You Learn Something New Every Day

Vegas... and Chad Kroeger's Hair

2008-11-17T15:48:00.003-08:00

Jeez. What's up with Chad Kroeger's hair in the new Nickelback video? I just saw a clip.... and I'm thinking... he used the MagicCuts coupon from the Sunday paper.

So, yeah. Trying new stuff. I went to Las Vegas for the first time this week, and I did LOTS of new things within the larger New Thing of Traveling to Sin City. Not a lot of it was sinful, though, as we shared a room with friends, and Chris and I Just Won't Go There (unlike some people we know who went at it like bunnies in the queen bed right next to our friends while they thought they were asleep, gag). (Hmm, lots of random caps and parentheticals in this post. Oh, well. It's literary.)

Some of the new things I did, not in order of importance, coolness, or enlightening-ness, are:

1. Drank what was essentially a slurpee spiked with 151 out of a clear plastic football while watching a girl with DD boobs and a size 0 waist wearing fishnet stockings and a cheap bustier spin the Money Wheel as our male friends lost hundreds of dollars on Freemont Street.

2. Took a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead. Oh, God, my credit card is never going to be paid off, but it was an incredible experience worth every penny. We took off from Boulder City, flew over the lake and Hoover Dam, then landed right by the Colorado River, how cool is that?

3. Puked on a helicopter. Cool people do not get air sick. Good thing I don't have to worry about being cool. At least I made it in the bag.

4. Took in a Cirque de Soliel show. I've seen a Cirque show before, but never in Vegas, and never on a stage built solely for that purpose. It was also amazing.

5. Watched the World Series of Poker final table, live and in person at the Rio. Poker was neato, the Rio was kind of depressing in an 80's kind of way.

6. Was offered prostitutes. Multiple times.

7. Watched the Bellagio water show. Which I could do all day long. Loved it. For someone born under an Earth sign, I am obsessed with water.

8. Listened to a friend barf on my hotel room carpet. Not particularly life-altering, that one.

9. Walked eight gazillion miles. I'm not exaggerating. It's a walking city. Next time I go I'm going to bring a pedometer, and recommend that anyone else who goes does too, so you can count the eight gazillion miles you will walk.

10. Admired and hated the architecture of the city, for it's imagination and it's awful, awful wastefulness.

All in all, a worthwhile trip. It's one of those things that everyone should do once in their life, whether they want to or not. In many ways, I found the city depressing. The entire place exists solely for the entertainment of people who have enough money to entertain themselves, and there were moments where you could literally see folks trying to decide what to do to distract their minds from... their minds. On the other hand, the creativity that went into making it, the artistry of the shows, the diversity of the food, and the diversity of the people, were pretty neat. And the alcohol was cheaper than food or water. I think that should be the city motto.

Working out for its own sake

2008-10-27T18:48:00.002-07:00

I definitely did something new today. I admit, I was kinda burned out from the fire - mwhaha - and the lack of routine and the total drudgery of the workout routine that I did have, so I didn't work out, like really workout, for two weeks. Sure, I played tennis once or twice, went for some long walks, went for a swim in Whistler, but unless the sweat is pouring out of me, and I feel like Guantanamo Bay would be a better fate than the one I'm imposing on my body by my workout, then I'm not working out. So by today, I was absolutely excited to workout.

Usually, when I workout, it's because a) I want to lose weight and b) I want to be healthy. Though I will admit I'm feeling lumpier than usual, and so recognize the need and desire to get back on the weight loss wagon, today, I worked out for neither of those reasons. Today, I kicked my own ass on the treadmill and the weight room because I wanted to. And no, that's not some messed up self-masochism. I wanted to feel my muscles exhausted, I wanted to pant for breath, I wanted to burn. Okay, that sounds kinda pervy. Or, like I'm too stupid to figure out that great sex would provide the effects described above. Nope, not stupid. But, unfortunately for me cause I'm lazy and sex is easier than a hard workout, sex and a hard workout just don't produce the same endorphins.

My workout today was everything I hoped it'd be. I was so damn happy to be able to work out, that I had the opportunity to do it. I ran harder than I've run in at least six months, my resistance training was challenging and kept my heart rate up in the training zone, and I had to walk home from the gym on wobbly legs. It was fucking awesome.

Getting away, just because we can/should/need to and not feeling guilty about it

2008-10-20T15:53:00.003-07:00

Let me tell you, folks, that's a new one for me. Usually, when I get away, my life has gotten stressful to the point that if I don't go away, things in my brain will start to crumble and break. This time, I recognized the stress before it got to the stale-cookie-like crumbling level. See previous post regarding fire.

Our good friends Mike, Stacey, David and Jenny got us a weekend at their condo in Whistler for a wedding present, and Chris and I both agreed that now was the time to use it. We left after work on Friday, and had a kind of harrowing drive through the rain and construction-confused roads, but got to Whistler safely at about dinner time that night. We had a nice dead-animal dinner at the Keg, came back to the condo, and enjoyed the heated outdoor pool and jacuzzi. That was QUITE nice. Saturday we did some hiking, shopping, and brunching. It's absolutely gorgeous up there this time of year - the trees are all turning, and everything was green and yellow and red, against a bright blue sky. We got home early Sunday afternoon, and spent it putting our house back together. Between the mini-vacation and just having our living space back in order, my brain and body and soul felt a helluva lot better.

Usually, after a trip like this where I spent too much money eating out and gas driving and twice as much on a new memory card as I would have at home because I'm a moron and left my other memory card in the computer, I am wracked with guilt - I should have spent this money elsewhere, I shouldn't have wasted, etc. This time, I was like, "Yeah. We needed that. It was good."

So... we're going to Vegas in November. The Grand Canyon is kind of close to there. I really want to go, but since we're only there for four days, I don't want to drive. So a friend (a much wealthier friend) suggested a helicopter tour. Mike looked it up (he and Stace and a bunch of others are also going to Vegas in November) and couldn't find any for less than $300 per person. My eyeballs almost fell out of my head. I started making excuses for why it wouldn't work, which really boiled down to the fact that I'd feel guilty for spending the money. Then I thought... when will you ever get the chance to see the Grand Canyon from the sky, and land in the middle of one of the crevasses? What if you NEVER get the chance to do that again? And I decided in that moment that Chris and I are going to do it, without guilt, because experiences are worth a helluva lot more than material shit is.

Please remind me of this magical thinking mindset if I can't afford groceries in December. Thanks.

2-? Lots of Stuff

2008-10-16T19:33:00.003-07:00

So I haven't been posting regularly. That's what happens when you procrastinate. By that, I mean this: I procrastinated putting up new posts, thinking I could just get to it, you know, whenever, the next day or the next day. And then OUR FREAKING HOUSE CAUGHT FIRE. We are fine, and most importantly, our material possessions are fine, but it's been a damn stressful time dealing with the landlord's insurance company and blah de blah blah, I won't bore you with the stresses. I'm sure you can all imagine. Well, okay, maybe one thing. The stench of smoke and fire-killing chemicals was AWFUL for about 10 days. Better now. But I'm pretty sure I killed some healthy cells breathing in that shit air. That is all.

On to the new things I've tried since my last post. I have to admit, I haven't done something new every day, but close. Every other day, maybe? In no particular order of date, cause I can't remember dates anymore:

1. Hosted a wedding shower - it was made clear to me from this experience that you only ask people to be your bridesmaids if you hate them.
2. Made crafty little takeaways for said shower - which I sucked at, but did anyway.
3. Tried new pasta salad recipe - yeah, that was a mistake. It was a crappy recipe.
4. Ate at awesomely cool college-town restaurant in bellingham - OMG, best hash browns EVER!
5. Went to a Mindemporium, this place where a local geek built all these miniature science-world type exhibits and only charges people 2 bucks admission. It was pretty damn cool, actually, to know that someone cares enough about science to build all that shit and write the blurbs to explain wtf was going on to dummies like myself.
6. Tried new torture device in the dungeon, ahem, tried new exercise equipment at the gym. I think the closest approximation is the Gazelle, by that guy with the long pony tail. I wasn't a fan.
7. Convinced a border agent not to arrest my mother. Long story short, she was not arrested, but she did not come to Canada.
8. Thanks to Margarita, developed an obsession with True Blood. You must watch it if you enjoy wonderful writing, directing and acting. Best show on TV right now, period. Yes, even better than Project Runway, or that work of artistic genius, Hole in the Wall.
9. Was in a wedding party. New one for me. All my best girl friends are single! People should not drink and do emotional things on the same day. It leads to drama. I don't do drama, unless it's acted out by good looking people that I absolutely do not know and can be turned off when I get sick of it.
10. Tried a new... ah... erotic aid? Is that what they're calling them now? Anyway, we had a presentation at Nikki's stagette and I bought it cause I've been wanting it for a while now. I'm not selfish! I'm not! It's called a "We", so Chris likes it too. ;)
11. Went to a gourmet cheese store. Hard to believe I've never done this, given my love affair with hard, moldy cow's milk, but yet... it's true. The cheese was fabulous. I want to roll in it. And build an apartment in the shop.
12. Cleaned up after an upstairs fire. Learned A LOT about insurance companies. Dear reader, please please please check your policy to see what is covered and what is not in terms of alternative living arrangements, who gets to decide whether to replace or just clean, etc. My landlord is getting SCREWED.

I think there are more things, but I feel guilty typing because my husband is doing the dishes, and I feel useless. I promise, now that we are getting more settled after the fire, I'll be posting more often. I also promise that I have learned my lesson about procrastination - don't put it off cause you never know what will happen tomorrow!

2 - Sitting in a different chair at work-type meeting

2008-09-17T19:41:00.002-07:00

Yes, it's a weak new thing. Especially since I didn't actually speak to any of the new people on the new side of the room. But, it did give me a different perspective on the meeting, and its dynamics. For one thing, I had less stuff to look at while I daydreamed. For another, I got to see different looks on the new people's faces while they daydreamed. All in all, not a bad experience, but not a particularly special one, either.

Tomorrow, I plan to try something new at the gym. And if something else new comes up, I'm trying that, too.

1 - Tai Chi

2008-09-16T20:52:00.003-07:00

Because I'm kind of mentally ill on a lot of fronts - lacking in both self-discipline and body awareness, being overly self-conscious - after some research, I decided that one of my new things would be to take a Tai Chi class at the local community centre. Practicing Tai Chi is supposed to increase your ability to position your body, breathing and posture, while also helping to develop a more disciplined mind. Chris signed up for the class with me, in spite of not being mentally ill, cause he's into the trying new things thing, too.

I gotta say, I think it's going to work out. Our teacher has been practicing for 18 years, and seems to be very capable and comfortable in the instructor role. She was good at pointing out mistakes without making anyone feel like a tool, and took things slow and easy for the first class. There are only 12 people in the class, and it's in a great big classroom, so no one was in danger of being whacked in the face by someone's (my) flailing arms. Just kidding. There were no flopping limbs. Just a lot of controlled movements (18 of them in fact - going to have to practice before next class, several times), and some breathing and stretching at the end of class.

I found the experience very positive, because

A) While I'm doing it, I'm not thinking about anything other than what my body is doing. And that feels awesome.
B) I felt more focused both while I was tai-chiing and afterwards.
C) I was definitely more in touch with my body, how it felt and how it moved.

Anyone looking to improve fitness through Tai Chi might want to consider a different martial art. From what I can tell so far, Tai Chi will improve balance, posture, and flexibility, but I could have worn a coat and long underwear and still wouldn't have broken a sweat. My heart rate probably peaked around 100 bpm, and other than a slow burn in my thighs while doing some front/back movement (not nearly as exciting as it sounds, though it could certainly end up that way if you found someone to stand behind you and follow your movements -- oh, inspiration!)
I didn't feel any strain on my muscles whatsoever, so it's unlikely to make any significant improvements to muscle strength. However, I do think it could cause significant improvements to the strength of a certain large and wrinkled organ, and said organ's ability to stop being such an isolated fucking snob, and connect with.... everything.

Reset

2008-09-16T18:08:00.003-07:00

Third time's the charm?

I've changed templates again, which is a way to signal my brain that I've changed formats again. This time, though, I've also changed the title. My old title was past-oriented, and it didn't really reflect what I want to write about these days.

So without further nattering... may I present... a path to self-growth, self-improvement, and general self-something... the new blog! Here, I'm making a commitment to myself (and maybe to the occasional reader) to experience something new every day. I might not post every day - probably won't, in fact - but I'll DO something new every day, and write about it eventually.

Yeah. What do you think?

whatchoo gonna do?

2007-07-26T17:17:00.000-07:00

for the sake of non-repetition, i'm just going to stop apologizing for sporadic posts and making promises for more frequent ones. what can i say? i'm streaky.

i have no idea what to write about. i'm only on here because i need to procrastinate with the book writing, and chris is glued to the new harry potter like i used to be glued to quarter pounders with cheese. that is to say, he is quite engaged. so, here's some random miscellanea:

-- i liked the deathly hallows, though not as much as some of the other books, which i think has a lot more to do with my newly discovered inner editor than any flaw in her imagination of the novel.

-- i registered for the surrey international writer's conference today, and i am alternating between moments of insane fury (WHY haven't they confirmed my fax registration by email yet???), rolling nausea (what am i thinking, believing i can successfully pitch my totally unfinished novel to kristin freaking amazing nelson?) and pure excitement (OMG, OMG, OMG, kelley armstrong, diana gabaldon and jack whyte might TALK to me!). luckily for me, and unluckily for you, i get to go up and down this emotional roller coaster for another three months. that means much blog-worthy angst and mania.

-- the exhaust support structure for the portable air conditioner i bought last week won't fit into our ridiculously small basement suite sized windows. i have to wait until tomorrow to call customer service for alternate suggestions because the fascist manufacturer is based in backwards ontario, and has been closed for the last three and a half hours.

-- the muscles in my abs, back and thighs are absurdly, whine-inspiringly sore, and i have no idea why. yes, i've worked out, but i haven't changed my workout's intensity or duration, so i don't know wtf.

-- my mom is sick with some sort of hitherto undiagnosed illness, and it's driving me nutso not knowing what's wrong with her. i live in constant fear of yet another person i love calling and telling me that they have the big c. fair warning: if my mom has the big c, you can just count on me to lose my shit. lose. my. shit. lock me up, give me a straight jacket, and padded walls. and then take me to visit my mommy so i can take care of her.

-- i'm not writing my book right now, and i don't know why. i can't say it's the publishing fear, really i can't. usually when i procrastinate, that's what it is. not this time. this time, i'm kind of scared that i can't write creatively anymore, that i spent so much time writing to please a potential publisher i don't remember the elements that made my writing unique back in the day. i'm hoping that writing this blog post will jump start the book writing, because it has in the past. fingers crossed.

-- i think i'm getting an out-of-the-house research job, and a very large part of me feels very 'eek' about that. however, it's time to wake the hell up and smell the burnt coffee that is life. the reality is that even if i finish the book, find an agent, and get the book published, i won't make enough per book to support myself financially. therefore, i probably need to get used to the very real world lifestyle of waking up early to exercise, getting ready, taking the bus downtown to work, coming home and hopefully having enough energy to write, because let's face it folks -- i'm not going to make enough money from writing to be materially comfortable, especially not with my boyfriend on strike. yet the prospect of facing this reality is most daunting, and frightening, because i have much at stake on other levels. i worry that this job will interfere with the book writing (what book writing? what?), with the healthy lifestyle changes i have made for myself (which are good for my health in so many ways i don't have enough fingers to count), with the largely stress free mental space i've got now. but alas, you never know until you try, and if i hate the job, i can always burn my bridges and quit, right? also, on the brighter side, the job might eliminate stress about finances, introduce me to new and nice people, and impose an external schedule that would actually force me to work on the things that are important to me rather than procrastinate by writing on my blog.

-- i should have hired a wedding planner.

-- i've decided on a honeymoon location, and i am freaking thrilled about it. can we just skip the wedding part and get on with the honeymoon part?

-- there's nothing good on tv this time of year.

-- i need some good book recommendations. anyone got any ideas?

-- i've been trying, and succeeding, at reading more. i think the more i read books, the more i am inspired to write books. the more i read publishing blogs, on the other hand... at any rate, just finished the year of magical thinking by joan didion and storm front by jim butcher. totally different books. magical thinking is a memoir about death and loss and grief, and it is both well-written and incredibly touching. i bawled at numerous moments because didion manages to communicate the intimacy of her relationship and the chaos of her loss in such a way that the reader can remember and imagine their own losses. it's a very good book, though certainly not happy reading. storm front is the first book in the dresden files series by butcher. i tried to read this series months ago, and totally hated it. i think i started with a middle book instead of the first book. anyway, for some reason -- i think because of butcher's inclusion in the urban fantasy pantheon along with hamilton, armstrong, harrison and harris -- i decided to attempt a re-read and boy, was i wrong the first time. i really enjoyed butcher's world building, and his main character, harry dresden, is funny and interesting. he's also a wizard listed in the yellow pages who consults for the police on the weird and whacky cases. butcher does a good job of melding back story with description and action, and he has great technical writing skills. there are times that the drama is a bit overwrought, but i'm willing to overlook that for all the other great things he brings to the table. page. whatever. the point is -- reading books is good for me. i should have a book on the go all the time. now, if only the publishing industry could manage to produce enough good ones for me to read. (did i mention that if i like a book, it rarely lasts for more than two days?)

-- it's getting hot again, and i don't like that at all.

i've got lots of other stuff to update, i could do this forever, but i'm bored, so i'm going to go try something else now. thanks for listening.

Gak!

2007-06-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

has it really been 16 days since i posted? where does the time go? jeez. now i'm going to have to have a 3 posts week in the near future to make up for it. that won't be this week though because my mom is coming for a visit, yay!

i'm having a slight time problem right now. perhaps because i work at home and my hobbies are home-based (reading, writing, watching TV, downloading stuff to watch/listen to, exercising) and i don't have an externally imposed schedule, time has started to do weird things. days run together, yet hours can stretch into torturous segments as i check and recheck my favorite sites to see if anything new has been written/posted. i'm not working right now, so i don't even have my work reports to keep me grounded in today's date. the weather hasn't yet summer-fied, so sometimes it feels like may and other times september. the days of the week are determined by exercises performed -- monday = walk/jog, bike, abs; tuesday = bike, legs workout, abs... et cetera, et cetera. i think that's one of the reasons i've had some difficulty making the final push to finish the book -- when every day seems quite the same, it's hard to understand that yes, time is marching on without me. that's not to say i'm drenched in ennui like that horribly depressing nine inch nails song (every day is exactly the same). quite the opposite, in fact. i'm pretty dang happy with my life. i just need a reliable time keeper that beeps and talks to me every once in a while to remind me that my existence may be cyclical but the rest of the world works on linear time.

under water?

2007-06-06T10:24:00.001-07:00

well folks, between the rising waters of the fraser river and the final push to finish my reports for work, i'm looking around for an ark to either save me from sewage and bacteria infested flood waters or to take me the fuck away from it all.

some poor peeps in maple ridge have had to leave their homes, as well as peeps in other places in the fraser valley and the interior. as for chris and myself, we've purchased some bottled water, granola bars and dried fruit, just in case grocery trucks can't make it in. it might not get that extreme, but who knows? we'll eat the stuff, regardless of what happens.

as for work, well, this project is almost done. it's driving me whacky, though. i've been a very good girl and began writing my reports well ahead of the due date so that i could avoid my usual "i-regret-this-work-because-i-could-have-done-better-if-i'd-worked-harder" self-flagellation. the result? my reports are pretty dang good, but i miss my last minute adrenaline rush. i miss the clarity that comes with panic, the way my mind focuses completely on JUST GETTING IT DONE. i miss the kind of writing that i am capable of when all those stress hormones coalesce into some brilliant turns of phrase and sentence constructions because i am IN THE ZONE. so while my reports may contain better, more thorough research, they lack the tone that i am capable of producing only when freaked out and under the deadline gun. sniff. the grass is always greener on the other side, yes?

post-lite

2007-05-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

can you blame me? i've got 60 pages of material due at work next week, and though i've got a lot done, i don't feel anywhere close to being done. i'm dying to work on the end of personal demons, and i just fucking found out that one my favorite authors in the genre that i write in is naming her next book PERSONAL DEMON, for god's sake. i'm also thinking a lot about the editing process, and where/how i'm going to tighten my writing and my story. i'm also thinking a lot about ghostkeeper, which will be my second books series. i'm also keeping up the exercise/eating right thing. i'm also managing to pay my bills on time, cook spectacular dinners, maintain my MSN-based chats, read two novels, hire a personal trainer, get the lenses in my glasses replaced, watch chris's team play softball, and sleep between 7-8 hours a night. poor chris is being ignored and deprived.

how in the hell did i get so busy? i don't like being busy. i am not a busy-type person. i am more a couch-potato type person who gets off on reading lots of books, preferably while watching TV and listening to music, yes, at the same time. i am one of those people who can literally sit in the same position without so much as a fidget for HOURS. so how did i get here, to this place where time to be a vegetable has been sucked up by the vacuum of work, social, and personal improvement projects? i am not this motivated! really, i'm not! maybe i've been possessed. yeah, that must be it...

sorry for the blog-lite post. it was a necessity, i'm afraid. i'll try for better next time, but the reality is that i prolly won't be able to do a thinky-thinky thing until after june 8. deadline, baby, yeah!

RIP miss snark -- death of a blog

2007-05-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

about five years ago (oh, my god, i am getting so old), my friend jenny had a political blog. back then, blogs were popular among the techno-savvy only. blogger was not yet around to provide those of us with the computer skills of pre-historic humans an opportunity to share our lives via the internet. hers was the only blog i read, and when she stopped posting, i missed it, but i always knew (because we speak on a near daily basis) that her blog would be back some day. hope remained alive. i stopped reading blogs then because, well, hers was the only one i read.

fast-forward five years. thanks to jason's suggestion that i start keeping a blog myself, and the blogs of friends including jason and margarita, and the massive depth and breadth of the blogging community as a whole, i am a blog addict. i check my regularly read blogs almost as often as i check my email. they have become as much a part of my day as brushing my teeth or deciding whether or not i want to watch a horrible season one episode of star trek: tng on spike tv. and several days ago, one of them died.

miss snark, the very BEST blogging voice out there on writing and publishing, retired. she said she'd answered all the questions she could, and she announced that she would no longer be making new posts, though thankfully, she will maintain her website so that we can partake of her famous 'snarkives.' after i confirmed that the date was not, in fact, april first and the announcement was not, in fact, a joke, i was just struck by this incredible wave of sadness, much more profound than any i've ever felt over the death of a celebrity, or even a distant relative that i only knew from the way they pinched my fat cheeks at bi-annual family get-togethers. miss snark was gone. i wasn't ever going to get to 'talk' to her again, 'hear' her witty voice, or 'witness' her amazing knowledge and seemingly endless patience for naive and inexperienced and generally stupid writers like me (which isn't really the case since she's leaving us her archives, but that was the overly-dramatic thought i had in the moments after reading about her retirement). i was so, so, so sad.

and then i was so, so, so surprised because i've never stopped to contemplate how much my daily blogs mean to me. the regulars -- those bloggers who are committed to posting at least three times per week -- are a source of stability, of constancy. they are reliable, and that is frankly unique. miss snark was great, not just because she is brilliant, but for a whole host of other, deeper reasons: she cared enough about her readers to read and reply to their emails, to put on contests for them so they could improve their hooks or queries, to post important information about what was going on in the world of publishing. and she did so with humor and grace and not a little snarkiness, like a beloved grandparent (in case miss snark somehow ever stumbles upon this post, i should note here that i have no idea how old miss snark is, so the grandparent reference has nothing to do with supposed age) lovingly teaching their grandchild some skill that modern sensibilities have overlooked and undervalued. bloggers like miss snark are the reason that some people believe, in contrast to technophobes who preach against the impersonal 'unreality' of the internet, that the relationships developed in the online world are real and important. with the death of miss snark's blog, i realized just how real and important they are to me.

so here's a shout out to all my regulars. you know who you are. thanks for stayin' alive.

this post is...

2007-05-16T16:54:00.000-07:00

more filler, in a likely futile attempt to make sure that i post at least once each week on the blog so as not to lose my loyal readership. i know, today is wednesday, technically 9 days after my last post, but i figure as long as i do one today and one sometime next week, i am keeping with my pledge.

on one hand, it's a real bitch to start writing when you don't know what you're going to write about, but on the other hand, it's freeing. though i've written my book without an outline, i've always known the major plot points i want to hit on before i sit down to write the next chapter. there's a lot of constraint now in the way that i write personal demons. i think about how much i use the word 'that', how often i speak in the passive voice, how often i modify 'said' with a much-maligned adverb (i.e. she said sadly, angrily, throatily, wryly, etc. etc.). i think about how a character is going to be read. my characters aren't nearly dramatic enough sometimes. for the most part, they are intelligent, emotionally sound, reasonable people. at times this does not make for interesting interplay, so i have to try and create conflict between people who, like me, can certainly participate in a conflict successfully if they are thrown into one, but don't particularly relish instigating one because they are bullheaded, immature, or asshole-y. so, yeah, it's kind of different to sit down to blog, and not have any clue where i'm going with it or what i'm going to say. i'm glad i made this pledge to myself, because i think it will help my writing overall, and it will help me keep in touch with you, dear reader.

on a related topic, i was forced to pick up a copy of bill gates's latest money-making, fascist program -- otherwise known as microsoft office. maybe i wasn't forced, so much as coerced. i need to have a registered copy for my job, since some of my work is legal-like, and my employer's employers would no doubt look down upon a researcher who plies her trade on bootlegged software. i was at first quite miffed to see that microsoft outlook is not included in this year's student/teacher bundle. it was replaced by something called 'one-note.' i scoffed to myself, "what is this one-note?" and purchased it anyway because i need the word, excel and power point programs. just for shits and giggles, i opened the one-note program, and to my surprise, it was an over-organized virgo's wet dream. i've had it for weeks now, and still haven't figured out all the fabulous functions. (oh, god, i can't believe i'm plugging for microsoft! ew! someone stop me!) one-note is made up of, get ready for it.... notebooks! and within each notebook, there are pages. so for example, i have a personal notebook with pages for shopping lists, account numbers (password protected, of course, and none related to money, only things like chapters and amazon usernames), books and music to pick up, and recipes; i have a work notebook with pages for billing hours, project ideas, and notes; and i have a writing notebook with pages for personal demons revisions and notes, gagan's second book (as yet untitled, obviously), and ghostkeeper, a new idea rattling around in my head that i might write between personal demons and gagan's second book. the Very Best Function of one-note so far that comes in verra handy for work is that when you cut and paste text or pictures from a web page, one-note automatically records the website from whence it came! this is so fabulous! no more writing a quote in my reports and asking myself, "now where did you retrieve this from, and on what date?" it also does some desktop wiki stuff, i think, that i haven't played with yet. the tool bars are fancy pants, and have every imaginable tag or highlight, again, some of which i haven't tried out. all i know is one-note is a veritable playground for the person who'd rather organize their information than get down to business. who, me?

filler

2007-05-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

i don't have anything in mind to write about now, i just feel like writing. i think it has something to do with work. i've been doing a lot of report writing today, and will be doing a lot of writing (not the research, that's done) in upcoming weeks, and i think with me, once i let my writing genie out of its bottle, it ain't gonna go back in willingly. i'm going to have to stuff the writing genie, fighting, down that narrow neck, and plug the cork. there is little doubt in my mind that i will be lying in bed tonight writing in my head. (sometimes i wonder why i don't just get OUT of bed and write the shit down already, just so i can sleep, but there's a war going on between my creative brain and my lazy i-like-my-comfy-sheets-and-my-cuddly-man brain and so far, lazy ILMCSAMYCM is winning. i have 500 thread count sheets.)

i confess that i haven't been reading as much news lately, so i've got no funny or quirky or horrible material to use as a muse. the weather here is lovely. it's finally starting to warm up, and everything is a verdant, vibrant green. the smell of fresh plant life in the air is just about intoxicating. the bad news? i can't hide under my winter coat and heavy jeans anymore. sigh. shorts season is upon us again. how white are my legs? blinding white. they reflect light like the purest black absorbs it. we got a new barbeque grill, and have been utilizing it to great effect (warning to all you vegetarians out there: graphic material about the consumption of animal flesh forthcoming). we christened it with new york steaks, and since that first usage have had flame-kissed chicken fajitas, barbeque pork chops, and hamburgers. i've purchased some beautiful pork loins that i plan to marinate, grill and serve with warm tortillas and homemade salsa (read: pork tenderloin tacos, one of the yummiest meat dishes EVER). i got my first sunburn at baseball on saturday, and it was overcast that day AND i wore sunscreen. guess i'd better buy a hat. one of those old lady wide-brimmed ones. how incredibly summer-y all this is. talk to me in a month when i'm so fucking hot i can't sleep and i'm bitching about how much i miss central air conditioning.

so, what else? the book. i've been learning lessons while writing personal demons, and that's a good thing. yet, the fact that i've learned these lessons during the process scares me into thinking that personal demons was largely a waste of time. yes, i think it has been a success as a learning tool, but i also think it might be a failure as a Good Book. as jean would no doubt point out, i am not finished with it yet, and it won't be until i do a real read through of the whole thing that i can say whether or not it is a book i'd like to purchase and read. i guess that should be a true test of how "good" it is -- did i like reading it? anyway, the point of this is not to crap on personal demons, but to say that i'm looking forward to starting the next one, a different series with different characters and a different cosmology. i'm even considering writing it in third-person omniscient, which i've never experimented with before. all the short stories and books (total -- 3 book starts, and 2/3 of 1 whole, heh) i've ever written have been in first-person. i plan to write this one according to the eight rules of writing fiction by kurt vonnegut, which are, unlike most rules, very helpful, and i think a succinct approximation of what, apart from an interesting story, makes for a great book. holy comma splices, batman! don't get me wrong -- i'm going to finish personal demons, and i'm going to do it the best i can, to make it the best book that i can given what tools i've provided for myself so far, to do the best i can for the characters i've created that i really, truly do like and respect. but i am looking toward the horizon, toward something that gives me an opportunity to stretch again, this time with the flexibility and grace i developed doing clumsy, fumbling moves in personal demons.

i think that's it. the genie has been squished into its bottle. i'm out.

i waited all this time for THAT?

2007-04-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

fair warning, dear reader, that will be your question when you finish reading this post which consists of a heaping helping of bitch with a side of aged whine (with a floral bouquet).

a person shouldn't post on their blog when they are feeling depressed, by the way.

am having, predictably (god, i hate how boring i am), and yet again, book publishing angst. sure, i'm not done yet, am only maybe 2/3 of the way done, but i am thinking about the quality of my writing a lot which leads to the question of getting an agent, and getting published, and finally, getting paid. i am not a deep person. i don't have deep writing. i write in a genre that is hot, hot, hot right now, but might be not, not, not hot by the time i finish. i'm not writing in the genre because it's hot, but because i love it. whether or not i love it does not matter to the publishing industry. sometimes, love just ain't enough.

so the question is -- how do i motivate myself to write through these doubts? i am a goal-oriented person. don't laugh. i really am. i need to have predictable outcomes, need to know that if i input a, i will get output b. and with this whole writing thing, it's driving absolutely fucking crazy that i don't know what the outcome is going to be -- i mean i know i will have a 300 page book manuscript on my hard drive, and that's something important... but the other stuff is important too. the recognition that what you have done is worth someone else's time. the fact that it's out of my control past a certain point makes me feel, to paraphrase frodo, like butter scraped over too much bread. or, alternatively, like my head is going to explode.

tentatively...

2007-03-24T17:55:00.001-07:00

i think i'm done editing. at least until i finish the first draft. ;)

self-pampering and well-being

2007-03-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

most of you who know me now would likely be very surprised to learn that i used to be a foofy-girl. as a teenager, i was one of those girls who never had a bad manicure, whose toenails were either fire engine red, pearly pink, plum purple or flashy fuschia, who spent all of her extra spending money on hair care products, lip glosses, body treatments and polishes of various sorts. probably because i don't have nice boobs or a shapely body or a hot booty, i focused all my attention on maintaining a blemish free, smooth, buffed, almost perfect integumentary system. during that period in my life, leg and armpit hairs were never allowed to reach more than 24 hours maturity, manicures and pedicures were paint-chip, callous, dry skin and cuticle free, and the epidermis was soaked, exfoliated and lotioned with great ceremony and frequency.

sometime between being a care-free teen and a serious college student, i stopped painting my fingernails and wearing mascara and lip gloss every single day. sometime between being a serious college student and a not-so-serious master's student, i stopped soaking and exfoliating. sometime between being a not-so-serious master's student and a very poor immigrant working as a volunteer to keep the resume current, i stopped buying nice hair care products and face washes. somewhere between being a very poor immigrant and a low paid non-profit administrator, i stopped having my hair trimmed regularly and buffing the callouses off my feet (i NEVER wear shoes inside, and i wear shoes outside only in deference to the fear of having a hookworm burrow through the soles of my feet and find its way to my intestines, hence the persistent development of callouses).

now that i am a part-time research analyst and novelist with more free time and a bit more money on my hands, i am beginning to rediscover the sense of well-being that such self-pampering engendered. i am eating healthfully. i am exercising regularly (albiet resentfully). on thursday, i soaked, exfoliated, and lotioned my feet, and then painted my toenails a fabulous color (OPI's chica-go-get-a-manicure, if you're interested). my feet look and feel excellent. ;) i bought some nice shampoo to combat the effects of the bad highlight job that damaged the ends of my hair, and the curls are starting to bounce back. this morning, i shaved, exfoliated with the body shop's coconut scrub and lotioned with body shop coconut body butter. i smell good, my skin is soft as a baby's ass, and i feel awesome.

i feel so good in fact that i'm asking myself why i ever stopped my self-pampering routine. of course, part of reason is money, or a lack thereof for a long period in my life. but i realize now it's not about the type of 'product' you buy. it's about taking the time to care for yourself, to get in touch with what's going on with your body. it's almost a kind of meditation. you have to parce out a segment of time devoted just to your physical self. i don't have any problem giving that time to 'intellectual' or 'social' persuits -- i always make sure to spend time reading or writing, catching up on the news, catching up on my favorite TV shows, spending quality time with chris because these things are important to me. until recently, i've never made that kind of time to take care of my physical or material self -- i'll put it off, or not think about it all. i lived in my head so much that i forgot that my body needs just as much attention as my mind. today, i remembered.

frakkety frakking frak

2007-03-12T10:27:00.000-07:00

as most of you know, i am a battlestar galactica whore. i gobble up BSG episodes like i've been known to gobble up dairy queen ice cream cake. as a result of my near total immersion in the BSG world of skin-jobs, toasters, the CAG and tyllium fuel, i have picked up a very useful new word: frak.

frak is how the brilliant writers of BSG manage to get past the FCC and let the main characters curse like the soldiers they are, and i have shamelessly incorporated it into my vocabulary. i walk around the grocery store wondering where they moved the frakking shake'n'bake, why that frakking lady at the meat counter cut in front of me in line, and whether or not i have few enough items to go in the frakking express lane. i've been known to utter, "holy frak, that's expensive!" while picking out curry paste.

the very very best thing about frak is that i can walk around cursing loudly as i am prone to do in the most mundane circumstances and feel not one iota of guilt! i am not cussing in public! my mother used to chastise me when i let loose with a string of swear words that would make little old ladies and suburban housewives look like they'd swallowed something nasty. i wasn't trying to offend, it's just that going to the grocery store is very stressful for me, and i am a firm believer in letting your stress out through a non-physical pressure valve: in my case, cussing. i'm not trying to be obscene. i'm just trying to keep from going postal. it really does make me feel better. with the help of frak, the little old ladies and suburban housewives still give me looks of disgust, but now they are primarily made up of confusion and "what a weirdo" rather than "how uncouth!"

to all my fan(s?)

2007-03-07T14:41:00.000-08:00

today, while chatting with margarita, i was very politely berated (it wasn't really a beration, it was more of an encouragement, but she called it that, so i must respect her agency in naming her words) because i don't post on my blog enough. she is completely right. totally and completely. it's not as though i don't have time. it's not as though i don't have shit to talk about -- i must, for all the time i spend chatting with you all on various chat programs. and then there's my own blog habit. my list of bookmarked blogs is now about as long as my very large flat panel computer monitor and i check them all at least once a day. so i am READING blogs. i'm just not WRITING my blog. (by the way, i'd be totally pissed if any of my blog peeps that i regularly read didn't post for as long as i go between posts. and yes, that's a threat AND a promise.)

now, on to our soon-to-be-regularly scheduled posting...

so i just re-read the entire harry potter series. fucking fabulous. i mean, jk rowling is a genius. i appreciate this even more now that i've been writing my own novel. she is able to weave together plot elements like magic (mwhaha), and when she does the big writing no-no -- including a scene that doesn't advance the plot or reveal something about the characters -- it is always so much fun to read that you don't care if it advances the plot or not, you could read her writing about opening a can of alphagetti.

now, i've been finished with HP and friends for a couple of weeks, so in bookless desperation, i cracked open one of chris's nelson demille books, called charm school. i like him and his stuff, generally. in fact, some of his books are downright fantastic -- see the lion's game, cathedral, talbot odyssey. this one, though... not so much. for one thing, he is writing in third person, and when the character thinks something to himself, it is put in quotation marks!!! i know it's a small thing, but it's driving me nuts, cause i keep thinking.... is someone else in the room that i missed? secondly, there are these incredibly long descriptive scenes. i know, it's the pot calling the kettle black cause i've been known to enoy writing the odd descriptive scene myself, but these are like.... about antique shops in moscow and shit. makes me wonder if he's cutting and pasting from his travel journal. oh, oh. and the sex scene! ugh! i don't expect wonders from male writers when it comes to sex scenes, but this one was just... why even have it in there at all? went something like this.... little bit of foreplay, insertion, and then... and i quote, "she grabbed his buttocks as she came." new paragraph. "he came." i do not lie, and i have not omitted anything. it was so ugh, ugh, ugh, from both a writer's perspective and a romantic's perspective. but mostly from a writer's perspective.

the point of all this is not to discourage you from reading the book, but rather to explain a VERY important realization i came to while trying to force myself further into the novel before putting it down for good. this was one of demille's first books. he's come so far as a writer and a novelist since that first one. the first one is always going to be somewhat less than perfect. it will probably have parts that are messy, parts that are awkward, parts that are anti-climactic. parts that are over-descriptive, parts where the dialogue is stilted and forced. so i don't need the first one to be perfect, i just need it to a) tell the story that's rattling around in my head and b) tell it well enough to get an agent and get that first publishing credit under my belt!

apostasy and confession

2007-02-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

so.... it's been a while. again. i have no idea who still reads this blog. lord knows i'd stop looking for new posts if it were me. i'm going to do better, i promise. ;) have i promised that before? i'm going to have to look in my archives and see.

so here's the thing. i haven't been writing. christmas vacation in texas came up, then mom's visit, then a quick work deadline, then a break from work which i didn' take advantage of, now more work. i realized the other day that it has been almost two months since i wrote an original word. oh, i've been editing. yes, i have, almost every day. trading words for better words. correcting (i hope) grammatical mistakes. chopping up the occasional run-on sentence. you know what? that's not editing, it's an excuse.

i really do need to edit, though. when i started The Book, i had a rough idea of where i wanted the plot to go. that's it. i had three major plot points and a rather large group of main characters who i wanted to write about. now, i've got about 170 pages of rough draft, and 75,000 words. in december, it was already getting to the point that i had figured out that while my three major plot points remained, i needed some subplots and foreshadowing and whatnot. i became OBSESSED with the need to change what i had done already, to the point that i could no longer write forward. so i printed out my manuscript at the time, and started scribbling on it with a pen. didn't really do much else though. oh, i'd open word and open my files, but then i'd get distracted, or more honestly, i would avoid working on The Book. i told myself that if the files were open, i was working on it. snort. what an ass. anyway, i got depressed after that. someone told me they thought i had ADD, and i used that for an excuse for about a week -- i won't finish the book, i have ADD, i can't finish anything. i mean, i've never successfully dieted, why would finishing a book be any different? then i kicked myself in the ass because that is such a moronic excuse. writing is by damn sight a lot more fun than dieting, for one thing. so i got over the ADD thing, but then had more depression. every time i thought about editing the book, some really psychotic voice in my head would pipe up about throwing myself in front of a mack truck. that lasted for a bit. and then today, voila, i opened the fucking file and actually fucking edited. funny how when you tell your mind to shut the fuck up and just let yourself do what you need to do, life gets more simple. and more satisfying.

today, i decided to stop excusing myself and actually EDITED my first chapter, as in junked quite a bit of it and rewrote the sections i junked with my new ideas. i am VERY happy for several reasons. first, it felt so good to actually write again rather than just fiddle with words and phrases. it felt like sex after no sex for a really long time. ironically, other than sex, writing is the only thing i do that gets me completely out of my conscious mind. i know that doesn't make sense since writing requires quite a bit of 'higher' brain function, but that's how i feel. i really am one of those people who feels like they're in a fugue state when writing. i do my best work when i'm just sitting in front of the computer and letting it flow, out of 'my' control. second, i like the plot points i've foreshadowed and the bit of world building i've redone in this chapter. i have high hopes for my future editing endeavours, and for the first time in a while, i am actually looking forward to being able to write new chapters and finish the book. third, it's always good to have DONE something, rather than just thought about it to death.

and in celebration of this momentous moment, wherein i feel like i'm back on track and chugging along again, i'm announcing the working title of The Book. drum roll please. personal demons. wow. how anti-climactic.

is it plagarism if i have permission?

2007-01-18T15:34:00.000-08:00

if you get a chance, hop on over to jason's blog to check out his "miscellaneous top lists of 2006." after i read his lists, i told him i wanted to copy the idea for my blog, and he said to go ahead. so here i am. going ahead. (going to be redundant for readers of both blogs, since jason and i have very similar taste.)

top 5 movies SEEN in 2006 - in no particular order
1. casino royale - could daniel craig BE any hotter?
2. talladega nights: the ballad of ricky bobby - reminds me of home
3. the departed - so, so good. this movie was very emotionally involving.
4. inside man - good crime flick, well written, humorous and slick
5. pirates of the caribbean - had many sucky aspects, but johnny depp is the shit

top 5 movies i SHOULD HAVE seen in 2006 - in no particular order
1. borat
2. babel
3. little children
4. little miss sunshine
5. miami vice

top 5 movies i'm GLAD I DIDN'T see in 2006 - in no particular order
1. crank
2. snakes on a plane
3. step up
4. the hills have eyes
5. anything in the saw series

top 5 books read in 2006
1. a fistful of charms by kim harrison
2. definitely dead by charlaine harris
3. undead series by mary janice davidson
4. the eyre affair by jasper fforde
5. the traveler by john twelve hawkes

(can you tell i like pulp fiction? i read tons of books in 2006, and all my favorites are contemporary fantasy.)

top 5 tv shows watched in 2006 (new)
1. battlestar galactica
2. bones
3. entourage
4. supernatural
5. boston legal
6. deadwood
7. 24
8. house
9. daily show
10. colbert report
11. ugly betty

(yes, i know that's more than five, but what can i say? i like tv....)

top 5 tv shows watched in 2006 (syndication)
1. the simpsons
2. star trek: deep space nine
3. arrested development
4. family guy
5. without a trace

top 5 events of 2006
1. getting engaged
2. quitting access justice
3. winning a week in the province writing contest
4. getting more than halfway through writing my book - thanks to everyone for the encouragement but especially to margarita, without whom i wouldn't have made it this far
5. getting my new job

top 5 meals of 2006
1. las margarita's salsa
2. wrap zone's bombay wrap with chicken
3. milestone's tomato basil capellini
4. milestone's garlic and goat cheese appetizer
5. grandma's spaghetti and meatballs

top 5 commodities of 2006 (purchased or recieved)
1. creativ zen vision m video mp3 player
2. canon elph digital camera
3. engagement ring
4. HP pavillion desktop computer with 21" widescreen monitor
5. sirius satellite radio

top 5 albums of 2006 (chosen by how often i listen to them)
1. chemical city by sam roberts
2. ambassador by elliott brood
3. thumbelina's one night stand by melissa mcclelland
4. with teeth by nine inch nails
5. brushfire fairytales by jack johnson (old, i know, but i listen to it a lot)

top 5 songs of right this fucking minute
1. you know i love you baby by melissa mcclelland
2. uprising down under by sam roberts
3. gold lion by the yeah yeah yeahs
4. everlong by the foo fighters
5. the hand that feeds by nine inch nails

top 5 orgasms of 2006
just kidding!

cannibalistic sex

2006-12-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

not really. though jason really encourages it with a passion that makes me wonder about what goes on in the dark depths of his mental sexual dungeon. ;) i had the pleasure (no pun intended) of writing about a kiss in my last chapter. it was SO FUN! i can now understand why laurell k. hamilton, who used to write about murder and mayhem among supernatural creepy crawlies, now writes about multiple orgasms with multiple partners. i mean, if writing a kiss was that much fun, how fun is it going to be to write actual sex?!?

the feeling was quite similar to the feeling i get when writing fight scenes (of which i have had two major ones now). what is the lesson to be learned here, grasshopper? writing ACTION is more stimulating to the author, or this author anyway, than descriptive or expository writing. don't get me wrong. i love descriptive writing, almost to a fault. but writing action, whether it be sexual or violent, provides a thrill that is somehow akin to the real thing. i don't know if that's because it brings to mind your memories of those things, or if imagining the acts pokes around in those areas of the brain that live next door to the hippocampus. either way, whether it's a character's fist making contact with someone's face, or a character's mouth making contact with someone's neck, writing an intense action scene is an awesome experience.

i can't wait until my next one... which unfortunately is probably a few chapters away as my heroine has some detecting to do. we must solve the mystery, not go around fucking and fighting everything that walks!

oh, oh, oh! or... i'm a dumb shit

2006-12-06T18:35:00.000-08:00

instead of thinking about my book, i thought about thinking about my book, and how i don't do it as much. and i was like... why not? and then i fucking realized what the fucking problem is. sorry about the profanity, by the way. i cuss when i'm happy, mad, sad or otherwise excited. anyway. the PROBLEM is that i am not READING ANYTHING. sure, i read the paper, i surf my favorite sites. but when did i finish my last full BOOK? i've started a couple of crappy ones, and not finished them. i think the last book i read from cover to cover was.... ugh. janet evanovich's 12 sharp. and before that, i think it was the kelly armstrong books IN SEPTEMBER. yes, that's right. IN SEPTEMBER. which is not to say that i haven't been looking for new good books. i have been. all the time. but i haven't found any. i've been prowling the library like a wild animal, accruing overdue fines on books that are too crappy or uninteresting to read. THAT'S THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

all writers know that what makes them writers is that they are first and foremost readers. over the summer, when all my favorite authors were releasing books like literary ho's, i was reading 4-5 books per week. none of my favs have released anything since september or so, and none of them will until march. march, i say! why do all my favs come out in the spring and summer?!?! why do they make me wait?!?! i've read all your old stuff! write faster! my writing depends on it!

sheepish

2006-12-06T18:12:00.000-08:00

umm...well, it's been over a month since i posted here. i was rather hoping that it had been less than a month. a month is a nice round, arbitrary number. less than = no guilt. more than = guilt. so, here i am, posting and feeling guilty and sheepish.

i don't know why i didn't post for so long. it's been an eventful time. i won a week in that contest, ironically the week after i posted about it. i'll find out this weekend if i'm in the top three or not. also, the furry one and i got engaged. no big surprise there, but it's nice. and so's my ring ;) i printed out a draft of my novel so far -- 160 pages, 70,000 words. i figure i've got about another hundred pages to go, which is ten weeks if i work at a chapter per week pace.

the book has been giving me some trouble lately. why is it that i only post about the trouble? i don't post about all the times that i get a warm fuzzy from writing, the times when i have the writer's equivalent of a brain orgasm because what i'm writing feels that damn good to me, the times i send off my chapter to margarita with satisfaction and pride.

nope, you don't get to hear about that. you get to hear about the tough times, the struggles, the blocks. right now, i'm in a block PERIOD. earlier in the fall, i was writing a chapter a week. since the beginning of november, i think it's been a chapter every two weeks. traumatizing. part of the problem is that i'm paralyzed by the thought of the agent search process. i'm already thinking about query letters and editing and hooks even though i've not finished a draft. luckily, margarita has helped exorcise that demon from my mind, and i'm not thinking about it. as much. i'm still thinking a lot about editing, but that's because i've changed a basic premise of the book, so i'm going to need to do some editing when the first draft is done. i KNOW KNOW KNOW i have to wait until it's done because if i wait to finish it until i've edited everything i need to edit, i won't ever get it done. i'm also having insecurity problems, doubting the readability of both my writing and my story. i'm worried that my main characters won't hold a reader's interest the way they hold mine. the only thing that's keeping me together is a line i read in stephen king's book "on writing." to paraphrase: the first draft of a novel is you telling the story to yourself. the second draft of a novel is you telling the story to someone else. i'm living for the second draft, and i think that's bad, because i'm only 2/3 of the way through on the damn book. i'm not giving it all of my attention, and i think it's coming through in both the length of time it's taking me to write and the product i'm writing.

i think to some extent writing is like losing weight. not that i've been too successful at maintaining the latter, but i've probably lost over 150 pounds if you add all my diets together over the years, so i know what it takes to be successful at taking it off if not keeping it off. anyway, you can think and you can plan and you can make charts and journals and all that shit. in the end, the only thing that matters is getting off your ass and DOING it. preparing healthy food. going to the gym when all you want to do is sleep. sitting in front of the computer and typing even when you're drenched with apprehension and worry. get. it. done. or, as my southern friends might say... git 'er dunn!

the contest

2006-10-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

i only wish that the contest to which i am referring bore any resemblance at all to the famous seinfeld contest. alas, this one has nothing to do with masturbation, fantasies about nude neighbors, or money. it DOES raise the issue of whether or not i am queen of my domain -- in this case, my creative mind.

a local newspaper is holding a contest for canadian writers to complete a chapter in a 'serial thriller.' each sunday, the winner is published in the newspaper, and more importantly, qualifies for the grand prize, which is a trip to mexico and a meeting with a literary agent who will read the winner's manuscript. the second and third place winners also receive the latter half of the prize, which is the most important reward to someone like me anyway. my goal is to just win a week so that i have a 3 in 11 chance of submitting my manuscript to an editor who HAS to read THE WHOLE THING (not just the first page, like so many editors do before sending a scathing rejection letter).

last week, i submitted a chapter (which is limited to 1000 words -- YOU try putting in authentic character development and advancing the plot in such a short space and see how fucking hard it is) and made it to the final four. this week, i submitted a chapter and got a big fat nothing. i've read this week's winner, and my brain is already desperately casting around for some kind of something that will allow me to win next week. and therein lies the problem.

i have very little interest in the story -- it's a cop drama, which bores the hell out of me under the best circumstances. cops have too many rules, and i don't like rules in fiction. i don't really identify much with the characters, so i find it difficult to imagine them in three dimensions. also, i write long fiction -- novels. i'm not sure i have the chops to write something so short. so why i am i wasting my time? i want the prize so bad i can taste it. i don't care if my name (and my story) gets published in the paper. but the thought of getting past the hurdle of having an agent read more than just my first page fills me with more excitement than the prospect of brad pitt appearing naked and willing on my doorstep (oh, lord, what's happened to me?!?!?!).

last week, i spent TWO DAYS working on the chapter that didn't even make the final four. i gave up time that i should have been spending on MY book. on thursday, when the paper annonced the final four by email, i refreshed my email once every two minutes until i knew the winners had been notified, and i was not one. every time the phone rang, i hoped it might be the sunday edition editor calling to tell me congratulations. this morning when i opened the paper, guess which section i went to first? in short, i am obsessed with this contest and with becoming eligible for the grand prize.

it is not a healthy obsession. i don't want to think about it all the time. i want to go home tonight and write the stupid thing -- which realistically should only take a couple of hours given its length -- and think about my book for the rest of the week. i know that's what i should do. but what i should do and what i actually do in many aspects of my life don't usually overlap at all.

when i was a kid, i never won any contests in school. my best friend stefanie, who i have no trouble admitting is much smarter and more creative than i am, always won, and i got second. as usual, childhood trauma rears its ugly head and stomps on my rational, logical and healthy thought processes to produce this obsession with the contest. i gotta win this one. second just isn't good enough.

question answered and other things

2006-10-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

no doubt you all have been chewing your fingernails with worry, wondering what decision i made about taking the data entry job. i turned it down with chris's full support (he was even more certain about the 'no' decision than i was). then i spent the next two weeks working my ass off on report revisions for my current job. not complaing. lots of money to sock away for lean times. which might begin now since the revisions are complete, and no other projects have been directed my way.

there are two 'other things' that i'm going to post about in this blog. (why do i feel like i am writing a third grade level paper? in this paper, i will talk about items one, two, and three.) the first is the difficulty of getting back into The Book after an almost two week work-induced haitus. the distance gained by such a break is a double-edged sword. good side: i get perspective and see the outline of the book rather than getting mired in the chapter details. bad side: i get perspective and see holes. which in and of itself is actually a good thing, but when the holes seem to be the size of a small eastern european country and make you think that maybe your writing and your story are crap crap crappy, it ain't so good. luckily, i seem to have found a happy medium and have a feasible plan about plastering the holes that will require a decent amount of editing but won't take a herculean re-write effort.

the second thing is that i spent a goodly amount of time this week pouring over the 2005 guide to the publishing market, looking up agents and publishers. it was a learning experience, that's for sure. some folks are snobs and won't take submissions from new writers. bitches. who needs them anyway? (a reasonable voice in my head is right now saying, "we do" but i am resolutely ignoring it.) others take new writers but they don't publish very many copies, and since writers (especially new writers) are paid mostly by royalties... well, let's have a little math lesson, shall we? 10% of 10 bucks (most first novels come out in paperback) equals $1. $1 times 1000 copies printed (which is what most small publishers put out) is $1000. that would be a payment of 1000 bucks for how many months of work? i dooooon't think so. it appears as though getting an agent is the way to go. an agent is kind of like a lawyer. they will take shitloads of your money but they will end up netting you more than you would have gotten if you had self-represented. most agents only want three chapters and a cover letter, which means that i could start looking for them now, but they also want you to be able to give them a manuscript the very second they ask for it, so i'll have to wait to start the search. which gives me plenty of time to prepare for the numerous rejection letters i am undoubtedly going to recieve. (i'm not being negative -- it's just a part of trying to get published.) so anyway. look at me, actually trying to learn the business i am choosing to work in.

so yeah. that's it.

to write or not to write, that is the question

2006-09-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

i can't remember if i posted under that title before... if i did, forgive me for being entirely uncreative. if i didn't, then fuck you for jumping to conclusions.

here's the thing. i've been working pretty hard the last couple of weeks, i've had deadlines approach and recieved some new assignments with more deadlines. i haven't had the mental energy to write very much. i've written a bit, enough to keep me thinking about the characters and what's going to happen next, but not as much as i'd like. i'm behind on my weekly submissions because the work has been full time and then some.

here's the other thing. i just got offered a data entry job with a government branch. it's technically classified as research, but it's data entry and document coding. the job will suck. but it might get my foot in the door for actual real research jobs. my current job is about to come to an end, though the possibility of getting the occasional scrap exists. the new job would be from 8:30-5:00 in downtown vancouver. the pay would be about 4,000/month. there are pros: my foot gets in the door with the research gig, the pay is good, there's work for the forseeable future. there are also cons: i would be gone for twelve hours because of the commute, i lose any chance to do other research jobs cause i won't have time. and the biggest con of all: no time to write The Book. my experince of the last several weeks has shown me that i can't write and work full time at the same time.

so i have to ask myself at this point: how important is this dream? is it stupid? is it a waste of time, and the possiblity of starting an adult future with chris? how much do i want to finish the book and why? do i take a haitus or do i refuse the job and continue writing? will this hurt my chances of getting a job in the future? do i hope for the best and prepare for the worst? does taking the job preclude the possiblity of writing The Book? does writing The Book constitute an act of childish hope? good lord. what will happen to me, to my psyche, if i don't finish The Book because i took a job? and what will happen to me, to my psyche, if i don't take the job, i finish The Book, and chris and i are forced to eke out an existence without anything to look forward to because i squandered our future on the barest hint of an idea of what i wanted to be?

i need some answers, and it pisses me off that they are never really very easy to obtain. and they are usually unsatisfactory in some major way. i am going to have to sacrifice something. if it were just me, i wouldn't worry about it. i'd throw caution to the wind and write the goddamned book. but it's not just me, and i don't want to end up sacrificing chris's well-being for my own. i fucking hate making decisions like this. hate. it.

laughter

2006-09-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

**too much information warning: if reading corny, lovey-dovey stuff makes you squeamish, please skip the first paragraph and proceed to the second... or maybe skip the whole post**

two nights ago, i laid in bed and cried. i wasn't crying because i was sad or because i was angry or because i was sexually frustrated. no. i was crying because i love chris so much that it fills me up and spills out. sometimes this overflow takes the form of hysterical giggling, sometimes it takes the form of tears. my tears (oh, god, i think i am making myself nauseous with this stuff, but alas, the story needs to be told) that night were fueld by a mental picture that i couldn't erase from my head or my heart; it just kept replaying over and over again. chris was sitting on our moldy green couch, and he was laughing. yeah, that's it. that's all. but bear with me! this is not some hysterial, overly-romantic rambling about how very very cuuuuute my boyfriend is when he laughs. this is a hysterical, overly-romantic rambling about the nature of laughter itself.

chris's laughter is unique in my world. and i don't use that world lightly; i recognize that unique means singular, not just weird or strange or a little bit different but not really that different. what makes his so special? well, i don't want to get to the climax before you've had some foreplay, so i'll save that for later.

how often do you really listen to people laugh? i mean, we hear it, we hear it all the time, but how often to we really listen? what does laughter have to say? what does it mean? i have one friend who only chuckles quietly under his breath, never letting loose with a laugh. another friend laughs, really laughs, when someone has put down another person; he only laughs at other people's discomfort or awkwardness or social retardation. another friend laughs at his own jokes, never anyone else's. when you really listen, you can hear in laughter a multitude of emotions: sarcasm, cycnicism, derision, happiness, amusement, embarassment, hysterics. laughter is like a hidden language, or maybe a dead language, one that we use to communicate but is rarely understood or correctly interpreted. the next time you hear someone laugh, turn on your universal translator and listen for that language. do you hear discomfort under the peals? cyncism under the snorts? sexual attraction under the giggles?

since i've never been one for a whole lot of foreplay, let's get to the important part. what makes chris's laughter unique is that, unlike many others, and i would argue unlike all others, his laughter does not contain one iota of anything negative, his language is easily understood. when he laughs, the only things i hear are enjoyment, amusement, and genuine delight. i want to say that his is like the laughter of a child, but even children sometimes laugh at other people's misfortune, even their tinkling laughter can contain a hint of dislike. when chris laughs, his eyes crinkle up and he flashes teeth all the way back to his molars, and if you really freaking listen you hear nothing but pure joy.

i wish i could laugh like that, but since i can't, i'm just happy to be able to inspire it.

oh, bother

2006-09-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

i'm going to completely contradict my last post by saying that writing absolutely freaking sucks. for the last week, i have been struggling with the same scene, writing and rewriting, more than thirty pages now, trying to get my characters from point a to point b. this is a new one for me. i have had writer's block before, but it's been because i've convinced myself how bad my ideas are. this time, it stems from having too many possibilities. i remain confident in my story, my plot, my people. i just don't know how to get around this road block.

i've tried action and inaction, talking and not talking, dealing with one subplot or another. none of it seems right. none of it flows like my last chapter did, which practically wrote itself. or the chapter before that, or the chapter before that. i think i am going to have to learn a new way of writing to fill gaps like this, but i don't know what that way is!

i thought that blogging about it might help, but it hasn't so far. i thought that just sitting down and forcing it would help, but it hasn't so far -- it's just kept me from my other work, the work i get paid for that is due in a little over a week. i turn on music, i turn off music. i turn on the tv, i turn off the tv. i pull out some hair. and the more i talk about it and think about it, the more frustrated i get. so i'm just gonna post this, mess that it is... otherwise, i'll stroke out and the blog's new beginning will be its end.

new look, new purpose... still too lazy to capitalize proper nouns

2006-09-06T16:26:00.000-07:00

greetings. when i first created this blog (and it really wasn't much of a creative act -- it involved choosing a template from blogger and typing some words in a text box) it was supposed to be a place for me to write and be creative and ruminate upon all the cliches that my daddy always told me: don't let anyone steal your joy, everything happens for a reason, wish in one hand shit in the other and see which one fills up faster... he reiterated each of those classic gems with an almost frightening frequency because he believed in their truth and wisdom.

recently, for possibly the first time in my life, instead of pondering, ponificating, analyzing or agonizing, i actually started to do something. around june-ish, i initiated several large changes in my life. first, i quit my old job. i had great coworkers... and, well, that was the only thing i liked about it, really. the work was very stressful and very unsatisfying, and i realized the other day when i didn't freak out about some news that would have sent me into a screaming rage six months ago that the stress of that job went mostly unacknowledged. nevertheless, it had been killing me emotionally and spiritually, and if i hadn't left when i did, i would have gone over to the dark side of the force. second, i got a new job, doing social science research from home. it pays much better than my old job, and the commute is much shorter. ha. it isn't necessarily steady, and i almost had a panic attack when i realized that i was TURNING INTO MY FATHER, who never had steady work and counted himself in the ranks of the self-employed, otherwise known as contract workers. gulp. but alas, the job allows me to work less hours and get the same (or more) money as my previous one, which leads me to waystation number three on my Journey Toward a Fulfilling Life. the new job has given me the time and mental freedom and energy to start Writing a Book. i have about seventy pages so far. i was lucky enough to find a person who is also Writing a Book willing to share her wonderful work with me, and to keep me on track by exchanging at least ten pages a week of new material. ten pages isn't a lot, but it really is when you are working a near full-time job and trying to maintain a romantic relationship. perspective: if i keep up this pace, i will have a draft completed by valentine's day. i am finally doing something that is meaningful to me. it gives me pleasure. it makes me happy in ways that i never imagined.

and so, i am reshaping the content of this blog. instead of thinking about my dad's cliches, i am living them. it is hard to believe that everything doesn't happen for a reason when i applied for and got a job that gives me the time and money to write. it's hard to think that everything doesn't happen for a reason when through that job, i met a writing partner who helps me every day. it's hard for anyone to steal my joy now that i am doing something i am proud of. so many years of thinking about these things and how to achieve them, and all it took was doing something i really really wanted to do.

from now on, this web log is about books and writing, my two favorite things. and sometimes chris. but of course, he is inextricable from all of it because of his support and his inspiration. right now, i am thinking that many of my posts will be book reviews, ruminations about the writing process and flaky, floaty, shallowly deep ideas that pop into my head but don't really fit into the Book. i hope those of you who still read this blog like the changes.

cool james sallis quote # 2

2006-07-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

"we live metaphorically, striving always to match our lives to images we've accepted or imagined for them -- family man, middle American, true believer, gangster -- contriving these containers, a succession of them, that preserve us, define us, that keep us from spilling out and give us shape, but rarely fit." -- from eye of the cricket

the end is near.... or, reminiscing

2006-06-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

after today, i have exactly fourteen work days left at my current place of employment. this is very exciting in MANY ways (the first, foremost, and best thing is that i will no longer have to talk to, look at, interact with, or think about my oft-mentioned crazy, annoying, and maddening boss). however, as is often the case when a period of one's life comes to a close, i am starting to reminisce about the good times, the happy people, the (usually) functional and clean ladies' washroom in our building -- in short, i am dwelling on the reasons that it has taken me so long (more than a year since i first started thinking about quitting) to make the decision to leave.

reason 1: coworkers. i like my coworkers. i realized a long time ago how lucky i am to be able to say that. many of my friends LOATHE their coworkers, and have to deal with nasty nasty people every single day. by virtue of the fact that we are all crammed into a tiny space without any cubicles, we spend a lot of the day talking about politics, music, books, whatever. sex or some variation of it invariably comes up. someone's size is insulted, someone's orientation is questioned, someone's propensity to burst into giggles at the slightest mention of nether-parts is ridiculed. hilarity invariably ensues. it occurs to me sometimes, as i drive to work, or relate some funny-ness to chris, or sit on the couch after the commute that i will miss all of these people very very much.

reason 2: free parking. near downtown. 'nuff said.

reason 3: flexible hours. i basically get to come in whenever i want, as long as i'm here eight hours a day. it makes it easier on chris and me to commute in to town from the boonies.

reason 4: commuting with chris. i HATE the commute. i cuss. i spit. i make profane hand gestures. but i LOVE commuting with chris. it's two hours a day of uninterrupted time with him. in the morning, he puts his hand on my thigh, and i put my hand on his, and sometimes we talk and sometimes we don't, depending on just how sleep deprived we are. we put on the fox morning show, and make disgusted noises when one of the deejays says something too stupid for words to address. we see sunrises together, and we notice all the early morning weirdos who are up at the same awful time that we are -- the lady who takes her morning walk backwards, the girl who wears scrubs waiting at the bus stop, the guy doing tai chi in the park. in the afternoon, i tell him about my day. sometimes this takes five minutes, and other times it takes the entire freaking commute home, depending on my level of outrage. he tells me about his day. i alert him if there's someone turning in our lane or if he's about to hit a pedestrian (which he's done before -- you really have to watch that guy). we usually hold hands during all this (except at those moments when driving necessitates the use of both hands). it's good quality couple time, and it's time that i really appreciate. thinking about him commuting to work all by his lonesome self, not being able to use the HOV lane, not having anyone to hold hands with, makes me really sad. and oddly, it makes me feel guilty. maybe because i am probably going to be unemployed for the next three months? yeah, that could be it. anyway, i am going to miss that time with him more than i could have ever imagined. damn it all to hell and back.

reason 5: washroom. one toilet. roomy. clean. good hand soap. this is the washroom i will miss. the building administrator is making it a bit easier to leave, however, since the washroom is kind of dirty right now, and smelly, and there is some algae growing in the fresh water tank that's coming out when the toilet is flushed. so this is really only half a reason right now.

reason 6: local shopkeepers. when my brain makes an exit from my cranium, which it does regularly due to the ridiculously boring nature of my work, i get out of the office and spend some of my hard earned cash at local shops. aveda salon. body shop. chocolatier. ah, yes, the chocolatier. i love it. there's this red-haired chick who works there and she knows me by now, and we chat about everything and she gives me free chocolate. i'm going to miss her.

reason 7: money. as poorly paid as this job is, it pays something for god's sake.

reason 8: volunteers. we work with a lot of volunteers. some of them are idiots. some of them are irresponsible. but most of them are interesting people who i'm glad to have met. they come from all different backgrounds and cultures. they are young, so they keep my old ass down with the street lingo. they are enthusiastic about being here, which warms the cockles of my cynical and sick-of-this-shit-job heart. i'm going to miss meeting so nice, young, and bright people.

okay.... i think that's enough. i am already all depressed and maudlin about leaving. if i keep dwelling on all the things i am going to miss, i might, in a fit of temporary insanity, retract my resignation and decide to stay here. thank god that we have already hired and started training my replacement. it would be a little difficult to explain to her that i've changed my mind.

why is it that change is so hard? i know that i want, and probably need, a major change in my professional life. and even though my brain knows that, my gut is sad about it. my gut is also worried and anxious. if my gut had fingernails, it would be chewing on them. if my cut had cuticles, it would be picking at them. so on top of sadness about leaving some very good things in my life, i am dealing with anxiety about the lack of career certainty in my future. i have basically been promised a job in october, but what if that doesn't work out? i have promised to work on my book during this three month hiatus, but what if i fail myself? jesus, mary, and fucking joseph, where is pollyanna when you need her ass? WHY AM I SO NEGATIVE???

i want to be excited about leaving, and i am, but in the way that one is excited about getting rid of the mold in one's fridge. yeah. i don't have mold anymore. but what do i have to look forward to? what's in my fridge now? NOW MY FRIDGE IS EMPTY!!!! i got beer and mustard and empty shelves. and i don't even like beer.

god, i'm boring

2006-06-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

wonder why i haven't posted in a long time? see title. you know what my mama said? she said if you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all, so i haven't. the majority of my thoughts lately have been nasty, insidious, self-flagellating (and NOT the good kind of flagellation) ones about myself. so.... do i have anything nice to say yet? nope. not at all. check back soon.

neurasthenia, mother fuckers, neurasthenia

2006-05-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

don't say i never did nothing for ya -- i've contributed to your vocabulary, if nothing else. unless you're too lazy to look it up. yeah, you didn't look it up, did you? alrighty then. neurasthenia: a psychological disorder characterized by chronic fatigue and weakness, loss of memory, and generalized aches and pains, formerly thought to result from exhaustion of the nervous system. no longer in scientific use. well, it should still be in use, goddamn it. for the last almost two weeks straight, i have been fighting almost constant stomach cramps and nausea, on and off headaches, bleary eyeballs, and a sore back (read: generalized aches and pains). let's break them all down, shall we? stomach cramps and nausea -- work related stress causing ulcer. on and off headaches -- work related stress causing abnormally high blood pressure. bleary eyeballs -- work related stress causing sleep deprivation and red, puffy eyes. sore back -- work related stress causing neck and back muscle spasms. freaking excellent. now kiddies, what's the common thread here? could it be.... work?!!?!?! damn my need for money and damn capitalism!!!!

in all seriousness, my mood is more serious than i am letting on. continuing with the theme of my last post, my work life has degraded into something dark and ugly and slimy and smelly and horrifying and my conscious self is coiled up, huddling in a corner of my brain, arms wrapped around knees, rocking back and forth, muttering under her breath to just make it all go away. it really is an interesting condition/state of mind. there are some people who would undoubtedly be thrilled to have a job like mine -- sit at a desk all day in a comfortable chair doing work that while demanding is not particularly hard. i am sure that there are some people out there who could deal with and maybe even thrive on the crazy, self-absorbed, immoral boss and the steady stream of complaints and the office politics. however, i am not in that group of some people. for whatever reason (my own limitations, childhood traumas, etc.) i cannot seem to make it past the negative points of my job that stab into my body like ice picks. i feel like a dark cloud is hovering above my head, putting a crushing pressure on my shoulders, and i can't get away from it. yet, i am self-aware enough to realize that this is a panic/horror of my own making. i am in control of my emotions and my thoughts, and i am the one who is dwelling on the bad and the ugly rather than trying to accentuate the positive.

i believe that a portion of this state of mind arises out of a mid-twenties crisis. in august, i will officially be a quarter of a century old. for most of my life, i was ahead of the class. i started college at 16 with a 4.0 GPA. i finished university with honors and a double major at 20. i finished my master's at 22 -- sooner, if i wasn't such a lazy ass. but now.... well, i have been working at a doomed and dysfunctional non-profit as an administrator for the last two years. i spent all my savings immigrating to canada. while i learned some useful adminstrative stuff (nifty tricks on excel, how to use a database, the difference between a statement of claim and a statement of defense, etc.), in my mind i have not learned about or gained any new, different, or marketable skills. i have got to get out of this place, but i don't have another job lined up. nor do i really want another job. jobs suck. i want a career (note previously mentioned trite i-want-to-be-a-writer post) but i have no idea how to start it. especially given the geographic limitations placed upon me by my boyfriend's very secure and well-paid union job that he probably couldn't get anywhere else in north america. (that sentence refers to the fact that the job market is absolute crap in vancouver for anyone other than a skilled tradesperson which i am not and which i am not interested in becoming.) said wonderful and spectacular boyfriend has offered to support me financially if i want to quit working for a while to finish the book. he is so freaking amazing. how many other boyfriends would offer to do that? when i asked him why he has so much faith in me, he said, "i think it's great that you feel passionate about something and you're trying to go after it. and i believe that you can do it and that it will be great and if you don't do it now, you'll regret it when you're older." oh, getting teary eyed now. so, other than a man who believes in me and loves me and supports me and is the bestest person i've ever known in my life, what am i left with? (don't get me wrong -- i am SO thankful for chris in my life that i really wouldn't have any regrets if he were the only good thing in it, but i feel that i need to follow this panic attack to its logical end.) a flimsy and nascent book idea, no time to write it, and even if i did write it, what about publishing it? and even if i did publish it, what about getting paid for it? and what about the next one? and what about buying a house and maybe one day having a dog or a kid and a retirement fund? what the fucking hell am i doing with my life??? aaaarrrrgggghhhhhhhhh. oh, god, my stomach hurts.

nudity, sexuality, and violence

2006-05-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

i've just finished reading a recent post from a friend/coworker that got my thinkin' cogs slowly grinding (a miracle on a monday morning after five hours of sleep, and after i woke up to a mysterious and painful bump on my head -- mayhap chris decided i'm more work than i'm worth and attempted to elbow me to death in the wee hours of the morning?). i only read the goddamned thing because he promised scenes with coarse language and sexuality. boy, was i disappointed to find NOT ONE cuss word and no smooching, groping, or flashing either. false advertising. not only did this post make me think thoughts that are entirely too deep, it also got me wayyyyy too emotional.

some persistent themes included: the horrific myopia of our boss (not literally -- he's deaf, not blind), the family-like emotional and psychological ties of affection (as in, we like each other, mostly) and dysfunction among and between the office staff, and the general feeling of professional castration and uselessness that our organization often fosters. boy, i hope i don't get dueced for this post. good thing my boss is a technophobe. anyway. i feel that writing about themes 1 and 2 would probably fuck me up this early in the morning, so by default, i'm gonna talk about theme 3. now, the coworker who got me thinking about all this stuff definitely has the shittiest job in the office -- he is/was the administrative assistant to our executive director (it's a little unclear exactly what my coworker's position is now, as we have added yet another staff member with an ambiguous catch all job title). he is/was responsible for loads and loads of unnecessary typing, answering the phones, looking up bus routes for our erstwhile director, and a pile of other random and unpredictable things. his input was not wanted or required, in spite of the fact that he's fairly smart (though a pinko commie -- we can't really take him seriously, then, can we?). said coworker is understandably fed up -- when you eat a diet of shitcakes and shitballs and shitsticks all day everyday, you tend to get full fairly quickly. however, thinking about his plight got me thinking about the plight of others in the office. at the apparent opposite end of the spectrum are myself and our IT/finance manager. we have 'held the ear' of the boss for the longest time, have been here the longest (bless our hearts), and therefore have earned certain privileges. however, though i am dubbed the operations manager, i do not have the authority to make decisions on even the smallest points of policy, or even the smallest points of operations. the guy who is/was working as the admin assistant was supposed to be my 'second in command' as far as operations are concerned, and he was co-opted by my boss, and now i am doing the job alone. which is fine, in principle, but really, this job is best shared by two people. that's how it was in the past, and that's how it was when our little organization was operating at peak efficiency. so that's my cross to bear -- even though i can talk to the boss, and sometimes have him listen to me, he only listens when i give him answers he wants to hear. so of course, it makes me feel a bit like the office bitch -- i deal with the consequences of outdated policy or our director's inaction/missteps. as for the finance/IT manager, he is often asked to literally make up budgets, to shuffle money from our director's personal account into our office account, and to make all of this awful accounting look like it's on the up and up. he doesn't get to protest. he doesn't get to decide anything. the boss says jump for the money, and he has to ask how high. also, he is supposed to be working on a dedicated server to streamline our IT.... our website crashes all the time because our shared server can't handle the traffic, and we are running two databases, which causes all sorts of errors. but, our boss won't earmark any money to purchase a shared server. it's absurd. so the IT guy has to listen to all of us bitch about the IT system, when he isn't given the budget to buy what we need to fix the problems. our volunteer manager has a pretty decent gig, though she has to explain why it is that volunteers sometimes don't show up or change their schedules -- obviously she is doing something wrong when college students and teenagers decide to sleep in or fuck or anything fun like that instead of showing up for their volunteer work. our publicity/fundraising person has to write drafts and drafts and drafts of grants, only to be told that the project sucks and have to start again. she can't publish any posters or ads or anything because she doesn't have a budget either. each of these problems arises out of one source: the b-o-s-s. he has managed through his manipulation and his obtusity (is that a word?) and his awful awfulness to kill the spirit of not just my coworker who talked about it on his blog, but every staff member in this office.

now, i know that i said above that i was going to talk about theme 3, and my concluding sentence looks a lot like theme 1, but the two are inextricable from each other. having a boss who treats you like a child, who patronizes you and uses your labor like an abused sex toy to be taken out for his own gratification at his will and leisure (see, i got in some sexual content after all) is incredibly demoralizing. hold on. before you accuse me of white, lower-middle class self-pity, i do recognize that having an office job, no matter how shitty, is preferable to picking cotton in a hot field all day or cleaning out shit buckets, or whatever, consider that i do realize there are much worse jobs out there and i am by no means implying otherwise. i'm just trying to articulate the effects of working at a place where the boss is like a little dictator. in spite of the fact that ALL of us in the office have a bachelor's degree or better (two of us have master's), in spite of the fact that most of us have participated or directed meaningful social or political actions, in spite of the fact that we are all pretty darn decent, smart, and worthy human beings, we are not treated as such. and not only does this have an effect on our senses of self on a personal level, but it also has a devastating consequence for our senses of self on a professional level. i mean, how do you view your professional self when you have gotten what seems like so very little professional development? how do you view your professional self when you have no room for promotion? how do you view your professional self when your ideas are consistently pooped upon? how do you view your personal self when your boss refers to the royal "we" in a way that dehumanizes and devalues you? how do you view your professional self when you only exist at the office to serve the whim of another human being? you start to view yourself as expendable, as fairly useless, and you start to be afraid. you start to wonder if you would be able to cut it at a 'real' job, you start to think about your resume and how few skills you have acquired during your tenure at this place. your professional self shrinks into a little ball of apprehension and ennui. so... even though that effect is not so awful has having your fingers hacked off by a machete while cutting down sugarcane or not sleeping because of spasms in your back caused by ten hours of heavy lifting, it is there and it is significant, and for most of us, it really sucks.

now then. are you as depressed as me yet? i figure you must be. you're either depressed cause you can relate to the stuff i've said or you're depressed cause you've just wasted ten minutes of your life reading this shit and you're thinking that humanity is doomed if self-interested, sniveling little bitches like me populate the north american work force. in either case, i have to pat myself on the back for a job well done.

dum de de dum dum

2006-05-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

well, it's happening already. barely eight pages and three character sketches long, and already i am starting to do with my current 'book' project what i have done with every other intended book in the history of me -- thinking that the idea is crap, that it's so been done before, and that i am a stupid fuck for believing i could ever write something interesting, creative or good enough to be self-published, much less paid for by a publisher. sucks, sucks, sucks. this after a blitz where i wrote pages and pages without even having to stop and think about them, this after a moment of i-can-totally-do-this certainty. ah, what a difference a sleep makes. don't really know what to do here -- even though i definitely write for pleasure and escapism (notice i don't write for literary value -- i have no literary delusions of grandeur -- i just want to write fun, entertaining pulp fiction, i want to write the kind of books that i have read and loved and consumed like crack for my entire life) i am also writing because i want to make a living as a writer. shudder. that is just ever so slightly less trite and overdone than wanting to make a living as an actor (no offense meant to any starving and aspiring actors out there). but how can i make a living as a writer if i suck so much at it?!?!?

perhaps these were the thoughts going through harvard chick's head when she rationalized plagarizing like FIFTEEN PEOPLE. (yes, i am still stuck on her.... fuck you for judging me.) my great friend jenny, knowing how interested i have been in the subject, kindly fowarded me two recent (as in published yesterday or today) articles cataloguing the catastrophic plunge of harvard chick into infamy. the first one is a quote from salmon rushdie (just one of the virtual football team of authors she is accused of copying from) talking about what a shame it is that she would do something like this and jeopardize a writing career this early in her life. the other is from the harvard crimson, the paper that originally outed her, and it refers to further possible incidents of copying from such well-known authors as sophie kinsella (the shopaholic series). holy moly cow. and you want to know how she defends herself? she says (hold on, i'm laughing too hard to type now) she has a photographic memory, and she internalized these passages without realizing it. hah! my above-mentioned friend jenny could be said to have, if not a photographic memory, nearly so, and let me tell you -- she can remember a lot of shit, AND she remembers that she READ it. she doesn't think she came up with, for example, durkhiem's theory on tribal spiritualities. again, i am amazed that a girl who could get into harvard could be dumb enough to come up with these weak defenses. i guess she can't just come out and say she did it on purpose, and that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that for legal liability reasons. but i would certainly respect her a lot more if she did. i mean... let's see. unintentional, almost word for word copying. victimized and betrayed by her amazing photographic memory that's not quite photographic enough to remember the real authors' names....have mercy. gotta roll my eyes here. a lot. again.

alright, enough of that shit. when i don't have the dumbest harvard chick ever to occupy my thoughts, they return to the endangered future of my book. i feel like a schizophrenic manic depressive (please, no comments here about my callous use of the schizophrenic and manic depressive conditions -- my mother has suffered from the latter and my mother-in-law still suffers from the former, so, having lived with people who live with said conditions, i feel that i have earned the right to invoke said conditions in my blog... again, fuck you for judging me). i mean, one day it's like, i am going to be a writer. as in a W-R-I-T-E-R. and the next day, it's like, i am going to suck at everything until the day that i die, and i will probably suck at that too (how does one suck at dying? well, maybe they drown in a hundred pounds of elephant crap or maybe they die of auto-erotic asphyxiation or maybe they use too much easy off and then stick their head in an oven.) at this point, you can probably read a sense of panic in my words. panic is exactly what i am feeling. which is weird, cause while my prevailing emotion is usually annoyance, it isn't panicky annoyance. i guess this is what happens when you want something really really badly. or when you love something. i have this same panicky feeling but worse when i remember that chris is mortal and that i am so ridiculously imperfect and one day something might happen that removes him from my life. okay, i am glad that i got that out of my system. i think thinking about something (someone, i guess) really and truly important, no, essential, to my existence has put the book into some perspective. i'll either work on it, or i won't. i'll either finish it, or i won't. and just because i don't finish this one doesn't mean i won't start and finish another. but jeez, i hope this is the one. cause i don't have any more ideas. heh.

man in black, et al

2006-04-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

johnny cash is the fucking shit. enough said. no explanation or sappy words needed. who else in the entire world can you describe so accurately, so perfectly, so succinctly with the words "(blank) is the fucking shit"? can you say simply that richard simmons is the fucking shit without talking about his frizz ball hair or sexy girlish legs? can you say that martha stewart is the fucking shit without wondering aloud if she is the reincarnation of john a. macdonald? hell, no. thank you goddess for giving us johnny cash and his wonderful voice and his wonderful songs and for my mp3 non-ipod device in which i can store my entire johnny cash cd collection.

follow up to yesterday's post: the publisher of the plagarized author's books do not accept harvard chick's apologies or excuses for her blatant knock-off. i sense a lawyer in this girl's future. while my compassionate self continues to feel sympathy for harvard chick, my prevailing emotion seems to be glee (obviously my compassionate self is a tiny little honey-i-shrunk-the-kids sized person). i have a smile playing at the edges of my lips and again, nelson munsen keeps repeating "hah hah" which is interfering with my johnny cash listening pleasure. you know.... i wear the black for those who have never read... hah hah. damn.

testing testing 1,2,3

2006-04-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

it has come to my attention that my comments function isn't working. so hopefully it is now. but i really suck at computers, so it probably isn't.

guilt post

2006-04-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

well, i haven't had a blog for all that long yet, but already i am writing my first guilt post. as an avid reader of blogs, i have noticed that all bloggers, no matter how talented they are, no matter how many great ideas they have floating around in their heads, eventually get to a place where they post only out of a panicky guilt feeling. like, oh, shit, it's been so long since i posted that if i don't write something soon, all of my readers are going to abandon me! you can discern these posts by their random quality, their lack of cohesion or theme, and babbling. that's right, babbling. useless words with useless meanings that run on and on and on and on. babbling. (sigh. i just realized that my pooh post could be considered a babbling messy... thing..., which would mean that this really ISN'T my first guilt post. but i really did feel like a chubby little tubby all stuffed with fluff that day. i did.)

since this is my first guilt post, i will indulge another first, but one that will likely become the first of many given my obsessive morning reading of the new york times online edition. i am going to write for the first time about an item in the news. about a week ago, i was reading about this chick who got a $500,000 book deal as a sophomore in college. now, said chick is very privileged, and recieved her book deal because of some quality networking between her college admissions coach (yes, that's right, a college admissions coach) and said college admission coach's connections with several publishing houses and publishing agents. naturally, my first thought was a jealously uttered "bitch". my second thought was "oh, jeebus, what's wrong with me? i am 24 years old and have never ever accomplished anything worthwhile in my whole entire life!" ahem. so, yeah, it was a little dramatic and completely illogical, but i may have been on my period, who the hell knows? this morning, i start surfing the net, and i find a story about last week's chick and how she might have plagarized 13 passages in her book from a popular author of young adult drama, and that another 29 passages bear "striking similarities" to scenes in the popular author's novels. naturally, my first thought was a nelson munsen inspired "hah hah!" my second thought was "my stuff may be shit, but at least it's original." my third thought was "i feel kinda bad for this chick. her book was about the pressure on young women of her class to perform like circus dogs, to be successful in walking tightropes and fetching brightly colored balls, and she becomes successful because of this book, and now she's a freaking plagarist." then i reverted to my usual cynical misanthropic self and decided that she deserves what she gets cause if she's smart enough to get into harvard, she's smart enough to realize that she has plagarized one of her favorite authors. its something that all writers have to face, i think. i struggle all the time to balance between being inspired by my idols and just repeating their ideas and style in my own work. (if you laugh because i am referring to myself as a writer, i will kick your ass.) it requires a huge amount of self-criticism and self-reflexivity. everytime you write something, you have to ask yourself, has this been done before? where did i get this idea? am i writing in my own voice, or in the voice of the last author i read? but you HAVE to do it. because while it's true that there is very little in the literary world that is truly original, you can't be a writer by imitating the style or stealing the words of real writers. i guess this harvard chick was more interested in the $500,000 than she was in being a writer. or maybe it was just fan fiction like that star trek novella i wrote in the seventh grade.

oh boy

2006-04-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

i went to bed pretty early last night, an optimistic thing to do after a four day weekend of staying up late and sleeping in even later (thank you jeebus for this most precious holiday). contrary to my usual pattern, i was on the verge of sweet dreams (well, probably not sweet dreams, probably more like weird dreams, under which heading most of my dreams can be categorized. not scary weird. scratch-your-chin-and-wonder-what-the-hell-is-going-on-in-my-deranged-brain weird.) at about nine p.m. when days (truthfully weeks and if i really want to admit the reality, almost months) of tossing around ideas for a book in my head, of tracing out possible plot lines and character traits, of setting down a setting of time and place, culminated in the formation of an idea. an idea for my book. not just an idea for my book, but a good, workable, and i believe, entertaining idea. i kept my head on my pillow and told myself to remember all the things that were popping up in my head, one after another, going off like an automatic weapon. i told myself that if i kept repeating these ideas as they were coming to me that i would be able to remember them in the morning. i didn't want to get up because being near sleep at nine (well, it would be about nine thirty at this point) wasn't worth hopping out of bed to grab a pen and paper. my brain continued to spin off the central idea and my body continued to flip and flop in bed. chris, who was dealing with his own bout of the sunday evening back to work blues, finally asked me why i couldn't sleep. so i told him "i've got it. i've got the idea for my book." at which point he asked simply, "why don't you go write it down?" count on chris to be logical on a sunday night when our room is too hot and the covers are all messed up and i can't sleep because i have finally found the pooper scooper and baggie to pile all this shit into that has been buzzing around my head without a place to land for the last two months or so (i think i mixed metaphors there, and my fly got stuck in my shit or something, but oh well). anyway, i got up and grabbed my notebook and jotted down all the floaties that were floating through my head and in about fifteen minutes i had about three pages, all of it the musculo-skeletal structure of what could end up being a long, long story. book length, in other words. i am very very excited about this, hence my title: oh boy.

however, i am also very scared about this. i am scared because i don't have any more excuses to start -- or to not start. i am scared to tell people about my idea -- what if they think its stupid and my balloon gets burst? i am scared because of the committment actually sitting down and writing my thoughts represents. i am scared that i suck too much, or am too lazy, or whatever, to get this done. oh boy.

so i guess now the responsible, smart thing to do would be schedule some time every day to write. right now with a full time job, it's a little hard to imagine getting more than a couple of pages per week finished. however, i at least have my beginning, and my character, and my setting, and my plot, and my structure. i hope that i don't do with this one what i've done in the past -- disregard it as already been done, or dumb, or poorly written. i need this to work. i need to work at this. i need to prove to myself that i am good enough, smart enough, and that gosh darm it, people like me. no pressure. oh boy.

tubby little chubby all stuffed with fluff

2006-04-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

i feel a little bit like winnie the pooh today, like my head is stuffed full of cotton that has surely molded from the slobber of children that have chewed on my ears. when taken with the facts that i am wearing a red t-shirt that resembles pooh's almost as much as my body type does, that i am hobbling around without balance due to sore calves caused by the fifteen consecutive flights of stairs forced upon my beleagured body by a personal trainer, and that i feel a near constant need to mutter "oh, bother" and eat honey out of a jar with my hands...well, if it thinks like a pooh, and talks like a pooh, and walks like a pooh, and looks like a pooh... it must be me today. i come to this conclusion after determining that i deviate from the pooh standard in two major ways: i lack his consistent good nature AND i'm wearing pants. they might have holes in them, but they are still pants. well, jeans, not pants. really, old, scruffy jeans.

(i just realized, at the ripe age of 24, after watching winnie the pooh for about 20 years or so, that none of the folks living in the hundred acre wood, with the exception of christopher robin, the lone human, wear any pants and that the likely reason for this state of pants-less abandon is that pants imply genetalia to hide, and as far as disney is concerned, while gender can and should exist, genetalia should not. who knew they were so progressive? i shouldn't be surprised. they have gay day after all. yet while i respect their progressive views, i would not want to give up my genetalia or my boyfriend's genetalia, even if it meant that we could walk around in public without pants. it's perfectly satisfactory to let loose with the pants-less-ness in the privacy of one's own home.)

believe it or not, i am thoroughly enjoying my pooh-like bumbling. my head was so full of fluff this morning that i did not care about the fact that my jeans are almost completely destroyed or that my t-shirt is probably inappropriate to wear to work or that my flip flops are four years old (i paid seven bucks for them in 2002 -- best shoe value ever!). why? because i am comfy, dammit, and my feelings of comfi-ness are translating into a very concrete sense of well being. if i knew dressing like a bum and staring off into space while humming "the wonderful thing about tiggers" (the wonderful thing about tiggers, tiggers are wonderful things, they're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy, etc. etc.) would be the key to self-actualization, i would have adopted this lifestyle a long time ago. power suits, my ass. screw the yuppie dream! for goddess's sake, read the words of the prophet pooh (or whoever wrote for pooh) and rejoice:

"the sky is perfectly blue/the clouds are perfect too/and here i am with you/what could be more right/a quest has come to an end/and home's around the bend/and here you are my friend/what could be more right/nothing can go wrong/if everything is right/and everything is right somehow/nothing can go wrong/as long as everything is right/and everything is right, right now." (well, except for that i am at work and no one else is here and i have seven hours to go before this song will really be appropriate.)

hmm. i think by now it's obvious that someone has slipped me some kind of fabulous pharmacuetical and i should go have myself checked. or maybe i should just have some breakfast. anybody got any honey? i guess yogurt and a granola bar will have to do. strangely, contemplating my breakfast is starting to cause an eeyore-like response. hopefully i will not begin to take eeyore's physical traits as i have taken on pooh's. i mean, eeyore has a nice ass and all, but would i really want to be a blue donkey with a black mohawk? then again... i could probably get some sick leave from work if that condition were to develop. will you listen to me? since when have i looked on the bright side of things? it looks like pooh's possession of me continues after all. what's next? getting stuck in a rabbit hole with my ass hanging out? lucky for me (and for the rest of you, incidentally), it's (it being my ass) covered in my old blue jeans.

sleep? i don't need no freakin sleep

2006-04-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

those of you who know me are probably fucking sick of hearing me obsess about sleep -- how much of it i get or don't get, how much i like it, how much i want it, how much i needs it, my precious. too. damn. bad.

four hours. four hours. i know that bryant gumbel and that katy couric bitch can function on four hours of sleep, but i am a human being, not an automaton programmed by aliens to get up at the butt crack of dawn in order to drone on about whether or not tom cruise is possessed by the spirit of l. ron freaking hubbard. ahem.

i apologize for my nasty tone. i get a bit testy when i am tired. perhaps it's the bleary eyes that looked like i've smoked more dope than woody harrelson and bill clinton combined. perhaps it's being more bloated than that whale that blew up from the inside out in taiwan. perhaps it's the feeling of fogginess, of my world being slightly slower than it should be. i have no doubt that my poor little axons are trying to fire neurochemicals at one another as bravely as the residents of the alamo shot at the mexicans, and with about that much enthusiasm. but like the texans, they are losing the battle.

how desperate is the situation? i am now contemplating taking a nap in the juevenile delinquent's room at our office. who knows what i might lay in? who knows what substances have soaked into those couches? will i get bedbugs? lice? syphyillis? do i really care? is having a nap worth getting some unknown skin disease? damn. i have nice skin. i don't want to break out in syphyillitic sores. i suppose i will have to tough it out. wish me luck. i feel a little bit like william b. travis writing to sam houston. that one's for you, jenny.

confession 2

2006-03-30T08:23:00.000-08:00

before everyone gets all hot and bothered about my confessions, there's one thing you should know -- my existence is stereotypically white, heterosexual, and lower middle class. i have many confessions, and none of them are about drugs, sex, or anything particularly exciting. if i did something worthy of confessing in the drugs/sex/excitement category, i wouldn't post about it because i would have dropped dead from surprising myself. just so you know.

anyway. so, i got back from my vacation to find an envelope from ubc in my mailbox. it was a letter informing me that i have been accepted to the faculty of law at ubc. yippee. notice my total lack of passion about something i should be passionate about. i have two weeks to tell them that i won't be accepting their offer. why would someone apply to law school and then refuse acceptance, you might ask? well, not just for shits and giggles, though that was certainly part of it. when i came up with the idea of applying to law school, i was all gung ho about it. i am interested in the law, i have connections in the legal community in BC thanks to my current position, i want to have a career instead of just having a job, and i miss being in school. also, at the time, i saw law school as the perfect compromise between my desire to continue my education and chris's desire not to get the heck out of dodge (seeing as how i have already done my master's at ubc, the thought of doing a phd there when i know how shitty the system is isn't too appealing).

however, i have since considered the drawbacks and asked myself what i really want from my life. let us first consider the drawbacks of law school and a career in law: sixty hour work weeks for the first five years, snotty assholes just doing it for the money, rigidity, moral ambiguity, MORE student loan debt, and the hour and a half commute (one way) from our home to ubc for three years. now, let us consider what i want from life: time to spend cuddling and talking (and let's face it, screwing) with my partner; time to visit my aging grandparents in texas; time to spend in one of my favorite cities, austin, with my friends; enough money to buy or build a comfortable and homey home; and enough energy to enjoy all the great experiences of life that i overlook in the pursuit of grueling work and social schedules. oh, and i think i want to write a book. so what to do, what to do? well, working a sixty hour week would make it pretty hard to get in all that quality cuddling, talking, and screwing (not in order of importance, by the way). nor do i think underling lawyers at big firms get a lot of vacation time, especially since every pay check counts when trying to get rid of student loan debt. in other words, i think that a career in law is for the most part (though not totally of course, wouldn't want to be deterministic here) incommensurate with my.... well, with my heart's desire.

by now it's pretty obvious that my confession #2 is that i am not going to law school (at least not this year... maybe i will change my mind after i watch more of my friends and coworkers get on with their lives). what do you think? am i a moron? am i on my way to being a fat, middle aged, prematurely gray and prematurely wrinkled (from the fat) waitress at denny's (or whatever. insert your own local nightmarish 24 hour diner here) with bad lipstick and even uglier hygiene habits? sigh. i think so.

travel log

2006-03-29T11:07:00.000-08:00

i didn't really keep a log. why would i?

i had a nice trip. the bed and breakfast we stayed in had a very comfy bed and a very tasty breakfast and a breaktaking view of the water and vancouver island in the distance. perhaps it is for that reason that we stayed in for 60 of the 72 hours we were on the sunshine coast, enjoying the view and each other. on monday, we emerged from our room and went on a 10 kilometer hike through the freaking wilderness. my legs are sore. i need to buy some suitable hiking footwear. at any rate, it was a good vacation, thoroughly relaxing. i think i need to do this exact vacation about once a month.

you see now why i don't keep a travel log? it would suck, much like this post. but i had to post about my holiday, right?

holiday

2006-03-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

tomorrow i am leaving town for a quick little four day vacation with my sweetie. i am very much looking forward to the time away, with no chores to do, no errands to run, no obligations to uphold, and nothing but time to spend with my favorite person in the world. (given the nature of my mostly self-involved posts, i feel the need to let you know that my favorite person in the world is not me, but rather my loving, compassionate, and furry partner chris).

however, the anticipation that i feel thinking about our trip is tinged with something not-so-anticipatory. i think it is dread. a nagging voice in my head reminds me that holidays are just little escapes from the drudgery and sameness of every day life, a way to recharge one's batteries so that they can be sucked dry yet again by working, commuting, small talking, whatever, upon one's return to reality. the really insidious thing about vacations is that you feel so damn good after one of them that you lose the will to change your crappy job, or leave your cheating spouse, or make that important leap in your life that will remove whatever monkey is clinging to your back and slowly leeching out your soul. holidays are like those flashing memory erasers from men in black -- one push of a button and you've forgotten that you've seen an alien in your mirror.

why do we need to get away from our lives? are our lives really ours if we constantly seek ways to escape from them? how much of our lives are made up of merely a series of implicit consents rather than conscious choices? all the time we consent to bills, to mortgages, to restraint, to retirement funds, to lazy coworkers, to hateful in-laws, to not letting ourselves experience happiness and joy as often as we can.

rainbow always used to say 'don't let anyone steal your joy' and i realized with a start the other day that i had let someone steal my joy and it was me. i plan to use this holiday as an opportunity to take back my joy. i plan to bring it back with me, tucked safe inside a little box in my head. i plan to share my joy with chris, every day. i plan to take it out and turn it over in my hands when i am overwhelmed by choices and paths until it provides me with a map of where i want to go.

confession 1

2006-03-21T08:07:00.000-08:00

i am at work. but i am not working. lately, i sit at my desk and work hard at avoiding my work. i search for obsure web pages about creative writing, foucauldian theory, soon-to-be-published books by favorite authors, graduate programs in politics, and miscellanea. i sit with scrunched up eyes, trying to push out some story idea or character for the novel i want to write. (writing a novel is something that people who don't want real jobs aspire to do, which often results in the kind of shit that populates the shelves of my local chapters bookseller.) i wonder if i should quit my job and try to get a new one. am i selfishly (i keep the job for fear of being unpaid, for fear of finding something worse -- the job is not bad, it is not hard, it suits my schedule and my routine, and i have good friends here) holding on to a position that is teaching me nothing new, that i neglect from sheer boredom of the work? should i let the work go to someone who could and wants to do a better job? probably. but will i? probably not. after all, what if my next job (assuming i get one -- my degrees are in political science and history, for goddess's sake) doesn't allow me the time and flexibility to write emails to friends in different countries, jot down thoughts on my blog, or surf the net for another reason to ridicule george bush? what could be wrong with that?

who is rainbow johnson?

2006-03-20T13:35:00.000-08:00

rainbow johnson was one of my father's names, the one under which he played ball, picked up women, and generally enjoyed life. he called rainbow his alter ego, but rainbow was exactly like wayne and vice versa as far as i could tell. wayne and rainbow came up with some pretty good shit together, including life lessons drawn from the simpsons, awful one-liners, and tips on how to live rather than just exist. i named this blog after him because i like the name and i need to recognize all that it implies.

he always used to say that everything happens for a reason. i wonder if he's right.