The title references the psychological profiles of the three people to whom my brother offered his breaded mushrooms at dinner tonight -- my mother refused entirely even though she loves breaded mushrooms, I traded him a cheese ball, and my father distracted him so that he could steal one off his plate. I think this is indicative of much more than just our mushroom acquisition methods!
Today was a v. good, v. lazy day; I spent most of the afternoon on the couch bellyaching to my mom about having to go back to work. I also did some last-minute packing, including the quart-sized jar of homemade sweet pickles that I'm hoping will not break in my checked luggage tomorrow. I successfully polished off the remnants of a container of Andersen Erickson french onion dip, and I'm looking forward to returning to the land of spinach tomorrow if only to save my arteries. Then, the four of us went out for dinner, where the breaded mushroom episode happened.
I would brood a bit about the differences between Iowa and California, but I already did that while talking to my dad about our various world travels and how strange and surreal it is to leave Iowa and end up somewhere completely different. Instead, I should really go to bed -- I sadly have to wake up at 3:15am so that I can leave the house by 4:15am to make it to Kansas City in time for my 9:50am flight. It really shouldn't take five and a half hours to get there and get on board the flight, but my brother has to run some errands on the way since he's leaving from Kansas City to go to Nashville for a wedding, so 4:15am it is. But since 3:15am is like 1:15am on the west coast, the likelihood that I'll make it to the new year is slim indeed. We shall see what happens -- but now it's time for bed!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
if you don't, well honey then you don't
I have v. little of interest to report today. I woke up late, messed around on the internet, showered, and then ate lunch -- it was my second-to-last day to have Andersen Erickson french onion dip, so I made the most of it. My grandmother showed up for a bit in the afternoon, sadly asking me the exact same questions she asks me every time she sees me ("when are you leaving? are you coming home for Aunt Becky's wedding? have you found a publisher for your book? how much time do you spend at work? etc., etc."). I realize, given my lack of patience with such things even though I feel horrible about it afterwards, that I am likely karmically condemning myself to future senility, but I had trouble remembering that in the moment.
However, I rebounded and spent the rest of the afternoon packing up my clothes and my Christmas gifts for Wednesday's flight back to California. Then, Katie would be happy to know that my mother made ham and bean soup for supper -- Katie has the mistaken impression that ham and bean soup is the only thing we eat, but we only have it the couple of times per year that my mother bakes a ham for a large family gathering, since the soup requires the leftover ham bone to make it delicious. And it was delicious -- for all of us except my brother, who hates the stuff and so chose to eat leftover chicken and noodles.
The only real thing of interest was that I signed up for a creative writing class at Stanford for winter quarter. The class is very craft-heavy; it apparently involves reading the works of great writers and then attempting to emulate and learn through their style in the writing assignments. It's only six weeks, but it's unfortunately on Saturday mornings, adding to my weekly commute. However, I get entrance to the library for the quarter, and so I think I'll likely go to the class in the mornings, and then spend the afternoon reading and researching the Regency period in the Stanford library during the afternoons. Yay.
Okay, definitely time for bed -- there's a lot I need to accomplish tomorrow if I'm going to be ready to leave on Wednesday! Not that I will be ready to leave, but I at least need to make sure that all my stuff makes it to California with me. Goodnight!
However, I rebounded and spent the rest of the afternoon packing up my clothes and my Christmas gifts for Wednesday's flight back to California. Then, Katie would be happy to know that my mother made ham and bean soup for supper -- Katie has the mistaken impression that ham and bean soup is the only thing we eat, but we only have it the couple of times per year that my mother bakes a ham for a large family gathering, since the soup requires the leftover ham bone to make it delicious. And it was delicious -- for all of us except my brother, who hates the stuff and so chose to eat leftover chicken and noodles.
The only real thing of interest was that I signed up for a creative writing class at Stanford for winter quarter. The class is very craft-heavy; it apparently involves reading the works of great writers and then attempting to emulate and learn through their style in the writing assignments. It's only six weeks, but it's unfortunately on Saturday mornings, adding to my weekly commute. However, I get entrance to the library for the quarter, and so I think I'll likely go to the class in the mornings, and then spend the afternoon reading and researching the Regency period in the Stanford library during the afternoons. Yay.
Okay, definitely time for bed -- there's a lot I need to accomplish tomorrow if I'm going to be ready to leave on Wednesday! Not that I will be ready to leave, but I at least need to make sure that all my stuff makes it to California with me. Goodnight!
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Scenes From Iowa, Part Three
Ice-covered trees along what used to be our fencerow; you don't need fence when you convert a field into a yard.
My favorite tree anywhere in our north, south, or back yards -- the south yard is mostly devoid of trees, but this one is gorgeous in summer and winter.
Scenes From Iowa, Part Two
Our Christmas Day dinner: prime rib, baked potato (with lots of my favorite Andersen Erickson French Onion sour cream), green beans, homemade roll, and spinach salad (that's the mayo- and cheese-covered blob of deliciousness on the lower right).
Ice on one of the branches in our front yard; the ice was even thicker a few days ago. This limb is hanging down vertically, likely after being taken out by last year's epic ice storm.
This is the end of our driveway, turning left (south) onto the gravel road that runs past our house.
Looking through our neighbor's 'gate' toward the cemetery where my family was and will be buried. The neighbor doesn't actually live by us; we can see the rotting remnants of a barn and a corncrib, but his house is in town.
Scenes From Iowa, Part One
From Thanksgiving -- the town Thanksgiving dinner in the Allerton Centennial Building
My father's chickens -- aren't they gorgeous? And if push comes to shove, they're totally edible!
My brother with his gift from Uncle Mark -- the Whomp It!
The view to our southeast when everything was frigid and covered in snow a few days ago.
pancho lost his band, you know...somewhere down in mexico
While eating brunch today (Amana bacon, blueberry muffins, and fried potatoes -- my father's specialty), my brother called out my father over the real lyrics to this Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard duet called "Pancho and Lefty". I never knew that that was the name of the song or that it was by Willie Nelson, but for the past twenty years, my father has occasionally sung "Pancho lost his band, you know...somewhere down in Mexico" to himself without ever continuing the song. It turns out that the real lyric is "Pancho met his match you know, on the deserts down in Mexico", and that it had absolutely nothing to do with Pancho Villa as dad always claimed. Sadness!
We recovered, though, and played a game of hearts in the afternoon, which my brother unfortunately won. Then, I did some shooting -- both in the gun sense and in the camera sense. I shot at some pop cans (you might say 'soda cans') with a couple of different handguns. My brother laughed at me when he saw me shoot the first gun with my ear protection around my neck and my sunglasses on top of my head -- but I forgot to put the ear protection on, and I made a conscious decision that I didn't want to ruin my expensive Bulgari sunglasses, particularly since they likely wouldn't have saved my eyes anyway. However, despite my poor decision-making skills, I still hit the targets several times, which made me happy. Then, I wandered around the front yard and took some pictures of the ice-covered landscape.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching some documentary on public television with my mom while she made delicious homemade chicken and noodles. The documentary followed a scientist tracing the exodus of early humans out of Africa to Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas in an attempt to document our 'family tree.' I should be barred from ever watching such shows; he was in the wilds of Arctic Circle Siberia with some miserable-looking nomadic reindeer herders, and all I could think was "I really want to go there!" While I had my doubts about some of his theories, I quite enjoyed it, although my brother came up with the title I would use if I filmed a similar show: "Cousin Fuckers: A Journey" (this came from a discussion about how the human population got down to a couple of bottlenecks of extremely limited population over the millennia, forcing us to go back to fucking our cousins until the population grew again, which we thought would be a good way to explain in layman's terms some of the theories currently on the table about evolution and migration).
I only have two more days left in Iowa, which makes me sad, so I will go to bed in an effort to make sure I wake up early enough tomorrow to enjoy it. Goodnight!
We recovered, though, and played a game of hearts in the afternoon, which my brother unfortunately won. Then, I did some shooting -- both in the gun sense and in the camera sense. I shot at some pop cans (you might say 'soda cans') with a couple of different handguns. My brother laughed at me when he saw me shoot the first gun with my ear protection around my neck and my sunglasses on top of my head -- but I forgot to put the ear protection on, and I made a conscious decision that I didn't want to ruin my expensive Bulgari sunglasses, particularly since they likely wouldn't have saved my eyes anyway. However, despite my poor decision-making skills, I still hit the targets several times, which made me happy. Then, I wandered around the front yard and took some pictures of the ice-covered landscape.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching some documentary on public television with my mom while she made delicious homemade chicken and noodles. The documentary followed a scientist tracing the exodus of early humans out of Africa to Australia, Asia, Europe, and the Americas in an attempt to document our 'family tree.' I should be barred from ever watching such shows; he was in the wilds of Arctic Circle Siberia with some miserable-looking nomadic reindeer herders, and all I could think was "I really want to go there!" While I had my doubts about some of his theories, I quite enjoyed it, although my brother came up with the title I would use if I filmed a similar show: "Cousin Fuckers: A Journey" (this came from a discussion about how the human population got down to a couple of bottlenecks of extremely limited population over the millennia, forcing us to go back to fucking our cousins until the population grew again, which we thought would be a good way to explain in layman's terms some of the theories currently on the table about evolution and migration).
I only have two more days left in Iowa, which makes me sad, so I will go to bed in an effort to make sure I wake up early enough tomorrow to enjoy it. Goodnight!
myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom
Tonight I left the house for the second time in the nine days (third time if you count the time I walked out to visit my father's chickens). Only a momentous occasion could drag me out into the wilds of my hometown; in this case, it was the opportunity to have dinner with Katie, who was in town for one day only and so lured me out into the treacherous conditions. It snowed most of the evening, after some truly strange weather; I don't know that I've ever seen a day before in which we had thunderstorms in the morning, a winter weather advisory and a flash flood watch in the afternoon, and snow in the evening.
But Katie was, as always, totally worth it. My family met up with her, her husband, and her father at one of the only restaurants in town, and it was surprisingly packed given how bad the weather was. So we had a good, albeit brief, time catching up with each other. She gave me a lovely picture frame for Christmas, but this was a tease because I'm still waiting to see the photos from her wedding two years ago and hoped that the frame contained one of the photos. I was still appreciative, of course -- and I'm hoping to visit her in Dallas sometime in the next couple of months, so perhaps I'll be able to raid her apartment and find a photo myself.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. My brother and I watched a travel show on public television and decided that we should put together a travel show -- either we will do one in which we do reenactments of various historical events in different destinations and play all the characters ourselves, or we will do one in which we pretend to go to various dangerous vacation destinations and hope that no one will be able to call us out on the fact that it was actually filmed in the US. Actually, I think we watched that today -- the days are kind of starting to blend together. But I know that the four of us spent the afternoon playing a couple of ill-fated games of canasta, since we only have three days left before I go back to California :( I'm not ready to leave and I'm not ready to go back to work, but it will be nice to be someplace that doesn't dump ice on you at any given opportunity.
I spent some more quality time with my journal tonight; I'm madly brainstorming Madeleine and Ferguson's story, and right now my ideas are totally outlandish. We'll see if I keep the outlandishness -- but right now I need to go to bed so that I can replenish my 'well of creativity'. Goodnight!
But Katie was, as always, totally worth it. My family met up with her, her husband, and her father at one of the only restaurants in town, and it was surprisingly packed given how bad the weather was. So we had a good, albeit brief, time catching up with each other. She gave me a lovely picture frame for Christmas, but this was a tease because I'm still waiting to see the photos from her wedding two years ago and hoped that the frame contained one of the photos. I was still appreciative, of course -- and I'm hoping to visit her in Dallas sometime in the next couple of months, so perhaps I'll be able to raid her apartment and find a photo myself.
The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. My brother and I watched a travel show on public television and decided that we should put together a travel show -- either we will do one in which we do reenactments of various historical events in different destinations and play all the characters ourselves, or we will do one in which we pretend to go to various dangerous vacation destinations and hope that no one will be able to call us out on the fact that it was actually filmed in the US. Actually, I think we watched that today -- the days are kind of starting to blend together. But I know that the four of us spent the afternoon playing a couple of ill-fated games of canasta, since we only have three days left before I go back to California :( I'm not ready to leave and I'm not ready to go back to work, but it will be nice to be someplace that doesn't dump ice on you at any given opportunity.
I spent some more quality time with my journal tonight; I'm madly brainstorming Madeleine and Ferguson's story, and right now my ideas are totally outlandish. We'll see if I keep the outlandishness -- but right now I need to go to bed so that I can replenish my 'well of creativity'. Goodnight!
Friday, December 26, 2008
the code of the ocean
I'm getting a lot of writing practice in -- I wrote several pages in my journal today, and I also just finished another post for zee romance blog. If I'm going to start writing book number two while keeping up with both blogs, I'm going to have to cut some mindless internet surfing out of my day and shift it into writing time instead.
Today was v. lazy. I stayed up until after two a.m. yesterday reading THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman, before deciding that I would enjoy the ending more if I got some sleep before reading it. I was right; while I hit the snooze button for an hour this morning because I had no real need to get up, I finally dragged myself upstairs, made a cup of tea, and finished the book. It was absolutely lovely, and I highly recommend it -- while it's more young-adult than, say, AMERICAN GODS or NEVERWHERE, the writing is still lush, the story is still highly imaginative, and the characters are still a weird blend of absurd and heartrending. I'll write more on zee romance blog in a few days, so I'll leave it at that.
I spent the afternoon doing nothing, unless you count a two-hour nap as something. Then I wrote in my journal for awhile before the family decided that we should all stop taking alternating naps and do something together. Some of us were not in the mood to play games, so we ended up watching FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. It was totally awesome, knee-deep in my favorite type of bizarre humor (particularly the weird British rocker boyfriend and the main character's Dracula-themed, puppet-performed rock opera musical). After the movie, I reverted to adulthood for half an hour to take care of my finances, then spent some more quality time journaling in an attempt to brainstorm some of the plot arcs for book number two.
I'm getting antsy to start writing again -- 2009 is just days away, and I intend to start writing book number two in January, even as I restart the process of querying and being rejected by agents for book number one. But I'm excited about book number two, and feel like I've learned so much from book number one that number two will be even better. But time will tell -- and I should go to bed, so that I can spend some more quality time with the family tomorrow. Only four days left in Iowa :( And then it's back to my regularly-scheduled city life, where I will attempt to reprioritize so that I can have ample time for writing over the next few months. Goodnight!
Today was v. lazy. I stayed up until after two a.m. yesterday reading THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman, before deciding that I would enjoy the ending more if I got some sleep before reading it. I was right; while I hit the snooze button for an hour this morning because I had no real need to get up, I finally dragged myself upstairs, made a cup of tea, and finished the book. It was absolutely lovely, and I highly recommend it -- while it's more young-adult than, say, AMERICAN GODS or NEVERWHERE, the writing is still lush, the story is still highly imaginative, and the characters are still a weird blend of absurd and heartrending. I'll write more on zee romance blog in a few days, so I'll leave it at that.
I spent the afternoon doing nothing, unless you count a two-hour nap as something. Then I wrote in my journal for awhile before the family decided that we should all stop taking alternating naps and do something together. Some of us were not in the mood to play games, so we ended up watching FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. It was totally awesome, knee-deep in my favorite type of bizarre humor (particularly the weird British rocker boyfriend and the main character's Dracula-themed, puppet-performed rock opera musical). After the movie, I reverted to adulthood for half an hour to take care of my finances, then spent some more quality time journaling in an attempt to brainstorm some of the plot arcs for book number two.
I'm getting antsy to start writing again -- 2009 is just days away, and I intend to start writing book number two in January, even as I restart the process of querying and being rejected by agents for book number one. But I'm excited about book number two, and feel like I've learned so much from book number one that number two will be even better. But time will tell -- and I should go to bed, so that I can spend some more quality time with the family tomorrow. Only four days left in Iowa :( And then it's back to my regularly-scheduled city life, where I will attempt to reprioritize so that I can have ample time for writing over the next few months. Goodnight!
Thursday, December 25, 2008
elevator, elevate...take me home
Merry Christmas, everyone! I had an absolutely delightful day, even if I had to wake up at seven a.m. to kick it off. Of course, the eastern view was gorgeous as I stood in the kitchen trying to inject some caffeine into my bloodstream; the sun came up over the hills to the east, streaks of red and gold warming the snow-covered landscape and highlighting a deer walking across the frozen pond. 'Twas truly idyllic in a way that the sirens screaming down Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco can never achieve.
We opened packages and all received excellent gifts that no one else in the family would want. My father got a pair of high-powered binoculars. My mother got some gardening supplies that she will force my father to share with her come springtime (lucky man). My brother got, among other things, a gigantic set of wrenches that are longer than my arms and twice as heavy. And I received books -- lovely, gorgeous books that I now really want to read despite my fatigue. I shall likely blog about them as I read them on zee romance blog; if you like just hearing about my day, you'll continue to get content here ad infinitum, but anything remotely literary is moving to zee romance blog forthwith.
But two of the books were cookbooks - Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics and the Culinary Institute of America's Book of Soups. I also got some fun kitchen gadgets, as well as a heating pad (to help with the destruction that my two-hour commute is wreaking on my back) and a teapot warmer. My brother scoffed at the fact that my Christmas gifts were more suitable for an old person than a twenty-seven-year-old, but I'm quite happy with what I got!
The rest of the day was wonderful. I took a nap after we were done opening packages, then managed to clean myself up in time for brunch. Gram came out to eat with us, and we had breakfast casserole (with farm-fresh eggs, of course), cinnamon rolls, and ambrosia. Then we all watched Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carrey movie in which Jim Carrey gets God's powers -- perhaps a strange choice, but my father *loves* that movie and so got it in his stocking from Santa this year. After that, we hung around waiting until we were hungry enough to eat again -- for supper, we had an absolutely perfect prime rib, baked potatoes, green beans, spinach salad (obviously not a fresh spinach and balsamic vinaigrette salad; think frozen spinach, hardboiled eggs, cheese, mayo, and some other ingredients I can't divulge for fear of having my mom put a hit on me), and homemade rolls. Mmmmmmmmm. I have a picture, but my camera's upstairs, so you'll have to wait to see the perfect Midwestern feast until I can upload my pics.
It's time for bed, and I'll be serenaded to sleep by the sounds of sheets of ice cracking outside my window -- it's above freezing for the first time since before I got home, and it rained/sleeted tonight, so the thick ice covering everything is starting to melt. I suppose this is a good thing, but I'm sad that the winter wonderland will turn to dreary mud. I hope you had a lovely, v. merry Christmas!
We opened packages and all received excellent gifts that no one else in the family would want. My father got a pair of high-powered binoculars. My mother got some gardening supplies that she will force my father to share with her come springtime (lucky man). My brother got, among other things, a gigantic set of wrenches that are longer than my arms and twice as heavy. And I received books -- lovely, gorgeous books that I now really want to read despite my fatigue. I shall likely blog about them as I read them on zee romance blog; if you like just hearing about my day, you'll continue to get content here ad infinitum, but anything remotely literary is moving to zee romance blog forthwith.
But two of the books were cookbooks - Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics and the Culinary Institute of America's Book of Soups. I also got some fun kitchen gadgets, as well as a heating pad (to help with the destruction that my two-hour commute is wreaking on my back) and a teapot warmer. My brother scoffed at the fact that my Christmas gifts were more suitable for an old person than a twenty-seven-year-old, but I'm quite happy with what I got!
The rest of the day was wonderful. I took a nap after we were done opening packages, then managed to clean myself up in time for brunch. Gram came out to eat with us, and we had breakfast casserole (with farm-fresh eggs, of course), cinnamon rolls, and ambrosia. Then we all watched Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carrey movie in which Jim Carrey gets God's powers -- perhaps a strange choice, but my father *loves* that movie and so got it in his stocking from Santa this year. After that, we hung around waiting until we were hungry enough to eat again -- for supper, we had an absolutely perfect prime rib, baked potatoes, green beans, spinach salad (obviously not a fresh spinach and balsamic vinaigrette salad; think frozen spinach, hardboiled eggs, cheese, mayo, and some other ingredients I can't divulge for fear of having my mom put a hit on me), and homemade rolls. Mmmmmmmmm. I have a picture, but my camera's upstairs, so you'll have to wait to see the perfect Midwestern feast until I can upload my pics.
It's time for bed, and I'll be serenaded to sleep by the sounds of sheets of ice cracking outside my window -- it's above freezing for the first time since before I got home, and it rained/sleeted tonight, so the thick ice covering everything is starting to melt. I suppose this is a good thing, but I'm sad that the winter wonderland will turn to dreary mud. I hope you had a lovely, v. merry Christmas!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
this river is wild
I should really go to bed; even though the youngest person in the house is twenty-three years old, we still have to get up early on Christmas morning to discover what Santa has brought for us. While my parents have stopped hiding Easter eggs and waking us up to make us find them (likely only because we usually aren't home at Easter -- and Aunt Becky did it this year), we still have to get up early to open packages. Even though I threatened to break off my brother's fingers if he knocks on my door (did you know I'm not a morning person?), I should set my alarm so that I can put my contacts in and brush my teeth before participating in our Christmas festivities.
We already had Christmas festivities again today; Christmas Eve afternoon is the usual time for us to celebrate Christmas with my sister and her kids. They came over for a late lunch (ham, baked beans, and scalloped potatoes -- mmm), and then we opened packages. It's nice to still have some kids in the family, although these particular kids are getting too old for toys. They aren't too old to be subjected to books, though, which is my favorite gift to give -- even if it isn't their favorite gift to receive, since Zane expressed gratitude that Michael shopped for him, which resulted in Zane receiving tools rather than books. Whatever, I'm just trying to do whatever I can to help the publishing industry survive long enough to publish me!
Speaking of publishing, I wrote a post on zee romance blog about ebook readers; three days in a row of romance blog posting is a good thing! But now, it's time for bed. Merry Christmas Eve!
We already had Christmas festivities again today; Christmas Eve afternoon is the usual time for us to celebrate Christmas with my sister and her kids. They came over for a late lunch (ham, baked beans, and scalloped potatoes -- mmm), and then we opened packages. It's nice to still have some kids in the family, although these particular kids are getting too old for toys. They aren't too old to be subjected to books, though, which is my favorite gift to give -- even if it isn't their favorite gift to receive, since Zane expressed gratitude that Michael shopped for him, which resulted in Zane receiving tools rather than books. Whatever, I'm just trying to do whatever I can to help the publishing industry survive long enough to publish me!
Speaking of publishing, I wrote a post on zee romance blog about ebook readers; three days in a row of romance blog posting is a good thing! But now, it's time for bed. Merry Christmas Eve!
we three kings of orient are
I would love to be a king of the orient. Sadly, I am merely a middle manager in a mainstream tech company, with delusions of becoming a successful novelist. I shall persevere, though, even if it means continuing to feel like I have two full-time jobs until one of them is either so successful or so all-consuming that I quit the other one.
I'm committing to writing more frequently in the romance blog (sararamsey.blogspot.com). Or at least, I've done it for the past two days; we'll see how long I can continue, but it's important to start building my online presence while I'm beginning the long slog towards publication. It seems a little strange to spend more time building an online presence for a pseudonymous persona than I do on genuine personal online interaction with my real friends -- but my real friends can't sell my novel, so my capitalist heart says c'est la vie. That doesn't mean that I intend to cut my real friends off (I'm actually setting a goal for the new year to either stay in touch with the people I'm still in touch with, or get back into touch with the people I see/talk to rarely), but it will likely happen over email or coffee (depending on location) rather than the ubiquitous Facebook.
I had a good day in the heartland. I finished wrapping some more presents, read most of the book on pitching to agents (more on that on the romance blog in the next couple of days), and escaped the house for an hour to run an errand with my father. While it was warmer today (~30), it still didn't get above freezing, and the two inches of snow we got last night merely added some padding to the thick layer of ice that still covers the roads. We're supposed to get more snow tonight, so we shall definitely have a lovely white Christmas. I must say that, while I wish it were a bit less icy, I'm glad that there's so much snow -- in a freezing winter wonderland, abandoned farmhouses and bleak landscapes look picturesque rather than depressing, and you can revel in the charm for a few moments before you remember that your homeland is rotting away.
But tonight is not a night for melancholy; it's the night before Christmas Eve! Merry almost Christmas!
I'm committing to writing more frequently in the romance blog (sararamsey.blogspot.com). Or at least, I've done it for the past two days; we'll see how long I can continue, but it's important to start building my online presence while I'm beginning the long slog towards publication. It seems a little strange to spend more time building an online presence for a pseudonymous persona than I do on genuine personal online interaction with my real friends -- but my real friends can't sell my novel, so my capitalist heart says c'est la vie. That doesn't mean that I intend to cut my real friends off (I'm actually setting a goal for the new year to either stay in touch with the people I'm still in touch with, or get back into touch with the people I see/talk to rarely), but it will likely happen over email or coffee (depending on location) rather than the ubiquitous Facebook.
I had a good day in the heartland. I finished wrapping some more presents, read most of the book on pitching to agents (more on that on the romance blog in the next couple of days), and escaped the house for an hour to run an errand with my father. While it was warmer today (~30), it still didn't get above freezing, and the two inches of snow we got last night merely added some padding to the thick layer of ice that still covers the roads. We're supposed to get more snow tonight, so we shall definitely have a lovely white Christmas. I must say that, while I wish it were a bit less icy, I'm glad that there's so much snow -- in a freezing winter wonderland, abandoned farmhouses and bleak landscapes look picturesque rather than depressing, and you can revel in the charm for a few moments before you remember that your homeland is rotting away.
But tonight is not a night for melancholy; it's the night before Christmas Eve! Merry almost Christmas!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
you know your team is morally bankrupt when sara is the nice cop
The title of the post is a quote from my brother; it is a readily-acknowledged fact in my family that I am coldhearted and ruthless, although I don't really know where they got that from. In this case Michael was referring to me and my father's power combo in this evening's canasta festivities; while the game that we carried over and finished from last night was really close, my dad and I smoked my mom and brother in the second game. Hopefully we'll play again and my mom/brother will have some better luck with their cards -- winning is fun, but it's substantially more fun when it's at least a little bit difficult to do so.
The only real story of interest from today is so disgustingly foul that I can't share it here for fear of alienating my sheltered city readership. Suffice it to say that it relates to my grandmother's bathroom and the lengths my father had to go to in order to repair it. But, Gram is home and in possession of a working toilet, my family is current on their hepatitis shots and so should be safe, and we shall never speak of this again.
I intended to go outside today, but was warned against it by my dad -- he said that I wouldn't make it more than ten feet, given that everything is a solid sheet of ice. I wanted to race my brother to see which of us could get farther before falling, but he has ice cleats and so had too much of an unfair advantage. We're supposed to get another 3-5" of snow tonight -- but the temperature made it up to eight degrees today! Lovely!
Okay, no more yakking. Luckily I'm done with my Christmas wrapping, so I can spend some quality time tomorrow either reading up on agent query letters or working on my web presence. Goodnight!
The only real story of interest from today is so disgustingly foul that I can't share it here for fear of alienating my sheltered city readership. Suffice it to say that it relates to my grandmother's bathroom and the lengths my father had to go to in order to repair it. But, Gram is home and in possession of a working toilet, my family is current on their hepatitis shots and so should be safe, and we shall never speak of this again.
I intended to go outside today, but was warned against it by my dad -- he said that I wouldn't make it more than ten feet, given that everything is a solid sheet of ice. I wanted to race my brother to see which of us could get farther before falling, but he has ice cleats and so had too much of an unfair advantage. We're supposed to get another 3-5" of snow tonight -- but the temperature made it up to eight degrees today! Lovely!
Okay, no more yakking. Luckily I'm done with my Christmas wrapping, so I can spend some quality time tomorrow either reading up on agent query letters or working on my web presence. Goodnight!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
stroopwafels, lasagna, and waaaay too many wamplers
The Wampler family fun continued today with an early Christmas celebration with my father's side of the family. We were supposed to have dinner and presents at my grandmother's house, but she had a problem with her sewer and so we moved the Christmas festivities up here instead. This was likely a good thing, since we have more space and better heating, but I believe that this is the first year that we've ever done Wampler family Christmas somewhere other than Gram's house (except for the year we did it in the hospital boardroom because Granddad was sick). Well, and the year that my parents and my visiting Aunt Becky got to watch me and my brother put on a totally awesome Christmas program in Ukraine -- which was also a year to remember since I got pepperoni, Mountain Dew, and a variety of other strange items for Christmas that I appreciated more than virtually any other gift I've ever gotten. Ah, the memories.
Anyway, we opened presents before eating dinner (aka lunch). I received some lovely presents, including a necklace made with ancient Byzantine glass, a Stanford sweatshirt and some other cardinal paraphernalia, an artistically-handmade blank book, and an avocado slicer. It was truly a strange and wondrous mishmash of stuff. We then ate our traditional Wampler family Christmas Eve supper as Sunday dinner: lasagna, garlic bread, layered lettuce, and jello salad. It's weird that we've always eaten lasagna, since we actually have absolutely no Italian ancestry, but I love the tradition. I also got to eat some stroopwafel, which Walter introduced me to when I visited him in Holland -- Aunt Becky's scandalous fiance was in the Netherlands on business and brought back a package of the wafer-thin waffles, which are filled with this caramel-y syrup. Mmmm.
I went outside for the first time in three days to visit Dad's chickens. Today was the coldest day in Iowa since 2000 (it never got above 0), and the windchill was apparently the worst since 1990. So despite my heavy jacket, gloves, and hat, I was still cold on the treacherous walk across the ice-encrusted snow to the chicken house. But the chickens are absolutely gorgeous, and my dad clearly loves them. That may sound weird, but my whole family is weird (as evidenced by the fact that my aunt, uncle, and scandalous fiance had a conversation about whether my brother should consider going into bear porn for a living), so raising chickens seems pretty normal by comparison.
The rest of the family sadly left mid-afternoon since there are blizzard warnings and wind chill warnings and all sorts of other weather problems going on across the state. My brother and I played a quick game of canasta, and then the four of us sat down to play -- but we had to stop so that my father could pick up my grandmother again and bring her back to our house to sleep over since her bathroom was out of commission. Then we watched some more fine CBS programming before deciding to call it a night.
I intend to use the next couple of days, while the rest of my family is supposedly working, to think about Book #2 and redesign my approach to finding an agent for Book #1. It's also likely that we'll play canasta, Monopoly, Rail Baron, or something else, but we shall see what happens. I hope all of you are having lovely (or at least warmer) weekends!
Anyway, we opened presents before eating dinner (aka lunch). I received some lovely presents, including a necklace made with ancient Byzantine glass, a Stanford sweatshirt and some other cardinal paraphernalia, an artistically-handmade blank book, and an avocado slicer. It was truly a strange and wondrous mishmash of stuff. We then ate our traditional Wampler family Christmas Eve supper as Sunday dinner: lasagna, garlic bread, layered lettuce, and jello salad. It's weird that we've always eaten lasagna, since we actually have absolutely no Italian ancestry, but I love the tradition. I also got to eat some stroopwafel, which Walter introduced me to when I visited him in Holland -- Aunt Becky's scandalous fiance was in the Netherlands on business and brought back a package of the wafer-thin waffles, which are filled with this caramel-y syrup. Mmmm.
I went outside for the first time in three days to visit Dad's chickens. Today was the coldest day in Iowa since 2000 (it never got above 0), and the windchill was apparently the worst since 1990. So despite my heavy jacket, gloves, and hat, I was still cold on the treacherous walk across the ice-encrusted snow to the chicken house. But the chickens are absolutely gorgeous, and my dad clearly loves them. That may sound weird, but my whole family is weird (as evidenced by the fact that my aunt, uncle, and scandalous fiance had a conversation about whether my brother should consider going into bear porn for a living), so raising chickens seems pretty normal by comparison.
The rest of the family sadly left mid-afternoon since there are blizzard warnings and wind chill warnings and all sorts of other weather problems going on across the state. My brother and I played a quick game of canasta, and then the four of us sat down to play -- but we had to stop so that my father could pick up my grandmother again and bring her back to our house to sleep over since her bathroom was out of commission. Then we watched some more fine CBS programming before deciding to call it a night.
I intend to use the next couple of days, while the rest of my family is supposedly working, to think about Book #2 and redesign my approach to finding an agent for Book #1. It's also likely that we'll play canasta, Monopoly, Rail Baron, or something else, but we shall see what happens. I hope all of you are having lovely (or at least warmer) weekends!
you've got to know when to meld 'em
Today was a v. all-American day in the heartland. I began the day with some not-so-very-all-American sloth and laziness, but I paid the price for it -- just as I was about to get in the shower at one p.m., the power went out, which meant that I had to take my shower in the dark. The power flickered off and on all afternoon, which is likely to continue over the next couple of days. All of the power lines are still covered in the heavy ice that we got on Thursday, and with the winds picking up and snow starting to fall again, the ice-covered lines could easily snap. The ice isn't going away anytime soon, either, since it's currently below zero and tomorrow night's low temperature could get to -12. Brrrrr.
My dad and my brother spent some time this afternoon messing around with the generator that my father rented in preparation for this storm -- they rented a generator last year during the ice storm of the century, and were v. thankful since many people were out of power for several days. So far our power has been on since five or six p.m., but there's no telling what the next few days will bring.
But, for the most part, we all stayed indoors and participated in some v. family-oriented activities. Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and my cousin Andrew (aka Drewbaby) came down, my grandmother came out, and we snacked incessantly before my dad made pizza for dinner. The name of the game today was canasta: a two-deck card game that we used to play all the time in Ukraine but really haven't played much since. It's really quite fun; it's part of the rummy family of card games, so you have to lay down triplets or more of the same face value (your initial lay-down is called the "meld", hence the title of my post), eventually building up to a canasta of seven of a kind (either natural or "dirty", which uses wildcards to build the canasta). I ended up playing two and a half times, since we called the third game quits around 11pm so that the visitors could return to Gram's house for the night. While I'm hopeful that we have a game of Rail Baron in the future while I'm home for Christmas, I bet we'll play canasta again -- it's definitely less time-consuming than Rail Baron, but a good change of pace from hearts.
My parents, brother and I used to play a lot of games in Ukraine -- it was one of the only things we could do, since we couldn't understand any of the television programming and we were there before the days of the (user-friendly, >28k-modem-speed) internet. In fact, the only activities I remember us doing are playing card games, playing Monopoly, and watching each other play old-school computer games (a pastime with limited audience participation, particularly since my brother, father and I are susceptible to motion sickness and could only watch or play for a little bit before being out of commission). Oh, and trying to find edible food, and reading the same books over and over again, and listening to Voice of America radio when the cranes outside our building weren't parked in the position that would block our signal. Those were the days! It's no wonder we're all just a little bit strange...
I should really go to bed; I got my parents to watch an episode of "House" from 12-1am, which they loved, although they'll likely never see it again since it's not on CBS. Now I have to sleep, so that I can get up early to do some wrapping before going to Gram's for Christmas dinner. Goodnight!
My dad and my brother spent some time this afternoon messing around with the generator that my father rented in preparation for this storm -- they rented a generator last year during the ice storm of the century, and were v. thankful since many people were out of power for several days. So far our power has been on since five or six p.m., but there's no telling what the next few days will bring.
But, for the most part, we all stayed indoors and participated in some v. family-oriented activities. Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and my cousin Andrew (aka Drewbaby) came down, my grandmother came out, and we snacked incessantly before my dad made pizza for dinner. The name of the game today was canasta: a two-deck card game that we used to play all the time in Ukraine but really haven't played much since. It's really quite fun; it's part of the rummy family of card games, so you have to lay down triplets or more of the same face value (your initial lay-down is called the "meld", hence the title of my post), eventually building up to a canasta of seven of a kind (either natural or "dirty", which uses wildcards to build the canasta). I ended up playing two and a half times, since we called the third game quits around 11pm so that the visitors could return to Gram's house for the night. While I'm hopeful that we have a game of Rail Baron in the future while I'm home for Christmas, I bet we'll play canasta again -- it's definitely less time-consuming than Rail Baron, but a good change of pace from hearts.
My parents, brother and I used to play a lot of games in Ukraine -- it was one of the only things we could do, since we couldn't understand any of the television programming and we were there before the days of the (user-friendly, >28k-modem-speed) internet. In fact, the only activities I remember us doing are playing card games, playing Monopoly, and watching each other play old-school computer games (a pastime with limited audience participation, particularly since my brother, father and I are susceptible to motion sickness and could only watch or play for a little bit before being out of commission). Oh, and trying to find edible food, and reading the same books over and over again, and listening to Voice of America radio when the cranes outside our building weren't parked in the position that would block our signal. Those were the days! It's no wonder we're all just a little bit strange...
I should really go to bed; I got my parents to watch an episode of "House" from 12-1am, which they loved, although they'll likely never see it again since it's not on CBS. Now I have to sleep, so that I can get up early to do some wrapping before going to Gram's for Christmas dinner. Goodnight!
Friday, December 19, 2008
the winner takes it all
Today was mostly a great day. I had a conference call at eleven a.m. and successfully set up a webcam for it so that I was able to VC into the office. I am usually adamant about not working while on vacation, but I needed to take care of the stuff being discussed on the call, and then I decided to clear out the remnants of my inbox and cross off the major things on my to-do list so that I can start 2009 with a relatively clean slate. That took a couple of hours in the afternoon, but now I'm totally free and don't intend to do any work at all for my employer for over two weeks. Yay.
I spent the remainder of the afternoon finishing up my Christmas cards; too bad it's so icy outside that it's difficult to drive, and our mailbox was so iced over last night that we couldn't open it. The ice isn't going to melt anytime soon -- it's supposed to get down to -4 on Sunday and -8 and Monday. If I don't freeze to death, the week promises to be fun; my father's siblings are coming down this weekend to celebrate Christmas early, and then we'll celebrate with my sister on Christmas Eve and just the four of us on Christmas Day. It will all be appropriately low-key and somber, given the grim economic outlook -- although my family doesn't really do low-key and somber well, as evidenced by how much we seem to like to talk about alcohol, sex, strange occurrences, etc. Or perhaps that's more of an indication about how every Wampler I've ever met seems genetically programmed to tell stories and try to one-up each other with little-known facts. Either way, it leads to a lot of entertainment, most of which is so strange and ridiculous that it's probably a good thing we live in the middle of nowhere.
My mother made a delicious supper (mushroom steak, baked potatoes, corn, and cottage cheese -- several food groups were missing, but the delicious one remained in higher concentrations), and then the four of us played a game of hearts. It was the first time I've won in at least a couple of years, and I did it by running the table twice. Naturally, I gloated just a little bit, but I expect to lose all future games of hearts, Rail Baron, canasta, etc. for the remainder of my time at home. Then we settled in to watch some fine CBS programming (1.5 episodes of "NUMB3RS", the news, some Letterman) before I decided to go to bed.
The only fly in the proverbial ointment was that I checked my work email tonight and found that, instead of giving us the Christmas bonus that they've given us for the past five Christmases that I've been employed there, they have instead chosen to give us all a new cellphone. Granted, my company launched a cellphone this year to quite a bit of fanfare, and I vaguely wanted one -- but I didn't want to switch to T-Mobile, and I just bought a freaking iPhone last week, locking myself into a freaking two-year contract. Now I have a $400 phone, which counts as part of my overall compensation for the year, and which my company has expressly forbidden me from reselling. Dammit. I know I sound incredibly spoiled, given the overall down nature of the economy and the pleasure that I should take in being employed -- but couldn't they assume that, as employees of a tech company in one of the most tech-savvy areas in the world, many of us would already have some sort of fancy, recently-purchased smartphone? Now I have two phones that don't work in Iowa, particularly since we don't have wireless in the house either, which turns both the iPhone and my company's phone into useless paperweights.
Okay, no more complaints, it's time for bed!
I spent the remainder of the afternoon finishing up my Christmas cards; too bad it's so icy outside that it's difficult to drive, and our mailbox was so iced over last night that we couldn't open it. The ice isn't going to melt anytime soon -- it's supposed to get down to -4 on Sunday and -8 and Monday. If I don't freeze to death, the week promises to be fun; my father's siblings are coming down this weekend to celebrate Christmas early, and then we'll celebrate with my sister on Christmas Eve and just the four of us on Christmas Day. It will all be appropriately low-key and somber, given the grim economic outlook -- although my family doesn't really do low-key and somber well, as evidenced by how much we seem to like to talk about alcohol, sex, strange occurrences, etc. Or perhaps that's more of an indication about how every Wampler I've ever met seems genetically programmed to tell stories and try to one-up each other with little-known facts. Either way, it leads to a lot of entertainment, most of which is so strange and ridiculous that it's probably a good thing we live in the middle of nowhere.
My mother made a delicious supper (mushroom steak, baked potatoes, corn, and cottage cheese -- several food groups were missing, but the delicious one remained in higher concentrations), and then the four of us played a game of hearts. It was the first time I've won in at least a couple of years, and I did it by running the table twice. Naturally, I gloated just a little bit, but I expect to lose all future games of hearts, Rail Baron, canasta, etc. for the remainder of my time at home. Then we settled in to watch some fine CBS programming (1.5 episodes of "NUMB3RS", the news, some Letterman) before I decided to go to bed.
The only fly in the proverbial ointment was that I checked my work email tonight and found that, instead of giving us the Christmas bonus that they've given us for the past five Christmases that I've been employed there, they have instead chosen to give us all a new cellphone. Granted, my company launched a cellphone this year to quite a bit of fanfare, and I vaguely wanted one -- but I didn't want to switch to T-Mobile, and I just bought a freaking iPhone last week, locking myself into a freaking two-year contract. Now I have a $400 phone, which counts as part of my overall compensation for the year, and which my company has expressly forbidden me from reselling. Dammit. I know I sound incredibly spoiled, given the overall down nature of the economy and the pleasure that I should take in being employed -- but couldn't they assume that, as employees of a tech company in one of the most tech-savvy areas in the world, many of us would already have some sort of fancy, recently-purchased smartphone? Now I have two phones that don't work in Iowa, particularly since we don't have wireless in the house either, which turns both the iPhone and my company's phone into useless paperweights.
Okay, no more complaints, it's time for bed!
livin' la vida loca
I made it home safely, despite the fact that the drive from Kansas City to my ancestral home took four and a half hours rather than two and a half hours due to the ridiculous ice storm going on in the midwest right now. My parents and brother picked me up, and rather than stopping to have dinner for my mother's birthday, we drove through a McDonald's so that we could keep on trucking. As a sign of how bad the ice was -- while we drove, the side-view mirrors accumulated five-inch icicles, and the antenna was nearly .75" wide from ice by the time we got home (after having been cleared once when we stopped for diesel halfway home).
However, we had an entertaining time nonetheless -- or at least Dad, Michael, and I did, since we spent the last couple of hours singing along poorly to the "90's at 9" satellite radio station. My poor mother didn't sing along, but I discovered something crucial about her -- you can sing for hours, you can tease other people in the car, you can (like my brother) tell a story about drinking a bottle of rum in a swimming, but you cannot, under any circumstances, make fun of Iowa public television's "CreateTV" programming, which she watches religiously for their gardening shows. Lesson learned!
Driving through an ice storm and singing along to "Livin' La Vida Loca" with your dad and brother is a surreal experience that I recommend to everyone. But, I made it home, and while this may have been nearly equivalent to last year in terms of treacherous driving conditions, I didn't lose my luggage and I didn't have to pay $200 to rent a car to get me out of Chicago, so I feel like it went blissfully by comparison. I can't wait to see what adventure my Christmas trip will provide next year -- I'm thinking I should take the train and see if it gets held up by the last of the great western train robbers. I'm sure one of them has been laying low for the past eight or nine decades, waiting to strike again.
Finally, double happy birthday wishes to my mother and to my Chandlord! Strange that the two people who have provided me with a place to sleep this month have birthdays on the same day...
However, we had an entertaining time nonetheless -- or at least Dad, Michael, and I did, since we spent the last couple of hours singing along poorly to the "90's at 9" satellite radio station. My poor mother didn't sing along, but I discovered something crucial about her -- you can sing for hours, you can tease other people in the car, you can (like my brother) tell a story about drinking a bottle of rum in a swimming, but you cannot, under any circumstances, make fun of Iowa public television's "CreateTV" programming, which she watches religiously for their gardening shows. Lesson learned!
Driving through an ice storm and singing along to "Livin' La Vida Loca" with your dad and brother is a surreal experience that I recommend to everyone. But, I made it home, and while this may have been nearly equivalent to last year in terms of treacherous driving conditions, I didn't lose my luggage and I didn't have to pay $200 to rent a car to get me out of Chicago, so I feel like it went blissfully by comparison. I can't wait to see what adventure my Christmas trip will provide next year -- I'm thinking I should take the train and see if it gets held up by the last of the great western train robbers. I'm sure one of them has been laying low for the past eight or nine decades, waiting to strike again.
Finally, double happy birthday wishes to my mother and to my Chandlord! Strange that the two people who have provided me with a place to sleep this month have birthdays on the same day...
Thursday, December 18, 2008
the best care in the air
Midwest Airlines' motto is "The Best Care in the Air" - but they apparently have the worst care on the ground. As evidence, the check-in counter in San Francisco contains only two gate positions, which meant I had to wait in line almost an hour to check my luggage even though I'd checked into my flight and printed my boarding pass yesterday.
But, this is likely just the tip of the iceberg (for reals): my horoscope for today says:
"You may feel like a billiard ball today as you careen off one experience only to hit another. Your day won't likely unfold according to your plan or anyone else's. Instead, you must keep changing your agenda to accommodate the shifting circumstances. Letting go of concrete expectations can turn a difficult day into an exciting one that is filled with surprise."
It could be an adventure; apparently my father has already rented a generator for our house in case we end up without power like they did during last year's ice storm. So we'll have to see if they can make it to Kansas City to pick me up when there may be three-quarters of an inch of ice on the roads. Yay. Wish me luck!
But, this is likely just the tip of the iceberg (for reals): my horoscope for today says:
"You may feel like a billiard ball today as you careen off one experience only to hit another. Your day won't likely unfold according to your plan or anyone else's. Instead, you must keep changing your agenda to accommodate the shifting circumstances. Letting go of concrete expectations can turn a difficult day into an exciting one that is filled with surprise."
It could be an adventure; apparently my father has already rented a generator for our house in case we end up without power like they did during last year's ice storm. So we'll have to see if they can make it to Kansas City to pick me up when there may be three-quarters of an inch of ice on the roads. Yay. Wish me luck!
i just want, i just want love
I'm all packed up and ready to go back to Iowa. Whether Iowa is ready to receive me is another story -- there is a chance of an ice storm tomorrow, which hopefully won't overly delay my flight into Kansas City, but may impede my parents' ability to pick me up.
But, if and when I get home, I'm looking forward to really relaxing for a couple of weeks. Even though I was just home a couple of weeks ago, the last three weeks have been ridiculously hectic. I'm feeling the need to get back to my roots -- or, at the very least, stop thinking about my corporate life and all the petty betrayals and economic worries that seem to be affecting everyone.
I'm also super excited to start refocusing on my romance writing. I intend to use the break to fully plot out book #2 (or at least as fully plot it as I can without writing the thing -- challenging, since I tend to not know what the characters are going to do until they do it). I also want to get ready to start aggressively querying agents in January, in the hopes that the post-holiday good cheer will a) make them more receptive to my work and b) make me less sensitive to their rejection.
Pete got me an awesome gift today -- a book of thirty postcards of romance novel covers. The artist who painted the covers is clearly incredibly talented. I took photos of three of my favorites:
I love this montage: any book in which a riverboat and a mountain lion figure prominently is a winner. In fact, I read a book with a riverboat in it once; I wonder if there was a mountain lion...
WTF is going on here?? Is the guy raising his hands to the heavens over the car the same guy who is facing right? Is he some sort of mild-mannered office man who turns into a race car god? How is any of this romantic?
This one may be my favorite: a car accident AND a UFO sighting. Super hot!
I really hope that my cover turns out half as nice someday. But right now, it's time for bed!
But, if and when I get home, I'm looking forward to really relaxing for a couple of weeks. Even though I was just home a couple of weeks ago, the last three weeks have been ridiculously hectic. I'm feeling the need to get back to my roots -- or, at the very least, stop thinking about my corporate life and all the petty betrayals and economic worries that seem to be affecting everyone.
I'm also super excited to start refocusing on my romance writing. I intend to use the break to fully plot out book #2 (or at least as fully plot it as I can without writing the thing -- challenging, since I tend to not know what the characters are going to do until they do it). I also want to get ready to start aggressively querying agents in January, in the hopes that the post-holiday good cheer will a) make them more receptive to my work and b) make me less sensitive to their rejection.
Pete got me an awesome gift today -- a book of thirty postcards of romance novel covers. The artist who painted the covers is clearly incredibly talented. I took photos of three of my favorites:
I love this montage: any book in which a riverboat and a mountain lion figure prominently is a winner. In fact, I read a book with a riverboat in it once; I wonder if there was a mountain lion...
WTF is going on here?? Is the guy raising his hands to the heavens over the car the same guy who is facing right? Is he some sort of mild-mannered office man who turns into a race car god? How is any of this romantic?
This one may be my favorite: a car accident AND a UFO sighting. Super hot!
I really hope that my cover turns out half as nice someday. But right now, it's time for bed!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
i could fall into the arms of anyone but you now
Today was generally excellent. It rained heavily throughout my commute, making me fifteen minutes late for my 7:30am meeting -- and so I decided to skip the whole thing and work instead, which was a key decision because it gave me over two uninterrupted work hours. Even though they ended up being interrupted by a fun/depressing conversation with my friend Joy, I managed to scrape the bottom of my email inbox -- I'm down to nineteen emails, and I haven't seen a number that low in weeks. It brightened my whole week, which is a rather sad and pathetic thing to say.
I had another bright spot -- Chandlord came for lunch, and it gave us a chance to catch up in a one-on-one format, sans the awful caterwauling we experienced from our fellow Rock Band players on Sunday. As usual, it was v. lowely to see her (and no, 'v. lowely' isn't a typo). While I adore living in her apartment, I would rather have her here, so hopefully we will live in the same general vicinity again someday! I also got to see Katrina for a few minutes, since she works in the same building as my favorite cafe, but I had to abandon them to their fun for another string of meetings.
I left work at 4:30, but by the time I got home and ran a couple of errands, I was too exhausted to rally and go to a bar for drinks with two of my work friends (Sarah and Shawn) who are moving to Singapore :( I feel lame, but I would have felt lamer if I fell asleep in a cab and got taken for a $70 tour of the city, so I think I made the right decision. And now, even though it's 9:30pm and my youth is slipping away from me, I'm going to go to bed -- I have another 8am meeting tomorrow that I can't be late for, so I should get some sleep.
But finally, I leave you with this picture that Katrina took of me and Adit at the holiday party on Friday. I was tipsy but not falling-down drunk -- and I always smile in photos, despite Adit's tendency to look too-cool-for-school:
Doesn't he look stylish? And for once, I feel like I *almost* held my own with him (almost).
I had another bright spot -- Chandlord came for lunch, and it gave us a chance to catch up in a one-on-one format, sans the awful caterwauling we experienced from our fellow Rock Band players on Sunday. As usual, it was v. lowely to see her (and no, 'v. lowely' isn't a typo). While I adore living in her apartment, I would rather have her here, so hopefully we will live in the same general vicinity again someday! I also got to see Katrina for a few minutes, since she works in the same building as my favorite cafe, but I had to abandon them to their fun for another string of meetings.
I left work at 4:30, but by the time I got home and ran a couple of errands, I was too exhausted to rally and go to a bar for drinks with two of my work friends (Sarah and Shawn) who are moving to Singapore :( I feel lame, but I would have felt lamer if I fell asleep in a cab and got taken for a $70 tour of the city, so I think I made the right decision. And now, even though it's 9:30pm and my youth is slipping away from me, I'm going to go to bed -- I have another 8am meeting tomorrow that I can't be late for, so I should get some sleep.
But finally, I leave you with this picture that Katrina took of me and Adit at the holiday party on Friday. I was tipsy but not falling-down drunk -- and I always smile in photos, despite Adit's tendency to look too-cool-for-school:
Doesn't he look stylish? And for once, I feel like I *almost* held my own with him (almost).
Monday, December 15, 2008
you try to tell yourself the things you try to tell yourself to make yourself forget
Despite all the lessons that I learned about balance and finding my inner peace and all that crap this year, today was a complete failure in my workaholic recovery process. I had meetings straight from 8am to 4:30pm, answered email for an hour, had dinner with Terry from 5:30 to 6:45, and then had a meeting with someone in India from 7pm to 7:30pm. Since I have another meeting with India at 7:30am tomorrow, I really want to go to bed.
I really wish that I could completely stop caring about my job -- it would make my quest for balance easier. But while I've 'recovered' in the sense that I no longer work weekends and I rarely work nights, I still care waaaaaay too much, so that I spend much of my commute stewing about stuff. This might be good in some ways, since it gives me a chance to 'detoxify my left-hand column', to use the language of the management coaching firm we paid an obscene amount of money to teach us common-sense stuff wrapped up in more interesting words. Detoxifying my left-hand column involves transitioning stuff that belongs in the left-hand column of my darkest feelings and emotions into positive, action-oriented language that I can share externally in my right-hand column. So where my left-hand inner monologue may be "I hate you and this entire project," my right-hand outer dialogue might start with "This is an interesting approach, but have you considered x?" Too bad my left-hand column is way more entertaining than my right-hand column -- but my left-hand column also begrudgingly accepts the need for a paycheck and so defers to the right-hand column. But if I ever stop getting paid, watch out!
Anyway, I'm looking forward to Christmas and to a two-week period of detoxifying my left-hand column while eating a lot, hanging out with my family, and hopefully catching up on reading and starting to brainstorm Book Two. It will be an interesting experiment to see if my left-hand column becomes more or less toxic under the influence of an Iowa winter, since it was apparently ~7 degrees today. Ugh.
Okay, I could rant some more, but as I found out yesterday, apparently Katrina and Vidya both read every detail of my mundane "this is what I ate/bought/did today" posts, but skim my brooding "this is how I feel about life" posts. So in the interest of keeping up my readership, it's time for bed!
I really wish that I could completely stop caring about my job -- it would make my quest for balance easier. But while I've 'recovered' in the sense that I no longer work weekends and I rarely work nights, I still care waaaaaay too much, so that I spend much of my commute stewing about stuff. This might be good in some ways, since it gives me a chance to 'detoxify my left-hand column', to use the language of the management coaching firm we paid an obscene amount of money to teach us common-sense stuff wrapped up in more interesting words. Detoxifying my left-hand column involves transitioning stuff that belongs in the left-hand column of my darkest feelings and emotions into positive, action-oriented language that I can share externally in my right-hand column. So where my left-hand inner monologue may be "I hate you and this entire project," my right-hand outer dialogue might start with "This is an interesting approach, but have you considered x?" Too bad my left-hand column is way more entertaining than my right-hand column -- but my left-hand column also begrudgingly accepts the need for a paycheck and so defers to the right-hand column. But if I ever stop getting paid, watch out!
Anyway, I'm looking forward to Christmas and to a two-week period of detoxifying my left-hand column while eating a lot, hanging out with my family, and hopefully catching up on reading and starting to brainstorm Book Two. It will be an interesting experiment to see if my left-hand column becomes more or less toxic under the influence of an Iowa winter, since it was apparently ~7 degrees today. Ugh.
Okay, I could rant some more, but as I found out yesterday, apparently Katrina and Vidya both read every detail of my mundane "this is what I ate/bought/did today" posts, but skim my brooding "this is how I feel about life" posts. So in the interest of keeping up my readership, it's time for bed!
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