groodthings

Q&A

2009-05-04T11:30:00.000-07:00

Q: So, walkinghomefromthethriftstore, you haven't been posting much. What's up with that?

A: I dunno. Not much was going on, I guess.

Q: Is it because you got sucked into Facebook, and that took all of your posting energy?

A: Mmmmaybe.

Q: What do you think of Facebook?

A: Like so many other intertubes gifts, it's a double-edged sword.

Q: How so?

A: It creates the illusion of intimacy without actually building relationships. You can confirm existing relationships through the FB medium, but you can't build new ones without some level of person to person real-life interaction. So it's like eating twinkies - tasty and distracting, even addictive, but ultimately the opposite of nutritious.

Q: Isn't that true of any intertubal communication? Why call out Facebook?

A: Ugh, hasn't this already been adequately addressed in the media? In fact, hasn't everyone moved on to deconstructing Twitter?

Q: I guess so. Any thoughts on Twitter?

A: Emphatically no.

Q: Ok. So let's move on - are you still writing?

A: Not really. And by not really I mean no.

Q: Why not?

A: Cuz it's hard?

Q: Yeah, but...

A: Um, I don't know. It's a habit I fell out of.

Q: Got any plans to fall back in?

A: Sure. At some point. Hopefully soon-ish.

Q: Ok. So what else is new?

A: I got an A+ Certification For Dummies book!

Q: Um... ok, why?

A: Cuz I love any test that gives you an A+ just for passing!

Q: No, really.

A: Cuz I have crushes on all the Helpdesk boys?

Q: Come on now. Why, really?

A: Well, because I work for an IT firm now, and I barely know my ass from an OS.

Q: What's an OS?

A: EXACTLY.

Q: So, what exactly is the A+ certification?

A: It's an international, vendor-neutral certification recognized by major hardware and software vendors, distributors and resellers. CompTIA A+ certification confirms a technician's ability to perform tasks such as installation, configuration, diagnosing, preventive maintenance and basic networking. The exams also cover domains such as security, safety and environmental issues and communication and professionalism.

Q: Did you steal that from a website?

A: Yes.

Q: So... you want to work for a helpdesk? I thought you were like a software librarian.

A: I'm in IT Asset Management, which is like being a software librarian, yes.

Q: So why didn't you get an IT Asset Management book?

A: There aren't any.

Q: Really? I find that hard to believe.

A: Well, ok, there are a couple. But the IT Asset Management specialization just hasn't existed for very long. I mean, think about it - laptops and software as necessities to business haven't existed for very long, so the need for someone to manage the associated costs and licensing is in its infancy. And it takes a while for the teaching and publishing industry to recognize the trend and teach/publish to it.

Q: Ok, fair enough. So, um, how do you know this won't be like the time you got the editing book? Or the screenwriting book?

A: You callin' me a quitter?

Q: Hey, you've called yourself that many times.

A: Fair enough. No, I don't think I'm going to quit this endeavor. For one thing, my work has a pretty good education benefit, and this is the closest thing I can take classes in at community college that work will pay for. Also, I really am embarassed on the daily about my lack of computer know-how. I feel like I need to catch up.

Q: What about technical writing? Wouldn't they pay for courses in technical writing?

A: Yes. However, in order to write something of a technical nature, you first have to have some knowledge of the information.

Q: Hmm, good point.

A: I know.

Q: Isn't computer stuff really hard though? I mean, computers pretty much work by magic, right?

A: Surprisingly, not at all. Upon reading the first couple of chapters, I found it all fairly straight-forward. Even the terminology, once you crack the acronym codes, makes more sense than a lot of other industry-specific jargon.

Q: But networking - that works by magic, right?

A: Yes.

I Call Do Over

2009-03-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a not so good, fairly unproductive day at work. I came home and allowed as how I wanted a do-over. The next day I came in early and got lots done, so the do-over worked.

Now I'd like to call a do-over on the last five days. I didn't write and I ate a ton. A ton!

Instead o' writing, I watched Serenity and Firefly and a doc on Hulu about the folks who dress up as superheros and take pictures with tourists on Hollywood Boulevard for tips. I enjoyed it, but new stuff ain't written, and drafts ain't revised.

The eating thing... I had a sales lunch on Wednesday. Salesfolk have a budget for wooing clients, and said wooing involves swag and taking clients out to lunch at nice places. Our salesman took us to Clyde's, which has an extensive and delicious menu. Calamari was ordered, and while I could have had a nice salad, I opted for the cheesy shrimp and grits, cuz I don't get free lunches that often and I'm not going to waste them on lettuce.

Then on Friday the hobbits invited me to go with them to Outback, cuz they had a gift card. Bloomin' Onions were ordered, and cheesecake for dessert. It seems I have no bravery in the face of restaurants.

Saturday was pancakes with Atomicate day. We went to the O.G. Pancake joint, and come on. Like I'm not going to have pancakes at the pancake place.

The final straw was seeing Watchmen on Sunday. Lil' Italiand Redhead snuck in a bag of Cadbury chocolate eggs and I got a bunch of popcorn. I have no justification here, other than I was hungry and I like popcorn and those chocolate eggs are rilly good.

So this week is going to be a do-over. It's back to nightly writing and salads. So say we all.

8 pounds and 3 pages

2009-03-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

Hmm. My weight loss appears to be progressing faster than my draft revision. Doctors, scientists and MFA grads will have to combine forces to research this phenomenon.

On the weight loss issue: I usually have 500 calories left when I go home for dinner, and dinner is usually 300 calories. However, what with it being lent and all, sometimes it's more like 200. It seems crazy but it's true - when you have vegetable soup and sweet potatoes for dinner, that's about the right number. Stupid minimal-calorie vegetables. Anyway, I am not one to let 300 extra calories just go by the wayside, so I've been eating them in the form of cookies. Girlscout cookies, to be exact, and Samoas to be even more exacter.

It occurred to me, looking back on a week filled with late-night samoa snacks, that this might not be the very best thing to do, seeing as how I'm actually eating more cookie calories than healthy foods calories. But, they are awesome, and I'm still losing weight, so I'm not going to worry about it. Viva las cookies!

On the writing issue: I intended to write an alternate ending to my story last night. I haven't gotten there yet, though. I found that there were many dialogue problems to correct, and that led to cutting more words. It's amazing how comfortable I'm getting with cutting stuff. Once I was able to part with a few beloved paragraphs, I found there were many, many words that didn't need to be there. It still takes a while to do, but I'm thinking I can definitely make this a 5000 word story. Unfortunately I think I'll be getting to the hard part tonight. I did have a flash of 'arrgh, can't do this, everythign sucks' last night, but I brushed the feeling off and got back to work.

And then I watched two episodes of Firefly on the intertubes. Because I have solid priorities in life.

Rewritey

2009-03-17T06:02:00.000-07:00

I finally got back to the story draft last night. As usual, I was scared of the idea of starting, but everything was fine once I started. I focused on cutting the first page. It's a whole page of the setup, so I got comments that it started slow. I took an axe to it, and now the story starts 2/3rds of the way into the first page. So, it wasn't crazy successful, but it's a little better.

So right now, it's 6000 words. I will be very happy if I can get it under 5000, for the simple reason that 5000 is usually the word count limit for longer short stories in most of the online lit magazines I've looked at. I'm not sure if I'll get this story in shape to the point where I'll want to send it out, but even if I don't, I'll probably send it out, because it's just never too early to start collecting rejection slips. It's been a while since I've put myself out there for rejection, and it's something that requires constant practice.

TV helps me read books

2009-03-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

TV gets a lot of crap. I know someone who likes saying "Theater is art, movies are craft, and TV is furniture." Funny thing, but this person and I are not close. It's a bs statement. TV is a medium, like theater or film, and what's on it can be art or it can be crap.

I will always defend TV, particularly in this here golden age of awesomeness. Here's one reason: TV helps me read books. Example: Stephen King's The Stand. In my youth, I loved me some Stephen King. I read every book of his I could find as a kid. (I still read him, but I remember discovering and then devouring his books back then.) With one exception: The Stand.

It's a huge book, firstly. It chronicles a plague apocalypse, and then the survivors battle it out, representing the forces of good versus evil. Now, plague apocalypse: SO up my alley, especially when I was a kid and was obsessed with the end of the world. So I read the first section, no problem.

Then we get into the survivors battling it out. Ok, there are too freakin' many of them. There's like, fifty characters, easy, and we're expected to care about all of them. I had issues. Also, I believe the post-plague part deals with my least fave character - the one who's starving in jail before the devil shows up to barter for his soul. And the devil barts with him for a while, and I'd get bored, and stop reading.

Then, some time in the 90's, the powers that be decided to make The Stand into a four-part TV series. And it was effin' AWEsome. The opening credits pan over the military super-flu creators, who are all in various poses of ACK-BLAH-dead, while Don't Fear the Reaper plays. Kick-effin'-ASS!

And then the fifty or so important characters are played by actors, who all look different, so I know who they are. I don't have to work my tiny brain to visualize. And then, mirabile, I went back to read the book, and was like, Oh yeah, that's the character played by that chick from Just Shoot Me, and that's the one played by that Gary Sinise, ok, ok, I got it. And I read it all and loved it.

Maybe I'm dumb. But if so, it doesn't change the fact that TV helped me read that book. So there. Suck it, haters!

Next up: Lord of the Rings. I got never read past the endless elf-poetry. Elf-poetry that was notably ABSENT from the kick-ass movies... Maybe I can finally get through it, nay, enjoy it, now. So let us all bask in TV's warming glowing warming glow.

Sleeeeeep

2009-03-13T06:04:00.001-07:00

I think I finally got enough. Yesterday I went to bed at 8pm, and actually woke up just a couple of minutes before the alarm. Sweeeet!

Getting enough sleep is muy importante to me, because ever since Back Pain: The Sequel, I've been cutting calories to lose weight. And sleep-deprivation = more feelings of hunger. Yesterday I was esstarvink, and ate more than my allottment of 1500k. Good thing I passed out shortly after dinner or I'd have kept on eatin'.

I had been doing Weight Watchers online, and it wasn't working for me because I was doing it half-assedly, so I got and read Carol Lay's The Big Skinny. It's better than most diet books because it's a graphic novel. So anyways, rather than counting points I'm counting calories, and eating 500 less than it takes to maintain my weight, which is 1500 per day. Now that I'm ok'd for exermacise I'll be doing that too, starting... tomorrow. Not today. Tomorrow sounds good. Anyways, without daily exercise, I've lost 6 pounds int he last 3 weeks.

I am trying not to think about it too much, as thinking about it gets real tedious real fast. I'm happy with my progress so far, so I'll say no more about it for now.

So tie-tie...

2009-03-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

I got critiqued and survived. Yaaaaay! Well, I had my story critiqued, not me myself, but same difference.

It went well. I got some useful comments in terms of things that I absolutely need to change (confusing dialogue, continuity errors, formatting issues) and also some thoughts of things that maybe probably should be changed (lots of back story on the first page, story-story doesn't start until second page) and then thoughts on what people think I should change but I may or may not change. Did I just use the word change like a million times? Yes. Yes I did.

Happily, there were at least four people who said they really enjoyed reading it, which definitely didn't happen with the first story I brought to the group. One dude really really liked it; he said he was reading it and had to stop to pick the kids up at the bus stop and then was running back to read the rest. And what more can you ask for than that? That's an amazing compliment. I was gratified and apparently my subconscious was THRILLED cuz I went home and fell asleep and totally had a dream about a three-way with him and one of the ladies from the group. The dude is married and the lady is probably not bi-curious so I woke up feeling the like the biggest perv in the universe. Go me and my crazy brain!

The downside to writey group is I have a hard time winding down afterwards; it takes me a while to fall asleep and so now today I'm all kinds of tired. Boo.

Excuses excuses

2009-03-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

So, tonight my 2nd short story is being critiqued at writey group. I posted the draft last week, and have been studiously avoiding writing anything ever since.

I want to work more on this story. I like it more than I liked the first short story attempt. Maybe I like it too much. Who knows, but my thinking was I'd see what everyone thought at writey group and then go back and work on another draft.

According to most professional/awesome writey writers, this is the wrong thing to do. What you're asposed to do is put one thing aside and immediately start working on something else. So in other words, you should still write every day. Because I haven't followed this advice, I think it'll probably be hard at first to work on another draft. Such is life. I'll still do it and everything, I just think it'll probably suck for a while.

In other news, I went to the back docker and he told me to go ahead and do any kind of exermacise whenever, since I can't make the herniation worse, and it'll go away in a couple of years. My first reaction: AWESOME! My second reaction, ah, crap, now I really do have to exercise. Starting an exercise routine again after doing nothing for months is going to suck much more than taking a week off of daily writing. Look for me to be sore and grumpy for a while...

Writey Update

2009-03-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

I ain't been writing. I have my current short story posted for critique this week, and have been getting feedback back (and bringing sexy back) from various friends, and I want to work on this story more but I'm going to wait until I hear what the writey group says first. Right now, I've got a few readers who understood what was going on in the story and a few who didn't, so some clarification work may be in order, and then more work on dialogue, prolly.

I have been reading some. I read Jeanette Winterson's Tanglewreck thanks to Mrs. Pinchloaf, who loaned it to me. It's YA scifi, and I enjoyed it.

I'm currently reading The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1999. It's edited by Ursula K. Le Guin, and starts with a really excellent discussion by her of what science fiction is and isn't. I've read two stories so far and liked them both. So that should keep me busy for a while.

Confession

2009-03-06T04:24:00.001-08:00

I downloaded the Barbarella opening song, and now I need to hear it over and over and over.

Barbarella, Ba-Barbarella!

A Really Grood Thing and Two Kinds of Work

2009-03-04T09:33:00.000-08:00

So, I sent my first short story to Circus Jeff to read'n'comment on. It's a scifi tale set in a scifi world (with a scifi giiiirl, laughing plastic, it's fantastic! Ok, weird swedish Barbie song interlude over) and in discussing said world, I mentioned that it'd be cool of C.J. wrote a story in that world. And he totally did! And I totally loved it! What a grood thing.

He writes about the creative handover better than me in his blargh: www.jeffwills.blogspot.com. I agree with what he says, so go read it. (If you want to.) To sum up: throwing ideas/assignments back and forth is awesome.

Now, it took me like a month to write my story, and I think it's just ok. Circus Jeff wrote his in a few days, and it's great, and I don't lie about that stuff. And, unless there's something he's not telling me, he's kind of in the same place as I am with writing; in other words, neither of us has been consistently working on it much in the last five years or so. So what gives? Why come did I agonize and throw my laptop across the room, and why come did he tear out a supremely awesome first draft?

I would like to think that I did some of the heavy lifting in coming up with the alternate future world, so I had a set of parameters to hand over. However, I also think there's a more complete answer.

Since college, I have been: spending most of my time in an Office Space kind of environment, and the rest playing/singing backup in bands, watching TV with friends and roller skating. The closest I've come to creative work has been songwriting in Cuddle Party (holla, Atomicate!) We did most of that via IM and didn't put a ton of thought into it. (That was kind of the draw for us.) I avoided theater like the plague and while I read a book or two, I mostly watched TV.

Circus Jeff has been: acrobalancing, auditioning, acting, traveling to Italy to learn commedia, and extensively blogging about his artistic work and relationship to same. He has spent a large portion of his free time working towards growth as an artist, and when he was acting, a lot of the time it was in never-before-produced work. He did lots of staged readings too, which is what you do with an infant play before you go back and fix it before staging it.

So it occurs to me that there are two kinds of work: there's the work you're currently working on, and then there's the lifelong work. I think Circus Jeff's time contributing to new works, working in theater, and generally gearing his life to support his art has made a big difference in how he works; he knows the rules, he has the discipline, and he's laid the groundwork to be able to build something relatively quickly. Whereas I've been, erm, watching TV. (In my defense, TV's gotten REALLy good. Truly it is a golden age!)

It's gratifying to know that all that crap you're supposed to do as a life-long artist actually pays off. There's no manual for how to do the crap either. (Well, there are many, none are very useful.) You just have to throw yourself into it and figure it out, which Circus Jeff has done and continues to do.

And uh, lest this seem like TOO much of a Circus-J love-fest, let it be known that he is extremely picky in his eating habits, so living in the food capital of the world is SO wasted on that guy.

Revisifications and where do we go from here?

2009-03-03T08:01:00.000-08:00

This past week, I gave my second short story attempt to a few folks to read and offer comments. Well, I say 'gave'... The first person to read it, Mrs. Pinchloaf, said the title bothered her because it was a line from a Phantom of the Opera song and the song got stuck in her head. I suck at thinking up titles so I sent it to Atomicate and was basically like, I need you to rename this now. And she did! Yaaaay!

So Circus Jeff, Atomicate and Mrs. P read it and said stuff, and last night I took all their comments and worked over the story again, and then posted it to the writey group for critique next week. I would have waited until Friday to post, but the queue was filling up rather quickly. So now, thanks largely to the above-mentioned folks, it's a reasonably solid first draft, I think.

I also gave the story to a few other people - a scriptwriter friend in LA, Mrs. Pinchloaf's sister, who is a noted creative writing scholar, and my very own seesterperson, an infamous reader, writer and editor. Scriptwriter guy hasn't read it yet, but I give him a pass because he's an editor/director on Nip/Tuck, and therefore I get to use him to namedrop, like this: "Oh, well my friend in LA was talking to Katee Sackhoff the other day..." or "Word on the street is cute Ryan from Oz is actually a huge pain in the ass to work with..." So that's cool.

Mrs. Pinchloaf and Seestor get a pass because, well, everyone gets a pass. I look forward to their comments even though they don't know as many famous people as scriptwriter guy.

So now I have tonight. I don't want to work on second short story, because I'm waiting on hearing the writey groups reactions, but I don't want to take the night off either. So I think it's back to the random prompt generators for me.

Writey Group: Also a Grood Thing

2009-03-02T04:34:00.000-08:00

Despite my complaints about other folks' critique tactics and writers who seem to me too defensive, there are many wonderful people in and grood things about writey group, and here they are.

The group as a whole is very conscious of the writer's feelings, and I've never felt like anyone got attacked during their critique. Everyone is kind in the way that they give their critiques. At the same time, they are not too kind - they'll definitely let the writer know if they don't understand or like something.

There are certain people whose comments I always agree with. Is that a good thing? It doesn't mean they're right, but I definitely feel more comfortable knowing that some people think the way I do.

When you submit to this writing group, you know that your work will be read carefully. I was pleased to get copies of my story back all marked up; it meant that someone read the thing and took the time to write comments. It's easier said than done, too. I always find a critique day comes up faster than I think it will, and I'm sometimes scrambling, not to read the posted stuff, but to write comments.

To go into particulars of grood things, at the last meeting I talked to a new member who a) always says something interesting and to the point about work, and b) has a number of short stories published in various literary mags, and c) whose work I've read online and liked. He was super nice, and when I told him I'd read some of his stuff, and was interested in eventually trying to go the same route with publishing, said, oh, you need to check out Duotrope.com, it's a listing of all the online literary mags. He went on to tell me he's negotiating a contract with a publisher for a novel. This guy is pretty quiet compared to some folks in the group (ahem, me included, yes I've discovered I have That Guy tendencies.) He's really nice and not obnoxious at all. And successful, in the terms that I define success. I sort of felt vindicated by this.

So, to sum up: Writey Group - a grood thing.

Who Owns the Art

2009-02-25T19:41:00.001-08:00

When you write a script, it ceases to belong to you as soon as you hand it over to the director and actors. This is fact, and it's a fact that is very, very clear. The only things you control are the words the actors say. To some small extent you control the commas as well. You tell an actor, this is where I want you to pause, by putting in a comma. But even that can be taken away. The director and actors own the script in rehearsal, and the actors own it in performance.

This is a very good thing. It doesn't feel like it at first. You write a script, you give it to people to read out loud, and when they do, you think, this doesn't sound like it sounds in my head, so therefore it's wrong. But you in fact are wrong. You don't get to see it until the performance. Then you say, oh my God, so THAT'S what that can mean. THAT's what I was writing about, this is how it is.

And then when the actors perform it they hand it over to the audience. The audience feels and thinks, and maybe it's not what the actors wanted them to feel and think. Or maybe it's not what the director wanted them to feel and think, and then it's at three steps removed from what the writer thought they should think.

And this is good too. It's all come full circle. You thought something up and shared it and got some other people to put stuff in it, and then they shared it, and other people saw it and heard it and connected it to their own experiences and filtered it and hopefully, enjoyed it, learned from it, grew from it.

The same transfer of ownership happens when you write a short story, poem, essay or novel. You only own it when it's in your hot little hands. As soon as someone else reads it, it belongs to them. It's not as easy to see as the script to actor to audience transfer, but it's the same thing. The reader reads your words and fills in the gaps with their imagination, which is colored by their experience.

Which is why it pisses me off when writers who get critiqued adamantly defend their work and tell the readers why they are wrong. The readers are never wrong. You may not like it, but you have to accept it. You do not get to dictate how a reader SHOULD receive your work. You can only write and let the reader read. If you don't like what they got from it, you can go back to the work and try again. THAT'S IT.

Daily writing

2009-02-24T06:04:00.001-08:00

So, I did write this weekend. Not much, not for very long, but on Saturday and Sunday I wrote.

Lately I'm feeling stalled. Not blocked, but stalled. I've written two stories, and sent the first one to a few friends to read. They each came back with similar feedback, which prompted me to go back to the story and work on it a bit more. Then the second story is almost to the point where I want folks to read it, but only almost.

Exacerbating factors include back-related issues. I spend more time sleeping, more time soaking in a hot bath, and more time fuzzy-minded thanks to muscle relaxers'n'ibuprofens. I think it's ok to have a stalling point, and hopefully soon I'll be back to the hour a day rhythm.

So brilliant it's stupid, and also the reverse

2009-02-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I did not work on character and setting, I worked on dialogue. Which fed into character, at least, so maybe it was the same destination by a less direct path. Meeeh, whatever, it worked for me.

The First Five Pages says dialogue can be instantly reject-o-matic, and an editor doesn't even have to read the dialogue to determine if they'll reject your piece. The editor looks at the page, and if there's a ton of dialogue and nothing else, rejected. And, if there's very little dialogue, rejected. He recommends taking a dialogue-heavy scene and condensing the dialogue to about a third of the original amount, and doing the reverse for a dialogue-light scene.

I looked at my story, and saw a crap-load of dialogue. I condensed it down and added more description, and voila! It reads better.

It's such a paint by numbers exercise that it seems like it shouldn't work, but it totally does. I also related to the idea of looking at words on a page and deciding whether or not I wanted to read more. This is part of my book selection process. I do read a few sentences as well, most of the time, but I will admit that sometimes I flip to a random page, and if the way the text looks on the page doesn't appeal to me (i.e., large paragraphs with few breaks, wah, too hard! Or, line after line of just dialogue, meh, I'm not getting my money's worth) I put it down and look for something else.

I didn't get a whole lot done last night. I definitely need to find ways to spend more time reading and writing. The evening routine, great as it is, does not give me a lot of time. It takes me a while to decompress when I get home, and I'm finding lately that I want to read more just to see how the good writers are doing it.

One option is to challenge this whole idea of needing to decompress. Probably I'm just a whiny bitch and could get started actually working earlier.

Another option is to schedule more weekend work time. Since beginning this effort, I haven't once worked both days of a weekend. A persistent voice in my head tells me I need the weekday routine, or else it won't work, but of course that's a weak excuse.

The upside is that lately, I haven't felt like throwing the computer across the room when I actually get down to it. Once I'm writing, I'm ok. It's just getting to the writing that's the challenge.

No percoset for you!

2009-02-17T13:59:00.000-08:00

I saw my doc today to ask for percoset'n'muscle relaxants. My Virginia G.P. is much more on the ball than my NJ one, which is good. He allowed as how percoset just hides pain and doesn't have any therapeutic benefits, so he didn't prescribe it, although he did give me muscle relaxants. I could have argued that hiding pain is a therapeutic benefit, but eh, I can still walk and function, so I'm not going to push the pusher. When I got percoset before, standing and sitting were excruciating - the only semi-comfortable position was leaning most of my weight on my arms on a desk or chair and trying to keep as much weight as I could off my feet. In that case, percoset, yes please and right now thank you. As I am now, I can get by without it.

He also recommended a couple of orthopedists who specialize in back pain. What a freakin' concept. Are you listening, NJ doctor? Well, no, you're not, but I wish you would, cuz this is how it's done. So the point of orthopedery, as I understand it, is to tell me whether or not I need surgery, and tell me what exercises I can safely do, and/or sign me up for more physical therapy. Frankly, even if they tell me I do need surgery, I ain't gonna do it without waiting a good year or two or three.

The troubling part is my doc told me not to do any exercise until the pain abates. It's good common sense, and I don't want to make matters worse. However. I am overweight. There is no doubt about this fact. There is scale evidence and worse, photo-documented evidence. Overweight exacerbates back problems. This is a fact. And it's going to be tough to lose any weight without exercise. It can be done, but it's tough. Grr.

Read Aloud

2009-02-17T05:48:00.000-08:00

This weekend, after a whole lot of procrastination, I read my short story out loud. I was quite scared of this task. I was finally able to do it by telling myself I could only watch Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica if I read my short story out loud to myself first, and that worked.

It wasn't as horrifying as I'd thought it would be, and was quite the helpful exercise. I was able to hear some oddly constructed sentences, and a few typos. The purpose of the exercise is to make you hear the sound of the language, and find places where there might be too much alliteration. I didn't so much notice odd/bad sounds, but I did hear quite a bit of repetition. I've managed to repeat information six or seven times, which is five or six too many. So I went in with an ax and cut a bunch of paragraphs. Yay!

Next up to work on: character and setting.

Last three pages

2009-02-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

I'm on the last three pages of my story. Last night I reclined on my bed and watched the sporting dogs part of the Westminster Dog Show. It's become my ritual to watch some TV online before starting to write. I do it because this is the sequence of events for me:

Come home and eat dinner with the fam
Wash the dishes (it's my 'rent' for being a living-at-home loser)
Watch some TV online
Write

I could jump into writing immediately, but I'm too much of a wuss. I'm all, 'meeeh, I need time to veg out, meeeeh.' Normally, an epi of the Daily Show or Lie to Me chills me out and then I can get to workin' on the story. The Westminster Dog Show, though? Not so much. I didn't like it, but I wanted to see who won. It was Stump, who's all right I guess, but I really wanted the golden retriever to win, cuz it was so preeeeetty.

So I was grumpy when I started writing. Then I got grumpier cuz I'm at a tough point. It's the last three pages, where I wrote more terrible dialogue and pulled an ending out of my ass. It was rushed and I didn't do much work to get there. Now I have to do the work. And the way I originally wrote for it to get there wasn't working last night.

The adjective exercise is enormously helpful in this regard, because when you're grappling with a complicated task, it helps to be able to go back to a simple task. When I got too frustrated and wanted to stop I went back to adjective work. It didn't solve all my problems, but it kept me writing long enough to set the subconsious wheels rolling, and this morning I thought of a way to help the ending along that I like better than the original.

Back pain: does it exist?

2009-02-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

I am currently experiencing Back Pain: The Sequel. Like most sequels, it's not as intense as the first episode, and thank God for that.

Because I've been so blog-happy, I can now read my past posts on back pain, and on allll the things I was going to do to prevent recurrence. Let's see, I was going to lose weight, strengthen my core, avoid high impact exercise, and pay more attention to the little aches and pains that can signal the bigger ones.

Sigh. The road to hell etc etc. Suffice to say I've been feeling better and I mistakenly thought I was completely fine. So why not go snowboarding? Why not! Why not do a few minutes on the rowing machine? It's such good exercise! Oh self, self, self, how quickly you forget.

So now I'm not in agony, but I am in pain. It's localized for the most part across my lower back, but I do feel a twinge on the right side of my right calf, and I'm feeling it more in my hips than I want to.

When I was first going through this, it debilitated me to the point where I couldn't walk for more than a few steps without crying. I got an MRI, which showed I have a herniated disc in my L5-S1. The disc is bulging and may be impinging on my sciatic nerve.

Now, here's the thing: apparently, you can have a herniated disc and have it impinging on all sorts of nerves and not feel anything. My dad told me he was having pain in his right shoulder, so he got an MRI and found he had a disc impinging on a nerve on the other side of his neck - his left shoulder, where he felt no pain at all. Weird, right?

When my back first flared up, it hurt so much I couldn't think straight. It was the worst pain I've ever experienced. My treatment options that night were some ice packs and some ibuprofen. Ten minutes after I took the ibuprofen, the pain abated to the point where I could sit in a car. I went to the doc the next day and got some mild muscle relaxants and nothing else.

By the next weekend, I was back to square one, and had to get serious muscle relaxants and codeine. So why, if I needed the heavy drugs a week after the incident, did I only need a few ibuprofen the night when the pain was the most intense? I discussed it with my dad, and apparently most pain doesn't really exist. It should be a signal that something is wrong with your body, but sometimes it isn't. Sometimes, if you think the pain is going to go away, it will. If you don't, the nerves keep firing and muscles respond by spasming, pinching the nerves more so the pain increases. So when I first had issues, I took the ibuprofen expecting it to help, and it did via the magical placebo effect. Then later I learned that the pain was beyond OTC meds and they stopped working.

And the way that painkillers work is odd. I don't know a ton about it, but each class of pain killer works in a different way. Some interrupt the signals from the nerves, and some work more with your brain, so you still feel the pain, but you don't care about it.

I looked on WebMD for back pain treatment options. They say that back pain goes away in three to six months, with or without treatment. So I'm experiencing pain, and whether I can choose to have it treated or not, it'll go away.

Personally, I'm very much in favor of not feeling pain. I think pain is physically and mentally tiring, and if you're tired all the time, you can't heal as efficiently. Also, I think bad things are vicious circles, and it's important to interrupt the cycle if you can. If pain is a signal that something is wrong, and you recognize it and fix the underlying cause, then you shouldn't have to feel it over and over. So Dear My Back: message received. Thank you. Please stop calling.

Gross

2009-02-10T10:11:00.000-08:00

I've started and abandoned three posts this week. But this one's too important to abandon!

I've noticed I'm drooling a lot in my sleep lately.

That is all.

More arduosity

2009-02-06T05:22:00.000-08:00

Last night I didn't feel like writing, but it was a different I-don't-feel-like-writing feeling than I've had before. Previously, it's been 'I suck and this piece sucks and I should just go watch TV and not add any more suckiness to the world.' Last night it was more like, 'I totally did lots of work on the piece, and it was great, and I should relax and not work on it now because I deserve a day off.' But you're not allowed to do that, so while I did get started a bit later on account of I had to watch the latest episode of Lie to Me on the interwebs, I did pull up the doc and get to work anyway.

Wednesday night I took adjectives out of the first three pages. Last night, I got to a page that doesn't have many adjectives because it has a ton of dialogue. I didn't like the dialogue. The First Five Pages has about five chapters on dialogue, which I didn't review ahead of time, but I know I committed many dialogue sins, so I got down to it. I still took out adjectives, which led to axing entire paragraphs, but I also changed the characters' lines a lot. I think the conversation makes more sense now, and flows better, so that's good.

It's slow going, though. I have 16 pages, single spaced, and about 7,000 words. After a couple of hours last night I'd gotten through page 8. It was a tad frustrating, that. I guess I still expect the process to be fast, like, here's a short story, BAM! Here's another one, BOOM! But alas, not so much. I wrote the draft quickly, and allowed myself a lot of leeway in order to do so, and now the going back and fixing is taking time. I still think that's a good way to go; if I let myself get stuck on silly things like plot points making sense and characters sounding like real people I wouldn't have gotten past page 4.

The habit is getting more habitual tho', and it is easier to sit and write for a while. Daniel Pinkwater has an essay about how he trained himself to write. He decided to practice sitting at his desk for two hours, and didn't allow himself to do anything BUT write. If he didn't write, he still had to sit there. I'm trying to adopt that method too. It's going ok. (I sometimes check Facebook or gmail real quick-like in the middle of writey time.)

My biggest fear about this story is that when I'm done with it, it'll be missing story basics: someone who wants something, encounters an obstacle, and takes action to get past the obstacle. However, I like it enough that I'm not going to worry about it. If I get done and that's the case, I'll put it away and go on to the next.

Ruining Poems with Adjectives!

2009-02-05T04:13:00.000-08:00

Twas brillig and chilly, and the slithy, lithe and slimy toves were gyring, gymbling and dancing in the wet, sloppy waves.

Every single borogove was mythic and flimsy, almost mimsy, if you will.

In addition, the momes rathed furiously, totally and completely outgrabe.

Adjectives

2009-02-05T03:58:00.000-08:00

I did the adjectives exercise with my story last night. It wasn't exactly difficult, but it was arduous. I was cutting and pasting into a separate doc without a mouse, and then I gave up on that and just deleted the adjectives. Also, and this is embarrassing, but I had to stop more than once and decide if a word was an adjective or not. S-M-R-T smart!

But here's a list of what I got from the first three pages:

jerky
unhappy
ok
obligated
in person
sometimes
infrequent
mostly
officially
wasted
very pleasantly (wasted)
extensive
mild
dangerous
basic
vast
tastiest
pleasantly
smashed, wasted
thigh high
striped boycut
long
sleepless
loudly
perfect
big sad
arrogant playboy
no good
always
dirty
most of the time
all the time
casually
racist
specifically
offensive
socially skilled
in seconds
instant
interesting
funny
complete
serious
chronic
different

Now, the exercise asks the writer to look at the list of adjectives/adverbs and see which ones are cliches, and figure out better, non-cliche words to use. I don't see a ton of cliches here, although 'vast' and 'arrogant playboy' have got to go. What I see are common, boring words.

Next, the writer is 'posed to see how the story reads without the adjectives. Here's where the task is really onerous (hard, difficult, arduous, a lot of work): when you take an adjective out of a sentence, often you have to go back and rewrite that sentence! So like, "She felt sad and lonely" becomes "She felt and ." And you have to rewrite that shit! No kidding!

That was my favorite part; seeing how I could rewrite with no adjectives. I do like how it reads. I think too many adjectives is a lot like expository dialogue. You insult the reader by saying the day was cloudy, cold and overcast, when you could just say it's overcast and let them draw their own conclusions about the cloudiness and coldness.

So tonight I'm continuing with taking adjectives out, and then I get to put some back in. Yaaaaaay!

The story

2009-02-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

This morning I printed it out, and I put it in my purse to take it work with me. Now, I'm not going to read it over lunch or anything. I just wanted to have it.

I t hink I might have a pate hangover

2009-02-04T09:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my folks took me out to Le Refuge in Alexandria for a pre-birthday dinner. The reason we didn't go today was two-fold; Wednesdays are lent days, and we didn't want my dad to have to order frog's legs again, and my seestor has to travel this week, and needs today to pack. Here's what we had:

1 bottle of white wine (I forgot to check the name before I started drinking, and then was too drunk after awhile to care. Woohoo!)
1 bottle of red wine (Hughe et someone? It was good)
Appetizers:
Me: pate de compagne
Seester: Cheese plate
Dad: Endive salade
Mom: hearts of palm salade

Main courses:
Me: salmon en croute in champagne cream sauce. (Hell. YEAH.)
Seestor: beef wellington
Dad: roast duck with raspberry sauce
Mom: roast lamb in mushroom sauce

Then we stumbled home for cake'n'presents. I'd requested a grocery store white cake with the sugary lardy kind of icing, and the folks obligingly gave me an edge piece with yellow roses, so the ratio of icing to cake was about 4:1. I got good stuff present-wise; in addition to the pink octopus, I got some nice books, a coupon for a massage (which I will need after snowboardin' this weekend) and an ipod arm thingy.

This morning I am hungover and burping pate. French food is rilly good, but ees a leetle reech for moi.

Hee!

2009-02-04T03:37:00.000-08:00

This about sums it up...

Done!

2009-02-03T06:31:00.000-08:00

I finished my story last night. Well, maybe I just ended it. I got to a point where something unexpected happened, and it seemed like an ending. It's probably not - it's probably the kind of thing where the reader's going to be all, 'well THAT came out of NOwhere, what the eff, this story sucks." But, I like it, so when I revisify I'm going to try to build to the ending I wrote.

So, revisification things:
1. Go back and reset the dominoes so they fall to the new ending. I think they'll just have to be readjusted. I don't think I'm creating a whole new line of dominoes. I do think the line may have to be lengthened in order to them to fall where I want them to.

2. Read the story out loud. This is an exercise from The First Five Pages. It has to do with hearing how the words and sentences sound.

3. Take out all the adjectives and put them back in again. Also from The First Five Pages.

4. Take out and put in dialogue. Also from The First Five Pages. Right now, my story is very heavy on dialogue, very light on character/setting description, so this will be necessary.

So that's the plan. Tonight o' course I'll be dining in state rather than revising a story. Pour the wine and flambe the goose, for I am almost one year older! Laissez les bon temps ROULEZ!

I am all talk, and also, I am all sleep

2009-02-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

I planned to finish my story this weekend, but only planned in the sense that I thought, 'that'd be a good thing to do this weekend.' I didn't actually make a plan for how I was going to accomplish this, and so it didn't come to pass.

I did stay up until midnight watching Dr. Who Season 4 with Lil' Italian Redhead, which, omgsoawesomeponieslol!11! Then I managed to sleep in until NOON on Saturday. I'd expected to sleep in, but until maybe 9 or 10am... I guess I was pretty well tired. The rest of the day was devoted to glamourousness preparations, as Atomicate and I were going to my company's 10 year anniversary party at the Clarendon Ballroom. Serious glamorfication took a couple of hours, and then serious canape-eating happened at the event, which was very nice I must say. The free booze and hors doovers were plenteous and delicious.

Sunday I had to go to Old Navy and buy much-needed work clothes, and then I went for a walk with Mrs. Pinchloaf and watched the first half of the supabowl with her and Mr. Pinchloaf and the Pinchmuffin. Go Stillers!

Meanwhile, my story sat on the computer, all unfinished. Note to self: actually make plans to accomplish things rather than just talking 'bout it.

So NOW I want to finish it this week. The writing time will be tonight, Wednesday night and Thursday night, and then will start, and I'm serious this time, the revisification. The ultimate goal: to have it ready for crit by Feb. 25th.

It's possible I just need to calm down, sometimes

2009-01-30T11:42:00.001-08:00

I missed the last two writey meetings because I had a cold, so despite post-icy conditions, I went to this week's critique meeting. And got very, very annoyed.

I don't know what it is about group discussion that gets me all riled up, but it invariably does. I've noticed it in staff meetings and roller derby meetings too. I think maybe it's because not everyone recognizes the correct way of thinking, i.e., mine. I wait patiently for others to say what I'm thinking, and not only do they often not say what I'm thinking, they often say things that are contrary to my way of thinking. How lame!

At this meeting in particular I was disappointed with folks' seeming lack of familiarity with speculative fiction. One writer submitted a nice first chapter of a YA fantasy. It was fun and funny, and overall promising. In it, s/he made up a word for the name of the underworld. One guy said he'd read the word and said, 'what the hell is that?!?' Then others chimed in suggesting she use a real word, but just in a different language. I was irked. It's fiction, and furthermore it's FANTASY fiction, so you can MAKE THAT STUFF UP. You can invent an entire language if you want to.

Furthermore, if the author had used a different language, s/he'd inevitably run into the A Clockwork Orange conundrum: when you use a real language that readers don't recognize, they assume it's made up. The slang in A Clockwork Orange is just Russian, and yet even folks who should know better, like Orson Scott Card, refer to the amazing slang the author invented. This in turn pisses the Russians off. And you don't want to do that because then they'll sulk twice as hard. So I really hope s/he doesn't change the word.

Then another author wrote a post-apocalyptic retelling of a famous piece of literature. I sat and waited for someone to ask what kind of apocalypse had taken place, and how long before the start of the story had it taken place. Instead they talked about whether the author used too many 'and's'. Then I eventually asked what kind of apocalypse it was, and everyone was like, meh, who cares. (It totally matters. You have to choose your specific means of world-destruction, because it should inform just about everything. A post-nuclear wasteland is different from a plague-ridden one, and post-nuclear people are different from post-plague people. Unless they're zombies, which is possible in both scenarios.)

My enjoyment of the writer's group depends on who's leading the discussion, I've found. Some leaders start with small things and gently coax the group into bigger issues, which I'm perfectly comfortable with. Then it seems like we're starting off easy, which is good, considering how nerve-wracking it is to have your work critiqued. Others lead the group in a way that pisses me off - they focus only on one aspect of the story, or they suggest alternate dialogue for the characters right off the bat. I understand that you can take or leave advice, and oddly, I wasn't annoyed by anything anyone said about my story when I got it critiqued, but I do get defensive on behalf of other writers.

In other news, I'm going to try and finish up my current story this weekend, and then I'm going to put it through the shredder. Mmm, tasty kindling.

And in the No Sh*t Category...

2009-01-28T13:54:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090128/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_winter_weather

Update: Ow ow ow ow ow!

2009-01-27T07:27:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my not really a new year's resolution to lose weight, I hit da gym on Sunday. I did arm weight machines, which I haven't done in like two years. I took it slow and easy, lifting 15 pounds at most, and only ten for the majority of the exercises. And now I am in SO MUCH PAIN. I'm crazy sore about the arms, to the point where I am having trouble lifting them up beyond waist height. Crazy!

In terms of writeration, I spent almost two whole hours working on a story yesterday. I did not feel at all like writing when I got home, and when I opened the current thing I've been working on I was like, wow, this is just awful, really; really really terrible. So I wrote for ten minutes and then switched to watching Dr. Who, but then I actually felt worse because I wasn't writing. So I went back to writing and managed to keep going for quite a while, to the point where I didn't hate myself or what I was working on anymore. So I guess it's becoming a habit, which is good. Hopefully I can finish this one, and then I'm going to rewrite the hell out of it.

Illness: Myths and Facts According to Moi

2009-01-26T12:12:00.001-08:00

Today my superbizor told me she had to leave early because her daughter wasn't feeling well. I said I hoped her daughter felt better, and she said, "Well, I like for her to eat fruit as snacks, so I gave her some fruit, and I told her to WASH the fruit before she ate it, and she didn't."

I was like, o.... k. Hence this list:

Things That I Don't Think Make You Sick

Eating unwashed fruit. Unless you eat a metric ton of it, in which case you might absorb enough bacteria/pesticide/wax to make you ill. But then, eating the metric ton would probably make you sicker, in general.
Going outside with wet hair.
Not wearing a coat. Unless you count frostbite or hypothermia as illness, which I don't.
Picking your nose. My grandmother's theory: picking or even TOUCHING your nose will introduce harmful finger bacteria into your sensitive nasal cavities.

Things That I Think Do Make You sick

Not getting enough sleep. This is top of the list as far as I'm concerned.
Working really hard to get something accomplished over a few weeks or months, and then accomplishing said thing. Example: rehearsing for a show and then performing in the show. Right after closing night, expect illness.
Commuting using public transportation. Last year I got sick three times in a six month period. Thank you, NJ Transit! And thank YOU, all you NJ workaholics who pack the train to work whilst hacking and wheezing!
Getting a flu shot. This is just hubris, people. We are not, have not been and will never be entitled to a cure for the flu. Don't front.
Upping the amount or difficulty level of exercise you do regularly. This is sad but true: you have to run faster, lift more, and work out for longer in order to get stronger, but at the initial point of doing more, you're more illness-prone.

Observations on the Groodthings Family Outting to Greater Tuna at LTA

2009-01-23T10:49:00.000-08:00

As promised, the folks and I went to the Little Theater of Alexandria to see our dear hobbit friend Shawnie B starring in a production of Greater Tuna. Some notes:

There are many, many elderly residents of Old Town Alexandria, and they're all seeing this show.
Shawnie B. looks too amazing in pink cat's eye glasses and a blonde diner-girl wig.
Just because the Groodthings family agrees on a calendar date to go see a show, don't assume that someone else will purchase the tickets when it is clearly your job to do so.
It is always, always funny to see a middle-aged man dressed in a flowered dress totter around the stage saying, "Where is my strychnine! I know I have some!"

I feel like I should have more, but honestly, we got home at 11pm, and that's officially Past My Bedtime, so today I'm all groggy and sleepy. Aging is a sad business.

Groodthings Tested, Mom-approved

2009-01-22T04:57:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Atomicate's band, Bette Noir, play at Bangkok Blues in happenin' Falls Church. Because all right-thinking people are Atomicate fans, my mom'n'dad came too. We opted to have dinner first, so we got to hear the sound check - Bangkok Blues is a nice venue for rock bands, they have their own PA and sound guy, and a little stage in the dining room. Earplugs are even provided by the establishment, a nice indication of their comittment to those about to rock.

And rock they did! Bette Noir is quite good I must say. Atomicate mostly takes lead vocals, and the lead guitarist does some of that too. Everyone in the band sings, so they do nice harmonies and backups. They all play their instruments well, and the drummer is particularly entertaining - he is so happy to be a-rockin' that he's as much fun to watch as to hear.

They did a mix of covers and originals. I really liked the covers they did - Mazzy Starr via the Gin Blossoms, Billy Idol and, just to make my heart skip a lil' faster, some Bee Gees. How can you not love that? You can't. You literally cannot not. They're like a wedding band but a million times cooler.

We could only stay for the first set, on account of me mum having the consumption. Afterwards she said, "You know, when I'm feeling a bit better, I wouldn't mind seeing Atomicate's band again." I concur.

Oh wait, it's a whole 'nother year?

2009-01-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

Atomicate alerted me to the fact that I posted only the title to a post - Combatting The Great Dark, Strategies, without posting any strategies... Apologies. I've been sick and started to write it and then was like, aaaahchoo, and left it. The strategy, fwiw, is to listen to lots of disco. Yeah, sometimes a little wockachicka is the only way to go: Bee Gees, Irene Cara, George Michael... it helps me, anyway.

It feels a little weird to be not posting about the noggaration happening all around us, but I'm opting out of anything not Daily Show-related. Which means I'll be watching the Daily Show after the fact and that's all I can commit to at this time. But I do have tomorrow off, so, yay noggaration, for selfish reasons!

This week is going to be chock full of event: Wednesday night I'm going to see Atomicate's band Bette Noir at Bangkok Blues, and then on Thursday I'm going to see Shawnie B star in Greater Tuna the Little Theater of Alexandria. I love seeing my friends creating culchah, so I'm excited.

I'm going to be missing writer's group for music time. It's a workshop week, and the workshop title is Goals. The plan apparently is for everyone to go around and say what their writerly goals are for '09, because saying your goal out loud makes it real and then the group can help you plan out ways to reach your goals and hold you accountable and whatnot. So by missing this crucial meeting, they can't hold me accountable for anything! Ha ha, suckers.

But it's a good idea. Goals are good, right? Sure. So I figgered I can blog the goals, writerly and otherwise, and you, my five or sometimes six or seven readers can bear witness. Please don't try to hold me accountable tho'. Or if you must, please use the carrot and not the stick. I like carrots. Carrots are part of the plan.

1. Lose a bunch of weight. Always and forever, this is a goal. I'm still totally planning to get it done. I have to anyway or the back pain will NEVER EVER NENVER NEVERNEN NORFEN NIRVEN go away, and that would be bad. I'm going to join a gym in February, when all the New Year wannabes have dropped out. I admit that over the holidays, good intentions were jettisoned in favor of marzipanimals and beef wellington. I'm only huuuuman, flesh and blood, a chiiick.

2. Do good at work. No, seriously this time... I'm going to care about doing my job well. I will care about it despite the fact that often, striving to do your job well means poor performance reviews and lots of people at work being annoyed with you. Don't ask me why X equals Y in that equation, but often it does. But no matter! I will not let weird corporateness turn me into a corporate slacker! As a first step towards do-gooderness, I completed several online training modules today... and I took notes. Yeah.

3. Write every day.

4. Finish stories.

5. Revise said stories.

6. Share said stories.

I'm getting better with writing every day. Finishing stories... well, that's harder. And you have to have a finished story before you can revise it, right? Maybe? I don't know.

And to get even more brain-stormy, here are things I've thought I'd like to write that I've never sat down and tried to write. Maybe posting them here will motorvate me to write them, or kill the ideas forever so I can think about something else.

A Mummer Show

I've always wanted to write and perform a Mummer's Play with my friends. I don't know a ton about them, but the tech kids in college did one and it was awesome. I'm attracted by the idea of broad comedy, costumes made out of paper, basic themes of good vs. evil battles, and making my friends do something stupid with me. Also rhyming couplets, I like those too.

A Musical

This one would be a collaboration with Atomicate. We were thinking a roller derby musical. It could also include rhyming couplets.

A Novel

Am I serious? I don't know. I do know that I keep saying, "I should write a book!" A novel is a book. So there.

Found Stories

I've asked my mom and sister why they don't write. Both of them read like crazy, and are certified editors, and write very well. My sister says she's not creative (a blatant untruth) and my mom says she doesn't have any stories in her. The logical me-centric question then is, do I have any stories in me? I think I do, but more to the point, I think everyone does, because we tell our experiences in stories because stories are happening all the time.

Example: on my first official day at work, I went to the deli downstairs to have lunch. I sat at one of the tables in the hall outside the deli and had just tucked in to some beef with broccoli when I heard a loud clatter behind me and a woman started yelling "Oh my God! Somebody help! She havin a seizure!" I turned around and a woman at the table behind me had fallen off her chair and was lying on the floor twitching. A crowd immediately formed around her and several people called 911 and then shouted that they had done so and that an ambulance was on the way. Her table-mates crouched down next to her and were telling a man in uniform who she was; it was her first day at work too, her name was Marie, and she'd seemed fine until now. Marie came out of the seizure and started moaning without words. She sounded terrified and struggled to get up, while her friends tried to hold her down and said, "Marie, stay down. Stay down, Marie. You're ok now, you're ok! Just stay down, honey!" I stood at a loss; I couldn't do anything, but I also couldn't just sit down and continue eating my lunch while this woman who was clearly in terrible distress was on the floor behind me. I felt sick but also hungry, and remembered when my back went out, and how time seemed to slow to an agonizing crawl while I stood with this awful new pain and the worse knowledge that there was nothing anyone could do, not the paramedics or my friends, there was no help and I was just stuck there until the pain went away to the point where I could function again. I felt bad for Marie on the floor because time was stretched out again for her while she waited for an ambulance to come on her first day at a new job, and how embarrassed she must feel on top of everything else for her new work buddies to see her like this. I stood for a minute and then packed up my lunch and brought it upstairs to eat at my desk.

So my point is, stuff is happening, and it is a story. So I want to write stories that I see happening, which is like journaling, but different.

Goals. Done and done.

Word of the Day

2009-01-14T03:52:00.000-08:00

Iterative - characterized by or involving repetition, recurrence, reiteration, or repetitiousness.

It came up a bunch in my corp training, and I sadly did not know what it meant, so I looked it up. I should have been able to figure it out from reiterate and iteration, but it's possible aging is having an endumbening effect on me.

Dear Sport and Health: Um, no

2009-01-13T05:46:00.000-08:00

I went to Sport and Health yesterday, cuz work has a discount deal with them and with Golds. Sport'n'Health is right in the complex, so it'd be muy convenient. I figured they'd be a bit pricey, but also figured maybe the work deal would make it do-able.

The nice gym salespeople told me the deal was actually quite amazing: sixty bucks a month and only fifty dollars down! I immediately started putting on my coat. But wait! Maybe they could offer me NO money down, so it'd just be sixty a month! Still, no. Not so much.

In other news, I got many fine books about writing for Christmas. They were all recommended by The Rejecter, (www.rejecter.blogspot.com) an agent's assistant who writes romance novels and has been through the dreaded creative writing MFA. Of her recs, I got The First Five Pages, A Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, Immediate Fiction, and a book on writing sci fi by Orscon Scott Card.

Immediate Fiction is good but a little self-helpy - lots of phrases in bold so that you too can be a better writer. The First Five Pages, on the other hand, is amazing. It goes through all the reasons agents/publishers will reject a manuscript, and then offers exercises to help the writer fix said problems. For example, second on the list is Too Many Adjectives, so the exercise is to look at something you've written and take out all the adjectives and make a list of them, and then read what you've written sans adjectives. Then you look at the adjectives and decide which are cliches, and see if you can find better ones. Then you put back a third of the adjectives and see how that goes. It's good stuff, I tell ya.

So my plan is to churn out a couple of stories, using some of the prompts in Immediate Fiction, and then try some exercises from The First Five Pages to revise them. It's going slowly. I can write for about an hour, and that's including various little procrastination techniques and internal whining. It's easier for me to write a story in twenty minutes in the writing group using prompts than to sit by myself with hours ahead of me and no prompt, which I think comes down to expectations. In writing group I have none, and by myself I think I should be coming up with something good.

I haven't read the Orson Scott Card book yet. I'm leaving him to last for a couple of reasons: 1. he has gotten worse with age, and 2. I have a feeling the basic elements will be the same, because the basic elements are always the same. It's amazing how much writing stuff is like theater stuff. Someone has to want something, and it has to be a matter of life and death, and they have to face an obstacle and then take action to combat the obstacle. No big mac moments, show don't tell, every character you create is you, even if it isn't.

I also spent some time writing up a critique of a first chapter for the group on Wednesday. I found it quite challenging and am not sure I'll be able to do it for the other pieces up for crit. But, I do feel an obligation - all of the folks up for crit this week gave me comments when I was up, so I reckon I gotta.

Shorter Stories

2009-01-08T07:15:00.000-08:00

Last night I dragged myself away from warm Christmas-lit home out into the pouring rain to go to the writer's meeting. I didn't really want to go, after a day spent opening presents and eating lots and lots of cheese and cookies, but it was definitely good that I did - if I'd stayed, I probably would have kept eating. And eating and eating and eating.

So this was a writing exercise night. Billybob read us two personals ads and we all wrote about 'em. One was of a wheelchairbound tech-head ISO a hipster Asian punk girl, and the other was a missed connection between a guy on a DC-bound bus and a tall Asian chick in a green peacoat. I wrote about the second one, and so did almost everyone else. I didn't read mine out loud at the group, but liked what I wrote, so I'm posting it here.

Bus Incident

I watched you on the bus again today. I always sit near the back, on one of the center-facing seats. I get on two stops before you. You are maybe 25 or 27, and you wear khaki pants and a blue button down sirt or a blue and white striped button down shirt. Do you only have two shirts? Or do you have three blue shirts and two blue and white striped shirts, or some combination thereof? If you only have two shirts, you must do laundry at least twice a week; they always look clean.

These are the kinds of questions I would maybe ask you if you ever struck up a convo with me, and we became friends and had drinks and went over to each others' apartments to watch Dr. Who or play Left 4 Dead, my favorite zombie-killing video game. But we never talk, because you're alway staring at that Asian chick.

Usually you just stare at her. I would like to tell you that if I were that Asian chick and I happened to look over while you were staring, I might move to the other end of the bus. It is more than a tad creepy. Granted, you are reasonably attractive, with your floppy blonde hair and blue eyes. But still.

You seem to think you are doing a rom-com stare. That is to say, you think your gaze is soulful, and that you are seeing hidden qualities in her that she has never even seen in herself, and if she happens to meet your eyes, she will see that you don't just see her, you REALLY see her, and that the two ofyou will know in that isntant that despite some comic plot twists the madcap DC life will throw at you, you'll ultimately spend the rest of your lives together.

This is not actually what your stare conveys. It actually says, "I'm really lonely, and you're hot, so I think I'll stare at you for the duration of our ten-minute bus ride together."

Also, a note about Hot Asian Chick: she is stupid. I learned that today, and I wonder if you did too. Today, you offered her a seat beside you next to the window. She said, "Uuuum, whaaat? Oh, no, I'm getting off at the next stop. HAHAHAHAHA!"

Who laughs when someone offers them a seat? And who laughs like that? Stupid Hot Asian Chick, apparently.

I have been noticing you for the past six months. In six months of riding the same bus, you have never noticed me. This despite the fact that I am also Asian. Yup, I'm Korean. And I don't have a stupid laugh. But am apparently not a hot Asian chick, so I don't get to be stared at.

I did not realize how much this not being noticed bothered me until today. Maybe it was watching you make your move and actually sort of not really talk to Hot Asian Chick, and seeing how you smiled warmly at her stupid annoying laugh. I felt less of you after that, I must admit. I was bothered by the fact that all of your bus-staring energies have been focused on one woman, entirely neglecting the other staring possibilities that exist on our fine bus. If you don't want to notice me, fine, but what about blonde librarian chick? She's cute, and wears glasses and puts her hair up in a retro bun. Or what about aging but still sexy divorced lady? I don't know if she's actually divorced per se, but she doesn't wear a ring. Anyway, she could use some stare-love too.

All this is by way of explanation for why I stuck my foot out into the aisle as you were exiting the bus. I thought you would stumble a bit, but I had no idea the timing would be so bad, nor that you would lose your balance quite so spectacularly. You tripped, and then in trying to right yourself tripped over your own feet and fell again, and went sprawling just as the doors were opening. I believe you executed a perfect double somersault down the steps. Your gymnastics were almost beautiful and I'm truly, truly sorry you didn't stick the landing.

I really hope you recover OK. Of course the bus had to stop as you lay unconscious and bleeding on the pavement, and I wanted to stay and wait for the ambulance, but I had a meeting to get to so I boarded the next bus along with everyone else. But I am sorry. You have the right to stare at whomever you want to, and I should not trip you.

I will give you this note when you return, which I hope will be soon - I'd like to think the fall didn't damage your brain and therefore ability to work. I'll give you the note, and then I plan to start taking the subway.

Are we there yet?

2009-01-06T08:42:00.000-08:00

It is the Eve of Russky Christmas. Russky Christmas Eve.

When I was a wee tyke, we would have two Christmases: American Christmas: presents! and Russky Christmas: Church! and a few presents! Now we just celebrate Russky Christmas: Church and presents!

Around Halloween I start to feel the weight of the holiday season settling in, and it becomes a countdown. Halloween: dress up, check. Thanksgiving: eat a lot. Check. American Christmas: a furious buildup of work at the office as folks try to shoehorn everything in before the end of year stuff and before they go on vacation, followed by a couple of weeks of dead silence and clock-watching, followed by weird coworker/manager gifting that puzzles everyone and makes almost everyone uncomfortable, followed by a couple of days off that I spend sleeping and hanging out with my immediate family.

This is closely followed by my mom's birthday, which I often forget because it comes so close after American Christmas. (It's not an excuse, it just happens...) I routinely panic because I've forgotten and fail to buy a gift because my mom assures me she doesn't need or want anything and I try to find the funniest card ever to make up for it. We have a nice dinner somewhere.

Then I realize it's time to buy gifts for all, and gift-buying ensues. Then I realize I have to wrap said gifts, and I do wrap some, but generally have at least ten items left to wrap on Russky Christmas Eve.

Finally Russky Christmas arrives, and we go to church and have the Festival Of Greed, followed by the Festival of Eating A Lot of Meat And Cheese. Much happiness, indigestion and exhaustion ensues.

Then comes the great dark of winter. My birthday and my dad's birthday follow in February, tiny lights in the abyss. My sister and I battle our varying degrees of seasonal affective disorder with sun lamps and vodka. Maybe the holiday countdown is a countdown to russkiness: I feel most Russian when huddled in layers of sweaters and coats and stoically trying to withstand cold weather blues.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful; Russian Christmas is, for me, a time to reflect on spiritual joys and feel gratitude for blessings, and I do. But even in the churchy sense, Christmas is the beginning of the story, and we build up from there to the loud jubilations and singing for Easter, the end of the story that is also the bigger beginning. So, it makes sense to me that russky Christmas brings me feelings of trepidation - it so closely coincides with the secular world new year, and the great dark, and questions both lofty and practical: will DC get snow, how much, will my car make it, what new shennanigans will our politicians and policies bring, will we survive and how?

My new year looks promising, but I'm wary. My new year looked promising last year, too, and well, it turned out to be The Year of Shit and Fans, to borrow a phrase from an ex. I wish everyone joy, and also luck and strength. Onward through the fog.

New Paranoia

2008-12-31T09:22:00.001-08:00

I'm currently temping for a govvie contractor in a complex that is home to many fed agency offices. There are folks in various uniforms moseying around and the secret squirrel/petty bureaucrat quotient is high.

Recently I was tasked with determining the fire safety rating of the filing cabinets in my office. Yes, I was tempted to just light one on fire and see how long it took to burn. In reality I just called the supply company and researched the various office furniture safety ratings available on teh interwebs.

I also recently watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries again. You know the one? The one where Caprica gets nuked about a kajillion times? Yeah, that one.

End result of all this: today there was a bright lightning flash followed by a very loud crack of thunder. I'm glad I was alone in my office because I immediately put my hands over my head and hunched down trembling over my desk. I was about half a second from crawling under the damn thing. It took a full minute for my heart rate to return to normal.

I thought I'd gotten jaded and insensitive to living in the DC area... apparently, not so much.

Les after effects de Le Refuge

2008-12-31T06:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my mom's birfday, so last night my dad took us out to Le Refuge, a country French restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.

The place is cozy and packed with tables and frenchy decorations (old ads, wine labels, etc.) I was in a spectacularly bad mood to start out with, on account of a bad day at work. Said bad mood completely evaporated after my third sip of Chateauneuf-du-Pape. J'aimes beaucoup le vin, and its magical bad mood killing properties.

I'd pre-perused the menu online and ordered the hearts of palm salad and beef wellington. My dad got the hearts of palm salad and frog legs, my mom got spinach salad with warm goat cheese toast rounds and cassoulet, and my sister got pate and duck with raspberry sauce.

The food was really, really good. The hearts of palm salad was served with a creamy vinaigrette which obliterated any hopes of it being low-fat and healthy (hooray!) I ordered the beef wellington on the grounds that it's not something I could get at too many other places, and I've never had it, and I'm currently fascinated by puff pastry foods. Also, after watching a few seasons of Hell's Kitchen, I wanted to know what the big deal was.

Apparently, the big deal is total deliciousness. Roast beef wrapped with duxelles, a layer of pate and then buttery pastry. What's not to love? The scalloped potatoes it was served with were also amazing.

This morning, I had a particularly hard time getting out of bed, and then needed an extra cup of coffee to peel my eyelids apart. Apparently this is one side effect to eating a fatty french meal. Note to self: plan another outting to Le Refuge on a Friday or Saturday night so as to allow for necessary post-meal sleeping in.

Internet Anonymity

2008-12-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

Has anyone applied for a job with the Obama administration yet? Even if you haven't, perhaps you've read that one of the items on the 25 page application (that's just a guess, but really, it is long) is: list every internet alias you've ever used. Yeah. They want to make sure they know what online shenanigans you've been up to before they hire you.

I mention this because it relates to something that's been happening for a while now to me on Facebook. I'm using a fake name on Facebook. Lately, lots of people, people who I know must have encountered teh interwebs before, have been asking me questions along the lines of "What is up with your wacky name? Is that your real name now? I had no idea who you were!" To which I say... really?

I use: Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo, one personals site, Gmail and Blogger. To date, the only account which includes my full real name is my Gmail account. This is because I use this account to send out resumes. I want potential employers to a) know my real name, and b) know that I'm not an idiot of the type who submits resumes under the email address SpankyPants69@whatever.com. (OMG LOLPONIES!!1!)

My Myspace name is my roller girl name, cuz I mostly network with derby types on Myspace. They know me as my derby name and most don't care much about my real one.

My yahoo account is a line from a Smiths song. I use this address for online dating correspondence. I don't need any blind dates knowing my real name until I've met them more than once and have established that they're not crazy.

My blogger name is a reference to the Teen Girl Squad cartoon on Homestarrunner.com. I could blog under my real name, but then I'd know folks would find it if they searched me, and then I'd feel pressure to represent myself in a certain way, and then I just wouldn't blog.

My Facebook name is a fake name referencing the fact that I don't want to be searchable. Prospective employers do search Facebook. I was in HR for a hot minute, and I know this for a fact. I'm frankly baffled that 90% of Facebook users post under their real names. Sure, anyone who really wants to find your internet presence will find it, but still... do you really want it to be that easy?

Sing Your Psychosis - It's More Fun

2008-12-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went to see Next to Normal, a new musical now showing at Arena stage, with my mom and Hobbit Shawnie B. I wanted to see it because it's new, it's a musical, and it got a couple of fairly positive reviews in the Post and the City Paper. The City Paper reviewer said he's rarely surprised by anything in a musical not written by Stephen Sondheim, and was surprised by Next to Normal. I like surprises, so I decided to see it.

I opted for cheap seats because well, I'm cheap. I thought about inviting lots of folks to go with, but well, it's a new musical. Even good musicals aren't for everyone, and despite the positive reviews, I didn't know if it really would be good or even bearable. Going to the theater is such a leap of faith anyway. When it's good it's divine, and when it's not, it's excruciating.

My mom likes the theatah, and Shawnie B is a theater nerd from way back who will be appearing in Greater Tuna at the Little Theater of Alexandria in a few weeks. (Go Shawnie B!) We metro'd to Arena's Crystal City space and were relieved to find our seats, while cheap, still had great sight lines. We were elated a few minutes before the curtain when the usher said, "Ok, who wants to move up?" The economy and state of theater being what it is, the show was far from sold out so we got to move up to a center row. Sweet!

Next to Normal is about a suburban mom with mental illness: bipolar disorder with a touch of psychosis/hallucinations. Peppy, right? Well actually, yes. The music is rock-ish, a la Spring Awakening - guitars, drums, piano, lots of impassioned loud vocals. The music was good, but too much the same. There were few musical motifs. Andrew Lloyd Webber gets a lot of crap because he uses repeating motifs too much, but they do work - it's nice to have one melody introduced in the beginning and then get replayed in a later part. It's even better if the motifs can be interwoven in an end of the first act fugue. N2N didn't so much have that, so the music got a bit boring at times.

There was some dancing; I could have done with more. Instead of dancey-dancing, the actors' movements seemed choreographed - they all sort of flung themselves around the stage. That sounds bad but it was actually well done. I just wanted more of the ensemble shaking lit up pill boxes and stuff like that.

The set and lights were awesome. The set was a three level scaffold with pieces that folded in and out and slid left to right, so they could build the house levels and open and close rooms. There were also rolly chairs and tables and one moving staircase, all used to dynamic effect. The lights - well let's just say that in a rock opera about mental illness that includes an ECT song, you need specacular and varied lighting, and the lighting design was both of those.

Acting and singing wise, the lead actress was amazing, and the guy who played her son was great too. The dad was an understudy and was ok, and we all had issues with the daughter - she was very one-note in her caricature of a sullen teenager. The dude who played her boyfriend was aight, and the psychiatrist was aight as well.

I enjoyed it quite a bit. I had problems with the second act - things didn't end in a way that felt true or resonant. I did have a hard time watching a lot of it, because I'm a sucker for music + emotion. If you have actors talking about how they feel invisible to each other I'm ok; but if they're singing about it over electric guitar I get sniffly.

I'm left with a feeling of frustration because there's no recording. If I like a musical I need to hear the songs about ten more times, and I can't because this was a merch-light workshop production. I reckon I'll just have to go see it again.

They starts out maids of honor, but they ends up tarts.

2008-12-24T05:17:00.000-08:00

Happily for those of us living at home and trying to lose weight, it is currently pre-Christmas lent in Ortho households, which means we eat a vegan diet (until my mom gets tired of it and we go out for peruvian chicken and steak. Or until I get tired of it and go out to Bertucci's with the hobbits and eat cheese.) The fast is either four or six weeks long, I forget which. Anyway, we've been having stuff like pasta, buckwheat, bread and margarine and vegetable soup for dinners for a good while now. I enjoy most of it but yesterday I got a craving for something different.

So I sent a recipe I found online for vegan mushroom tart to my dad and asked him to make it. Being a very nice and indulgent dad, he totally did. Here's the recipe:

5 tablespoons vegan margarine
4 tablespoons unbleached white flour
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, crushed or very finely chopped
16 ounces mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 cups soy/rice milk
1 1/2 cups white wine or vegetable broth
1 tablespoon dried parsley
salt and pepper to taste
18 ounces frozen puff pastry

Melt the margarine and saute the onion and garlic until soft. Add the sliced mushrooms and cook for a few of minutes more. Add the flour and stir well. Gradually add the soy/rice milk stirring all the time. Add the wine and keep stirring over low heat until the sauce thickens. Once thick, remove from the heat and add the parsley, salt and pepper. Allow to cool slightly while you prepare the pastry.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roll the pastry out into 2 circles approximately 11 inches, reserving some pastry for decoration. Place one sheet of pastry into a greased 9-inch pie plate and fill with the sauteed mushroom mixture. Place the top sheet on and seal up the edges with some soya milk or water, fold over if needed. Make some small slits on the top of the puff and decorate with the reserved pastry. Glaze with soy/rice milk and bake 45-55 minutes until puffed and golden.

Apparently we're never having it again, because it was a huge pain in the ass to make. The main problem was that the mushroom mixture didn't set as it was supposed to. However, it was very pretty before we cut into it. Then we cut into it and the filling sort of oozed out and looked kind of greyish. Again however, it was also delicious. My dad used Riesling, and it had a nice wine and mushroom flavor. He also quadrupled the garlic, because duh, that's what you do in a recipe that calls for a paltry four cloves. The filling soaked into the bottom layer of phyllo dough like gravy, yum. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Later we discussed what might make the filling set; my mom said corn starch and my dad thought tapioca thickener. Either way it's an aesthetic choice, as the filling tasted awesome but just didn't look good or hold together.

I sort of thought you didn't have to roll out frozen puff pastry. I thought it came in flat sheets, but it doesn't, it comes in squares, and you have to thaw and roll them. It's still a time-saver because if you made the pastry yourself you'd have to roll and fold, roll and fold, a million or so times. Good to know.

The Youth and What They Have to Teach Us

2008-12-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, I had no idea I'd grown up to be such a tight-ass. But it's true. I got given an intern today. Once again, still a temp here... why am I being tasked with keeping the intern busy? I reckon because keeping the intern busy is not the best of jobs. Anyway, there's always random work that no one else has time to do, so I've been giving her stuff, no problem.

Every time I give her instructions she asks me for a piece of paper so she can write them down. Today I tried to give her a swag notebook I'd gotten from our extremely hot software salesman (seriously, dude was foin!) I said, "Here. You can keep this. And use it." She proceeded to rip a page out of it and take only the page with her.

I also have yet to give her a task without her stopping to take a call on her cell phone. And it's funny, so far I don't think any of the calls have been business calls. Although, does it count as business if it's your mom who got you the internship who works in the next building over who calls four or five times a day? I guess probably.

I overlooked the gumsnapping and excessive chatter, because, well, whatever. But I really want to sit her down and give her what for, just in general. That first professional ass-kicking can be so crucial to a career.

Is Tom retarded?

2008-12-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

The critique group went well, and I think I'll stick with 'em. A good number of people showed, and they'd mostly all read the works up for crit and brought copies that they'd marked up. The discussion was thoughtful, and everyone found the good in each piece and talked about it before moving on to things they thought could be better. Everyone was kind, which is good. No one was therefore reduced to tears. Also, guy who talks a lot wasn't there, and everyone else took turns in a very civilized fashion.

I got lots of useful feedback. I'd been worried that everyone might be too kind, but they weren't. All in all it was a good experience.

There's a character named Tom who comes in at the end of my story to cause problems for my protagonist, and I foiled him in an extremely stupid way. I'd already decided to ax him before the crit group. So the first comment I read was "Is Tom retarded?" which I thought was funny. Yes, dear reader, Tom is retarded. And now he's dead because I killed him. So put that in your literary pipe and smoke it.

This one's my favorite...

2008-12-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

This is my favorite nano-news. My dad clued me in when I axed him about nanotech. Apparently cosmetics companies have started using nanotechnology. Because their products are not FDA regulated, they can do it sans clinical trials. So what happens is, you put a magical never comes off foundation, and guess what? 1.) it literally never comes off, because they use interlocking molecules in it, and 2.) the particles sink into your bloodstream and wreak havoc on your various systems. Like that one Batman movie! Only not so dramatic.

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=1505.php

Why research is hard

2008-12-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest abstract on nanotech:

Abstract. Er³⁺ and Ni²⁺ doped single-crystalline Al₁₈B₄O₃₃ nanorods were synthesized by a facile one-step toxic-free combustion method. The products were characterized by x-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, selected area electron diffraction, and integrated and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) measurements. The phase purity, morphology, and PL properties of Er³⁺ and Ni²⁺ doped Al₁₈B₄O₃₃ nanorods can be readily controlled by tailoring the annealing temperature. The mechanism for the formation of Al₁₈B₄O₃₃ nanorods with different aspect ratio is discussed. Er³⁺ doped Al₁₈B₄O₃₃ nanorods show strong PL centered at 1531 nm, while Ni²⁺ doped products show superwide PL with a full width at half maximum of up to 250 nm. These aluminum borate nanostructures are promising building blocks for optoelectronics nanodevices.

Guuuuuuuh. And heh, 'nanorods', heh heh heh.

The nanos are coming, the nanos are coming!

2008-12-17T04:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-02a.html

There's a Space Daily?

What I do and do not know about DNA

2008-12-16T05:45:00.001-08:00

What I do know about DNA:
-everyone has it
-it is the 'building blocks of life'
-DNA stands for Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid
-proteins form chains that link up along two lines, and the two lines and protein hooks form a double helix
-the order and type of proteins that a person has determines their physical, mental and maybe emotional characteristics
-it took scientists forever to map the human genome but they finally got it done
-you can analyze someone's DNA to figure out if they're susceptible to certain diseases
-some doctors have tried curing diseases by altering DNA but so far have only succeeded in killing their patients this way

What I don't know about DNA:
-if you could program nanobots to dismantle specific proteins in a human DNA chain
-if you could then release said nanobots into the American water supply
-if people, upon drinking the water, would eventually discover that they had been rendered unable to have children
-if, upon discovering this massive act of nanobot bioterrorism, the nation could pull together a repository of non messed-with human DNA and grow children out of it

So, one really awesome thing about writing a short story is I get reaffirmation of how much I don't know. My mom suggested perhaps I might do some research. Or stick to not sci-fi. Both are good ideas. I'm committed to finishing, so I guess research it is. Unless any of you lovely readers know any of the things I don't? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

More work

2008-12-12T05:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I blew off a friend in order to have another writing night. Yes, I'm now headed down the dark path of eschewing actual human contact in order to sit alone in my room and pursue a probably futile goal. And again with the fear: I was scared that maybe the night I'd skipped to go to the writing group would already be too much time away, and either I'd read what I'd written and hate all of it, or just feel no connection to it at all and not be able to work on it.

But, I think it's good that I went. For one thing, I left the draft alone for a night, which gave me space to think about it. Some major problems bubbled up and made themselves known. I had a small conversation with them and let them know I was aware of their concerns, and sorry, I had a meeting to go to, but I promised we'd discuss things as soon as I got back. They huffed a bit but said ok.

As always, there's the fear. This time, it wasn't the fear of having to invent something out of thin air, but rather having to go back and read what I'd written and see that it was crap and again consider not ever trying again. Writing group to the rescue: we did the exercise, and it drove home the point that when it comes down to it, you can write something. Yes, it's hard to do it well, but it's not magic. It's labor. I brought a pen and pad to the group, and I hate long-hand - it hurts my hand, my handwriting sucks, it's physically tiring. That's good because it reminds me that it's physical work, and knowing that makes it so much more do-able. (Also, it makes going back to my laptop SO appealing.)

Before I pulled up the draft, I opened a second word doc and wrote out all the problems, and some possible solutions. I fleshed out the world the story's set in, then saw some problems with that, and then changed that so it made more sense. I also wrote about the characters a bit, and immediately realized I've made assumptions about them, specifically about their relationship, that aren't true. I'd thought they'd be linked in one way, just because of where they are in the story and what they're trying to do, and it turns out they're linked in another, messier and less pleasant way.

I'm trying to get to know the characters, rather than trying to make them up. This is the first time I've had no problems learning the character's names. They just told me, which was cool. I still don't know them very well, but as we spend more time together they tell me more. One surprise is that one of the characters who I thought was minor is starting to come out of her shell and insist that I know more about her. I've made her no promises about how much to show, but it's nice that she's standing up for herself.

(I know this sounds frou-frou, but it's a process that's working for me.)

After all that, I went back to the draft. Because of what I now knew about the characters, I had to change a lot of the first part, which led to necessary changes in the middle. I wrote for two hours. There are three characters now who I know ok, and they manage to accomplish something, but there's a fourth one who's probably going to make an appearance and cause some trouble. I need to know him too, and to know what the others will do when he shows up, and if and how everyone's going to get what they want. And after I do, guess what? It's still probably crap. Good times!

So far it's about 3000 words, and will probably get longer before it gets shorter. This is not to say I didn't ax a bunch of stuff, but then I wrote more than I'd deleted.

Now I need to decide whether or not to post what I have for critique next Wednesday. The group only has two pieces of writing to discuss, so they need more submissions. And, there's going to be a few weeks of no groups because of the holiday. So my inclination is to post. I know it's not ready, and my preference is to work on it more, but I also think I can continue to work on it now even if a bunch of people I don't know praise it or criticize it. Probably.

Shut up, That Guy!

2008-12-11T05:43:00.000-08:00

I went to the writer's group meetin' last night. They meet in a well-known chain bookstore in NoVa... I don't want to be too secret squirrel about it, but one thing writer's groups are supposed to be is safe - a safe place to share ideas and writing and not get blogged about in a recognizable way. So that's why the vagueness.

Anyway, I didn't have really high hopes, but let's say I had medium hopes. The group seems well-organized, has a plan of attack, and there were at least 20 people there, which seemed a good sign. There's a range of ages and the ladies outnumbered the menfolk. After a little bit of chitchat the leader (nana nana nana nana LEADER!) handed out writing prompts on small pieces of paper and we all wrote for 20 minutes or so. My prompt said "Write about a strange tourist attraction." So after writing a bunch of ideas (a two story statue of a foot, a place where you can have a conversation with ten-year old you, the amazing glass-skinned boy, catch an armadillo) I wrote a story about a family on a road trip who stop at a Race The Alligator sign and the dad decides to try the race.

I thought the writing exercise thing was good - it offered the entire emo writing experience on a micro scale. First there was panic, then trying stuff, then despair, then trying again and writing, then elation, then doubt, then nervousness. After the writing time was up, the group leader - let's call him Billybob - asked if everyone like doing it. Most people did. One girl said she didn't like her prompt - write about a homeless person, but avoid using cliches. She said she could only think of cliches; the clean homeless person and the dirty one, so she just wrote Christmas cards instead. One guy asked her to read the Christmas cards but she said they were sealed. Billybob gently encouraged others to read, and about half the writers did. Some of the stories were quite good, some not so good. I read mine and was glad I had, just cuz getting over a fear of sharing is as important as getting over fear of writing, for me.

After the exercise portion, Billybob asked for suggestions for the non-critique meetings in 2009. Here's where I started to think maybe this group won't ultimately be for me. A lot of members expressed interest in genre discussions. One girl said she's always been interested in learning about the differences between scifi and fantasy. I would not attend such a meeting because a) it's an easy answer: scifi = rocket ships, fantasy = unicorns, case closed, and b) if the story's good, I don't really care what genre it is.

Then Billybob asked if we'd be interested in reading articles by writers about their writing process. I almost jumped in to say, yes yes yes! Because I'm interested in that. However before I could, he started apologizing and saying he knew we had a lot to read already, with the stories for crit being posted, and he knew people didn't want more 'homework' before a meeting. I was put off. People don't have time to read? Isn't reading rule one of writing? You're a writer, you read. You're a musician, you listen to music. You're a painter, you look at art. Anyone who doesn't read shouldn't be writing. It's like the scene in A Chorus Line (or maybe it's the All That Jazz), where the one girl messes up the ballet audition, and the director says, "If you haven't taken ballet, DON'T DANCE!"

And then there was That Guy. Everyone likes That Guy, but I have a problem with him, because he likes the sound of his own voice a lot. I quit after one meeting of the last writing group I went to, because not only was That Guy there, he was also the leader, andI wasn't having it. In this group That Guy isn't the leader, which is good, but he's allowed to run free anyway. Sigh.

The focus of the group is writing, and not publishing, which is ok by me. There's a ton of info out there about how to query for publication, and I think it's safe to say that I'm not thinking about publishing, being one week into establishing a writing schedule. However, I do think the ultimate goal of writing is to get published. I want to get better, and one way to know your writing is good is to have someone pay you for it so they can put it out there for an audience to read. So that's fine then - but then Billybob started talking about writing contests. He's going to post a bunch of them and encourage us all to submit. Maybe the group thinks this is a baby step to trying to get published. I'm not really down. Sure, it's a goal to meet - write something and submit it within a certain format by a certain deadline. But if you're going to put in the effort, why not put it towards getting published?

I'm going to go to the crit meeting next week and then decide if I should start lookin' elsewhere. I've read the stories that are up for criticism, and I'm interested to see if other folks see the same issues with the stories that I see, and how they give that criticism.

Fear and loathing and ecstasy

2008-12-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

I have a writing hangover. I think it's a good thing.

For almost a week now, I've been sticking to a writing schedule - every evening around 7pm, I sit down and hit those keys. And it has been, well, hard. Writing is hard! I know, it's not exactly a unique revelation. Except, to me, it sort of is. I always thought I should do it, and I always thought when I did, it would automatically be amazing, and I'd have tons of stuff to write about because my life is so very exciting, and I have a unique point of view and I read a lot so I know how sentences go together and I can hold the mirror up to nature and shed astonishing light on any number of subjects. Right? Totally!

Only, it wasn't like that. When I started writing I had only one goal: words on a page for two hours a day. I can do words on a page. (e.g., this blog.) What I ended up writing, though, was real stuff that has happened to me. How is this different from journaling or keeping a diary? It's not. And after writing my life for a week or so, it occurred to me that my life is pretty boring, if not downright depressing. Maybe not TOtally depressing, but, you know: I work. I come home. I eat dinner with the family. I watch TV with friends. I watch TV by myself. I break car mirrors, I take my car to the shop, I obsess over why my friends from college who I saw again at the wedding didn't email me back after I sent them pictures I'd taken of them at said wedding. It's not... anything I want to share, necessarily. It's definitely not something I want to have critiqued. I critique my life enough as it is, thank you. (Conclusion: the characters are amazing, but the plot lacks forward momentum.)

Also, I've joined this writer's group. I missed the first meeting cuz that was the day I broke my car. The group alternates critiques every other week, so this week is a non-critique week, but next week there is one, and well, if I'm really going to participate, I kind of need to put something out there. Hence, I have to write something I wouldn't mind sharing. I've got hubris but I'm not going to pretend I can write a novel, so that kind of leaves poetry or short story.

That's easy enough, right? WRONG. I started to worry. Do I have any imagination? Can I make something up, start to finish? Just sort of... out of nothing? I can't lie, it made me very depressed. Why was I bothering, and isn't it a bit late in the game to start trying to do this again? I'd started strong with two hours, and then a couple of nights later it was just an hour and a half, and then an hour. I'd write and get disgusted and stop. Yesterday I considered just quitting, and continuing to live a life of quiet desperation.

Circus Jeff has been writing a lot about memory (among other things) on his blog, Odin's Aviary (www.jeffwills.blogspot.com.) In this case, memory saved me. I remembered feeling this bad, back when I was in college and writing plays. I'd gotten through it then, so maybe I could get through it now. And at the peak of my anxiety I made a conscious effort to take the pressure off. No one says you have to sit down every day and write something good. You just have to sit down and write something.

My mom and Stephen King helped too. Stephen King because he's recently published a new collection of short stories, and my mom because she went to the library and got it, read it, and handed it over to me. As my mom said, "He gets a lot of crap for what he writes, but damn, the man can write." I read the first two stories at lunch yesterday, and another while waiting for a prescription at CVS. My mom is right; they're good.

Driving home from CVS, I had an idea. It was dumb, but fun. My thinking went like this: This idea is dumb. But I like it. And I don't have any other ideas, so I have to write this one, or I'll quit and never try to write anything other than corporate meeting notes again. I got home, I sat down, I wrote for two hours.

And now I have a story. While it has characters and a beginning, middle and end, it's definitely not done. The ending in particular needs work, and well, a bunch of stuff in the middle does too. I think I still like the beginning. I know I like the characters. Did I rip the premise off from a favorite sci-fi writer? Sure. Is that allowed? Definitely. Go ask Shakespeare if you don't believe me. (He probably won't answer right away, being dead and all.)

So now, I come to something else Circus Jeff eloquently addresses - I want someone to read it! Right now! I want praise for facing my fears and writing something! I remember this feeling too. And it's a trap, Skywalker. Even I admit the story's not done, and probably sucks. No way in hell should I give this to anyone else at this stage. My fragile ego would shatter into itty bitty pieces at the first even slightly negative comment. Maybe later after I've gone back and fixed problems. Or maybe after I've gone back, fixed problems, let it sit for a month, gone back again, buried it in a dark basement and written something completely different and better. Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

And now to the hangover: I wrote from 8pm to 10pm. I put off watching Buffy Season 4 to do it. And then, I wanted to watch Buffy. Cuz, it's Season 4, the one with the Initiative, where Faith wakes up and switches bodies with Buffy and Willow's got the relationship with Tara and then Oz comes back... you know, good stuff. So I watched Buffy until 11:30. And then I couldn't sleep because I WROTE A STORY! Outcome: I didn't get enough sleep last night, and now I'm woozy and groggy. But like feeling sore after going back to the gym, it's good pain.

Yay.

Quatres ans de francais dans l'ecole

2008-12-04T13:07:00.001-08:00

Because I am awesome, yesterday I broke my driver's side mirror backing out of a space at my office's parking garage. I distinctly remember thinking "I'm pretty close to that pillar, so I'll have to be careful pulling out!" which is why the fact that I then promptly broke the mirror means I'm awesome.

So I took my car to the shop this morning and called a cab to take me to work. The cab driver was listening to French NPR. At least I'm assuming it was NPR - they talked about le minister du petrol and les gens avec des problemes evec ses maisons et leurs argent. I took four years of French in high school (nous aimons toujours, Madame Alnwick!) so I enjoyed listening and trying to understand.

The driver was quiet during the ride, and I debated saying thanks in French. I always have this internal debate when deciding whether or not to addres a stranger in their native language - will they be happy I did? Will it not matter? Will my pronunciation suck? One time my mom was at a Greek store during Orthodox Easter, and she said "Khristos Aneste!" (Chris is Risen) to the proprietor. Rather than giving the standard response, the guy narrowed his eyes at her and barked "You grik?" So you just never know how people will react.

But what the hell; when we reached my office I said "Merci beaucoup!" to the driver. He got all animated, and said, "Merci! Au revoir! Bonne journee!" So that was nice.

I took French in high school only because my sister was taking Spanish, and being a defensive snot I didn't want her correcting my speaking/writing/reading. (Our relationship has improved a lot since. Hopefully I'm also less of a snot.) Sometimes I'd wonder why I bothered, figuring that French was way less useful in the NoVa area than Spanish. Realizing now that large chunks of a rather large continent were colonized by les francaises, and that many of the people living on that large continent have fled genocide and poverty and ended up here, I feel better about my four years o' french. Even if it's just to say thanks to cab drivers.

Reeejekshawn

2008-12-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

Last night I got my Thanks But No Thanks email on the rewritey job. It made me feel disproportionately sad, so I watched Simpsons reruns on Hulu to dull the pain. It worked! Let us all gather around tv's warming glowing warming glow.

Then this morning I submitted my o-ficial application to be full-time here where I'm temping at now currently at this time. (If good writing doesn't want me, I don't want good writing. LOLPONIESLOL!!1!!) I've been informed that because the position will be advertised, the competition will be fierce. Fierce! That's cool. Hopefully I won't be too sad if I don't get this job. I think I've been doing it and doing it and doing it well, but it is not for me to decide.

I joined a writer's critique group. The next step would be actually writing something. I'm a fan of Stephen King's book about writing, and he advocates reading a lot and writing a lot. So far I've got the reading a lot part down. Lately I've been reading Sophie Kinsella books. She writes british chick-lit on the lines of Bridget Jones' Diary. The books are like candy - sweet, very fast reads. Pretty soon now I'll have read them all and I'll actually have to write something. D'oh!

Mixed feelings

2008-11-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I showed my pro editor mom my rewrite, and she pointed out the inconsistent hyphenation and the fact that since it's a sales letter, I should have moved an "act now!" sentence from the end to the beginning. Then she told me not to quit my day job because she thinks I probably have stiff competition. It made me feel fairly depressed. I know this wasn't her intention; like me and like everyone else who writes, we just don't bother to pull any punches.

It was kind of an emotional rollercoaster (roller coaster? roller-coaster? Arghle-barghle!) day anyway. I've been working a long-term temp assignment in a software liberry, filling in for someone who left on short-term disability due to, as far as anyone can tell, nervous exhaustion. (Or perhaps the vapors.) The person's disability is up Dec. 1, so I kind of assumed I'd be moving on to something else next week.

However, yesterday I got the news that the person has officially resigned. The company is going to advertise the job and they invited me to apply. I got taken out to coffee so they could tell me this news, which is a pretty good sign; the treating of potential hires to free food or drink tends to be a wooing rather than a discouraging tactic. At the least, I'll be temping here until they find someone else. So, I should be pretty happy. After all, the economy is tanking blah blah blah current event-cakes.

I kind of am happy. I'll definitely apply and take the job if I can get it, and put lots of effort into doing it well. So, yay. Sort of. Sort of because part of me feels like it shouldn't be this easy, and conversely, going after and getting a job of my choice, which I've so far been completely un-sucessful doing, shouldn't be this hard.

I probably am just sinking into my yearly winter malaise. It doesn't help that my throat has swollen up - apparently my lymph nodes are busily manufacturing white blood cells to combat yet another cold/virus threat. I don't want another cold, dammit. And I want to be a part-time rewriter. So there.

I cans be rewriter?

2008-11-24T07:44:00.000-08:00

I AM SO EXCITED! Eeeee!

Ok, so last week I responded to a CL ad for a part-time copy-editor/rewriter job. A commercial real-estate investment firm in Dupont Circle is looking for someone who can rewrite their promo materials in grammatically correct, good written English. I seriously practically pee'd my pants when I read the ad, because I LOVE REWRITING. Friends who've given me term papers and grad school applications and asked for suggestions usually end up running far, far away as I end up red-inking and then rewriting the whole thing. (Sorry, friends. I know it's annoying.)

As in any other profession, actual for-real copy editors and copywriters need some kind of cred: you've either got to have samples (I have zero) or be familiar with A.P. and Chicago style guides (huh?) and growing up in a family of professional wordy types, I know I can't hold a candle to the real pros. (The test that my mom's editing firm gives? I would fail eet.)

So imagine my joy when I saw this ad, and saw that the job is part-time, and saw no mention of style guides or portfolios, and saw that the ad contained NUMEROUS GRAMMATICAL AND STYLISTIC ERRORS! I promptly responded and said I'd gotten a 5 on my Advanced Placement English exam (true) and also rewrote their ad and sent it back to them. Ha ha.

Then, to my grief, I went to check the ad, and it was gone from CL. Of course it was. They were probably flooded with five gazillion responses from the beelions of unemployed writers in the area. Who knows, I thought, they probably filled the position in five minutes. I was one sad wannabe.

But then today I got an email from their HR guy! He sent me a sales letter with instructions to rewrite it as I saw fit and send it back. They'll be picking the top three and interviewing after Thanksgiving. So I just spent a couple of hours researching Tax Lien investments and Mortgage Note CD's. At first I was like, this is all finance crap, I can't rewrite this. But then I started to understand the products (guess what, there is a way to make money off the foreclosure crisis) and rewrote what I think is a hell of a sales letter. I hope they think so too. I looked at their website, and there's a ton of rewriting to be done... Fingers crossed!

Jazzercise - 1, Me - 0

2008-11-18T05:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took a Jazzercise class for the second time in as many weeks. I decided to start going because I need to get more exercise in, and Jazzercise was a good cheap option that meant I wouldn't have to cross rte 50 coming back from my temp job at Skyline.

I used to take it with Mrs. Pinchloaf, and it's cheap, cheesy and fun. You do simplified jazz routines to All Your Favorite Pop and Country and R&B hits with a group of (mostly) middle-aged ladies. The theory is that you work your way up the exertion curve and then back down and then do some light weights. You can be as high-impact as you want or as low-impact.

So last night I really got into it - I was more high impact than low and jazzmatazzed my velour sweatpantsed ass off. As a result, about 45 minutes in I got a monstrous headache. This is what happens to me when I work hard. I have to watch it because sometimes the monstrous headache leads to throwing up. So I went home, and ma soer had come over with sour weed so my dad could make his famous schavel, which is a very delicious sour weed soup. Sadly, I couldn't eat any of it. I had to soak in a hot tub and then lie very very still for the rest of the evening.

There's a very unfair set of contradictions involved in getting healthy. By getting healthy I mean eating lots of fruits and vegetables, exercising and getting down to my federally mandated healthy weight. (149 and not an ounce less I tell you.) All this stuff is supposed to add years to your life and make you feel good most of the time. However, it has to be approached carefully. I'm 30 pounds overweight and work a sitting-down desk job, so if I start working out an hour per day, I will probably injure myself. Apparently even if I work too hard in one jazzercise class, I'm out for the rest of the night.

It's the same with food: if I immediately change to eating lots of fruits and veggies, I'm going to have some serious intestinal distress. Furthermore, even though I know the overweight is complicating my ability to exercise, I can't lose it too fast or I'll eff up my metabolism or be malnourished and get sick. I know, I know, slow and steady wins the race, blah blah blah gradual lifestylechangecakes. I thought I WAS being gradual, but apparently not gradual enough.

The other night I caught a few minutes of Half Ton Mama, one of the shows on a 'check out how fat these people are!' night on some cable channel (TLC maybe?) There are a number of shows about people who have gotten so large that they can never leave their beds unless fifteen firemen come in and drag them out on a tarp. On every show, they have pictures of the people from ten or twenty years before, and they're all normal-sized. Chubby, maybe, but not scary fat. Then of course by the time they're huge, they can't just eat less or exercise more and have to have scary surgeries where they have an 80% chance of dying on the operating table because they're so big.

Thinking about these folks makes me uncomfortable because I could so easily see it happening to me. I'm pretty sure it won't happen to me, but still. It's so easy to eat a lot and sit around. And now I'm all hungry. And sore.

Apparently, we do not care about whales

2008-11-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

According to the Environment News Service:

"WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. Supreme Court today lifted restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the coast of California, handing a defeat to environmentalists who say the limits are needed to protect whales and dolphins. The court, in a 6-3 decision, ruled that a lower court judge had wrongly allowed the environmental impacts of the training exercises to trump U.S. national security interests."

I heard this on NPR yesterday. It's sad. Apparently sonar testing scrambles whale and dolphin brains, and they get all confused and end up beached. I'm also in favor of military security, and the argument went that an untrained Navy is worse than a bunch of dead sea mammals. I was talking about it with my dad, and he said that earlier arguments centered around the location of the tests - the Navy doesn't HAVE to conduct tests in warm waters, where whales and dolphins are likely to be breeding and hanging out, but for convenience and fun's sake they (the Navy) prefer it.

I'm reacting to this story more strongly than to other enviro ills because it's us, our system, that decided that we'd prefer to scramble whale brains over the alternative. It's not like the oil spill, where there was a big mean corporation and I could go, 'well, I'm not part of that big mean corporation' or the melting permafrost which is leading to grumpy bears who aren't cued to go into hibernation and therefore run around terrorizing locals (because even though that's horrible, it's kind of funny. Bears!) It's California, and it's the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a check on the big bad military industrial complex. Plus, there's just something severely icky about the image. There you are, a whale, or a dolphin, swimming around, eating some krill, looking for a little whale tail, and all of a sudden you get super confused and you don't know up or down and you end up floundering onto a beach and unable to swim. Lame.

In other hilarious enviro news, a few months back I read that bear attacks are up in Anchorage because they built a bicycle trail right next to a river. The river is where the fish are, so... THAT'S WHERE THE BEARS GO. And then they eat bicyclists instead.

OMG WEDDING!

2008-11-11T18:32:00.001-08:00

Say hello to my new obsession

2008-11-10T08:59:00.000-08:00

I don't have a picture to upload here, but I will say that the object of my affection has been extensively blogged about already, so there are many pictures out there. Of...

Potachos!

I hung out with the ChriShawn and Lil' Italian Redhead: The Sister Version on Saturday night. We played some rousing pop culture trivial pursuit, and then watched some of P2: The Movie About That Chick Trapped In A Parking Garage With a Psycho Garage Attendant (most yelled comment: "Bitch, tase him! Tase him now!")Then after the attendant was duly blown up, (with a taser,) we decided we were hungry and so we went to Denny's. It was a tossup between Denny's and IHOP, and I'm so glad Shawn insisted on Denny's, because they have the most amazing, most disgustingly satisfying, egregiously unnecessary appetizer ever invented. It's called Potachos, and it's kettle chips covered in queso dip with sausage, bacon, shredded cheddar cheese, green peppers and sour cream. We ordered with without the green peppers, because, seriously. What is the point of the one vegetable? No point. None.

And damn yo. The shit is so good. I announced that they're good enough to start dating someone and then break up with them just so you can call your friends and go, "We just broke up, I need to eat potachos." Shawn insisted that they're so good you don't need a reason. Potachas by themselves are reason enough.

It's part of Denny's 'Rock Star Menu'. Apparently they adopt rock bands now and invite them to invent menu items. I dunno who invented Potachos but I would like to thank them, and encourage them to give up music and embrace catering to gluttons as a career.

Unfortunately, the rock star menu is only available from 10pm-5am... and yeah, I rarely end up at a Denny's before 10pm... but still. I wish they were a lunch item as well. Because I would eat them for lunch.

New Reason to Live...

2008-11-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Felicia Day. Web sitcom. World of Warcraft. Nuff said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grCTXGW3sxQ

Voteration

2008-11-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

I woke up bright and early this morning, chug-a-lugged some coffee, and made my bleary way to my alma mater, Graham Road Elementary, to get my vote on. I got there at 6:03 and there was a line of pre-work voters, but it wasn't too bad. I stood in line with mostly couples. Apparently voting is a couples sport, so I felt out of place with my singletude. But then I got to go in before everyone cuz there were more A through L's than M through Z's. Ha ha, suckers.

It has gotten less weird to be in my old elementary school, but it still feels odd. We vote in the cafeteria and I still remember gathering for assemblies to sing Great American Hero and that rainbow song by Kermit. To make it even stranger one of the secretaries from the school, tho' now retired, is an election officer, and she still remembers me! It is the freakiest thing ever. Nice, but freaky.

For some reason I don't expect anyone to remember me. This is partly because I myself have such a bad memory for faces and people. I can barely remember kids I went to college with, and that really wasn't that long ago. It's also that I tend not to look back too much; I am as I am today and therefore whatever I was before is irrelevant.

It's a strange feeling to see people From One's Past. This weekend I went to CircusJeff's wedding. The attendees included kids Jeff went to high school with (they aren't kids anymore but they're always kids in my mind,) some of whom I've hung out with in recent years, but some of whom I haven't seen since they visited Jeff in college. One was his good friend Dave, who I recognized, but I didn't expect him to come up and start talking to me and know stuff about my current life, which he totally did. This happened a lot at Jeff's wedding, because Jeff is the nicest person ever and his friends are also the nicest people ever. Nice people with good memories.

Also attending were two of my room-mates from college, Sarah and Julie. I call them room-mates because we lived together and because I can't think of a descriptor that sums up what they were. They were huge in my life at the time. We acted out great psychodramas and were each other's audience. And then we left and fell out of touch, and then there they were, back again, exactly the same, and our group dynamic was exactly the same, and it was like if we wanted to we could just go back to the same pre-war apartment in the Fan and buy groceries and own cats and argue about feminist politics and everything would be exactly the same. And then we left the wedding, and I don't know if we'll stay in touch now.

The wedding was great - great ceremony, great food, good music, good people. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome and as a couple they were ecstatic and it was a good time all around. Atomicate was kind enough to accompany me, and I hope she will forgive me for missing her gig on Sunday night, cuz it was another epic fail in my attempts to go see her amazing band Aubriot. I kept forgetting to introduce her to people at the wedding because in my mind, all my friends know each other and we all have the same shared history, so she knows about the time that Sarah and I were bloodthirsty wiccans in a production of The Bacchae, and Sarah knows about the time that Atomicate and I played Mark's house party, and we'll all head down to Hell's Kitchen in Newark for some bright pink cocktails after the home bout with the Pinchloafs and Belle and Christopher Talkin', and then we'll have brunch at Bilbo Baggins with the hobbits, all of us all together.

Ultimately, a life of crime leads to a life in exile.

2008-10-31T14:33:00.003-07:00

She has been seen collaborating with other suspects

2008-10-31T14:33:00.001-07:00

The Perp Returns to the Scene

2008-10-31T14:32:00.001-07:00

Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!

2008-10-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave mouse.

2008-10-31T04:20:00.000-07:00

Lady strikes again.

Pestilence

2008-10-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

Hello. I have a confession to make. I... am a slob. Yes, it is true. I am not neat. I am not tidy. I leave things in piles, I do not alphabetize, color code, reverse chronologize or plain chronologize. I know OF these practices, but fail to see how they relate to me and my life, and find them sort of quaint in others.

Let's call sloppiness the left, and neatness the right. I have a few friends who veer very far to the right. These friends admit that their neatness is related to an obsessive-compulsiveness that may or may not be a disorder. They can be made to feel physical discomfort if an element of their physical world is moved out of place; a disordered space leads to a disordered mind which leads to a disordered body.

I myself veer to the far left. I, in turn, admit that my slovenliness is related to a mild form of depression/anxiety which may or may not be a disorder. The difference is that I don't feel physical discomfort in a neat space. Rather, I can be made to feel physical discomfort if I either I am urged by someone else to neaten and organize, or if my sloppiness has gotten to such a state that I am ashamed to have someone else witness it.

As I've grown older I've learned to compartmentalize my sloppiness. When living with roommates, I make sure that I keep common areas clean, and have the door to my room always shut so no one has to be offended by the clothes on the floor, piles of paper on the desk, books everywhere, etc. My car is another compartmentalized space, and discarded paper bags, CD's and coffee cups tend to build up in the front and back seats.

I've long tried to believe that I can maintain a live and let live philosophy as regards the lefties and the righties. I can be messy as long as it doesn't impinge on others, and they can be neat as long as they don't make me join them in trying to impose order on chaos. Unfortunately, I've decided I can't really continue. My family is convinced that my messiness is harming my physical health (they think eczema is caused by dust) and I've realized that I can't really function in polite society as a messy person. I have to take my car in to get work done, so that can't be messy, and I live at home now, so I can't really be messy there either.

It's not a huge deal - I can be neat. I don't mind the repetitive task of cleaning, and all it takes is a few minutes out of a day or an hour or so out of a week.

Still tho', something rankles. The righties don't have to change. They are free to express their mild mental illness in peace, because society accepts it, man. But how am I supposed to express malaise and existential angst now, huh? The only form of aggression I like to indulge in is passive aggression, and now I'm willingly giving that up. I expect I shall now become actively aggressive, and society won't like that either. Society is such a whiny little bitch. (See? It's happening already. I rest my case.)

The bout

2008-10-24T17:43:00.001-07:00

The first reason for my NJ visit was to see the last Nightmares bout of the season, against the Hell Razors. These are my girls, even though we're not all close, we're a team, a collective, and a lovelier funnier more insane group of ladies I've yet to encounter. I'm not an o.g. Nightmare, but I'd say I came in during the second wave, and I skated last year and this year, so I'm still old enough that I can agree when my o.g. teammates say, 'ya know, it's not like before, with the old Nightmares...'

And it's not - there are new Nightmares. Still though, we've built our mythology up, and the mythology goes like this: the Nightmares are better than other teams because we skate as a team and we stick together. Somehow, everyone agrees that this has nothing at all to do with practice. The Nightmares don't practice as a team. Before every bout, Von Fury reminds us: 'you know, the Nightmares don't practice, and we always skate better, cuz we don't fuckin' need to practice'. Or words to that effect. And it's easy to think that's bullshit, and it's VERY easy to get pissed off by this attitude, if you happen not to be a Nightmare, but oddly there is something to it. I know this to be true because for this bout, a couple of subs from Jersey City skated with the Nightmares, and one of them said to the team manager, 'I love skating with you guys, now I understand why you're so adamant to stay together as a team!' So, there it is. Luck, magic, regional personality... we got something.

This made it kind of a hard bout to just be watching, for me. I haven't skated derby in five months now, and I still wanted to be out there with them, cuz damn it feels good to be a ganster. But what's done is done, what's herniated cannot be unherniated, and it was awesome to be there to see everyone.

The bout was fraught. Apparently in the last couple of months there's been huge animosity growing between the Nightmares and the Hell Razors. I don't know what went on, but you could definitely feel the tension. The bout started and ten minutes in, the Nightmares were leading by 20 points. The Hell Razors called a time-out, which seemed to last forever. It turns out they wanted call the game because the EMT's didn't show up. So we all waited 15 minutes for EMT's, which kind of threw the night off kilter. On the one hand, yeah, you want EMT's there; on the other, don't leave your audience hanging not knowing what's going on.

Play resumed and everyone was skating really, really hard. And really, really dirty. There were so many minors and so many jammerless jams because of fouls, it was nuts. The Hell Razors won by 15 points (I think), so there was no joy in Mudville for the Nightmares, but there didn't seem to be any joy from anyone, really. No joy from JC that their rivals had finally gone down, and no particular joy from the H.R.

Overall, it was fun to watch my girls skating, those on my team and those not. It was hard to watch, too; it was the kind of thing you watch intently so as not to miss anything, and the points were kept low, so it was edge of your seat stuff.

The cheering and yelling... I told myself I wouldn't, on account of my sore throat, but I couldn't help it. I never can. I yelled and screamed. My throat suffered.

Excuses, excuses.

2008-10-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

I had so planned to write an extensive, witty, fun to read post about my weekend in NJ/NY, because it really was amazing, but then, errg, stuff happened. Plus, I am lazy. Double plus, I posted pictures, and that seemed so easy and summary.

Stuff that happened that prevented writing: I came down with a pretty bad cold pretty much the day before I left to drive up. Note to the curious: staying up until 3am drinking and yelling are not that therapeutic, and may in fact worsen any cold you have. Further note: if you drink enough, you will stop caring about your sore throat. Oh, it'll still be there, but you won't care.

Also, I started a longish-term temp assignment on Monday. I could not very well call in sick to my first day, as I feel that would have looked bad, so I could not stay home and do the hard-core sleeping that I felt was necessary to kill the coughing, hacking, dry throat and ear pain.

I've spent the last week working and sleeping, with breaks for snacks and dinner. You would think that going to sleep at 7pm woud make it easy to wake up at 6am the next day, but in fact this has not been the case at all. Maybe it's the Nyquil. Finally, today, I'm feeling like a normal human again. A normal human who has more snot than usual, but a normal human all the same.

...and then some other stuff happened...

2008-10-21T16:42:00.000-07:00

...although frankly after my fourth vodka martini, it was all kind of a blur.

We saw some boobies. And some fire jugglin'.

2008-10-21T16:40:00.001-07:00

Who's gittin' married?

2008-10-21T16:39:00.001-07:00

This guy!!! This fuckin' guy!!!

And the bachelor partay...

2008-10-21T16:36:00.001-07:00

The Babybel

2008-10-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

Aka, squishyface. Errrrg! I won't wake up! I WON'T! So just enjoy catching up over your delicious Raymond's brunch special in peace, cuz I'm just gonna sit here all squishyface! NYERH!

Eeeee! Coming to get youuuuuu!

2008-10-21T16:33:00.001-07:00

...and then there was this bear.

2008-10-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

Happy Funtymes Weekend

2008-10-21T16:20:00.001-07:00

I went up norf this weekend, firstly for the Northern Nightmares/Hub City Hell Razors bout, to see the Babybell, and then for Mr. Getting Married Soon Guy's bachelor party in the citay. And I documented my reality in pictures.

I stayed with my old roomie in the House of Antiquity. He's got some new old antiques, including this lovely slot machine! How awesome is that? Rather, I think.

To The Starter Wife: I Am Miffed

2008-10-14T11:16:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the magic of teh interwebs, I now watch a lot of TV from my computer via Hulu. I watched season 1 of USA's The Starter Wife this weekend. It's about the wife of a Hollywood studio exec who gets dumped and blah blah blah drama-cakes. It stars Debra Messing, and I like seeing her in anything except Will and Grace, where she was a little annoying, but anytime she gets to act like a normal person and isn't constantly yelping and mugging, I think she's fun to watch.

The upside of hulu tv watching is you can watch an entire season quickly. The downside is you can see the creators making sudden changes. It seems like they started making one show and then quickly retooled it all midstream. Around episode three, for example, Debra Messing starts to have vivid dream sequences based on well-known movie scenes. Eh, whatevs, it didn't bother me that much, although it wasn't exactly original or funny. (The show is on USA. Do they really have enough viewers to care enough to change the series? It's not like Lifetime does that...)

So, I got into it, I got into the characters a bit, and I like a couple of the actors a bunch. Specifically, Stephen Moyer, who plays the hot homeless beach bum that Debra Messing falls in love with. He's now the head hot vampire on True Blood, and he's a way better sexy vampire than sexy homeless guy, but you know, I'll watch him in whatever, I don't care.

I also really liked Peter Jacobson as the smarmy studio exec who dumps Debra Messing. I wish I had the skillz to hyperlink his name to his imdb page, cuz you probably don't know him by name, but you'd recognize him. Oh, and he's on House, I forgot about that. Anyways, he takes a role that could be very one-note and makes him, you know, many notes. As he's dumping Debra you look at him and you see that he really thinks this is the right choice for him, and you really think he believes his ex-wife will be ok with it, because she should only want what's best for him. He's awesome, basically.

Some not so great kid actor plays Debra Messing's daughter, and yeah, she's not so great, but never the less it was TOTALLY JARRING to move on to season 2 and see that they had replaced her with some other kid who a) looked nothing like the first kid, b) was way older than the first kid, and therefore not in keeping with the time frames set by the show, and c) was definitely NOT a better actor than the first kid. What the effing eff?

Even worse though, they replaced Peter Jacobson! What? Come on now! Ok, so maybe it was his choice to leave so he could be on a Fox show instead of a USA show, but still. It sucks. The two casting changes coupled with the heavy-handed stylistic changes make it impossible for me to watch now. My bar for tv watching is set pretty low, so, I think that's saying something.

Hmph. Pout.

Office Pictures

2008-10-07T04:49:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I worked at a Native Alskan-Owned tech company. There were lil' stuffed seals on my desk. And that's really all there is to say about that.

If you have an idea for a story...

2008-10-05T12:45:00.001-07:00

...and you tell someone about it before you're done writing it, does it die?

My mom and my sister and I were at a Border's yesterday, because my sister wanted to buy the latest Buffy comic. While we were hanging around waiting for her to be done buying it, we saw a woman sitting at a table with her new book. No one was lining up to buy her book, or get it signed, so she was doggedly/hopefully handing out bookmarks promoting the book, and she gave one to my mom and one to me.

The book was some sort of historical fiction fantasy about a mystical Egyptian bracelet falling into wrong hands. My mom made some comment about never wanting to read such a book, and I said, if she can write a book, why haven't I written a book already? And she said, well you've got the computer and lots of time on your hands, and I was like, this is true. Unemployment - an opportunity to write a damn book already.

So then I woke up this morning quite early with an idea for a young adult novel, and I wrote a page or so of it. Later today I told my mom I'd started writing my book, and she asked what it was about, and I told her, and then I was like, should I have not done that?

Something in me says one should keep one's good ideas to one's self until it's done, or at least until it's a draft. But then again, I crave attention for everything I write. This is one reason I don't keep a diary. It would never be secret enough. I'd want to have people read it, every entry as soon as it as written.

To compare writing to cooking, that's like making someone taste raw eggs on their way to becoming an omelette. On the other hand, I rarely write anything unless I know people are waiting to read it. So what's to do?

I'm going to keep writing this one. No seriously, I promise. If only because other people are not only totally writing books, they're totally getting them published and junk. Even if they're not that great. I want to do that.

Urgh, Shut UP! Or, Temping Continued.

2008-10-01T18:36:00.001-07:00

So there was a week where the Large Nationally Known Temping Company didn't call me with any jobs. As much as I like not working, I actually do prefer to work, so I stepped up my cover-letter-writin', resume-submittin' game. I've been mostly focusing on Craigslist, cuz it's the cheapest and the best, imho, but I am registered with Careerbuilder, so I applied to a few on that.

(Uploading a new resume on C.B. had the unfortunate side effect of re-alerting them to my presence. Despite me changing my address on the site, I now get daily email alerts and solications from employers in New Jersey. It's a hell of a commute.)

It seems that 85% of the jobs posted on C.B. are posted by temp companies. I applied to one job without really paying attention to who posted it, and the next day Small Indie Temp Company called me up. They asked how many tests I'd taken at Large Nationally Known Temping Company. I told them I'd taken a Word test and an Excel test, and the rep somewhat snottily said, 'Oh, I guess our competitors don't test as extensively as we do.' I said, 'No, but at least they have name recognition.' Despite my returned snottiness they invited me in to take their barrage of tests and interview with them.

I was actually a bit nervous about it all - they test Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Access, typing speed, spelling and arithmetic. I actually pulled up my Powerpoint for Mac before the interview and messed around a bit, and worried a tad over it. They also told me to plan to be there for three or four hours, and cautioned me not to use Google Maps to get to the office, because people who use Google Maps to get there get lost. I looked it up on Google Maps, and well, I think stupid people who use it get lost... I didn't have any problems tho'.

When I got there they handed me the math'n'spelling test. It was not at all intimidating. The spelling test consisted of checking off words that were misspelled, and that was easy because I just looked for spellings I've seen on Craigslist. Redeculous, curoisity, excsept. The math was addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division. I haven't done long division since 8th grade but it wasn't too painful.

Then I got sent to the computer room to do the barrage of MS tests. Again, not that hard. You get 20 minutes for each test, and I finished each one in five or six minutes. Either you know the stuff or you don't. The Word test threw me because it was in Word 2007, and apparently they've done away with the menu options at the top toolbar in favor of pictures only. Whatevs.

And then we got to the interviews... oh man. They made me take a Meyers-Briggs test. GROSS. I am not a fan. "On the weekend, do you prefer to: a) make a schedule of things to do, or b) do whatever seems fun at the time?" Um, depends on the weekend. "When solving a tricky problem, do you a) rely on your intuition to tell you what's right, or b) apply a logical, reasoned approach?" Um, depends on the problem. I finished it as fast as possible and tried to seem out-going, logical and spontaneous. I was laissez-faire because THE TEST IS MEANINGLESS.

They treated it as gospel, tho'. The first chick who came in to interview me started explaining to me that I'm an ENTJ, and did that seem familiar to me. I was like, 'uhhhh, sure. Whatevz. Get to the part where you ask me where I'll be in five years.' So she did, and then she proceeded to talk about herself a lot.

The second guy came in and was more bearable; he just checked my paper work and asked me what, if any, jobs I wouldn't do. No cold-calling please! Oh, and he did tell me how I did on the MS tests... and it turns out I only got 55% on the Word one, but it DOESN'T MATTER, because they know most people don't have the latest update; they just test it to see 'who's keeping up.' Lames. But anyway, he lulled me into a state of relaxation with his easy questions and not talking about himself. I was then ill-prepared for the last interviewer... the owner of the company.

Owner guy majorly pissed me off. Over the next HOUR, he proceeded to tell approximately fifty bad jokes, told me to try coming to my next interview sober, spoke to me in a bad russsian accent after reading that my emergency contact's name is Leonid, told me random stories about how he went to Falls Church High back when it was in Fall Church City and oh wow it's so tough to be old, told me I was a 'high E' on the Meyers-Briggs and that would really influence my placement, and told me I was a beautiful young woman. EW. I felt like pulling out the sexual harassment policy they made me sign and throwing it in front of him. I kept hoping for the interview to be over already but it just went on and on. He told me I was one of the smartest candidates to come in that year. I didn't say, "Wow, your bar is set pretty low then, seeing as all I did was spell at a fifth grade level and do some arithmetic." He just kept going on and on and on and on. I wanted to scream "Will you just please SHUT UP" but instead I had to be all, "Heh heh... yes. You, sir, are a card. Oh my. How amusing." Finally he was like, do you have any more questions? And I said no, and he said, "I wish I had another hour with you." Gross!

They better get me some work, cuz EW.

Luckily afterwards I got to have a delightful lunch with Atomicate. And she bought me Tim Tams! The happiest cookie on earth! We also checked out the H'ween store. She thinks we should just get mascot heads, but I told her I'd rather be Sexy Darth Vader. (Plastic Darth Vader mask and a short skirt. Hell to the yeah!) It's a good thing I had funtymes with her after that grossness interview that is still grossing me out.

Derby!

2008-09-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, Atomicate, Atomicate's sweetie Pants and I went to the Dulles Sportsplex to check out the DC Allstars vs the Charm City Allstars. I've been itchin' to see some skating, and Charm City's got two of the best skaters around, Joy Collision and Dolly Rocket. (And a host of other amazing chicas: Mibbs Breakin Ribs, Coach Ballbricker, Frenzy Lohan, Lady Quebeaum...) Charm City's also just one of the strongest leagues around, and DC's pretty new, so basically I wanted to see if DC could put any points on the board at all.

And they did! The final score was DC 21, Charm City 205. So yeah, it was a rout... still tho', any time DC even got close to scoring a point, the home crowd went wild. In some ways, I was like, wow, why would DC ever play Charm City... they've got to have known they'd get spanked. But, speaking as a skater who skated in her team's very first bout against the Charm City Night Terrors (we got spanked also) there's something awesome about skating a bout you just can't win. You learn a lot very quickly.

From what we could see, it looked like Charm City formed a strong wall in the front of the pack. DC's blockers were focused on trying to stop the Charm City jammer, and then couldn't seem to get up to help their jammer in the front of the pack. If they had focused only on breaking the wall at the top of the pack and getting their jammer through, they might have narrowed the point spread a little. It's easy to say, of course, and hard to do.

I love watching Joy Collision skate. As a jammer she seems to just kind of float through the pack; the real fun is watching her block. She can trap a jammer at the back of the pack just with a continuous booty block, and then when the time is right she sends them flying out of bounds. She makes it all look completely effortless. It was also fun to see Joy Collision and Dolly Rocket take hits - they wobble but they just don't fall down.

DC rallied in the second half, and started breaking walls, so their jammers could get through. There was also some AMAZING skating from a couple of DC jammers - I noticed Meatball just fly past the pack on the outside a couple of times, which takes a great deal of speed and endurance.

In general everyone played nice, although there were multiple times when both jammers were in the penalty box and the jam had to be reset. I know Charm City has mentored DC, and you could tell there was a lot of good feeling amongst the skaters.

Atomicate is slowly getting seduced by the lure of ze derby. I'm not sure if Pants liked it or not. He's a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a cool t-shirt, that one. I had fun, so... yay for derby!

Oh Shizz! Retail Excitement!

2008-09-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I was with my mom at the mall, lamenting the fact that I've outgrown most mall clothing stores but am not quite ready for the dreaded Women's section of most department stores. (And note to Talbot's and Ann Taylor: some of us are still not rich at 30, mmmkay?) Where is the store for the chunky but not plus-sized 30's woooman who doesn't have a ton of cash?

Well yesterday I had to go to the DMV to get my license'n'plates'n'reg updated and to register to vote so I can annoy everyone else as much as they've been annoying me talking about blugh never mind I can't do it, and afterwards I was to meet Lil' Italian Redhead for lunch, but I had some time in between the two, so I wandered into... Filene's Basement!

Omg! It's my store! I found. The cutest. Dress ever. For thirty bucks. Hells to the yeah. This dress is a partay dress, suitable to be worn to the nuptials of Circus Jeff and the Lovely Librarian, which is where I'ma wear it. But then I also found the cutest sweater dress, suitable to be worn to the office, but I talked myself out of it. But it was hella cute, and now I want to go back and get it.

Arrrr! I missed it!

2008-09-21T19:13:00.000-07:00

So, once again, I have missed Talk Like a Pirate Day. Every year I intend to honor this great day, and every year I forget... can we have some more press about it please? Can CVS maybe start stocking pirate accessories around mid-August so I can go, 'Oh man, they're already stocking for Talk Like a Pirate Day? Summer is going by so fast!'

In other news, I got to hang out with the Pinchloafs today. Mrs. Pinchloaf and I took a walk and watched Baby Mama, which was aight. Amy Poehler is a genius. It was a nice time.

Mrs. Pinchloaf is currently cooking up a lil' pinchmuffin, so now every time I hang out with her I get to learn something new and gross about pregnancy and the birthing process. Today's lesson: babies can poop while in utero. Geeee-ross! I can't wait until she has da baby so I can stop learning all these new and amazing facts. Well, actually I can't wait cuz I want to meet the lil' muffin. I'm sure there are lots of gross things to learn about babies out of utero too. The ciiiiircle of liiiiiife.

Epic Outting Fail and More Temping

2008-09-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

So Atomicate invited me to see her other band, Bette Noir, in Fairfax. Although she clearly stated that they would be playing Fat Tuesdays, I for some reason thought they were playing at TT Reynold's. Which is apparently closed so of course they wouldn't be playing there. I know this because I drove to TT Reynold's and was all confused to see it dark... then got home and re-read the email and saw it was Fat Tuesday's. I am so s-m-r-t smart. So, sorry Atomicate! I'm a dumb.

I did get some awesome hangout time anyway. Earlier in the day Ms. Atomic brought over her Wii fit, and we did Wii fitness things. The only one I really rocked was the wii hula hooping. Also my wii age is 39. Whoa! I'm Wii old!

In other news I finished off a week of work at Lawyer, Lawyer, Lawyer and Lawyer. This was the temp job of all temp jobs. I got to arrange files in reverse chronological order, enter items on a spreadsheet, and shred old documents. Also I got invited to lunch at the Olive Garden with the ladies, aw. I did not go downstairs for Cake Day or Pizza Day, although I was invited to those too. Working in an office is very high calorie.

One of the nice things about temping is that expectations are usually set pretty low. The first project at this place was supposed to take three days, but I finished it in one. Because, well, it just wasn't that hard. My bosses were surprised, and found more things for me to do. Ah, the sweet satisfaction of having a task assigned and completing it. Yay for temping.

Atomicate Rocks Bethesda

2008-09-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

Seeew, I've always been lucky in having lots of rilly cool, rilly talented friends. One of them is Atomicate, who I met whilst singing backup for a local low-cal blues band. She is always in four or five bands at a time, and periodically I get a chance to hear her sing'n'play. This past Sunday I got to see one of the bands she's in, Aubriot, for the first time at Haagen Dasz in Bethesda.

Now, ahem, while it's awesome to have talented friends, er... how to put this? Sometimes, the projects my talented friends are in... I don't enjoy so much. I'm not naming names here or anything, but lets just say when I heard they were playing at Haagen Dasz, I thought perhaps this would be maybe not so good. Location, location, location, after all, and I say this as someone who's seen and participated in her share of converted-warehouse-space-coffee-house-open-mic shenanigans.

I felt a little better when I got to Bethesda. This particular part of it - Woodmont Road near Wisconsin Ave - is quite happening in an urban pedestrian mall kind of way. Lots of pricey chain restaurants, lots of folks moseying around, etc. In other words, the kind of area where one might very well expect to enjoy some quality music along with some quality ice cream.

Let me cut to the chase here - Aubriot is REALLY good. I totally dug it and would definitely hear them again, and At first I thought they were doing covers that I just hadn't heard - but turns out, they write their own stuff. And um, it's rilly rilly good. Like, for real. They play poppy rock (poppyrock!) with a tendency towards the sad'n'wistful. They've got a kick-ass drummer, a bass player with chops, and a lead guitarist who can actually play guitar. There didn't seem to be any ego - everyone was working together for each song. It sounds like such a simple formula, right? But come on, we all know it's a rare combination. Also, and not that I'm shallow, but everyone in the band was pretty darn cute to boot. Holla!

As the band was setting up they got the usual semi-hostile stare-down from the locals walking by. A funny thing happened when they started playing though - people walking by stopped and listened. The most amusing thing to watch was the little kids walking with their folks. They would stop and stare, all 'what is this strange thing?' and then they would smile and stand. Parents would stop and be all, 'c'mon, we gotta go meet Gramma at Jaleo' and the kids'd be all, 'No way! I must stay and rock out!' It was pretty cute.

Unfortunately, this being an outdoor show, it did rain a bit. They played through and no one got electromocuted, so whew! And um, I shan't go into the older lady with herpes who sat down next to me and kept pointing out the sore on her lip to me and then said, 'is that the drummer? That's what I like - drummers.' Uh huh. Staying away from drummers now. Got it.

Other good things - the sound quality was good, like all the levels were matched and not too loud and not too quiet, and I could actually hear the words, which I loved, cuz that's also kind of rare. I will say that the drummer was debating whether to use sticks or those whisk things that are not as loud as sticks, and I'd thought they'd go with whisks cuz it was a small outdoor venue - but then after they'd started playing the Haagen Dasz people had to come out and tell them not to use the sticks. Ha ha, drummers. Also, there was some banter from Atomicate. She told her chemistry joke. I'm not gonna tell you it, because then you won't think it's funny when you go to hear them. Suffice to say if you're following the Large Hadron Collider antics, you'll laugh at Atomicate's joke.

Anyway, my point is, they'll be playing again on November 2nd, and I plan to be there, fo' sho'. Aubriot. Good stuff!

Worst. Temp Job. Ever.

2008-09-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Today. Horrific.

Temp handler calls me with a job that may be two days but could spill into three days. It involves calling people who've signed up to attend an event and confirming their RSVP's. I'll have to do a phone interview so the job folks can ok my phone professionalism (i.e. that I don't sound ghetto) so I talk to them, and the guy says, 'Have you ever cold-called before?' Somehow, I managed to skip over the phrase 'cold-call', because I am dumb. I of course tell him straight up that I've never done phone sales, and he says it's between me and another temp, and he'll let my temp handler know by the end of the day. So whatever whatever, I get the job. *sound of tiny party horn fizzling*

I show up at the tiny office early, because I always am, and Job Guy is of course late, cuz that's rule one of tempage. Again, whatever whatever. I'm ushered into a conference room and offered water and coffee, and am shown the phone and stack of contacts. So, what is the deal exactly? Well, Job Company has arranged an event for Client Company. They've sent invitational emails to the contacts letting them know that if they attend a brief, catered two-hour presentation by Client Company on spam, content filters and firewalls they'll get two tickets to the last Nats home game of the season. My goal is to get people to say they'll come to the event, and then get their information so we can register them online for the event.

Slowly it dawns on me (see above re: dumb) that this is not confirming RSVP's. This is sales calling. I'm now the guy who has to convince you to buy the timeshare before you can enjoy the free weekend in Miami. Blurgh.

There are a few teensy problems with this scenario. Problem one: I am not a saleswoman. Sales-folk, imho, are born and not made. They are adorable smiley gifts from heaven who have the magical ability to woo you out of your hard-earned money. Me: not so much. I just work here.

Problem two: everyone knows I'm not a sales person. Receptionists know it and wisely route me immediately to the voicemail of whomever I'm calling as soon as I say, "Hi! I'm calling from Client Company!" Out of 150 calls, I speak to maybe 20 actual people.

Problem three: the company is selling spam protection services. TO PROFESSIONALS THEY HAVE JUST SPAMMED. Of the 20 people I talk to, at least 10 don't have the invite email because it is, guess where? In their spam filter.

Problem four: does anyone in this town actually care about baseball? Really? Well, ok, today I learned that at least three people do care about baseball. Two of them have prior commitments. I sign the last one up, desperate at this point, despite his protestations that while he does want the baseball tickets, he's just a policy wonk lobbying on IT issues and shouldn't I be talking to his IT guy if I'm trying to sell IT solutions? I assure him it's fine because at that point I just don't care anymore. My point is, the something for nothing we're giving away here isn't worth much. Unless the food is really good which I doubt.

About halfway into the morning the Big Boss comes in and announces that Client Company's CEO will be coming to the event, so now they REALLY need people to show up! No pressure though! (I don't explain that as a temp I'm exempt from being pressured by anything Job Company says, beyond showing up and making a reasonable attempt at getting the work done. This is part of the appeal of being a temp. Big Boss looks at me like he knows this but would like to believe otherwise. I say I'll do my best.)

As the day goes on it becomes crystal clear that I'm not selling the something for nothing very well. It's not that I'm not trying; I'm chipper, not too pushy, and use my years of training in the theatah to sound natural and not rush while including every selling point in one or two sentences. One british fellow says, "You'ah doing a veddy good job, and I see grrreat things in you'ah fewchah." Needless to say he's not interested in baseball.

My throat starts to hurt and I'm watching the minutes tick by on the Cisco conference room phone. Outside the conference room I can hear the Big Boss shmoozing away. I walk in and ask why he gets to talk to people and I only get to talk to voicemail. He says, 'Oh, I'm using my personal business contacts, that's why, it's a little easier that way.' Oh right, and that's because YOU'RE AS SALESMAN WITH A NETWORK OF CONTACTS and I'm COLD CALLING. ALL IN CAPS. He says maybe it's the list, maybe it isn't as good as they thought it was. Considering that some of the people I call haven't worked at the companies we have listed in five years, as some receptionists inform me in frosty tones, I think perhaps he's right.

I start to feel delirious. I can't make another call. I could just walk out - would that be so awful? But I can't; that would make me look unprofessional to my temp handler. But do I really have to come back and do this tomorrow, and maybe Friday? Surely not. The bosses leave for lunch and I call Mrs. Pinchloaf to vent, and she is nicely sympathetic. The bosses come back and bring a guy from Client Company with them. He is Georgetown button-down handsome and looks me up and down, a look that is half assessing my money-maker and half assessing my possible portfolio. (It's a G-town thing, I'm pretty sure.) I probably fall short in both categories but I'm so tired of cold-calling I really don't care. When he leaves he says 'thanks for helping us out' as he walks by.

Somehow I make it to 3:30 and then 4:15. Just 45 more minutes to go. At exactly 5:01 I walk out of the conference room to tell them I'm leaving if that's ok. Job Guy says, 'we think we're going to go in a different direction tomorrow, but thanks for coming in.' He says Client Guy listened to a few of my calls and thought I talked about the products well, but still. I can't help it, I heave a sigh of relief right there and shake his hand. And get the hell out.

In the parking lot I leave a hysteria-tinged voicemail for my temp handler, asking if they could please give me a heads up if the job involves cold-calling next time please, so that I can refuse to ever do it again. I do not say that I would rather enter the same 20 digit number into a spreadsheet five hundred times in a windowless basement room while rats gnaw at my ankles but the message gets through, as temp handler calls me back and is very apologetic and says she had no idea.

Sales. Shiver. Sigh of relief.

I Love Temping

2008-09-03T18:50:00.001-07:00

Now that I've completed the paradigm shift, I'm ready to pursue employment. I have most recently pursued it by signing on with A Nationally Known Temporary Staffing Company. I had to take an Excel test and a Word test, and I did a little interview and said I would like to make many monies please but would just like to start working again, mostly, and they checked my references and that was that.

One thing they did not check was my ability to walk in a straight line between orange cones, and yet that was what my first assignment called for. My Temp Handler called and was like, "Soooo, we have this half-day thing, and it's a liiiittle out of our scope... you'd be like, testing a new jacket for the military. Wanna do it?" Being a total whore for a few dollars more than minimum wage, I said okeydoke. She gave me the address - a Shriner's building. I said, 'is there like a company name I should look for in the building?' She said, "Oh, no, they'll be in the parking lot." Um, ok.

So I showed up at said building's very large, rather secluded and fairly empty parking lot, and met the job contact, who was really tall and good looking, and he showed me to the temp tent, where a couple of other ladies were sitting around, bored. (This is a major component of temping, so I wasn't surprised.) I was given a document to read where I learned what the job really was - testing suicide bomber detection systems. I was to pose as a suicide bomber and walk between two suicide bomber testing stations wearing a fake bomb pack. HOW EFFIN' AWESOME. (True fact: they already have this technology overseas, but designed it to identify men wearing explosives, and increasingly women have been making suicide attacks. Hence the need for the test, so's they could re-calibrate the systems for the lady-style suicide bomber.)

What made it awesomer was the fact that the guys running the stations were all ex-Marines. They'd all done tours of Iraq, had survived, gotten out, and are now working as private defense contractors. But they still look like Marines. I.E., incredibly hottt. (And I don't use the three t 'hottt' lightly.)

It took about two hours to complete the test - there were five of us temps, and we had to complete the walk five times (because there were four different jackets and once we walked without jackets.) It was so random and so easy and so cool. Alas, tomorrow I shall probably be temping in a more tempy (tempeh?) way, data entering addresses for some dumb company that does not create suicide bomber detection systems.

You can has mah bookz

2008-08-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

Today I called the Montclair Public Liberry to see if they would take my books. They said they would, provided I not bring more than a couple of boxes at a time and that the books are only gently used and not basement-moldy.

So, I began the process of culling the wheat from the chaff and delivering said chaff to the liberrian.

And... I still have a bunch of books. Sigh.

Phase 2 of Hippy Alternative Medicine Crap: Biofeedback!

2008-08-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

I heart Itunes - yesterday I bought two guided meditation mp3's. Both are by Dr. Kimeron Harding, a psychologist. One is specifically to get to sleep and the other is for general relaxation. I did them both yesterday, and I completely approve.

My criteria for choosing a guided meditation recording were that it not have anything to do with yoga, and that it not be too, you know, gay. I was also kind of hoping for some storytelling/abstract imagery (something like, 'imagine the tension is a big yellow balloon, and you can feel it pulling at you until you let it go and it gently rises into the air'... ok, that is kind of gay) but Dr. K does more of the 'think about the muscles of your forehead, eyes and temples, and now let them relax' type of stuff. In the end though I think it's all about following the voice, and regardless of if you follow the instructions by the letter, just focusing on the voice allows you to relax. Or I was able to relax anyway.

I listened to the sleep one before going to sleep. I didn't exactly drop off in the middle, but as soon as it was over I did. Success? Maybe. It's not like I have a lot of insomnia issues, but it was still nice.

The music is typical new-agey hippy stuff, but I'm ok with that. It's windchime-heavy, for sure.

Hot Blooded!

2008-08-06T08:52:00.000-07:00

I had session 3 of accupuncture today. As my back pain is mostly gone, I asked the doc/supervisor for an overall diagnosis. She said I have spleen chi and kidney chi issues, and that I also have blood heat issues. She thinks the blood heat deal is why I've had eczema forever, and gave me some oibs in pill form to take for it.

Weird as it is, I agree that I have overheated blood. My temperature has been 99.5 the last three times I've had it taken at the doctor's office. The accu-people also say my pulse is usually fast and my skin feels hot. Hot blooded! Woo!

Thanks to the Intolerability Index...

2008-08-02T18:53:00.000-07:00

...I ended up watching the documentary Summer Camp fo' free online yesterday; it's on Snagfilms.com. I loved it so very much - it brought back tons o' my own camp memories, and it's so fun/funny/heartbreaking hearing kids describe their lives in their own words. Hearing the counselors bitch about how burned out they are near the end of camp is fun/funny/heartbreaking too.

Not Really Dark Knight Spoilers

2008-08-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

So, I just saw Teh Dark Night today, feenalmente. I have to say, I think Katie Holmes made a better Rachel Dawes. I'm surprised to find myself writing that, cuz usually the Gyllenhal is pretty damn awesome, but in this crazy action-packed explosion movie, she kinda seemed like she was phoning it in. Crazy, right? I know. It's nuts. What is happening to me and the world. But for reals, I just liked Katie Holmes more.

Also, I think the reason I liked Batman: Beginnings is because it featured so much delicious nutritious Christian Bale. He is mmm mmm tasty. Gravelly voice, attractively wrinkled features, soulful wounded eyes... you can't get ANY of that when he's in the batsuit! And he's in the batsuit for way too much of Dark Knight. But there was a preview for another movie starring Christian Bale, which I'm totally going to see, cuz I'll see that kid in anything.

On the plus side: Aaron Eckhart. Hell to the yeah! I have hearted Aaron E. since Thank You For Smoking, and it was a delightful surprise for him to get so much screen time. His face is completely fascinating - no other face so perfectly embodies the phrase 'Gosh darn it, kids, let's put on a show!' I think he's a pretty good actor too, altho' a lot of his acting is just him sort of pointing his face at the camera.

Of course of course tragically post-mortem'd Heath Ledger was amazing. That was not a surprise since we've all known he was amazing since Brokeback Mountain. I liked this version of The Joker, but found myself distractedly comparing him to the Jack Nicholson one. Both versions work, and I'm actually glad they're playing fast and loose with the origin stories - adhering too closely to the accepted version of a fantasy stifles creativity.

Overall impressions - there were many moments that made me squeamish and have to cover my eyes and cringe away. I'm not sure if the movie was really that gross/violent or if I've become less immune to movie violence (possibly because of roller derby?) but there it is. And, um, well, overall... I was a little bored. Yeah. I said it. It was formulaic, and while I loves me some formula, I wasn't comfortably reassured this time. And yeah, it was 'dark'. Dark and kind of hackneyed. Yeah, I said that too. And as usual, too many villains! Too many devices! Too many essplosions!

The secondary characters, Alfred and Lucius, who I prefer to call Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, still ruled. So basically I guess I just want to watch the Bruce Wayne show. Can that be arranged?

Acupuncted, again!

2008-07-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

My second intern acupuncture treatment started out a leetle too Marx Brothers for me. There were two interns (different ones than I'd sticking me with pins than the first time) the supervisor and an observer, and they were a bit all over the place. One would start going over my history, the other would cut in to introduce herself, and then they asked if I could take my pants off, and I was like, awesome, please leave so I'll have room to take my pants off, cuz the room is not that big. So then they all got fluttery thinking I needed privacy, and they all filed out, and literally a second later I was like, ok, come back in! At this point I've had massage therapists, doctors, acupuncture interns and a raft of physical therapists seeing and working on my naked ass, so I'm not that self-conscious about taking clothes off. My point is the four of them didn't really have a rhythm. I wasn't expecting much from the session, given their pre-session flutteriness.

Then the interns started palpating points on my back. One of them found a few VERY tender points, meriting an angry 'Ow! Are you sure you're not just pushing down really hard?' from me. The intern assured me she was actually touching me quite gently, so it was decided that pins should go in those spots without delay. This is the part where I gave acupuncture some credence: when they stuck one pin in, the muscle under it actually twitched so much I could feel it, and the pins only go into the top layer of skin.

Finally they got all the pins in and left me there for 20 minutes. I'm still not sure if it's helping. I always feel dizzy afterwards, but eh... is that a good thing? I don't know. I like hearing the interns talking about which points they're going to stick, cuz all the points are in chinese and all the interns are not chinese.

More progress

2008-07-28T19:04:00.001-07:00

Doctorly gem of the day: "Well, you weren't bs-ing me, that's for sure. According to your MRI, you have a herniated disc!"

I suppressed my annoyance at said statement, because dude writes the scrips, so... yes.

Also, I jumped 'pon the scale this morning (the better to start a weight loss effort, as overweight is a cause of lower back issues) and found I've lost 7 pounds since this whole ordeal started. Apparently being too crippled to make it to the kitchen and subsisting for two weeks on gatorade equals mad weight loss. To celebrate said fact, I ate half a pumpkin pie. Mmmm, un-seasonal.

Acupuncted

2008-07-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

So I can walk again, yay! And drive. Woohoo! I haven't tested how long/far I can walk, but I drove to my PT appointment and to pick up MRI results, and my hip is complaining today, but not too badly. I give it a 4 out of 10.

MRI says I can has herniated disc and nerve impingement, surprise surprise. Most likely I will continue with present course of conservative treatment.

Current course of treatment includes letting third year acupuncture interns stick me with disposable needles. I got it done for the first time last week. Two interns and one teacher asked me a bunch of questions, and then poked and prodded to find out where the pain is. Ultimately they decided my gall bladder meridian has too much chi (or too little, I'm not really sure how that works) and so they stuck about 30 pins in my back, neck, hands and feet. A couple of the pins stung a bit, and I couldn't feel the rest. Then they threatened to electrify the pins, but I wasn't quite ready for that. They left the pins in for 20 minutes and then came back and took them out.

Did it help? I'm not sure. The sensation along my sciatic avenue did change from pain to ticklishness, and as I said I have been feeling better, but who knows how significantly the acupuncture helped. After a few days I did notice that my digestion has improved. I have two more appointments scheduled, so perhaps I'll just see what's what later on.

Clunk clunk clunk bzzzzzzzzzz

2008-07-21T13:47:00.000-07:00

I have survived my first MRI. Some observations:

1. I guess this was an 'open' MRI machine, because instead of going head first into a plastic tube, I went feet first into a tube with a big round plastic thingy about three inches from my face. I could see out on either side by turning my head. However, it was still disconcerting.

2. Regardless of the fact that I am not technically claustrophobic, I'm glad I was loopy on painkillers during the MRI.

3. Despite the fact that I have no metal in my body, I still try to convince myself that there must be metal in my body somewhere that I've forgotten about.

4. The music that Montclair MRI has on hand is for rilly old folks. I chose 'Broadyway' at first and it was Old Man River and No Business Like Show Business... too trippy along with the clunky sounds of the machine. I asked the tech to switch it up in the middle to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It was still trippy but seemed more appropriate.