Killers' video for their latest single "Spaceman". It looks like several exotic birds exploded and then adhered to Brandon Flowers' back, forcing him to put on a red jumpsuit and hang out with some extravagantly-dressed crackheads. Awesome!

let my love open the door to your heart

This is a four-minute post. Two full-time jobs will be the death of me. I was at the office from 8:30 to 5:30, then went to a cafe in Mountain View and wrote for an hour and a half. I managed to plow through ~1000 words (equivalent to about four pages) before deciding that I should return to my apartment. Traffic was predictably bad since it was Friday, but it wasn't terrible, and I made it home before perishing from hunger. I wanted to keep writing when I got home, but decided that I was too tired, so warmed up some soup and played on the internet instead.

Even though it's 9:30pm and I feel extremely lame, I'm going to go to bed after this -- my Stanford writing class starts tomorrow morning at 9am, which means that I have to get up like Saturday's any other working day. Luckily, the class is only three hours, and while there will likely be some annoying people, they can't assign me action items, so it's a definite improvement over work. And, as an added bonus, I can do some of my favorite South Bay weekend things -- like spend the entire afternoon writing at Cafe Borrone. I would love to get a pedicure, but it's cold and rainy, which means my glorious feet would be wasted in boots and sneakers. Sigh.

Sorry this post is more disjointed than usual, but I'm wiped out! So I'm going to be lame and go to bed -- goodnight!

still your mind and the universe surrenders

It's already bedtime, so I'll make this quick. My commute was enough to make me want to stab myself in the face -- it took an hour and forty minutes to get to work, which meant that instead of being twenty minutes early to my 9am meeting, I was twenty minutes late. It was certainly not an auspicious start to the day -- but given that I only had 3.5 scheduled hours of meetings, plus my allergy shots and some random one-off conversations, the day couldn't be totally terrible. I managed to plug away until 6:45pm and get through a ton of random action items, even though a major part of me wanted to sneak out at three p.m. and write instead. I might have done it if the weather was still as gorgeous as it was last weekend, but today's weather (rainy in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon) was just as conducive to sitting in my office as it was to sitting in a cafe.

But, I had shrimp ceviche for lunch, which was totally delicious. And, I had ample fountain Diet Cokes, which kept me happy for the slog. Best of all, I had dinner plans to look forward too -- Terry, Lauren (aka Subz), and I met up in Menlo Park and spent some quality time catching up on our holidays, our recent life developments, etc. Since we all started in roughly the same era and reached roughly the same levels of professional development in our roles, we have a lot in common (and therefore a lot of shared platforms for dissecting/bitching about what has changed and what has stayed the same). So, that was v. nice, and I enjoyed the afterglow on the v. speedy drive back to the city (which took less half as long as my morning commute).

Now I just have to make it through tomorrow (meetings straight from 9am to 4:30pm), and then it's the weekend! My Stanford class starts on Saturday, so I have a feeling this weekend will be all writing all the time...and I can't wait. Goodnight!

i'm just turning away from where i should have because i am not anything

I have nothing of any real interest to report tonight. That's pretty typical, actually, so I don't know why I felt the need to comment upon it. I made it to the office in time for an 8:30am meeting, but today wasn't quite as bad as usual. I had two free hours at lunch, and ended up spending half an hour in an impromptu chat with Gyre and Lizzie (Lizzie left my company last year, but she works down the street and stopped by to bring Gyre some stuff). I also got fairly caught up on stuff and fully unpacked my desk. I love my new office -- I have a much bigger window, and I ended up fully busting out the swag I've accumulated over the past five years. With my Bon Jovi poster on the wall, my lava lamp lit up and my fiber optic bonsai tree twinkling merrily, and feather boas and starry tinsel and my glass orb-shaped luminary award strategically placed, my office is the perfect cross between a dorm room and a thrift store. Yay.

So I slogged away all day, then left around six to have dinner with my boss, who is in town from Ann Arbor for a couple of days. We had a good time, but I ate too much and it was hard to stay awake on the drive back to the evil city. But I can't express how much I'm looking forward to tomorrow -- I only have three and a half hours of meetings. This is such a shock that I don't quite know what to do with myself, and will just have to hope that I am productive with that time (particularly since Friday goes back to my regularly scheduled brutality). I'm going to go to bed now, though, so that I can get up in time to beat some of the worst of the traffic -- it will likely be raining tomorrow morning, and if there's anything worse than rush hour, it's rush hour in the rain. Goodnight!

you watch the sky, it's a pale parade of passing clouds that cover the bed upon which we laid in the dark

Today was surprisingly good, considering that I had meetings basically straight from 7:30am to 5:30pm, followed immediately by our monthly margaritas and pie event (with a special guest appearance by our director) from 5:30 to 7:30pm. I skipped my allergy shots this morning because I wanted to get my desk set up from last week's move. As I said to Pete when he walked in for our 1:1, it looked like a dollar store had exploded all over my office. To fit in with our company's culture, it's imperative that you have as much random and useless decorative crap as possible -- and over the course of the past five years, I have accumulated a great collection of stupid stuff.

This came back to bite me -- at margaritas and pie, we were talking about movies, and I quite seriously agreed with our director that I'm not a huge fan of Leonardo DiCaprio. At that most inopportune moment, Pete called me out, mentioning that I have a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio on my desk. Snap! He was right -- I found the stationery I bought for 27 rupees in India that featured a young Leo's face both faded into the whole sheet and captured in a smaller color photo in the lower right-hand corner, and I put the stationery up with some of the other cards and paper mementos. But I apparently turned four shades of red when Pete brought this up, contrary to my usual impossible-to-embarrass facade.

Now, though, I should really go to bed -- I have an 8:30am tomorrow and I'd like to get there a bit earlier than that to finish unpacking, and then I have meetings all day, followed by dinner with my boss tomorrow night. Bleh. Corporate whoredom is putting a cramp in my writing lifestyle, but it pays the bills. Goodnight!

'cause it's easy once you know how it's done

Today was lovely, and I enjoyed a bit of the weather in anticipation of the cold front expected later this week (and of course 'cold' means mid-fifties during the day -- I know this gets no sympathy from my relatives). I briefly contemplated the sobering fact that I'm turning into my mother as I thoroughly cleaned my kitchen after the devastations of last night's cooking; in times gone by, I would have left the mess for a couple of days (and I would have also slept until noon). Instead, I had everything spic and span by 9:30am. My mother later laughed at this, since she believes I'll never turn into her, given my strong urges to pick up and move to foreign countries on a whim...but time will tell.

Later, I met up with Oniel and his girlfriend for lunch. They took me to an east coast-style deli (which serves such delicacies as cold corned tongue), and it was quite good. The sandwiches were huge, and mine was covered in hot sauce, so I ended up bringing the other half home with me. I likely won't get a chance to finish it, since I have dinner plans every night this week and a fridge full of other leftovers, but I would happily try other sandwiches at that establishment in the future. We had a good time catching up, and I made Oniel jealous that he missed out on playing Worms (although Kathryn didn't seem to mind too much that she missed it), so hopefully I'll see them again sometime soon.

After parting ways with them, I was good and worked on my book. I went to a cafe, and later Tom met me there -- since he's also working on a book, we're good writing companions. I stayed there for 2.5 hours and wrote almost exactly 2000 words, which I felt pretty good about. So, book two is well under way -- I just have to keep it up in spite of my grueling work schedule and my typical procrastinatory urges.

I meant to keep writing tonight, but decided to read a book and do laundry instead. Unfortunately, when I went downstairs to get my laundry out of the dryer, I discovered that one of my loads wasn't dry -- and was in fact so wet that it seemed the dryer hadn't ever started. So now I have to wait until 10:45 to get my clothes out -- particularly unfortunate since I have to be in Mountain View for work in time for a 7:30am meeting :( The chances of writing tomorrow are bleak, but I'll have to pick up the pace later in the week. Now, though, I'm going to get ready for bed so that I can go to sleep as soon as I've picked up my laundry. Goodnight!

i guess i stuck around so i could watch us fight for all the wrong reasons

Yes, I quoted Nickelback. Suck it!

Today was lovely, and comprised of a significant amount of family time. I woke up in time to buy some groceries, enjoy a leisurely cup of tea, take a shower, blowdry my hair, and talk to my parents before Adit showed up in the early afternoon. As mentioned, he invited himself, John, Jess, and Katrina over for dinner tonight, but he came over around 12:30 to work and watch football and work. So we hung out for a few hours before beginning to prepare our culinary contributions to tonight's "party".

It turned out to be the best party ever -- we ended up watching several episodes of "The O.C." and playing Worms, which was the key game of my freshman year of college. We also ate a lot of food -- Adit made two pizzas, I made potato and leek soup and this awesome caprese salad from the Barefoot Contessa cookbook that I got for Christmas, and Katrina brought strawberries that went perfectly with the brownies and ice cream I bought from Whole Foods. Also, we spent a lot of time trying to explain the Walter Talbott phenomenon to Katrina; I think we failed, but we discovered his website and John and Adit spent some time playing this computer game he wrote in which two players try to crash pinewood derby cars into each other.

So, the evening was pretty much perfect -- there was much laughter, much food, and we used an inexplicable number of dishes, considering that there were five of us and we went through every piece of silverware I own, as well as all sixteen bowls. The only thing that wasn't perfect about today was that I didn't work on the book -- but I did write a couple of posts for the sararamsey.blogspot.com blog, so I guess that counts.

Tomorrow is a free day for me, and I intend to spend it writing (with a break for lunch with Oniel and his girlfriend, who may have been scared off by tonight's solely vegetarian fare). Then it's back to work, bleh, but now is not the time to think about it. Instead, I'll go to sleep, with memories of tomatoes, mozzarella, and Worms' banana bombs dancing in my head. Goodnight!

hold your breath and count to ten, start again, start again

Today was nearly perfect. I woke up, messed around the apartment, played with my eye makeup, and finally girded my loins (figuratively, as I don't know how to do it literally) for the walk through the Tenderloin down to Union Square and Yerba Buena Gardens. My first destination was Samovar, that tea place that I sometimes go to overlooking the gardens. I hadn't been there in several months, and they slightly changed the outside arrangement, decreasing the size of the patio and increasing the size of the tables. I sat outside, and it was absolutely gorgeous -- there were moments when I couldn't quite decide whether I would rather stare off into space, focus on my salmon quiche, or work on my brainstorm for Ferguson and Madeleine's story.

I spent an hour and a half there, enjoying some people watching (several of the groups on the patio were in town for some type of fancy food distributors' convention, so they were much pickier than I am) and drinking a pot of English breakfast tea followed by most of a mug of masala chai. I would have eventually finished the chai, even though the caffeine overload was starting to make me feel ill...but I got oddly booted by a Frenchman who came up to me and said that he and his friends would 'like very much to sit in the sun' and asked if I would mind sharing a corner of my [four-person] table with him and his other three friends. I said I would be done in five minutes and he just looked at me, then waved his friends over, and so I decided to leave. His friends looked a little bit appalled and the waitress looked very much appalled, but I was done anyway and preferred to have another reason to hate zee French.

After that, I wandered back in the general direction of Chinatown, stopping at my two favorite card shops on Grant before catching a bus back to my apartment. Before going home, I stopped at Staples to buy mailing labels and at the art supply store near my house to buy another notebook -- I need more paper like I need another shade of nail polish, but c'est la vie. Then I came home, vacuumed, procrastinated, and finally sat down to write.

I have officially broken ground on Madeleine and Ferguson's book. It was a little bit exciting to go through the process of setting the right margins and ensuring that Word stopped putting in 'smart quotes' and 'smart dashes' and all other 'smart' formatting things that could be bad for manuscript submission down the road. Then I typed the title (currently "Book 2 - Madeleine and Ferguson", although I expect to come up with something a bit snappier), and off I went. I ended up writing the whole first chapter, which was around 3000 words, in less than five hours. While I still have a lot of questions to answer and problems to resolve when it comes to the plot, I have a fairly decent feel for the characters since they were secondary characters in my first book, so I don't think I'll go through quite as much trial and error as I did with the last one. Or at least, I hope that's the case -- if I could write for two hours a day (recognizing that that's somewhat impossible but planning to make up for missed hours on the weekends), it would take me two months to get to the end of the first draft. That's much better than three years. So even if I fall off the wagon a little bit, I can't imagine this book will take as long as the last one.

So, it was a great day. Tomorrow I need to figure out what I'm feeding the friends who invited themselves over for dinner -- they're likely to get potato soup, but if I discover some culinary ambition in my dreams tonight, that may change. Now, though, it's time for bed, so that I can accomplish some stuff tomorrow before my guests show up. Goodnight!

i'm no superman

Today was an excellent day. I worked out of the San Francisco office; while I actually had to work all day because I had meetings basically straight from 9am to 3:30pm and lots of email to send and to-dos to do, working out of SF is so much easier for me. I woke up at 7:15, took a shower, actually blow-dried my hair, and still managed to get on a bus and into the office by 8:30. To make it to the Mountain View office by 8:30, I would have to leave my apartment around 7:15. And today was gorgeous -- while I spent most of it in a windowless interior conference room on a succession of videoconferences, I did manage to leave by 4:30.

Instead of fighting traffic home for an hour and a half, I took a stroll down the waterfront of the Embarcadero and stopped in at the Ferry Building. I walked past the restaurant where Irish Matt and I had a five-hour booze-filled "lunch" a couple of months ago, and just seeing it gave me a hangover. Then I went to Sur la Table and bought a v. small tea strainer that will finally fit into the teapots that my mother and Heather gave me, which is exciting. I topped it off with a scoop of gelato from Ciao Bella -- the flavor was masala chai chocolate, and the hint of spice in the chocolate was perfect. I ate it standing on the back patio watching the ferries come in and musing over how lovely the day was. Then I caught a bus home, where I relaxed, ate English muffin pizzas (one with feta and olives, one with mozzarella and so much fresh garlic that I'll likely reek for days), and ended up boycotting all work by watching two episodes of 'Scrubs' and four episodes of '30 Rock'. Brainstorming Ferguson and Madeleine's story starts in earnest tomorrow, but I needed a break tonight.

I don't have major plans for the weekend, but I'm v. excited that it's three days long. I guess I'm making dinner for some people on Sunday -- I woke up to a calendar invitation from Adit, inviting himself, John, Jess, and Katrina to my place for dinner on Sunday, and the description said 'wamper make us dinner'. The fact that he purposefully misspelled my name while inviting people over to my house was icing on the cake. But despite the weirdness of the event, it should be fun -- I just need to figure out what to make. Luckily my house is pretty much as clean as it gets, so I'll just have to buy some groceries and throw something together.

Even though it's still early and I'm wasting my youth, it's time for bed -- I need to start writing book #2, if only to take my mind off the agony of waiting for replies to my attempts to sell book #1, and I'm not going to get started as soon as I want if I spend tomorrow sitting around. Goodnight!

i'll wait for you where saturday's a memory

The query letter revision must not have been a complete fluke -- I got another request for fifty pages this morning from one of the agents whom I queried on Tuesday! Now granted, some of it is likely timing, and some of it is likely that the agents I queried are more actively seeking clients (I read the blog of one of the agents who sent me a form rejection in December, and she said that she only took on two new clients all of last year!). But I'm glad to see that I can at least write a query letter.

Now I just have to hope that the book itself holds up. And really, this phase is scary; if I failed to ever get my book in front of someone, then I could blame my querying skills. But now, if no one takes it, the book itself is either boring, poorly written, or unmarketable. So I'm going to go down the path of assuming that someone will pick it up someday, rather than self-doubting -- there's plenty of time for me to be proven wrong, but as evidenced by the fact that I procrastinated for six weeks on rewriting my query letter when it turns out I had a good query letter within me, I can't let my fear get in the way of making progress towards my goal.

So that's the news on the book front. On the work front, today was a brutal slog (starting with an eight a.m. that I was a few minutes late for because of a five-car pileup on the freeway out of the city -- but I cleared the scene early enough that it didn't hold me back too much, and I got to see a car on fire, which was exciting), but I made it out by 5:30 and only did an hour of work when I got home. I also played some mafia today and kind of hope I die tonight, if only so that I can get some stuff done tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.

On the home front, I actually watched television tonight! After I was done working and had eaten the last remnants of my beef bourguignon (I froze the rest a couple of days ago), I realized that I didn't want to look at agent profiles, send query letters, read romance blogs, work on my research database, or keep brainstorming Madeleine and Ferguson's story. Instead, I watched two new episodes of "Scrubs" -- it moved to ABC from NBC to complete its last season, and the episodes that I watched tonight were great. One even made me cry with the (admittedly cheap and obvious) juxtaposition of a death scene with Death Cab for Cutie's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark". I haven't watched television (other than part of that Nostradamus thing on the History Channel last week) since I got back from Iowa, and it was a nice break. I need to either catch up on stuff or delete it, since my tivo is filling up -- but the book remains the priority.

I'm going to bed now. The knowledge that I can get up tomorrow and take the bus down to the bay tomorrow is incredibly nice. If the weather is still good, I'll likely try to leave a little early and walk around the Ferry Building or something else down there -- I'm looking forward to relaxing this weekend. And also, of course, working on the story for Book #2 -- I really want to start writing no later than the first week of February. Goodnight!

on board i'm the captain, so climb aboard -- we'll search for tomorrow on every shore

My job is winning the current battle. This week is pretty much shot due to the two-day training that I finished this afternoon; I have tomorrow and Friday, but tomorrow is completely booked from 8am on, and Friday is mostly booked. But I'm working out of SF on Friday, so at least my commute won't be too bad. The weekend is a lovely three-day thanks to my company's observance of Martin Luther King Day, but that means that next week is a four-day week -- and short weeks are the death of me, because the missed meetings end up taking away the precious hours of work time on the other days.

Arrrrgh. I've been pretty out of it this week; it's been a struggle for me to stay engaged when I'm just eager to sell book #1 and write book #2. I ran through almost a full battery charge of my iphone in training today -- for one, I'm playing online mafia again, and I was addicted to seeing what happened (and posting under my binder, even though I'm sure the trainer caught on that I was playing with my phone most of the day), and for another, I checked my email every five minutes to see if I got another response from an agent. No luck, but no news is good news, I suppose.

But, the weather here is gorgeous; it was almost seventy degrees today, and I ate lunch outdoors with my fellow team managers (Lisa, Heather, and Pete were all in the same training with me, and all similarly distraught after two days locked in an airless conference room). So, there is that; as much as I may hate the commute, the sight of the bay under the morning sunshine for the brief part of the drive where 101 goes right by the bay warms my soul. Sadly I have to be at work at 8am tomorrow, so the sunlight won't be very strong when I drive by the bay -- but at least traffic will be better. I'm looking for the good things in life! But now, it's time to sleep -- hopefully tomorrow brings fewer headaches!

come on all you dashing gentlemen of summer

Thanks v. much for all the congratulations, friends! Hopefully everything will pan out in the end, but despite the pitfalls between here and publication, getting my first positive response to a query letter was a v. exciting occurrence.

Since I'm currently buoyed by yesterday's request, I decided to press forward and send out three more queries tonight. While I would be thrilled to work with the agent who requested my material yesterday, it could take her weeks to review it, and I don't want to waste that time if she ultimately says no. So, I sent similar letters to three other agents at the top of my list. Figuring out what to send to whom is a bit maddening; all three wanted different things (one wanted 10pgs plus a synopsis, one wanted 5pgs, and the third wanted only the query letter itself). Because I'm both paranoid and detail-oriented (a dangerous combination), this meant I quadruple-checked everything before hitting the send button. But, they're finally out there in the ether -- and my goal is to have at least four queries out at any given time until I sign with an agent or exhaust all possible avenues.

It's hard to do this on top of a full-time job, though. I was only at the office for nine hours today, but it involved an all-day training, and for some reason sitting on a couch and listening to someone train me for eight hours (with a break for lunch) makes me more tired and stressed than running around to 8-16 meetings over the course of a day. Maybe I was stressed because I kept surreptitiously checking my iPhone and saw how much stuff was piling up. So I left work as soon as the training was over, went to downtown Mountain View to mail some stuff (including my application for Romance Writers of America's next level of membership -- which I'm now qualified for since I have proof of a completed manuscript and proof of submission to agents), and then sat in a cafe for an hour and caught up on email while waiting for traffic to die down. It's a little ridiculous that my commute is now my only break in the day, but c'est la vie. Until I find an agent, I've got to keep my eyes on the prize -- and I need to start writing the next book!

Okay, no more, it's bedtime. And we'll see how well I can keep my composure in tomorrow's all-day training as I secretly update my iPhone to watch the newest rejections roll in...

hope springs eternal

Apparently my new query letter is a winner -- when I woke up this morning, I had an email from the agent asking to see the first fifty pages of my manuscript and a two-page synopsis!!! This merits the rare three-exclamation-point celebration!!! It totally made my day. I'm trying to keep myself grounded and remember that having an agent ask for a partial is not the same thing as getting an offer of representation, or selling the book, or hitting the New York Times bestseller list, or turning into J.K. Rowling -- but it's at least a sign that I can write a query letter that might, on a good day, intrigue an agent enough that she wants to see more of my work.

In fact, had that not happened, today would have pretty much totally sucked. Or maybe today pretty much sucked because it happened -- all I wanted to do was sit at home and write my synopsis (since my book is well-polished, but the last synopsis I wrote was six pages, and cutting a 400-page manuscript down to two pages is not trivial). Instead, I had to sit in either boring or annoying meetings most of the day, and the breaks I had were not long enough to recenter me. But I survived, left at 6:15, and made it home in good time. I took half an hour to empty the dishwasher, change into sweats, and reheat some of that delicious beef bourguignon, which I enjoyed before sitting down to write the synopsis.

Now, three hours later, I've sent the synopsis and the first fifty pages to the agent, and it's time to cross my fingers. It could take her weeks to get back to me on the partial, though, so I'm not holding my breath; instead, I need to decide who to send queries to next. The funny thing is that I sent to her partially because she was the only agent at the top of my list that didn't want a synopsis with the query letter -- and now this has forced me to write one, so I can't procrastinate on the other three or four people in my top bucket. I should go to bed, though -- it's enough to celebrate this for a day before I start thinking about all the other steps in this interminable process. Goodnight!

oooh, take another little piece of my heart now baby

I just sent out another query letter. That means that, instead of being 0 for 3, I'm now 0 for 3 with one pending! Upgrade!

I spent some quality time this afternoon revising my query letter again, and I think it's a lot tighter. I've cut the description of my book by about forty words and completely revised the spirit and intent of the first paragraph. So we'll see how it goes -- the agent I queried tonight was chosen specifically because she was the only agent in the top group on my list who wanted only a letter without a synopsis or additional pages. I wanted to get something out today to restart the querying process, but it's way too late for me to be thinking about synopses when I have to go to work tomorrow.

I had quite a full day, all told; I worked for work (bleh), worked on my query letter, and met up with Tom (aka Tom Foolery) to discuss our querying processes. He's written a book as well, and so we discussed what we've learned about agents, how we're querying, etc. We're going to try for a standing Sunday writing date, which should be nice; it's good to talk to someone else about the process, and having someone else in a similar situation helps to encourage accountability.

I couldn't hang out long because I had to come home to finish the preparations for Heather and Salim's postponed dinner. They got here at six, and we had a lovely time; my beef bourguignon was totally to die for, and there was a marked lull in conversation while we all savored the stew, accompanied by mashed potatoes (made with cream and half a stick of butter, so it's no wonder they were a hit). This recipe is a total winner; it's too bad it's so time intensive, or else I would make it all the time. It's also too bad that it's chock full of fat, of course, but once every six months hopefully won't kill me.

Heather and Salim were great; they're moving to Boston next week and I'm really sad that they're leaving. They're an example of 'summer friends' who became real friends -- living, working, eating, shopping, traveling, and doing everything else together for six months will either make you friends or enemies for life. In this case, they're great friends. We discussed a multitude of things, and while they laughed at the sheer number of books I have on English and Regency-period architecture and interior design, they actually spent a not-insignificant amount of time looking at my books. I was sad to see them go, so hopefully I'll get out to Boston to see them and my score of other east coast friends at some point in the near future.

It's tragic that I have to go back to work tomorrow, but unless I fall suddenly ill tonight, it can't be helped. Sleep well, friends!

that is that and this is this -- you tell me what you want and i'll tell you what you get

I was supposed to have Heather and Salim over for dinner tonight, and I spent much of my time off and on throughout the day preparing for their arrival. I ran to Whole Foods to buy the meat and a couple of other items for my beef bourguignon, then stopped at BevMo to buy some brandy and a bottle of wine. I cleaned my bathroom, vacuumed my living space, took out the trash and the recycling, and generally tidied up.

Making the beef bourguignon reminded me how much I love to cook. The initial ingredients are simple: 2.5lbs beef (such as a chuck roast), 1/2lb bacon (because bacon belongs in everything), two yellow onions, a pound of carrots, a bit of garlic, some thyme, and a tablespoon of tomato paste. Step one is to brown the bacon and then the beef; step two is to cook the onions and carrots in the fat from the meat. Step three is my favorite, though -- you pour half a cup of brandy or cognac into the pan and set it on fire. I didn't come close to singeing my eyebrows, but the fire burned for a long time, to the point that I started to worry that it might damage the stove canopy. But that step adds just a hint of char to some of the vegetables, which contributes to the complexity of the dish. Then, you put the meat, thyme, and tomato paste into the pot, add a bottle of red wine and a couple of cups of beef broth, and put the whole thing in the oven until the meat is tender.

It was at the end of the first phase that I looked at my phone and realized that I'd missed a call from Heather several hours earlier. It turns out that Salim has food poisoning (the guy ate anything and everything across India, China, and a variety of insalubrious foreign dining establishments and never got sick, but he gets sick in America?!). Heather offered to come by herself, but instead I rescheduled for tomorrow night -- the beef bourguignon will actually be better after sitting overnight, and I hadn't cut up the salad veggies or made the mashed potatoes yet, so there was no harm done. Finishing the dish tomorrow will be easy -- you add a bit of butter and flour to thicken it, saute a pound of mushrooms to add to the dish, and add a pound of frozen whole onions that totally make the meal outstanding. Mmm.

So when I found out they weren't coming, I was at a bit of a loss for what to do next. I spent an hour on the phone with my parents, since dinner tomorrow will interfere with my regularly-scheduled Sunday afternoon phone-home time. Then, I spent three hours finally framing and hanging the nine 8"x10" photos that I had ordered in August or September. I bought the frames several months ago, and at the time I bought two different styles for variety. One style was straightforward and easy to use. The other style was designed by Satan himself and could be featured on Armageddon Week on the History Channel. I should have known better than to pick a frame with pending patent -- really, frames have been around for centuries, and the usual style seems to hold up pretty well. You know how most frames have little swiveling closure tabs on the cardboard backing that you can twist out from under the frame itself to lift up the cardboard and replace the photo? Well, this one had eight locking mechanisms that you had to pry up from out of some deep metal channels; when that was done, the eight spring-like pieces between the four metal sides and the cardboard/glass lost their tension and popped the whole frame apart. So then you're left with four separate metal sides, eight half-moon shaped springy steel components, and the challenge of trying to reengage the pressure system without breaking the glass front of the frame.

I succeeded eventually, but I broke a fingernail, bruised my thumb, and have tiny glass shards on my carpet from where the metal frame pieces chipped away at the glass edges. Then I hung the photos on the long wall by my bed. Hopefully there won't be a major earthquake while I'm living here; I'm suddenly having visions of the frames exploding and sending metal components all over my sleeping form.

I spent the rest of the night reading LIFE IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE. I ordered the book while I was home during my sabbatical but never read it; it turns out that it's one of the most engaging and informative books I've read in awhile. Then again, perhaps it's only engaging if you have a deep and profound interest in English culture, and particularly in domestic arts, architecture, and society. But I read the overall intro chapter and then the chapters on 1720-1770 and 1770-1830, flagging many things that I intend to go back and put into my database sometime soon. If I ever decide to write medievals or Victorians, I'll have to go back and read some more; the author chronicles developments in English country houses from the first medieval castles to the twentieth century estates in decline. There are also tons of illustrations, paintings, etc., which is a good complement to the other two or three books I have on historical English architecture and design.

Okay, clearly I'm a total dork since that's how I chose to spend my Saturday night, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I suppose I should go to bed, though; I've got stuff I want to accomplish tomorrow morning, and I'm meeting Tom for coffee at two before coming home to finish the beef bourguignon and make a salad and potatoes. Have a lovely Sunday!