Geekwif

Sherry Burgers

2012-01-30T17:12:00.002-06:00

When My Geek was away on business last summer, I took the opportunity to do a little experimenting with cooking. There were a couple of things that made it into our regular repertoire of dinners after he got back home.

One night I was looking around the kitchen and found that I had a bottle of sherry I had bought to make French Onion Soup a while back. I knew I would never drink it, so I thought I'd find another use for it in cooking.

I honestly don't remember how the idea of using it with ground beef occurred to me, but it turned out to be really tasty. This recipe makes a burger that is nice and tender and full of flavor, and the sauce you get from the reduction of sherry used to deglaze the pan is just delicious. It sounds like it uses a lot of sherry, but it cooks down, leaving no alcohol.

A couple of notes:

1) Since the time that I first made this, we started on the South Beach Diet, so now I make it without the brown sugar. I like it a little better with the sugar, but it is quite tasty even without it.

2) This recipe is for one burger. Just multiply by however many burgers you want.

3) The amounts of the ingredients are really just approximations as I rarely ever actually measure anything when I'm cooking, so keep that in mind and adjust to your taste.

4) This is great with asparagus, but other veggies will do as well. Green beans (fresh or frozen) are quite tasty with this burger.

Ingredients (per burger)
1/3 lb ground beef (I use 86% lean. I know. I'm evil.)
scant 1 Tbsp plus about 1/2 cup cream sherry (will be less than this per burger if you're making more than one at a time)
dash of cayenne
dash of Cajun spice mix (this is the only pre-mixed spice I always keep in my pantry)
1/2 Tbsp brown sugar (optional)
2 slices bacon cut in half (4 half-slices)
1/4 small onion thinly sliced
shredded gruyere cheese (amount to your taste)
asparagus (as many pieces as you want)
olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 avocado, sliced (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix beef, scant 1 Tbsp sherry, cayenne, Cajun spice, and brown sugar together until well incorporated. Form into a patty(s). Sprinkle both sides of each burger with kosher salt. Set aside.

Arrange asparagus in baking dish, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Bake for about 15 minutes, until tender when poked with a fork, but not mushy.

Fry bacon in a pan over medium heat until just crispy. Remove to plate covered in paper towel to drain.

Remove all but about 1 Tbsp of bacon grease. (You may want a little more if you're making more than one burger.) Add 2 Tbsp sherry into same pan to deglaze bits of browned bacon in pan. Add sliced onion. Simmer until onions are nicely caramelized, about 10 minutes. If pan starts to dry out, add just enough more sherry to keep pan from getting dry. Remove onions to separate dish and set aside.

Raise heat to high. Place hamburger patty(s) in pan and cook for about 2-3 minutes, again adding a small amount of sherry to deglaze if the pan starts to dry out. Flip burger. Top with caramelized onions, bacon slices, and cheese. Cover and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Remove to plate along with asparagus. Cover to keep warm. Add remaining sherry (about 2-3 Tbsp) to pan and simmer over medium heat until reduced to a syrupy glaze. Drizzle over asparagus and burger. Top burger with sliced avocado if desired.

Could be served on a bun if you like. I ate mine without and it was quite tasty that way.

A Tale of Two Tales – and One Bag – In Three Parts

2012-01-24T10:24:00.000-06:00

The first tale:

Once upon a time there was a girl named Geekwif who read too many blogs. However, she was rarely disappointed in the reading of all those blogs and in fact, sometimes a gem would surface that benefited her in ways she could not have forseen.

One of the blogs she enjoyed reading was called U-handblog by Lisa Lam who lived in a land far away across the big pond. While she loved to see all the photos Lisa posted of the lovely bags she made, she was in no way affiliated with U-handblog and in fact no one affiliated with it even knew who Geekwif was (nor do they to this very day).

Then one day, Lisa Lam completed a wonderful project which she called The Bag Making Bible and Geekwif was consumed with an unexplainable but desperate need to own this book. So she rushed off to ~~Amazon~~ the market and purchased her copy ~~without hesitation~~ with very little hesitation (as Geekwif was a cheapskate and hardly ever made any purchase without at least some amount of hesitation).

The Bag Making Bible was a wonder to behold indeed, its photos beautiful, its pages sturdy. She marveled at the practical instruction and advice it contained and ogled the pretty bags she could make.

But alas, it sat on her shelf for several long months before she ever did more than admire its pages.

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The second tale:

In the summer of 2011, Geekwif's mother-in-law returned home after a vacation in Tennessee, and shared with Geekwif a photo of a Bible bag she had seen at a bookstore there. How they oohed and aahed over the pretty bags. They discussed how Geekwif could make bags like them, how she might modify them with pockets and trim, and how she could sell them on her Etsy shop.

But Geekwif saw something else that day. She saw a twinkle in her mother-in-law's eye that said that she might like one of these bags for herself. As Geekwif always had trouble with finding unique and thoughtful gifts that her recipients would love, she formed a plan in her mind to make one of these bags for her mother-in-law for Christmas.

But as she began to plan the design of the bag, she realized that she was missing some of the skills needed to make the bag of which she dreamed. She imagined a nice square bottom, a pocket or partition large enough to hold a study bible, interfacing that would make it sturdy but not stiff, and when it came time to think of closures – well she had no ideas.

She measured and plotted and planned and while she knew she could make the bag, she also knew that it would not be all that it should be.

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The coming together of the two tales:

As the Geekwif puzzled over her bag design, she was suddenly struck with the memory of a book purchased long ago – a book that might hold the answers to her questions. She scoured her dusty bookshelf and was nearly distracted many times by books she had not used for a very long time; books on paper crafts, sewing and crocheting called to her, begging to be pulled off the shelf. But she bravely pursued her goal until at long last she found the treasure she sought: The Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam

The heavens may not have opened, nor the angels sung that night, but her sewing skills were greatly enhanced as she mined the book for the information she needed. For that, indeed was – and is – the wonder of this book: that it not only contains patterns and detailed instructions for making beautiful bags in many shapes and sizes, but that it also gives instruction on particular skills that one might need whether making the author's patterns or one's own.

And in the end, after some modifications, Geekwif completed a beautiful bag that she was proud to give as a Christmas gift, with a big pocket for a study Bible, a small divided pocket for pens, remaining space for other trinkets so that it could serve as a purse as well as a Bible bag, a crisp square bottom, and a handy snap closure.

Unfortunately, Geekwif forgot to take completed photos of the bag, so this is the only photo she has of it, before its lining and pockets were inserted.

~~~~~~The End~~~~~~

The Bag Making Bible at Amazon

Lisa Lam's new book, A Bag for all Reasons can be pre-ordered at Amazon

Once again, Lisa Lam, her publishers, Amazon, and anyone else in any way associated with this book have no idea who I am. I just really, really like the book.

European Vacation – Germany – More Castles and The End

2012-01-11T15:25:00.000-06:00

With just two days left of our vacation (the second of which was spent driving back to Amsterdam for our flight home), we spent one day visiting three different castles along the Castle Road. The first was Castle Colmberg.

We walked around the grounds for a bit before finding the entrance. This was not a problem as they were lovely and interesting.

I'm guessing the original door wasn't painted in a black and white chevron stripe, but then what do I know.

Like a lot of castles in the area, this one has been converted into a hotel and restaurant.

The view over the countryside and the adjacent town was beautiful. You can see here that we were looking down from one wall to an outer wall. There were actually several walls inside each other which very much interested my Geek since he's writing a fantasy novel in which that kind of detail is important.

You can read about medieval castles and even see them in movies, but seeing the real thing brings it all to life. I could imagine the wheels turning in his head, visualizing men in armor, swords drawn defending their king's castle.

We went inside to see if they did tours, but the only public areas are the restaurant and hotel areas. She let us go ahead and look around the restaurant since it was early enough that they were not serving yet. It was set up for a wedding reception to be held later in the day, but with a little imagination you could picture men of ancient times sitting at large wooden tables enjoying a mug of ale after a battle.

Medieval weapons hung on the walls. This sword in particular caught the Geek's eye.

Our next stop was Castle Steinsberg. From this point of view you could almost imagine that you really were in the time when the castle was owned by Counts and served as an actual fortress. Of course the illusion for us was a little tainted by the fact that we were standing in the middle of a blacktopped parking lot when snapping the photo.

The castle was surrounded by a vineyard. Aren't those little baby grapes cute? There were entire fields of them. I've never seen such a thing though I suppose it's pretty commonplace there. Okay and in California too, but I've never been there either.

The tower in the middle of the courtyard looked much taller than it does here. I was curious about all the blackened stone – was there a fire? – but the signs were all in German and the staff only spoke German so there was no way to ask.

The Geek tried to figure out what the sign on this well said since he learned German in high school. He got a few words, but we still weren't really sure.

This castle had also been converted into a hotel and restaurant. It was lunch time, so we sat ourselves down in the windy courtyard and had a tasty lunch. The waitress spoke as little English as we did German, but she was very nice and between the few words my Geek knows and pointing at things on the menu, we managed to order.

And if my face looks a little grimace-y in this photo, it's because a fly had just landed in my Chardonnay. Seriously. I am not joking. It was not at all ironic, but it was a little annoying.

The vineyards. Aren't they just lovely?

Castle Guttenberg was our last castle that day. This one was closed for tours for the day by the time we got there, but the museum was still open so we got to spend some time there.

The grounds were very pretty. This was a big castle with lots of walls and pathways and bridges and a gigantic square tower.

The theme at this castle seemed to be birds. This was a stone bird on top of that ... uh ... cone-shaped roof thing. Between us and that short round tower was an area full of big cages with birds in them, like some kind of bird zoo. There was a guy on the other side of that bridge who seemed to be doing a show with the birds, but it was the last show for the day and I'm pretty sure it was in German anyway so we didn't watch.

The museum was a self-guided tour and took you through and up the big square tower. This was apparently the kitchen. I'd love to have a big stone hearth like that in my kitchen.

I think we were almost to the top of the tower here, looking down into the castle grounds. Almost to the top, mind you. It was a very, very tall tower. And there was no elevator. Can you imagine the stairs? Can you? Because I will never forget them. I found out that day just how very out of shape I am.

There were a few rooms off to the sides as we climbed, but most of the landing areas inside the tower looked like this. And those wood floors they did creak. I was just sure that one of them was going to break under me and I would go plummeting down, smashing through each floor as I hit it, until I laid at the bottom of the tower while the entire thing came crashing down ... all because of me.

Okay, so it was a fleeting thought, but I did think it.

The Geek had to do a little time in the stocks before we left Guttenberg.

From here, we drove to Nuremberg where we had planned to see one more castle, but it was late and we were tired, and traffic was really ugly and we couldn't find our hotel and ... well, we finally did find it and the room was pretty cool, but I'll tell you, the people of Nuremberg know how to party and they did so until about 4 a.m. right outside our window. Loudly. Boisterously. With great valor of force.

Oh yeah and there was the clock tower. Did you know that Germany is really into clocks? This was the second place we stayed where there was a clock tower right across the street from us that insisted on alerting us to the time every quarter hour all ... night ... long. People who live there must get used to it otherwise no one would ever sleep, because just as you're starting to slip into sleep for the umpteenth time, the clock would start ding donging as if to say, "Wake up! Wake up! It's 3:15 a.m. and you need to know it!"

But despite clock towers and partiers, we had an absolutely wonderful vacation. It's amazing how you can pack so much into 9 days and yet feel like there is so much more you would like to see. I'd love to visit the Tuscan countryside and stay in an Italian villa, or see the fjords of Norway, or the castles and churches and libraries in England, but what we did see was quite satisfying and we are so happy to have had the chance to experience it all.

Thanks for coming on my little (little!!??) tour with me. It was fun to go back and remember all that we did while we were there.

Brothers

2012-01-10T16:53:00.005-06:00

There's not much to say about this photo. I do believe the cuteness speaks for itself.

The Geek Has A Blog!

2012-01-08T16:34:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned that My Geek is a writer? He started writing fantasy novels long before I ever thought seriously about writing. He started doing NaNoWriMo with me back in 2005 and is currently working on a story about a young adventurer named Balfrith.

He started a new blog recently, called Chronicles of Aerde – Aerde being the name of the world he created. He has a world map, has worked on languages and created multiple diverse cultures for this world. (You can see part of the map as the background of his blog.) Seriously cool stuff.

Please go visit him at chroniclesofaerde.blogspot.com and leave him a comment. He's writing about his writing process and project and whether you are a writer or a reader it's sure to be a very interesting and enjoyable read!

European Vacation – Bavaria – Castles Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein

2012-01-06T12:07:00.001-06:00

After visiting Lichtenstein, we stayed in Bavaria and visited a pair of castles built near each other – Castles Hohenschwangau (hoe-en-shvan-gow) and Neuschwanstein (noy-schvan-stine).

The hotel where we stayed (that's our little black rental Beamer on the right) was nice, but a little weird. The owner was also a dentist so the door behind the desk led to the dentist's office and the stairs led to the hotel rooms.

And the decor was ... well ... odd. Let's just say the Germans don't seem to have the hangups we Americans (some of us anyway – and I like my hangups thank you very much) have about nudity. And also ... mirrors ... in strange places. Yeah. Weird.

The owner suggested that we go up and see the castles in the dark as they are apparently very romantic when they are all lit up at night. But it was cold, and raining which made it feel even more cold, so we opted to have dinner and call it a night. And can I just say that the Germans know something about pork that we in America simply do not know? It was fantastic. Not fatty and tough like it is here, but tender and juicy and ... yum. And the bed of spaetzle it was served on ... double yum.

And the apple fritters I had for dessert? Oh good lord. There is nothing like them. Every apple fritter I've seen here in the US has looked something like this. Bits of apple baked into a cinnamon-y dough and smothered with glaze, usually a little dry – not bad, but not great either. But the fritters I had in Bavaria looked closer to this. Full rings of apple deep fried in a heavenly, light dough, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar and served with vanilla ice cream, oh-dear-lord-I've-died-and-gone-to-heaven.

Sigh ...

Okay, enough about the food ...

The next morning we drove up the mountain to the uber-touristy village where you could buy all things Castle Hohenschwangau or Neuschwanstein including tickets to tour them. I may as well warn you right now – they, like most of the castles we saw, did not allow us to take photos inside the castles, so the only shots I have to show you are from outside.

Castle Hohenschwangau was restored in the 1800s by King Maximilian, after having been destroyed. His son, King Ludwig, inherited it from his father when he became king.

The setting is just gorgeous – surrounded by mountains, a lake, the quaint village. I had no idea how beautiful Bavaria was until we visited there. It's really absolutely stunningly beautiful and I highly recommend vacationing there if you ever have the opportunity to do so.

Funny thing – I have never been much into garden art and statues, but this little guy (like the gnomes at Lichtenstein) just made me want to take him home and find a place in my own garden for him.

The "schwan" in Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein means "swan" and refers to an order of knights who used the swan as their symbol. There are swans all over the castle (did you see them under the arms of the guy in the fountain statue above?), inside and out. This one atop the castle is probably the most prominent one.

This is looking down on Hohenschwangau when we climbed up to Neuschwanstein which is situated higher up the mountain. Is that not just one of the loveliest things you've ever seen?

When we first arrived that morning, the fog was quite heavy. It gave even cheerful Neuschwanstein a kind of sinister appearance.

But the fog began to clear up eventually, though we still had to deal with drizzly rain. And we still had no umbrellas, though you would think we would have learned our lesson after Versailles. Fortunately, we were surrounded by a village where tourists could buy just about anything they might need or want – including a couple of umbrellas.

It was a very long trek up the mountain from Hohenschwangau to Neuschwanstein, so we chose the option of getting a ride half-way up and walking the rest of the way. (My idea – the Geek was ready to walk the whole way, but I wanted to see the castle before my heart gave out on me.)

The day cleared up a bit and we got to see the castle from many different angles, all beautiful. Castle Neuschwanstein, though built in the late 1800s, was actually modeled after an older style of castle.

It's hard to see in this photo, but under the arches are comical faces carved in stone. This is the side of the castle you first see as you approach from the road coming up the mountain.

Here is a better view of the faces. Apparently King Ludwig had a sense of humor.

I wish I could have taken photos of the interior of this castle. It is truly amazing. There are a few on the wikipedia page that will give you some idea of the grandness and extreme ornateness of the rooms inside. It was designed as an homage to Wagner's operas, and King Ludwig did not hold back when decorating this castle. Unfortunately, he only lived there for a few days before his untimely and mysterious death. The castle, still unfinished, opened to tourists just weeks later.

Only a few more castles left to go. Can you believe we did all this in just 9 days?

European Vacation – Bavaria – Castle Lichtenstein

2011-12-13T06:40:00.002-06:00

After our night in the quaint little French village of Niederbronn les Bains, we entered Germany and traveled south into Bavaria. Along the way, we stopped at a castle called Lichtenstein.

A castle was first built at this site around 1200, but it was destroyed in a war. In the 1800s King Frederick built a hunting lodge there, and the current castle was built a little later by Duke Wilhelm.

There were lots of outlying buildings, but only the castle itself was really on tour. The rest we only saw from the outside. It was a bit of a rainy day, but as you can see from my Geek's smile, we didn't let that stop us from having a great time.

I think Lichtenstein may have been the smallest castle we saw, though like I said, there were other buildings we did not tour.

The castle is built on a cliff (there's a better view of the cliff at the end of this post) which overlooks several villages built into the nearby hills and valleys of Bavaria. Those hills are so beautiful. This particular village is built in the valley, but many of them were built right into the side of a hill.

Aren't those little gnomes cute? I might have to find a couple of them to hide under a bench in my own garden someday.

This is the main entrance and bridge into the castle itself, where our tour began. Unfortunately they don't allow photos to be taken inside the castle so I have nothing to show you from inside.

Lichtenstein looked much like a hunting lodge inside. It was a little dark, lots of stone, and had a room dedicated to drinking beer, which also featured an emergency exit. There were collections of armor and weapons and photos of the king who built it and his descendents. A Duke from his line actually owns the castle now, but doesn't live there.

This was taken from the bridge in the previous photo, looking across to some of the other buildings.

Remember the emergency exit I mentioned above? In the drinking room? Take a close look under the bridge in this photo; hidden behind the ivy you will see an opening in the wall. That is the secret opening to which the exit leads.

You may have seen this view of Castle Lichtenstein before. You can see how it was built right into the cliff, almost like it just sprung up out of it. This really is a pretty castle – very classic fairytale look from the outside. My Geek was soaking up all kinds of inspiration (in the form of photos and memories) for his fantasy novels. Of all the castles we saw on our trip, this was one of our favorites, possibly second to Neuschwanstein which I'll show you in my next post.

NaNo Is Over And The Castles Are Coming

2011-12-04T19:56:00.001-06:00

I won. Yup, that's right. I won NaNoWriMo. My final word count was 51,551 as of about 9:30 pm on November 30th. Never mind that the NaNo image at the top of my page says 51,771. It's a long story. Not worth going into.

So, anyway ... I didn't actually finish the story in those 51,551 words, but I'm awfully close. I just need to wrap up a few things. The denouement, as it were.

Now as I think back on it I'm doing the whole "holy cow this is the worst book EVER" thing. But I haven't actually read it, so I need to finish it, read it, and then decide if it really is the worst book ever or if it is worth editing.

Of course, I promised my Geek that he could read it this year. I'm really bad about letting people read anything I write. One little criticism and I'm convinced that the entire story is completely idiotic and start wondering why in the world I ever thought I could write anything worth reading in the first place. And my Geek, he's the type who just sits down and writes and his first draft is wonderful, only a few tweaks needed here and there. So we'll see. Maybe a few edits before I pass it off to him. Or if it really is the worst book EVER, maybe I'll let him read something else instead.

In other news, I have been horribly negligent with the remainder of the European Vacation photos. Not that I feel awfully bad about it, what with writing a novel in a month and all. So I'll be getting back to that very soon. The castles are coming! I promise. And boy are they pretty.

NaNoWriMo – Confidence and Strangeness

2011-11-28T16:22:00.001-06:00

Less than 5,000 words to go. I did that in one Saturday – the last day of November – a couple years ago, so I am heading toward that finish line with confidence. Not that I can slack off; I am technically behind, but I will make it.

In my writing today, I found out some interesting things about my main character that I didn't know before. And it came from a very unexpected source too. Must explore further. Wish me luck.

Yet Another NaNoWriMo Update

2011-11-20T20:36:00.001-06:00

I've been slipping behind. As of this morning I had more than 4,000 words to write in order to be caught up with today's goal word count. But after spending a good chunk of the day writing – in between seemingly endless laundry, making chili, shaving the cat, and a few therapeutic facebook and blog checks – I wrote 3,429 words today. That means I am now at 32,449 words which is only 891 words behind. And I'm okay with that. I could try to toss a few more words on the page, but my brain is tired. So I'll give it a rest and jump back in tomorrow.

Here's to getting ahead in the next few days so I can slack off on Thursday and Friday!

NaNoWriMo Update

2011-11-17T06:10:00.001-06:00

My word count is at 26,011 as of last night. That is 661 words short of the target for the 16th day of the month, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. 661 words can be made up in less than an hour.

You should see my word count stats over the month so far. Crazy, I tell ya. Right on target for a few days, then down to half, then 2000 one day, then down to zero, then 3000, then zero, and then 2000+, 2000+, 2000+.

They say week two is the hardest, and I have never been able to prove them wrong. Every year it seems that week two is pure drudgery. So here's to week three being crazy kinds of productive with amazing plot points appearing out of nowhere and twists and turns wiggling their way out of my head (okay, that just sounded gross) and making me a happy writer girl.

NaNoWriMo Widget

2011-11-13T16:08:00.001-06:00

The word count widgets are now available on the NaNoWriMo website. Yay! If you're reading this on my actual blog and not in a reader then you can see it at the top of the page. Just never you mind that the count is a teensy bit lower than it should be considering we're on day 13. I'll catch up.

Yup.

Guess I should go do that then.

A Letter to Beethoven

2011-11-11T07:20:00.001-06:00

Dear Mr. Ludwig van Beethoven,

I want to thank you for writing the heart-rending, soul-searching, hopeful, romantic, reflective piece that is the Moonlight Sonata. My fingers do not do it justice, but every time I let them float across the keys, following the glorious pattern of notes that your genius so skillfully and expressively arranged, my soul floats away with them.

There have been many great composers over the years, but there is a reason your name is still known all over the world almost 250 years after your birth. Thank you for sharing your beautiful music with us.

Geekwif

Oh, and I named my cat after you. I think he kind of looks like you, actually. What do you think?

European Vacation – Traveling Through France

2011-11-09T09:08:00.003-06:00

We left Versailles in the early afternoon with a goal to reach a little town on the French side of the France/Germany border by that evening. The Geek has a co-worker who lives there and we had been invited to visit them for a real French home-cooked meal that evening.

As we drove through France, I was surprised by how much it looked like the American Midwest. If I hadn't known any better, I would have believed we were driving up I-35 through northern Minnesota. At least until we saw a sign saying the speed limit was 120. That was a dead giveaway.

When you drive through the countryside where I live, you see one of two things in the farmers' fields: corn or beans. I rarely ever see anything else, and whatever is growing in those fields is always green. So it was a delight to see so many colors growing in the fields of France (and Germany too). We saw fields and fields of sunflowers like this one. There were fields at least as big as this one that were completely purple with lavender. (I'm assuming it was lavender. It could have been some other purple flowering crop.) And then there were the vineyards, stretching as far as the eye can see. They were so beautiful.

Villages like this were everywhere. They dotted the hillsides one after another. Some we drove through, and some we saw sitting up on the side of the mountain looking down on life in the valley below. In Bavaria especially (which I'll post about later) there were farms with fields of crops growing on mountainsides so steep that you would think the rain would wash them right away, and yet they looked healthy.

Here we are entering Niederbronn les Bains, France. Right on the border of Germany. Our hosts told us that, in fact, it was once a part of Germany, and a lot of people there speak both languages or even a sort of mix of the two. The village was quaint and pretty, as were so many similar villages we passed through while we drove. Believe it or not, this was one of the wider streets we drove on. There are places where, even though it is technically a two-way street, there is not enough room for two cars to pass through together.

We had a lovely dinner with our hosts that night. They were so kind and welcoming and prepared a wonderful authentic French meal for us: foie gras to start, followed by the most tender, yummy roast pork in a delicious sauce (They really know how to cook pork there. It's fantastic.) french fries (They did this as a joke since french fries are more American than French.) and a couple of great desserts from a local bakery.

They spoke English impressively well which was great since the extent of my French is "oui". They had two children, one a baby and the other the cutest little blond boy, about two or three who chattered away to us in French, clearly telling us the most interesting things, which we, alas, could not understand a word of.

That night we had planned to drive to Germany after dinner, but we ended up staying late, chatting with these wonderful people. And then it started raining, pouring, gushing, crazy kind of rain. So with their help, we found a hotel with an available room right in town and stayed there instead. In the morning, this (above) was the view from our hotel window. Such a pretty town.

We decided to walk around town a bit that morning to see what we could find for breakfast. This pretty little church was just down the street from our hotel.

We had found that while the hotels served pretty good breakfasts (usually a buffet of small baguettes, croissants, boiled eggs, cold cuts, cheese, yogurt and fruit), we really enjoyed finding a local pâtisserie and buying a baguette to share for breakfast. We did that on this particular morning and wandered the village, enjoying the sights while picking bites off the wonderful, crispy, chewy baguette. Europeans know how to make bread like no bread I have ever tasted in the U.S.

We left France that morning and made our way down to Bavaria. Next stop: castles!

Thinking Vs. Writing

2011-11-07T18:32:00.001-06:00

Have you ever had one of those moments when you have an epiphany that isn't really an epiphany? A non-epiphany-epiphany, if you will. It's not really an epiphany because epiphanies must be profound, life-changing ideas, and this is so obvious that you could have told yourself this when you were five years old, if you would have just listened.

Well, as you may have guessed, I had a non-epiphany-epiphany today. I've been writing – off and on – for several years. My first NaNoWriMo in 2005 was when I gave myself permission to admit that I was kind of, sort of, actually going to try this writing thing. But I've never really let myself pour my heart and soul into it, except for one month a year when NaNo comes around. The rest of the time I have moments of obsession, but no heart-and-soul-pouring.

So to make up for the time that I don't spend sitting at my laptop and actually typing/writing, I spend lots and lots of time thinking. I think in the shower, in my Jeep, while I clean the house, when I'm lying awake in bed at some ungodly hour; I think a lot.

And then, on the rare occasion when I get around to sitting down at my laptop with my Scrivener file open, I jot down a few notes on the things I've been thinking about. But the few notes never amount to nearly as much as I think they will, considering the amount of thinking I've been doing.

You may have heard of BICHOK. Yeah, that kind of looks like a swear word, but I promise it's not. Let's say BIC-HOK. In case you haven't seen this before it stands for "Butt In Chair - Hands On Keyboard". The idea is that you will never accomplish anything as a writer if you don't glue your butt to your chair and keep your hands in contact with your keyboard for a significant amount of time daily. That means every. single. day.

I'm really good at sitting in my chair, but if my hands are on my keyboard they are more often browsing my favorite blogs than they are writing.

So my epiphany came this morning when I realized that even though I spend quite a bit of time thinking about whatever I happen to be writing at the time, that time is remarkably unproductive. Part of that is because when I'm thinking I have to run it over in my head so many times for it to stick, whereas if I am sitting at my keyboard typing it I only have to do it once. Then it's there for me to go back and mull over later if I really need to, but I don't have to worry about losing it because it's there, on the screen, in black and white, there to stay.

That's one of the joys of NaNoWriMo. When I'm forced to create actual words every time I write, and when I don't have the time to sit and mull over and over and over the same word or passage or idea, I'm actually more creative. Ideas flow more freely when my fingers keep moving constantly. I can always go back and smooth them out later (which leads to another pitfall of mine that I will not discuss now).

There's a scene that I love in the movie "Finding Forrester". Jamal is sitting across from Forrester, a typewriter in front of each of them, but Jamal is not typing. Forrester says to him, "No thinking — that comes later. You write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think."

And that is the joy I'm finding as well as the lesson I'm learning in doing NaNoWriMo this year. NaNo is always about turning off your inner editor and simply writing, but this year because of my lack of preparation, I feel even more like the words are coming from a place in me that goes beyond thinking. I'm finding that when my fingers are moving, constantly punching the keys of my MacBook Pro, the words that spill onto the page thrill me more because they are so unexpected. It's almost like reading a book that someone else wrote.

No matter what the outcome of this year's NaNo novel, the concept of Forrester's "first key to writing" and the real value of BIC-HOK have sunk in a little further than they ever have before, and for me, that is an epiphany.

NaNo Update

2011-11-05T16:58:00.002-05:00

It's day 5 and I am currently at 7,352 words on my NaNoWriMo novel. I wanted to put a word count widget on my blog like I usually do, but they don't seem to have them ready this year. So I'll just keep posting my number here every now and then.

The story is going swimmingly. Of course, I'm only a mediocre swimmer, so that might not mean what you think it means. As I mentioned before, I started this story remarkably unprepared. I am having fun with it, and I do think there is some value in just pounding out a sort of maelstrom of words onto the page whether or not they end up being useable or not in the end. It gets the blood flowing to the brain, works the literary muscles, and hopefully will make me better able to go back and rewrite/edit past rough drafts later on. That is assuming I don't wait until those literary muscles shrivel up again before I get started.

On the other hand, maybe I'll finish this and find out it's brilliant and only needs to be polished up and made pretty to become the latest, greatest novel on the shelves. I'm not really counting on that, but it could happen.

Right?

So anyway ... at 1,667 words per day, I need to write a minimum of 983 more words before I go to bed tonight. Guess I'd better get busy.

European Vacation – Versailles

2011-11-03T08:13:00.002-05:00

The day we left Paris, we stopped at Versailles before crossing through France on our way to Germany. The opulence of this place was almost beyond imagination. Gilt gold, marble, and velvet were everywhere, covering every surface of the walls, floors, and furniture. No wonder Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake." It would not take many days of living in a place like Versailles to make a person forget that poverty existed outside their doors.

This was taken inside the first set of gates. The entrance was all paved in cobblestone so bumpy and worn that I wondered if it wasn't the same cobblestone that had been there for hundreds of years. The palace was huge – Mall of America huge. And if you look at an aerial view, you'll see that the palace is only a small part of the gigantic estate that is Versailles.

It was raining; not a pouring rain, but a strong, constant drizzle. Thank goodness it wasn't very cold, but it was very, very wet. The line was long and we talked about leaving, but I really wanted to see inside. My Geek was such a sweetie and stood out in that rain with me for at least an hour without a complaint. (I think I might have to frame this picture and put it on my desk. He is just so sweet.)

The line (so long it wove back and forth through the courtyard like a giant snake) led us past this inner gate. The gold gilt shone so brightly, even on a cloudy, rainy day. Can you imagine this being the entrance to your home? The fact that people actually lived in this place still amazes me.

We were under some time constraints, so we didn't tour the gardens, even though it had stopped raining by the time we were done touring the inside of the palace. Here is a photo of them through a window. They looked so lovely. If I ever get back there, I'd love to spend some time in those gardens.

Marie Antoinette, possibly the most famous resident of Versailles.

There were paintings everywhere. In many of the rooms they were paintings of kings and queens who had lived there. This one seemed to be depictions of Biblical events.

The desk is just one example of the ornate furniture that filled every room in the palace.

A painting of Versailles from overhead, back in the day, as they say. That roundish area in the center is now a parking lot.

More gold gilt furniture, marble wainscotting, and a touch of velvet-covered walls. Imagine your house with velvet on every wall like wallpaper, and marble wainscotting in every room. Incredible.

This chapel was built by Louis XIV. Apparently he wanted to make the chapel stand taller than any other part of the palace, so it is two stories tall with a vaulted ceiling besides. The photo on the left is the upper floor which is open in the center to the lower floor shown on the right.

I love the tall, grand windows. I should have gotten a picture of the ceiling in this room. Actually, I think I did, but I forgot to Photoshop it and I'm too lazy to go back and do it now. Anyway, the room itself was at least as big as my entire house, and the ceiling was all one big painting.

The one complaint I would have (other than the standing in the rain part) about touring Versailles is the massive crowds. Every room was packed so tight with tourists that it was difficult to even take pictures. In some of the smaller rooms (smaller being a relative term) the crowds were shoulder to shoulder and you were sort of forced to move through in one big mass as you became one with the crowd. Very uncomfortable. I think if we ever went again, I would try to find out when the least popular time was to visit and go then.

Another view of the gardens through the windows. Aren't they pretty? Can't you just see a queen in her big, poofy, beautiful dress, meandering through with a glass of wine with a pretty ribbon hanging off of it? Sigh.

The famous "Hall of Mirrors" was just amazing. Parquet floors, painted and gilt ceilings, crystal chandeliers every few feet, one wall covered in mirrors and the other in windows. I imagined a room full of ladies and gentlemen dressed in their fancy attire filling this room with light glinting off of every surface. It must have been an incredible sight to see.

The ceilings in most of the rooms were covered in paintings depicting various religious scenes or military campaigns. This one was under restoration.

This was where the royal family dined. They sat at that table while the courtiers sat on the ottomans in the foreground, watching them. In fact, they had courtiers watching their every move, all day, every day. Even with all the grandeur and beauty of Versailles, I think I would go crazy living such a public life as that. (This room was very dark, thus the crappy photo.)

This is the queen's bedchamber. The gilt railing separated her from the courtiers that were constantly surrounding her. To the left of this photo was a small door almost hidden in the wall (sorry I didn't get a photo of it) which was the door Marie Antoinette escaped through when the peasants came for her. (You can see the door in this photo.)

If you ever are in France, I would highly recommend visiting Versailles. I would not want to live the life that its residents did, but it is a beautiful place to see.

Next up, traveling across France on our way to Germany.

It Hasn't Even Started And It's Already Keeping Me Awake

2011-10-31T11:21:00.001-05:00

Just to get a couple of things out of the way before I start the real post:

1) There are still a few sites left to visit in my European Vacation series, and I will be posting them despite doing NaNoWriMo. The next one (which will be up this week) is one of my favorites.

2) "Barton Hollow." "The Civil Wars." Fantastic. Go. Buy. Or at least listen to a few songs on YouTube and see if you aren't instantly addicted.

Okay. Now on to the meat of this post.

Last night we went to bed at 9:30. Normally we'd be in bed by 9:00, but the Geek had last week off and we got used to going to bed late and getting up late (about 6:30 or 7:00 for us as opposed to our normal 4:50).

Then two voices started arguing with each other inside my head, keeping me awake.

One of them was very enthusiastically thinking about ideas, first lines, opening scenes, and characters for the NaNoWriMo novel that I can not start until midnight tonight. The other was vehemently arguing against such nonsense, shouting that the plan this year is not to make any plans.

Eventually I got tired enough to tell them both to shut up and managed to fall asleep. But then I woke up at 2:00 am and did the whole thing over again.

It's a good thing NaNo starts soon. I've heard that writers have a tendency toward insanity, and with two inner voices speaking to me, I'm afraid I may be heading that way.

P. S. I should add that while having a voice in your head coming up with ideas for your novel would seem like a good thing, this one was not. It was more like a very loud, small child yelling every random thought that comes to him. Like this: Apple Jacks! Fruit Loops! Cardboard box! Candy! Pretty Rainbow! Lightning! Aaaahh!!

The last two words came when the other voice got so put out that it touched the first voice with a live wire. And I can't blame the second voice for doing so. It really was annoying.

A New Way (For Me) of Doing NaNoWriMo

2011-10-30T12:59:00.000-05:00

NaNoWriMo starts in less than 2 days. The starting point is looming, dangling in front of me like a carrot on a stick, and on Tuesday, November 1st I will catch it. Normally I would be nibbling on that carrot a little before the starting date, planning my plot, setting, characters; struggling to form an interesting main conflict and resolution (always the hardest part for me). But this year, I am going the extreme "No Plot? No Problem!" route.

It's not that I didn't try to plan ahead. I racked my brain, trying to come up with a great story idea, but nothing I could think of excited me. I ran my ideas by the Geek and he agreed. There was no magic, no thrill to them. It was like dangling a thistle from a stick; not exactly something that was going to entice me or any potential readers to bite.

I started thinking that, like last year, I might just skip NaNoWriMo and work on the editing of another novel – certainly the more practical, responsible route. But the truth is, that just made me sad.

I love NaNoWriMo. I love the thrill of setting new, fresh, previously unread sets of words to the page. I love watching a story mysteriously form itself in my head and subsequently on the page. I love the challenge and the motivation of writing 1,667 words every single day for a month. And, for these reasons, I have looked forward to November every year since 2005 when I first discovered the wonders of NaNoWriMo.

So, I am going to write. I have no plan; no outline, no plot, no setting, no characters. I am attacking the event this year armed only with excitement, a desire to write, and the knowledge that whatever the outcome I will enjoy the process.

European Vacation – Paris – Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe

2011-10-22T09:36:00.001-05:00

After visiting the Louvre on our second day in Paris, we noted on our map that Notre Dame was within walking distance, just down the river. So we started walking. And walking. And walking.

It seemed to take forever to get there, though that might have been because we were still tired from the previous day of walking and the hours we had just spent walking around the Louvre. Eventually I started pointing at buildings I thought were Notre Dame, but then it would turn out they were not. After doing this about half a dozen times – or maybe more – we finally came to the real thing.

Notre Dame was beautiful. I mean, just look at those doors. Like the Louvre, the carvings were amazingly intricate, and all the more impressive for having been done so long ago.

When we arrived, there wasn't another English tour for a while, so we wandered on our own, which a lot of people seemed to be doing as well. It was very dark inside, and all I have is a little point-and-shoot Canon, so only a few of my inside photos came out well enough to use.

There is stained glass everywhere inside Notre Dame. Beautiful windows in various shapes, colors, sizes, and designs. While the structure itself was somewhat symmetrical, the windows didn't seem to have any rhyme or reason – each alcove around the sides of the church had a different window and different vignette made up of various altars, statues, and other objects. Maybe if we could have read the signs we might have understood better, but once again they were all in French. Nonetheless, despite the seeming randomness of it all – and maybe because of the it – this church was beyond beautiful.

The height of the ceilings was breathtaking. Imagine working up there to create this structure, hundreds of years ago, long before they had all the safety tools, apparatuses, and regulations that we have now. Below all those gorgeous arches and windows were hundreds of people, some wandering and taking it all in like we were, and some sitting in the chairs arranged down the center of the church. I wondered if the people in chairs were resting their feet or worshipping, and if they were worshipping I wondered if they resented all the people walking around snapping photos and exclaiming over the beauty of the place in many different languages.

The chandeliers were amazing. (How many times have I used that word? It's getting hard to come up with new adjectives after all we saw.) This one had been taken down for cleaning and repairs so we got a close-up view of it. They were even more beautiful hanging and lit up, but my little camera just didn't take very good photos of those.

Back outside, saints and angels were carved into the facade of the church. These were just a few of them. I assume the second from the right in this photo is John the Baptist. I love how there is a circle of stone where his head should be, as if he has a halo over his missing head. Sorry. Was that irreverent?

The gargoyles fascinated me. They were so high that we couldn't get a very good view of them. It's strange how there are carvings of saints and angels alongside these grisly gargoyles. I don't know what their purpose was, though I'm sure there was one. Maybe to scare away evil spirits? Anyone know?

The flying buttresses of Notre Dame. This is at the opposite end of the church from the doors in my first photo. Behind me is a very nice park-like garden.

Notre Dame looks different from every angle. It's almost like the builders had so many ideas of what they wanted the church to look like and rather than pick one they just used them all. Or maybe as it was built and rebuilt over the years, different builders used different ideas creating almost a hodge-podge of design. However it was, they did it in such a way that it has become one of the most admired and well-known structures in the world.

The stained glass windows with all their stone work are just as beautiful from the outside as they are from inside.

A side-view of the church with the towers. It's hard to believe that any building could still stand after so long, and while it has been plundered and desecrated, and undergone restorations over the years, it has essentially been there for almost 1000 years.

The famous towers of Notre Dame. We were not able to take the tour that takes you up to them, but we enjoyed admiring them from below anyway.

After leaving Notre Dame, we took the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. The real one this time. We were tired by then, and we had to wait a long time before the guards would allow us into the tunnel that crosses under the roundabout that encircles the Arc since they apparently only allow a certain number of people at a time. So we didn't spend a lot of time there, but once again, it was an amazing experience to actually see in front of our very eyes all these sights that we had seen only in pictures all of our lives.

This was our last day in Paris. The next day we traveled across France on our way to Germany, but on our way, we made a stop just outside of Paris which I will tell you all about in my next post.

European Vacation - Paris - The Louvre

2011-10-11T15:34:00.001-05:00

The day after the long walk to the Eiffel Tower we decided that the Paris Metro would be the way to go. We'd heard good things, about it and while we enjoyed seeing so much of the city on foot the day before, our feet needed a rest.

So we bought day-passes, studied the giant color-coded wall map, mispronounced many French names as we searched for the correct stop, and figured out how to get to the Louvre. There were a couple of times throughout the day when we stopped at an information booth to ask for help. My Geek had no qualms about walking up to them and saying, "We are ignorant Americans. Can you help us find this?" That approach apparently worked, because not one Parisian was rude to us. We had heard so many horror stories about how Parisians will not speak English to Americans even if they can. Our experience was quite different. Almost everyone we spoke to was very nice to us.

We tried to get there a little earlier this time to beat the ridiculous line, but we there was already a line by the time we got there. When they started letting people through, we noticed that it moved fairly quickly, so we decided to get in line anyway. We really wanted to see the Louvre.

While we were waiting, we noticed that a group of women who were directly in front of us in line were speaking English with American accents. One of them, who introduced herself to us and told us she was from Michigan, offered to take our photo.

The wait wasn't too bad, and totally worth it. The Louvre was amazing. This is the inside of that famous glass pyramid, looking up from the main lobby area.

Have I mentioned that the food in Europe was incredible? I don't think you can get a bad sandwich there. After viewing the Rembrandt exhibit, we stopped at the cafeteria and picked up a couple of sandwiches for lunch. The bread is chewy, crusty, and flavorful. Yum.

In case you didn't know (I didn't until we got there), the Louvre was originally a palace that was built on top of an old castle, which this is a model of. You can still see some of the original castle walls as you walk through the basement, but it was so dark down there I couldn't get any good photos.

Sphinx! The Egyptian exhibit was huge! We spent so much time there. It was interesting to see so many artifacts, but we couldn't tell what much of it was since all the signs were in French.

I don't know for sure (since we couldn't read the French signs), but I think this was an actual wall taken from some ancient Egyptian structure.

Those could not possibly have been comfortable. Apparently Dr. Scholl wasn't around yet when these were made.

The ceilings were gorgeous. Every room was different, with their paintings, and ornate details everywhere. Incredible.

More incredible ceiling art. We took tons of photos of the ceilings.

I loved this one with the figures carved around the sides and the bright light pouring through the skylight. Beautiful.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace took my breath away. It was so incredibly beautiful. I had seen photos of it, but it never really impressed me that much until I saw the real thing.

It was also much taller than I thought it would be. I had pictured it as something that would sit on a table top, but in reality it's probably about 10 feet tall.

The Mona Lisa was just the opposite – much smaller than I thought. It was no larger than a portrait you might hang above your mantle. There was glass in front of it, so my photo isn't very good, but it was amazing to see the original Mona Lisa just a few feet in front of our faces.

The Geek told me to give him my best Mona Lisa smile. Not sure it's very Mona Lisa-ish, but it's proof I was right there anyway. :)

See that crowd? That is what we had to fight our way through to get to the Mona Lisa. There is no line, just a massive crowd. You slowly make your way forward (people there seem to have far less personal space issues than we Americans do, which was ~~not always~~ never pleasant) until you get to the front where there is one of those movie theater type rope barrier things. After you are done admiring the piece, a guard unclips it and lets you out through the front because you would never be able to get back through that crowd.

The Venus de Milo. Also bigger than I thought, and very cool to see up close.

The Geek posed for me in front of this lion statue. Little kids kept running up to it trying to touch it and saying "Aslan!" I hope they didn't think the White Witch had turned Aslan into stone.

The Greek and Roman section of the museum is huge just like the Egyptian section, but where the Egyptian area contained a lot of artifacts (jewelry, household items, etc.) the Greek/Roman part was mostly pottery and statues. We saw many copies of statues of Diana in this exact pose.

These are only a small portion of all the photos we took and even less of all we saw, and we only saw a tiny fraction of what is there. The Louvre is an amazing place. I imagine you could go every day for a very long time and still see something new every time.

Later on this same day we visited Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe, but I'll save that for the next post.

Coming Soon: NaNoWriMo

2011-10-08T12:11:00.000-05:00

According to their website, NaNoWriMo is starting in exactly 23 days, 11 hours, 52 minutes, and ... well, I got stuck there because it keeps counting down, but you get the idea. I don't really know what I'm going to write this year. I have a couple of ideas, but neither is well enough developed for me to fall in love with writing them yet.

And for those who have been around here for a while and remember that last year I spent November concentrating on editing an existing manuscript rather than writing 50,000 new words, the answer is no; that novel is not completely edited yet. I've been working on it this year, but it needs some major help in certain parts and I'm feeling the need to get away from it for a little while with the hope of coming back to it later with a fresh eye.

My problem in the past has been that I envision a character that I really love and want to write their story, and I have an idea that I think would be really cool and fun to write, but there's no strong plot and I don't have a clue how it will end. This year I want to know how the story will end and at least a few major points along the course of the plot before I get started. I think this will make my 50,000 NaNoWriMo words much stronger and hopefully easier to edit later on.

So my writing focus for the next 23 days, 11 hours, 50 minutes and ... whatever ... is to come up with a keep-your-eyes-glued-to-the-page plot with a killer (not necessarily literally) ending, whether it be one of the ideas I'm already considering, or something entirely different. Wish me luck!

European Vacation - Paris - Eiffel Tower

2011-10-07T08:26:00.001-05:00

You may have gathered from my last vacation post that I left Europe and went back again. With my Geek being there so long, I went for a short visit in the middle of his stay, and then at the end of his stay we took a lovely 9-day vacation together. Our first stop on this second visit was Paris.

We spent three nights in Paris. On our first and third nights we ate at a little French (of course) restaurant just down the street from our hotel where we bravely tried new and interesting foods like duck conservé (good) and escargot (not so good in my book, but the Geek loved it).

On the morning of our first day we took off walking with our handy tourist map in hand, aiming to find the Museé du Louvre which I have no idea how to prounounce even after seeing the pronunciation guide on Wikipedia.

On our way, we stumbled into the Pantheon, which was very cool. We didn't go in, but it was fun just to have seen it. Then we turned around to go back down the street we came up on and look what we saw.

With so many buildings around, the Eiffel Tower was obscured most of the time we were walking around Paris that day, but every once in a while it would peek out through an opening between them. It was fun to catch glimpses of it throughout the day.

We found the Louvre! (Smile, Sweet Geek!) This is just a small portion of it from outside the gates and across the river. I had no idea it was so huge. As you follow it down the river it seems to just keep going forever.

Inside the gates (and after being stopped by a very persistent little kid asking for money for a cause that may or may not have been legit), we found the famous pyramid entrance.

We also found the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, which is a smaller version of the real Arc de Triomphe (although it was built first). Much smaller. And which, I must admit, threw us off briefly. "But the map says the Arc is over here? What's it doing in the courtyard of the Louvre? I thought it would be much bigger than that." We eventually figured it out.

The Eiffel Tower is also visible from the courtyard of the Louvre. Our feet found out later that it was much, much farther away than it looks.

The courtyard of the Louvre. The building is ancient and beautiful. The glass pyramid actually looks a little odd in the middle of the ancient palace, but then so much of what we saw in Europe is like that – a juxtaposition of old and new.

The detail was amazing. To think that all this was carved and built so many hundreds of years ago, long before they had the advantage of machinery to help them. I can't even begin to imagine the monumental undertaking this was for artisans that had to do it all by hand.

And then we saw the line. It was long. Very, very long. And we really wanted to get in, but the line was so very, very long. So we left and went on a very, very long walk to the Eiffel Tower instead.

We walked and walked and we thought we were close based on our map, but we couldn't see it, and then we turned a corner and voilà! There it was!

Looking up from underneath the Eiffel Tower. It is truly an amazing structure.

There are three decks. The first is a restaurant, and the third, at the very tip top, was closed by the time we got there because there were so many people. We stopped at the second which is 380 feet above ground and offers impressive views of the city.

Now that's the real Arc de Triomphe. I love how it stands out among all the smaller buildings surrounding it.

Looking up from the second deck to the top. Yes, my Geek held me again to keep me from falling backwards while I took this photo. :)

The river looks so pretty from up here. And there's the Arc in the distance again.

We got lunch at a snack bar on the second deck of the Tower (the most Americanized place I think we ate the entire time we were in Europe) and then started our long trek back to the hotel. On the way we stumbled upon an Italian restaurant (run by real Italians) where we stuffed ourselves full of great pasta (the gnocchi bolognese was to die for!)*. Our feet were so very sore by the end of this day that we decided the next day we would take advantage of the Paris Metro.

Next stop, more Paris sights, this time with the advantage of not having to walk everywhere!

* And now I'm craving a big steaming plate of gnocchi bolognese. At 8:30 in the morning. I'd better walk away before I start drooling on my keyboard.

A Chicken Stock Revelation

2011-10-04T17:02:00.001-05:00

I am going to post about Paris soon. I promise. But I just discovered something so simple and so wonderful that I had to share.

I have been making my own chicken stock for a long time – it's so easy and it tastes a million times better than anything you can buy off the grocery store shelves. And with an inexpensive pressure cooker, it takes about half an hour to make it from the minute you pull out the ingredients until the timer beeps telling you your wonderfully fragrant chicken stock is ready. This article by Camy Tang was my inspiration for buying my pressure cooker and now I can't imagine my kitchen without it. I'll include my recipe at the end, since this post is about storing it, not making it.

After making my stock, I put it in the refrigerator covered in plastic wrap overnight, and then skim the fat off the top the next day. Then it has to be strained before packaging it up into usable portions for storage, since even after straining it in a colander there are usually a lot of small bits that need to be strained off.

In the past I've always poured it from one big bowl into another big bowl and tried to somehow cover it with a giant piece of cheesecloth, which inevitably falls off because there is never a rubber band big enough to hold it in place and the Geek isn't always around to hold it there for me, and even if he is sometimes it just doesn't cooperate and the cheesecloth ends up falling into the stock and ... well it's a mess.

So today I had an epiphany, and for all I know everyone reading this may already have figured this out, but I am nearly giddy with my new discovery. Instead of my old, messy, wasteful process, here is what I did today.

First, I pre-labeled my bags. I used quart-sized freezer bags and used a sharpy to write "ck stock - 2 c." on each one since I like to freeze my stock in 2 cup portions.

Then I cut a piece of cheesecloth (double thickness) just big enough to cover the top of a 4-cup measuring cup. Unlike a bowl big enough to hold my entire batch of stock, it was easy to find a rubber band the right size for this cup. I stretched the rubber band around the top and under the handle to hold the cheesecloth in place, as you see here.

Then I proceeded to pour 4 cups of stock through the cheesecloth into the 4-cup measuring cup, using my 1/2-cup ladle. Once it was 4 cups full, I poured 2 cups into each of 2 pre-labeled zip bags. I did not take off the cheesecloth or attempt to clean it yet. At this point, there was a lot of gunk clogging up the cheesecloth, but as I had poured it in through the center top, and I was pouring it back out through the spout, it worked fine, and by pouring out through the cheesecloth it double filtered the stock.

Then, without removing the cheesecloth from the measuring cup, I rinsed the cheesecloth under running water to get off all the excess stuff clogging it up, and made sure to pour out all the water before repeating the above process until I had bagged up all the chicken stock.

This may sound like a lot of steps, but trust me, it was so much easier, cleaner (I did use a towel to soak up the small amount of drippage that came off of the cup as I poured), and efficient than my old method. I hope this helps anyone out there who likes to make their own chicken stock (or veggie stock) and if you don't make your own, please consider it. You will not believe how much better it tastes and it is not nearly as difficult as you might think.

Now, here is how I make my stock:

After cutting apart a chicken, I toss in whatever bits I have: the back bone, wings, any bones I've cut the meat off of, and sometimes the drumsticks. I add half an onion (no need to slice or peel it – just chop it in half), 1 or 2 sticks of celery, 2 carrots, some whole pepper corns, a sprig of whatever fresh or dried herbs I have on hand (marjoram, thyme, and oregano are all good choices), and a generous pinch of salt. Then I add water up to the line indicated on the pressure cooker, pop on the top, turn on the heat, and after 15 minutes of cooking I have a glorious chicken stock.

I let it cool, then pour it through a colander into a large bowl, and toss the stuff in the colander into the trash.

They Say You Learn Something New Every Day

2011-10-03T06:04:00.000-05:00

Here are a few things I've learned recently.

This is not the most annoying sound in the world. Nope. The most annoying sound in the world is the sound of asian beetles landing on various items in your house. It's like a little click, or tap, and it could seriously drive me insane in a very short period of time.
Crab Cobb Salad? Not tasty.
The South Beach Diet takes a LOT of work. I pretty much spend 8 hours a day prepping food. I have no idea how anyone with a job outside the home could find the time to do this diet.
When you're on a diet, even one that says you can eat until you're full, you get really hungry for every meal - even breakfast.
If you leave a half-pound steak on the counter, the dog will jump up while you are not looking and swallow the entire thing in less than 10 seconds.
If you get too close to your dog's face, she might just belch up skunky-smelling nastiness in your face, even though she hasn't eaten a skunk. At least not that I'm aware of.
On a nicer note, it's really fun to see your dingy, dank basement be transformed into a cozy, liveable space.

More European vacation photos coming soon. This time we're going to Paris!

European Vacation – Amsterdam

2011-09-22T07:23:00.000-05:00

Next stop – and our last day together before I had to fly home, while he stayed there for several more weeks – was Amsterdam. Our hotel was near the airport which is actually in Schipol, so we took the train.

Like much of what we saw, the inside of the train station was very modern – concrete, tile, shops, electronic kiosks, etc. – but outside, it looked like this. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you'll see that the "clock tower" is not a clock at all.

We immediately started seeing bicycles everywhere. This was apparently an entire parking ramp just for bikes. There were thousands of them, some new, some abandoned. I'd heard that a lot of people got around Amsterdam on bicycles, but I had no idea there would be so many.

Everyone told us that we should take a tour of the canals at night. Unfortunately, our schedule did not allow us to be in Amsterdam at night (which considering where we ended up later is probably a good thing), but a morning tour worked out great for us. The tour boats were all lined up and ready to take on passengers.

There's my happy Geek! Our tour boat had an automated voice "tour guide" that spoke in about five different languages throughout the tour.

I have no idea what this was, but I thought it was interesting how there is such a mix of modern and historic in this city.

And here's an example of the historic. I don't remember what the tour guide said this was, but I loved how this grand building sat right out there on the water.

This is what much of our tour looked like, with the canal following the road (or vice versa) lined with houses and the cars parked right up to the edge of the canal wall. Notice how that black house is leaning forward a bit. Some of these houses are very, very old.

The tour boats (and any other boats on the canals) are very low since they have to be able to fit under these bridges.

There were tons of these houseboats along the canals.

It's Duncan McLeod's barge! Hello, Highlander! What are you doing in Amsterdam?

Is that not just the cutest little Dutch shoe boat you've ever seen?

All the houses had these things (I'm sure there's a better word than "things" for them, but it's early in the morning and I can't think of it) sticking out of the tops of them with hooks hanging from them. (You can see the hooks if you click to see the larger photo.) These are used to haul stuff up to the upper floors since the stairways are too narrow to get anything through them.

Some of the houses had doors instead of windows, like this one. These were originally merchants warehouses. They would bring in their goods by boats on the canal, and then haul it up to these doors to be stored. I have no idea why, but that little bit of trivia just fascinated me.

This is pretty typical of what Amsterdam streets look like. There's train tracks, a car lane, a bike lane, and a pedestrian lane all in one road.

After our canal tour, we spent some time walking around the city and saw some rather interesting things that I didn't feel comfortable photographing. For instance, the guys huddled in the alcove that smelled so strong of marijuana you could almost get high just walking by it. Or the girl posing in the window like a mannequin in a storefront – and I'm quite certain she wasn't there to sell clothes.

Then we came to an intersection with what looked like a small stoplight, about 4 feet tall or so, with only red lights on it. Yes, that should have been our clue as to what we would find down there, but apparently we are clueless Americans. We were looking for someplace to get gelato (I never did get to try gelato!) and it looked like there might be some restaurants in that direction.

We no sooner turned down that street than we started seeing shops with logos that looked an awful lot like a certain kind of leaf. Yup, that kind. Pretty soon we were walking by shops with giant storefront windows and I noticed they were full of people. When I looked as we passed by one I realized that these people were all gathered around tables with pretty vases on them. Some of them were dressed like businessmen who came straight from the office ... at 2 o'clock in the afternoon ... apparently to admire the pretty vases.

Yeah.

So, Amsterdam was an interesting place. I'm sorry I didn't get photos of the more "interesting" parts of the city, but some things are better left to the imagination.

I am glad we were there during the day instead of at night. But we had a good time and despite the less than savory places it was really a beautiful city.

The next day I went home while the Geek stayed on ... but wait, there's more! My European adventure isn't over yet by a long shot. I'll be back with more stories and photos soon!

European Vacation - Lissewege, Belgium

2011-09-12T11:31:00.001-05:00

On the way back to Amsterdam from Bruges, we made a stop at a beautiful, quaint little village called Lissewege. We pulled into the parking lot near the church below and were greeted by a cow moseying around the corner of a barn just a few yards away from us.

This church was sort of the central figure of the village. It was a little less ornate than the buidings we had seen in Bruges, but it was old (built in the 13th century), and beautiful, and amazing. Wait until you see the inside.

Looking up the side of the church tower. We have a lot of photos like this, looking up the sides of towers. I'm not sure why except that the Geek liked the towers, and I liked leaning back while he held me to keep me from falling backwards while I took the photo. :)

There was a small graveyard outside the church with graves from the past couple of centuries. Then we saw these stone panels on the side of the church and went to take a closer look.

They were sepulchres, and as you can see here, they dated back to the 1600s. I don't know who the people are who are buried here – if they were important people at the time, or church officials or what – but it was amazing to see that these "graves" embedded right into the walls of the church, were from 400 years ago. As I said before, I think one of the things that impacted me most in Europe was the presence of such ancient history all around you, nearly everywhere you go. You just don't see that where I live.

The inside of the church was so beautiful. It was simple, almost plain compared to some of the intricately ornate architecture we saw elsewhere (like Notre Dame which I will talk about in a future post), but even the simple details in the arches, pillars, and ceilings were just breathtaking. And again, the history – just knowing that we were standing in a church that had been standing there for nearly 800 years ... incredible.

These stained-glass windows featuring Saint Joseph, Saint Mary, and Saint Elgius (whom I had not heard of) were so beautiful. I imagine they are not as old as the church itself, but still quite beautiful.

After we left the church, we wandered around the village of Lissewege for a bit. There were a few restaurants (though they didn't seem to be open) and adorable houses, all with the typical red clay roofs of the area. This little canal ran right through town with houses lining it on either side, big gardens and chicken coops in the back yards. It was a beautiful little place to just wander and enjoy for an afternoon.

Next stop, Amsterdam!

European Vacation – Bruges, Belgium

2011-09-07T08:18:00.004-05:00

Here it is! The first installment of photos from our sort-of-accidental European vacation!

When I flew out to meet my Sweet Geek, I landed in Amsterdam. We hopped in a rental car and drove directly to Bruges, Belgium, while I tried to stay awake in order to see everything, after a nine hour flight. (I learned on this trip that jet lag is a very, very real thing!)

This is where we had dinner that night – a little Flemish restaurant halfway down a road that looked more like an alley. My Geek (who you see here, smiling nicely for the camera) had the rabbit stew and I had the beef stew. It was not what I typically think of as stew. It was more like a bowl of meat in a yummy, slightly sweet gravy. Very tasty.

The next day we spent all morning in Bruges, just wandering around, seeing what we might see. Bruges is apparently one of the few European cities that did not take significant damage during the wars, so all it's old buildings are still intact. The architecture is intricate and amazing.

This is the central square, or the "Markt", a wide open area with a statue in the middle, surrounded by beautiful old buildings. And lots of bicycles. So many bicycles. They are everywhere in Europe. Wait until we get to Amsterdam. Crazy amounts of bicycles!

This is another side of that same central square. You can climb up in this clock tower, but they weren't open for touring that day, so we just admired it from outside.

Across from the clock tower was this row of little cafes, all with the same awnings and lots of outdoor seating. It was filled with people sipping at their morning coffee (or sipping a glass of white wine at 9 am). My Geek and I sat here for a bit. He had a cup of coffee (when you order coffee there, you get espresso, which he loved!), and I, not being a coffee drinker, had a sparkling water.

These horse-drawn carriages were lined up in a row, waiting for tourists. Bruges is just full of tourists, on buses, in carriages, on foot.

I read somewhere that there are three towers of Bruges. I think this is the same one that we saw in the square, just from the back side.

I loved all these quaint little streets. There was cobblestone everywhere. It looked like something out of a period movie. You just don't see this in the US, except maybe a few places on the East Coast, and even then, they are simply nowhere near as old as this.

In many places there were very modern shops (electronics stores, cell phone stores, etc.) on the ground floor of an ancient building.

Here is the second tower we saw. I don't think we ever saw the third one.

This mime was amazing. When he wasn't moving, he looked just like a statue. There was a couple elsewhere doing the same thing. They were slightly less convincing than this guy, but pretty cool nonetheless.

I think this was the city hall. We saw a wedding party out in front of this building. The smaller building on the left was a museum, but again, they were closed that day. We didn't really mind though.

It was so much fun to just wander the city, oohing and aahing over all the beautiful buildings and quaint streets, and munching on bits of bread torn off of a fresh baguette. If you ever have the opportunity to go to Europe, I would very much recommend visiting Bruges, Belgium.

Next up: an even more quaint (quainter?) little village we stopped at on our way back to Amsterdam.

Sneak Preview

2011-08-26T06:35:00.004-05:00

I've been working furiously on fixing up vacation photos to make them blog-worthy. Not that I'm particularly picky – a photographer I am not! There are a TON of photos and I'm trying to weed through to get the best ones, and then crop, resize, and sometimes brighten them up just a tad.

I'm getting close now, but I'm not quite done yet, so in the meantime, here is a bit of a preview.

The Professor and the Madman

2011-08-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

Well, the European vacation photos are still stuck on my husband's laptop. I'll try to encourage him to share them with me by this weekend.

In the meantime, I have a great book to share with you. You may have heard of it already since it was first published in 1998. It is The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. I downloaded the audible version from Audible.com.

This is not a novel, but in some ways it reads like one. It is a true story about two men – Professor James Murray, who led the enormous task of creating the Oxford English Dictionary; and Dr. W. C. Minor, a criminally insane man who was one of the primary contributors to the project. It is really two stories intertwined.

I know it might not look like the most interesting book when you see that it is about the making of the OED; after all, how can the making of a dictionary be interesting enough to write a book about, right? I guess that depends on how much of a word geek you are. But it gets much more interesting (regardless of your penchant for words – or lack thereof) when you add in the incredible story of the man whose tragic life led to his living in an asylum for many years, where he had the luxury of spending his days contributing to the amazing work of the creation of the OED.

I found this book fascinating. The audible version is only about 7 hours long – I listened to it in one day while mindlessly entering data at work. If you choose the audible version, the narrator is the author, Simon Winchester, who has a very pleasant reading voice. (I suppose I should say here that I have no connection in any way to Audible.com. That just happens to be where I got the book from.)

Let me know in the comments if you have read this or decide to read it. I'd love to know what you think of it!

European Vacation - Part 1

2011-08-04T07:51:00.005-05:00

In May, my husband's company offered him an exciting opportunity. They had acquired a company in Europe with offices in Holland and Germany, and wanted him to go there to lead the project to integrate the new acquisition's computer systems with their own.

The good – traveling to Europe, an exciting new project to work on, high-profile project with the opportunity to look really good in front of lots of important people. The not-so-good – he would be away from home for 9 weeks. 9 weeks is a really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y long time to be away from home.

He traveled from city to city, hotel to hotel, usually moving every 1 to 3 days, never settling in one place long enough to even bother unpacking. This was hard on him.

The hard part for me was not having him around. I eventually got used to him being gone at night – enough so that I could sleep reasonably well most nights. But I learned what it was like to expect a particular response from someone who is always there and be surprised when it doesn't happen. I thought of women who have lost their husbands, and those military wives whose husbands are gone for a year or longer and reminded myself to be glad I only had to wait a for 9 weeks.

There was some good that came out of this though: I was able to go join him for a European vacation. We went to Amsterdam and toured the canals; Bruges, Belgium and enjoyed the amazing architecture of a thousand years ago; Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and Versailles; and we spent a few days traveling around Germany, visiting and touring castles. It was a wonderful way to end a long time apart.

The vacation was so packed with things to do and sights to see that I'm going to break it up into a few posts, but suffice it to say for now, after a successful project on his part, and an amazing vacation for the two of us, I am so very glad to have him back home.

Changes

2011-08-02T06:31:00.002-05:00

A lot has changed in the past couple of months here in the Geek household. Actually, the more accurate statement would be that one big thing has changed which has prompted other changes: as of the end of June, I no longer work outside the home.

When My Geek and I moved to the country, we knew we wanted to have a hobby farm. We also knew that we wanted me to be home to take care of it full time. Recently our life became such that we decided it was time to take the plunge. I am now a full-time homemaker and soon-to-be hobby farmer.

We have a garden already, which I hope to expand at some point and maybe grow enough to start selling at the local farmer's markets. Next year we'll be adding goats as the first animals in our little farm from which we will get milk (cheese!) and meat, and we may also get some chickens to get the tick population under control.

My first task at hand is to plan. I am learning everything I can about raising livestock - where to get our goats, how to go about buying them, what breed we want, what kind of shelter to build, what other supplies we need, what we feed them - so many questions and things to learn.

My main source of information right now is the book Barnyard in Your Backyard by Gail Damerow. I borrowed this from my father-in-law (who has chickens and has considered other animals) but I will be buying my own copy as it is an invaluable reference tool and will continue to be as I meet various challenges of raising farm animals. I'll be seeking out other sources of information as well.

Other than that, I've been spending most of my days getting the house in order and rescuing it from the sad state of neglect it's fallen into. It's starting to look pretty good and will soon be in purely maintenance mode. Yay!

We're also working on finishing our basement, which is currently just one giant concrete-floored room full of boxes and stuff. And we're finally hoping to build ourselves a nice front walk (after having lived here for almost four years with no real front walk to speak of - that's how we roll out here in the country).

I also want to make time to do more crafting, especially to add to my Etsy shop and maybe bring in a little income that way. And, of course, I want to do more writing, perhaps actually finish a book and attempt to publish it.

People always want to know what in the world women do who don't work outside of the home - how they fill their time. Well, this is a pretty good start, I think. I can't imagine I will be running out of things to do any time soon.

Oh, and I can't forget - I'd also like to get back into blogging more regularly. With all these wonderful new challenges in my life, I feel like I finally have something to say here again.

Jane Eyre (Again) And Other Books

2011-03-21T20:49:00.003-05:00

I finished Jane Eyre.

Siiiiiiggghhhh.

That book just makes me so happy. I could read it over and over and over again. Wait. I have read it over and over and over again.

Unfortunately, the movie isn't coming to my little town, so I either have to drive 1-1/2 hours into a not-so-safe part of the nearest city, or just hope and pray that it will come here in its next life. Or – most likely – wait for it to come out on DVD. Considering how difficult it was to wait the three months from when I found out about the movie until now, another 6 months (or however long it takes to get out on DVD) might just kill me. I may have to read the book again to keep myself sane – and alive.

In the meantime, I'm reading another book that I've already read once – The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs – while I wait for the library system to deliver Breakfast at Tiffany's to my local library. Anyone ever read BaT? I saw the movie and almost loved it. I'm hoping to like the book better.

How Do I Love Classics? Let Me Count The Ways...

2011-03-06T07:31:00.003-06:00

There is a scene in Jane Eyre in which Jane saves Mr. Rochester's life by dousing a fire that caught in his bed while he was sleeping. His response is to say the following to her:

"You saved my life; I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt. I cannot say more. Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation; but you, it is different – I feel your benefits no burden, Jane ... I knew ... you would do me good in some way, at some time; I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you; their expression and smile did not ... strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing. People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii; there are grains of truth in the wildest fable. My cherished preserver, good-night!"

And what do you think he would say if he was in a modern novel instead of a classic?

"You saved my life! I owe you one! You're my guardian angel, babe!"

The language of the classics is so rich. It conveys so much more depth of emotion. No matter how many classics I read, I doubt I will ever be able to speak or write such rich language, and frankly it would be hard to be take someone seriously these days if they spoke or wrote that way anyway. Just one more reason I love reading the classics.

Reading Update

2011-03-02T19:19:00.004-06:00

Well, the giving-the-book-back-and-kindly-refusing-the-next-in-the-series conversation went reasonably well. I took Jeana's advice and told her I had too many other books to read right now, which is true anyway so it's not like I was lying.

Then I read "The Host" by Stephenie Meyer.

As an aside, yes, I loved the Twilight series. And no, I don't care who thinks I'm a barbaric heathen for it. See? No apologies.

I have to say, I did not enjoy "The Host" nearly as much as I did the "Twilight" series. That's not to say it wasn't a good book. It just didn't draw me in to the story the way Meyer's other books did. It is still a well-written story with an enjoyable plot, but it is a little too predictable, and I didn't identify with the characters like in the "Twilight" books. Maybe that's because I've been a teenage girl before; I've never been an alien inhabiting another person's body.

That said, if you're thinking about reading "The Host", then by all means go ahead and read it. It is a good book. Just remember that it is different from "Twilight".

So, what am I reading now? "Jane Eyre", of course! My favorite book of all time. The movie is coming out in just 9 days and I must finish before then! I'm on page 160 of 527. I'm not generally a very fast reader, but this is "Jane Eyre" – I have no doubt I will succeed.

Redemption

2011-02-13T15:00:00.007-06:00

Let me preface this post by saying that if you read "Redemption" by Karen Kingsbury and Gary Smalley and loved it, you may not want to read this post. If you choose to do so anyway, please don't be offended. I know several people who have read this and loved it. I just don't happen to be one of them.

"Redemption" is the first of a series of five books, which is followed by several more related series. The co-worker who lent me this book was sure that I, like she and several other co-workers, would devour it and not be able to stop reading until I had completed the entire line of books. I did read it quickly, but unfortunately it was less like devouring it, and more like reading it as quickly as possible in the way you might quickly swallow a piece of liver just to avoid having to taste it as it went down.

The writing style was okay – similar to a lot of other books I've read in the same genre. I have definitely read worse writing than this book.

Just a warning here: I'm not going to give any specific spoilers, but I will say some things at this point that might be considered general spoilers.

By the time I was halfway through the book, not a single good thing had happened. It was simply a series of tragedies or setups for future tragedies, one after another. A little past the halfway point something good happened – the redemption from which the book gets its title. And then everything fell apart and the rest of the book was filled with more tragedies.

Within the first few chapters of the book, I had an idea of where it was headed and my mind had formulated a possible ending. But surely, I thought, they wouldn't actually end the book that way. It was so obvious, so predictable, so cheap. I kept hoping throughout the book that it would not end that way, even though it was clearly being set up that way. They ended the book exactly the way I feared they might, just a few chapters into the book.

So, now I will have to find a way to explain to my co-worker that I do not want to read the rest of the series without sounding like I am criticizing her taste in books. That's the hard thing about reading books recommended by other people. Books are so personal. If you love a book, it's wonderful to be able to share your thoughts about the story and discuss with a friend what it meant to you. But if you don't, it is so hard to say so without hurting their feelings.

What do you do when you read a book that someone else loved, but don't like it yourself?

Oh My ...

2011-01-24T20:18:00.005-06:00

This is beyond fantastic.
Credit where credit is due: this is originally from theselby.com.
I found it at Winsome Hollow.

On another note, I may have gotten myself into a pickle regarding books to read. Someone at work who knows how I love reading suggested an author which after a series of brief conversations ended up with her coming to me with a stack of five books. I managed to convince her that I should only take the first one ... to start with.

I'm reading The Secret Garden (again) right now (still reading Emma (again) at work since I only get to read in 5-10 minute snippets at lunch) and I want to read Jane Eyre (again - anyone else noticing a pattern here?) before the movie comes out in March. So maybe I can fit this one in between there. My greatest concern is what I'll do if I don't like it. I know as soon as I return the first book, she'll be handing me the next. (This is the first of a series of five, which is followed by two more series of five and four respectively.)

On the other hand, maybe I'll love it and be begging for the next book in the series. I'm a little skeptical, but I would love to be surprised.

Remember What I Said About Libraries ...

2010-11-05T05:27:00.002-05:00

... back in this post?

You have got to see this ...

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain/doublespreads/ggcoll11_005_006.html

I know it's just a cartoon, but I'm trying to dream up ways to get my Sweet Geek to build the real thing for me. Hmmm. Christmas is coming ....

No NaNo For Me

2010-11-01T20:44:00.003-05:00

It’s November 1st, and you know what that means. It’s NaNoWriMo time again.

But sadly, not for me.

I wrote my first NaNoWriMo novel in 2005, and I haven’t missed one since. I failed to finish in 2007, the year we moved, but I still attempted it.

But this year, right from the start, I have chosen to not even attempt NaNoWriMo. And I have a good reason.

For five years running (with the exception of 2007) I have come out of November with a 50,000 word novel, but not one of those novels has ever been complete. Even if I wrote a beginning, middle, and ending, each and every one of those novels needs to be re-written, edited, and transformed from a crazy mish-mash of words tossed onto the page into a clear, coherent novel.

But every year I throw my 50,000 words on the page and then, for the most part, neglect them until the next year when I start all over again.

This year, I decided it was time to make a change despite my disappointment in not being part of the thrill of NaNoWriMo. This year, I am editing a first draft from a previous year.

I am not calling it a NaNo project, as I am not starting from scratch. I am not even planning to complete the editing process in the 30 days allotted for NaNo. I think that would be a foolish goal for me to set. Thirty days to get a first draft out of my head and onto the page makes sense to me. It keeps me from deliberating over each and every word and forces me to just write. But the editing process, in my extremely inexperienced opinion, needs to be more deliberate, more precise, and cannot be rushed in a NaNoWriMo way.

So I am using November as a launching pad this year. I have already been working on editing this novel for a little while now, but in November I am going to force myself to work on it every single day, just like I would if I were writing a NaNo novel. And at the end of November, my goal is not necessarily to have a finished, presentable novel, but rather to have established a habit of writing every single day.

Tonight is the start (I worked on the novel before I started writing this). And for anyone who is doing NaNoWriMo this year, including my Geek, I wish you luck and hope to join you again next year.

Bookshelves, Lovely, Lovely Bookshelves

2010-09-16T17:09:00.033-05:00

**Please click on the images below to see their original sources.**

I love bookshelves. Really. Love love love them. My dream living room has no inch of wall space not covered by built-in bookshelves. Since my Geek thought that might be a bit far on the wrong side of overkill, I conceded my lofty, bookshelf-y dream and settled for his plan ... which is a really nice one, I must admit.

Here's our great room – or as much of it as you can see from the hallway.

His lovely plan is to build bookshelves to fit right where our shelves are now, but they will be tall. Very tall. Like 10 feet tall ... give or take a few inches.

And he is building them. And they will be lovely. And I probably don't have enough books to cover every square inch of wall space in my great room anyway, so this is much more practical. (That's how we work, you see. When I get impractical, he brings me back to earth ... and vice versa.)

But since we're on the topic of bookshelves – lovely, lovely bookshelves covered in books – let's stay there for a while, huh? Come on and join me. This is my happy place.

Thumper, who is also a book freak (If you're reading this, Thumper, I hope you don't mind that I called you a freak.) posted about this very unique bookshelf recently.

And I must agree with her wholeheartedly ... I want. I could not possibly care less that it's utterly impractical. If someone dropped this on my doorstep I would be ecstatic.

So that got me thinking about unique bookshelves, which led me to this ...

35 Really Unusual And Desirable Bookshelf Designs

... which holds treasures like this ...

... and this ...
... and (oh my lord) this ...

(Oh, be still my beating heart.)

But as much as I love these truly unique pieces, a bookshelf does not have to be unique or even fancy to be wonderful. The most important factor in a truly magnificent bookshelf is that it hold lots of books, and by that I mean not that it must be huge, but that it must be packed to the brim with books.

Even plain old Ikea bookshelves can be wonderful as long as they are full of books. You see, it's not really about the bookshelves. It's all about arranging the books.

Which really means that it's all about packing books in wherever they will fit.

Okay, so the mirror is a bit of wasted space, but I'll forgive them because this may just be the prettiest dining room I have ever seen.

Of course, you can get all schnazzy and do something ambitious like this ...

Personally, I don't have the energy, but it is fantastic. Anyone want to come arrange all my books by color for me?

Anyone?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I'm almost done here, but I ran across another photo that got me thinking about books, and reading, and cats.

I started thinking that it seems like there is a pretty strong correlation between book lovers and cat lovers. That is, almost everyone I know who loves books also loves cats. And almost everyone I know who does not love books either hates cats or is ambivalent toward them. I realize that there are probably exceptions to this rule, but in my experience this seems to be the case more often than not.

Interesting ...

Anyway, that's about all I have to say about bookshelves. And if you have enjoyed this little tour of beautifully collected books as much as I have, then you may want to do a Google search for "unique bookcase", or a Flickr search for "bookshelves". I even linked the searches there to save you a few minutes. I promise, this will keep you entertained for hours. Not that I would know. (I'm such an enabler.)

Oh, and by the way? Just one last thing before I go.

Don't even get me started on libraries ...

(siiiighhhhh)

A Funky Farrago Of Favorites

2010-07-17T15:09:00.000-05:00

I was looking back at my gigantic list of Etsy Favorites recently, and was struck by what a mishmash of items I have there. I tried to weed a few out, but I really do love them all. It doesn't matter that I will never buy most of them. It's window shopping at its best where I can go back and look at all the pretty things over and over again.

Some of the items in my Favorites list could actually be considered somewhat practical. (Did you happen to notice how many qualifiers were in that sentence?) Some of them are completely impractical.

There are clothes that are absolutely fabulous, but would never fit me ... or my budget ...

by TimelessVixenVintage

... and there are clothes that I would definitely wear, and would fit my budget quite nicely.

by Brookish

There is furniture that is over the top frou-frou ...

by sarahlouisedix

... and furniture that is rustic and homey.

by newmoonsalvage

There are things I love even though they are so "not me" ...

by jjboz10

... and things that scream my name.

by Thyme2dream

I think the nice word for it is "eclectic".

Standing In The Rain

2010-06-28T15:26:00.003-05:00

There's something about rain, something wonderful and refreshing, something that feeds the soul. The sun is wonderful: it warms your skin, your hair, the earth; it coaxes plants up from the ground and draws people outdoors. But there is something about rain.

More and more I am learning to love the rain. Lately, if it is over 75 degrees and raining, I can't help myself: I have to go and stand out in it, soaking it in, letting it fall on my face, my hair, my shoulders, and run over me. It doesn't matter that we have had more rainy days than sunny ones this summer. I may complain that I can't get out in the garden because it's raining, but next thing I know I'm drawn out into the rain.

And when it is too cold, or it pours down so hard that I can't stand in it, I love to sit inside and watch it run down the window pane, backed by a fantastic display of lightning and the music of thunder.

In our modern society, we tend to think of rain as bad and sun as good. Rain keeps you inside where it's dry; sun begs you to go out and play in it. But we who do not live a farmer's life forget: the rain is every bit as important to us as the sun.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, "He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." I have often heard this interpreted as saying that good and bad things happen to all people whether or not they are righteous, the sun representing the good, the rain representing the bad. But when you remember that Jesus, when he spoke these words, lived in a largely agrarian society, you realize that they would have understood this differently. The sun and the rain are both good, both necessary to the health of a crop, therefore good things happen to all people whether or not they are righteous. God pours out his blessings on all, perhaps to draw them to himself, perhaps simply because he loves them.

So the next time it rains, especially a nice gentle rain with big fat drops on a warm summer day, put on shorts and a tank top and go stand in it. Let it run over you, washing you, refreshing you. Lift your face to the sky and let it run down your cheeks. Open your arms and let it drench you. And remember, that the rain, just like the sun, is a beautiful gift.

"... Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."
-- Matthew 5:44-45, NIV

I Have A Plan

2010-06-17T15:43:00.002-05:00

Believe it or not, I have been writing ... just not on my blog. I can't claim I've been doing a lot of writing, but I've been fitting in some time just about every evening to add a bit to the ol' novel. I think I'm now in the vicinity of 8000 words.

So, I was thinking today that come November I'm going to want to write for NaNoWriMo again, which according to the NaNo rules means starting something new. But I don't really want to stop right in the middle of my current project.

Bingo!! A goal was born. If I finish my first draft of this novel by the end of October, then I can take a break – always a good idea anyway, according to what I've heard from more seasoned novelists – and get back to editing it after NaNo is over. That gives me four months (plus a little) to finish.

It's a perfectly lovely plan, I think.

As Long As We're On The Subject ...

2010-05-24T05:08:00.002-05:00

I came across an interesting blog post as I was scanning through my Bloglines feed, looking at old posts that I had marked to be read at a later date. This one had been waiting for quite a while as it got lost in the shuffle. I thought it was interesting in light of what I said here. Pretty much the same thing, only much better spoken. Also I'm not nearly as much of a book snob as this guy, which proves my point that I'm really just a recovering wanna-be.

Thank You, Nick Hornby; or, Confessions of a Recovering Literary Philistine

Ditto To Myself With A Slight Twist

2010-05-21T15:57:00.003-05:00

Remember what I said here? Well, as I was writing that, I realized that it applied to writing too.

As I mentioned back in January, I've been really wishy-washy about finishing/editing my NaNoWriMo novels, and had finally settled on completing my first NaNo novel. Well, I'm going back to wishy-washy ... sort of ... just a little.

I wanted to write that novel for several reasons, but I think they are the wrong reasons, at least for now. I may go back to it someday, but for now, I'm changing courses. Feel free to slap me if I do this more than 3 more times in the next year.

I think I can stay on track with the novel I've decided to write. It's actually a re-write from scratch of the second novel I wrote for NaNo since I lost that one in a devastating hard-drive failure just days after NaNo 2006 was over. I've had some really fun ideas playing around in my head, so I started a new Scrivener file, got myself organized, and wrote for about a half hour before bedtime last night. Pitiful, I know, but I've got the weekend to make up for it, in between gardening, yardwork, laundry, etc.

But at least I'm taking my own advice and ~~reading~~ writing what I want – nothing stuffy, toffee-nosed, or even particularly inspirational. Just pure, good fun.

Read What You Want

2010-05-08T23:15:00.001-05:00

I have a confession to make.

I'm a bit of a book snob.

Actually, it's worse than that. I'm really a wanna-be book snob, which means I'm just a poser.

I'm a poser book snob. It's sad.

But I have come to realize that maybe being a book snob isn't all it's cut out to be. Don't get me wrong – being a "snob" about certain things is noble and good. Take, for instance, grammar. Grammar snobs are, in my opinion, noble and necessary forces for good. Without grammar snobs we would have no one to keep the world from collapsing under all the "is-ises", "a whole nothers", and "I seens" that threaten us daily.

But book snobs, while they may serve a purpose, have a tendency to get out of control. If the snobbiest of book snobs had their way, the world would read nothing but Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Kurt Vonnegut – and Henry James would be questionable. (By the way, I have never read Kipling or Vonnegut and I was not impressed by the one Henry James novel I read, which proves unequivocally that I am only a wanna-be book snob.) I happen to love certain classics, and there is a reason many of these are classics, but what about the not-so-classic books?

What makes a book a "good" book? For a long time, any time I picked up a book that might be classified as romance or chick-lit, I immediately went into apology mode. "I'm just reading this because I need something a little lighter than my normal fare right now," I'd say. Or I'd excuse myself with, "A friend recommended this, so I really should read it." And if I enjoyed the book, I'd say, "Well, it's no Jane Austen, but sure, I enjoyed reading it anyway – you know, for a change."

Of course, the irony is that Jane Austen and Henry James were the chick-lit of their time, but since they have endured the test of time, and because their use of the English language is so superior to our severely devolved English language, they are now considered serious literature.

The truth is, while I adore Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, and Charlotte Bronte, I have read many modern chick-lit novels that I enjoyed (shocker!) just as much. (You might want to sit down before you read this next sentence.) I even enjoyed the Twilight series. Yup, you heard right – the series by Stephenie Meyer – with vampires – and teen angst – I devoured all four of them in a matter of a few weeks.

So what makes a novel a "good" novel? I suppose that question would have a different answer from every person who answered it, but I think my answer would come down to this: A good novel is one that engages your interest. It doesn't have to inspire meaningful conversation or deep introspection to be good. If it engages your interest, entertains you, makes you laugh, cry, or just want to read more, it might be a good book.

This doesn't mean I'm equating or even comparing Stephenie Meyer to any of the great classic authors. It also doesn't mean that I think everything on the shelves of the big box book stores these days is good – there's a lot of crappy writing being published that should never see the light of day, especially when a lot of good authors are waiting to be published. All I'm saying is that it's okay to read something simply because you enjoy it.

Or maybe I should say that it's okay for me to read something simply because I enjoy it, since I'm really writing about me. I'm sure you're not a wanna-be snob like me.

So from now on, I'm giving myself permission to read what I want, guilt-free. If I want to pick up something shallow, I'll do it without making excuses. Billerbeck, Kilgore, Carobini, Meyer, Vanderbilt and Dayton, they're all fair game, with no apologies. Chick-lit, sci-fi, fantasy, it's all acceptable reading material, as long as I enjoy reading it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do a little light reading.

On Writing Numbers and Letters

2010-04-08T19:49:00.000-05:00

My handwriting stinks. My grandmother had that quintessential handwriting of women who grew up in a time when they really learned how to write neatly - tiny letters, cursive by the book, a perfect balance of precision and beauty. My mom's handwriting is neat and very nice too, though not quite as neat as Grandma's was.

And then there's mine. I'm lucky if I can even read it, much less anyone else. And there are certain characters that just irk me.

For instance, I hate writing the number 2. Do you write it with the little curlicue on the bottom or without? Written with the curlique, a 2 looks like cursive, but none of the other numbers get a cursive version. What makes the 2 so special? If you have to fill out one of those forms with each character in a separate box, they always tell you, "write the numbers like this," and the two is always so precise with the hanger-like curve at the top perfectly balanced over the slope down to the point at the bottom and the horizontal line that bears the weight of it all. Seriously, a perfect 2 is like a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Mine on the other hand are far from perfect and usually come out looking more like a letter Z.

The lower-case letter a is another non-favorite. Do you write it round with a stick on the right side? Or do you put the little awning over the top? I like the awning, but as much as I like it, it seems like I can't stay consistent. Sometimes I write the awning, sometimes not. There's no rhyme or reason. I sometimes think that if a handwriting expert were to evaluate me on the basis of how I wrote the letter a in a sentence, he'd probably think I was schizophrenic.

Cursive L's, on the other hand, are great. I have loved cursive L's since I was just a kid. They are loopy and swirly and elegant and oh so very girly. Even I can write a decent cursive capital L. It really doesn't have to be perfect because with all those lovely loops, it looks pretty no matter how badly you mess it up. You could make a wallpaper decorated with cursive L's. I wouldn't use it because I hate wallpaper, but if I was a wallpaper-user, I might just use one covered in cursive L's.

W got me in trouble in sixth grade. We were making a poster that said "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" and it was all in bubble letters. The girls were looking for the person who could draw the best bubble letters. (The boys really didn't care.) We used the W to display our talents and I – who had probably never written a bubble letter in my life, but of course knew what they were – this was sixth grade after all, and I was a girl – bubble letters were very, very important – I was dubbed the best bubble letter writer, based on my W ... until they discovered that the letter W was the only letter I could write well in bubble.

1s are boring. It's a line. A stick. Boring. Boring. Boring. Unless you dress it with the little off-kilter hat and give it a base to stand on. Then it takes on a whole new personality. Like the person you think is quiet and shy and quite dull until one day they tell a joke or a story or show up wearing a ridiculous outfit and you realize that they could be the life of the party. That's the 1 with the hat and base. But you have to be very careful when you use the accessorized 1 or you run the risk of appearing uppity and pretentious, and then you're not the life of the party anymore.

3s rock. Easy, round, anyone can write a nice three. And don't use the one with the pointy top and the round bottom, please. It's like putting Madonna's top on J-Lo's bottom. It doesn't work. In fact, it's just plain wrong. In fact, can someone just erase my memory of this paragraph, please? That's just plain disturbing.

And finally, (Yes, I realize there are many more characters I could discuss, but I really don't think you want me to.) there is the 0. Confusing, huh? Was that a zero, or a capital letter O, or a lower-case letter o? You only know if you see them all together, don't you? 0's and O's and o's are dubious little stinkers. And they're not so simple to write as one might think either. To get that perfect circle or oval shape without leaning too much to one side or the other, or flattening one side and rounding the other - it's all very challenging.

And the point of this post? Well, honestly there isn't one beyond what I just wrote. Writing is strange, and with so many different styles of writing I find it amazing that any of us can even interpret what anyone else is saying when they write by hand. I bet someone, somewhere has written an entire book on this subject. It's probably one of those experts who would diagnose me as schizophrenic based on my handwriting. And based on this post, he may not be so far from wrong.

They're Not Immortal Anymore

2010-03-25T03:45:00.000-05:00

Until recently, I believed my pets were immortal. Of course, in the back of my mind I knew that they had a finite number of days to spend with me and the Geek, but I pushed the ugly thought always to that place in the very darkest back corner of my mind, relegated it to a quiet place where it couldn't bother me too much.

About a year ago, the ugly thing managed to sneak out of its chains when YoYo's seizures got significantly worse. My husband reminded me that there was a possibility his finite days were coming to an end and I had to prepare myself for that possibility. But upon visiting the vet, we found out something our previous vet hadn't told us. He has epilepsy and it is possible to manage it with a simple pill.

So, the ugly thing got shoved back in its place, since, after all, a simple visit to the vet would heal whatever ills might attack my sweet pets.

On Friday I noticed that Diva was acting like she didn't feel well. Her meow had been funny for about a week or so, but I figured she just had a kitty cold or a dry throat. No big deal. But when she laid in the same place for an entire day, and didn't even move to escape the dog or get excited when we petted her, I knew something was wrong. But not to worry, the vet can heal all, right? I packed her up in her crate and we made a visit to the vet.

They acted concerned, but they always act concerned, so I didn't worry. They suggested blood tests and an x-ray to determine what was wrong. Sure it was a little spendy, but that was okay. It was the only way to find out the problem and then we could get on with fixing it. I had no doubt Diva would be back to normal again in no time.

The test results showed that there was something very wrong with her liver. I took her home so the Geek and I could decide what step we wanted to take next. More tests were available, but which ones should we have them do and how much could we spend?

That's when the Geek asked me. "Did they mention sleep?"

Sleep? As in "putting her to"? No! Of course they didn't mention that. Why would they do that? It hadn't even crossed my mind as a possibility. There was surely no reason for it. We would do a few more tests and they would find the problem and then it would be solved. End of story.

But the other tests came out negative, which left only one possibility. The problem was more serious than we were able to deal with. Sure, they could do exploratory surgery, but chances were that it was cancer and whether it was or not, the problem was not likely to be curable.

Sleep. It suddenly became a possibility. And as my sweet Diva looked mournfully up at me, purring contentedly despite the fact that her poor little body was wasting away (she was a big cat, but was losing weight quickly), I knew that it was more than a possibility. It was the only choice left to us.

On Monday, I came home from work, wrapped her in a blanket, and gently carried her to the couch where she laid in my lap until my Geek got home from work. I petted her and talked to her, told her I was sorry she was hurting, but promised it would be better soon.

I couldn't go with them. I just couldn't. He was so sweet to take her to the vet himself, and I know it was hard for him too. When he came home with a cardboard box and the blanket he had carried her in, I couldn't look inside. I didn't want to see her that way. I wanted to remember her sweetly purring in my lap.

He dug a grave out in the yard and I went out with him while he placed her in it and filled it in. I'll plant a rosebush there this spring, when the weather is warm enough. Something pretty, needy, sweet, a little dainty, and a little bold, just like Diva.

The ugly thing is no longer relegated to the back of my mind. It has taken up residence in a more prominent place now. If it can steal Diva away, it can steal the rest. And of course, it will eventually. I'll enjoy as many years with them as I can, but the fact remains. They're not immortal anymore.

Sherlock Rocks!

2010-02-28T19:34:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned previously, the Geek and I saw the Sherlock Holmes movie twice in December. I had never read the stories, but I was excited about the movie from the first time I saw that it was being made. Maybe it was because it was based on classic literature, though I am usually skeptical about the authenticity of such movies. A few are done well and remain true to the original story, but unfortunately too many are not.

Of course, since I had never read the Sherlock Holmes stories, I had no idea at first whether the movie was true to the original or not. But once I had seen the movie, I had to find out. The characters, the story, the style were all fascinating, and if the written stories were anything like the movie, I wanted to read them.

I had never been particularly interested in mysteries. My mother had given me her Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew books when I was a little girl, and while I read them, it was more for a love of reading than for the thrill of the mystery, and many years later I remember more of the characters than I do of the stories. And as for Sherlock Holmes, I knew the basics – that he was a private detective; that he had a friend named Dr. Watson; that he lived on Baker Street in London; that he played the violin – but that was about all I knew. I had enough interest to pick up a copy of "A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes" for 50 cents at a thrift shop years ago, but not enough to have read it after buying it.

So when I got home from the movie, I started digging through the boxes of books that are stashed around our house since we have limited shelving space and a plethora of books to fill it, and I found "A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes". The book I had been reading was set aside for a while and I delved into a world of foggy London streets, seemingly unsolveable mysteries, and downright campy fun.

I think that's what I liked about it most. The mysteries and Holmes' uncanny knack for solving them were quite engaging, but there is something about Holmes' slightly off-kilter character and the way the stories don't take themselves too seriously that makes them absolutely delightful to read. I found myself devouring page after page, story after story, and loving every word.

And I was thrilled to find that the movie had been true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories. Holmes, though not tall and thin as the author described him, was characterized perfectly as a near madman, absolutely unpredictable, beyond moody, who kept his tobacco in his slipper and lived in a state that would appear to any outsider to be a complete disaster, though he always knew where to find any item that was needed at a moment's notice. The manner in which he conducted his investigations, the more reasonable though imperfect character of Dr. Watson, the quality of the settings, were all very much in sync between the movie and the book.

The collection I read contained two of the original novels and twenty-some short stories, but after reading them, I would love to someday read the stories that were left out as well, both because I so enjoyed the others, and to get a more complete picture of the over-arching story of Holmes' and Watson's lives.

If you are like I was and have never read Sherlock Holmes' classic stories, I would highly recommend trying at least one or two. Even if you don't typically read mysteries, you may find that you enjoy these. And if you haven't seen the movie, I would definitely recommend it as well. It's hilarious, interesting, thrilling, and beautiful – just like the written stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Catching Up

2010-01-10T20:20:00.002-06:00

Since I last blogged:

I finished NaNoWriMo with a day to spare.
I decided that I really want to complete my first NaNoWriMo novel, as opposed to the wishy-washy wavering I do every year about which NaNo novel I'd like to work on, if any. I've put a little half-hearted work into this one since NaNo 2005, but I think it deserves a whole-hearted effort at re-writing it.
My Geek and I went on a Caribbean cruise. White sands, warm sun, crystal clear water, exotic places – it was amazing! We're already plotting when we might be able to go again.
We had a beautiful, quiet Christmas with family despite the crazy cold and snow.
The Geek and I saw the Sherlock Holmes movie twice – once for our anniversary and the next day with his family. It was the first movie I've seen in a long time that was good enough to see twice in two days.
Inspired by the movie, I pulled out the "Treasury of Sherlock Holmes" which I bought out of curiosity at a thrift shop a few years ago but had never read. And guess what. I like Sherlock Holmes! I've never gotten into reading mysteries, but these stories are really enjoyable.
We, like the rest of the country – heck, the world for that matter – have been enduring the cold as best we can. It's crazy kinds of cold out there! They keep forecasting that it's going to warm up, but it's just not happening. I can't wait until spring! In the meantime I will have to be satisfied with curling up on the couch with my hubby and our 80 pound lap dog and reading a good old Sherlock Holmes mystery. And despite the cold, that actually sounds very inviting.

This Thanksgiving Day ...

2009-11-26T10:26:00.002-06:00

This Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for:

A wonderful husband who works hard, loves me, makes me laugh, gets along with my parents as well as his own, gets excited about geeky things, likes cats and dogs, plays cribbage, and is not afraid to tell me that he loves me every day.

A warm and comfortable home in the middle of a rolling field, far from the hustle and bustle of the city, with a gorgeous view of the sky,the trees and the occasional wild life.

My dog, who always seems to know more words than I think she does, loves to play, takes me for walks, showers me with kisses when I need them, and loves to hold paws.

My cats, each of whom has his (or her) own distinct personality, all of whom love to be petted and loved, and sometimes have their bellies rubbed while lying in the sun.

My family, both by blood and by marriage, who loves to sit and chat and loves me despite my occasional weirdness, who gets my dry sense of humor, loves to play games, and loves to eat almost as much as I do.

And for my country, which despite the corruption, lies and power-mongering of many of our leaders is still my country, which was still founded on the principles of freedom by decent, honorable, and brave men, and which still is the home of so many of this generation's decent, honorable, and brave men and women who want nothing more than the liberty to live their dreams in the greatest country on earth.

A Chat With My Blog

2009-11-21T07:31:00.003-06:00

My blog snuck up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder today. Yeah, scared the crud out of me. She wasn't trying to be scary though. She was just feeling lonely. I guess I can't complain. It is nice to know I'm needed.

So, I thought I'd sit down and have a nice chat with my blog. I started out trying to flatter her to get back on her good side. She really is kind of pretty with her pale peachy pink and brown accents. And I'd love to have those actual pencils she displays in the center photo at the top of her page. I like fat, chunky pencils and pens; they fit better in my hand. The skinny ones always feel like they're going to sneak away when I'm not looking directly at them.

We both missed the way I used to just sit down and write, and rarely had difficulty finding inspiration. But then that was years ago, and time can often distort the way we see things. So I ran a few ideas past her and she suggested I save them in her drafts and come back to them. They might make great posts at a later date, but right now I can't really afford a large chunk of time working out an idea.

It was nice to spend some time with her. I explained how I'm focused on NaNoWriMo and I think she understands why I've neglected her all November. I hope she does, anyway. I promised to try to be around a little more as soon as NaNoWriMo was over. Or maybe after Christmas. Either way, we had a nice chat. She's a good blog, and I have missed her.

Creative Costumes and Other Gory Things

2009-10-31T10:52:00.006-05:00

Warning: Fake, not particularly realistic gore ahead.

I'm not a huge Halloween person. I don't dislike it, I just don't generally get into it. When we lived in the city we would pass out candy to the neighborhood trick-or-treat-ers, but now that we're out in the boonies, we don't get them anymore unless we invite the neighbors to bring their kids over. And by that I mean the two little kids in the one family that lives within a quarter mile from us.

I rarely dress up, except for a couple times when I've worn a costume that I already had for some other purpose. (The dress I made for the Renaissance Festival once and a pineapple costume I had made for a church youth group project another time.)

I have to say though, that I do appreciate truly creative costumes, and I think this Marie Antoinette costume is just awesome. Generally this would be a little gory for me, but it is just so very creative.

You can see how it was made on the Etsy Storque.

And as long as we're on the subject of decapitation, one of my cats recently had a little too much fun with a mouse. I heard a weird crunching noise in the night and woke to a mouse in two parts lying on my laundry room rug. (The rug, including mouse parts, went out to the garage to be dealt with by my hubby when he got home.)

In honor of Mo's hunting expedition, I thought I should get these cat toys made by spellwell.
The mouse head looks remarkably like the one I found in my laundry room, except for the fact that Mo's mouse head was about 1/4" long. Let me tell you though, small size does NOT negate the creepy factor!

So there's your Geekwif gorefest for the day. Happy Halloween everyone! Stay safe and dress creatively!

Drumroll Please

2009-10-20T12:11:00.003-05:00

After spending the past several days in tortuous deliberation, I have made my decision in the matter of my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel. I shall now announce it after the fashion of the beauty pageant by starting with the not-so-much-a-winner, followed by the penultimate winner, and finally crowning the starry-eyed actual winner.

Our 2nd runner-up is Option #1. (polite clapping) She made a fine go of it, but when it came down to it, she had no substance (aka plot).

Our 1st runner-up is Option #2. (impatient clapping) Pirates would be fun, but would a modern-day pirate ever say "Ahoy, matey" or "Arrrrrr"? And really, what's the point of writing pirates if they don't say "Arrrrrr"?

And our winner is ...
(drumroll)
... Option #3! (Crowd goes wild!!! Tears flow freely.) Yes, this year's winner is a romance about sandwiches, oh yeah. It's cheesy, it's fun, and it's perfect for packing 50,000 words into a ridiculously short span of time.

And now the countdown begins. 12 days from today it's NaNoWriMo 2009!

Need NaNoWriMo Help, Please!

2009-10-18T10:09:00.000-05:00

Okay. I have four options I'm considering. No, make that three, I just decided to scrap one of them. Just now. As I write. She's a fabulous character who I would love to write but I have no plot for her story yet. So there. She's gone ... for now.

Okay, three options. Here they are.

Option #1
Re-write my 2006 NaNoWriMo novel, which was lost when my hard drive crashed just days after completing NaNo that year.

This story is a mix of real world and fairy tale. It's about a woman who is recruited to help save the fairy tale world of the novel her deceased mother wrote years ago. Of course, she doesn't believe such a thing is possible as it's just a story and, obviously, you can't really enter the world of a story. Turns out, of course, that she really can, and she helps to "save the day" while learning things she never knew about her mother (and herself) before finally returning to the "real world".

Pros: It was a fun story to write the first time. The imaginative possibilities in the fantasy world are endless. I've changed it significantly from the original idea (from 2006), and I have none of the original text, so I wouldn't just be editing a previous novel, thus it would not violate the NaNoWriMo starting from scratch rule.

Cons: I have not managed to come up with a conflict that I like yet. There has to be some big problem in the fairy tale world that she can fix. I just don't know what it is, and without that, there is obviously no story. I've had a few ideas, but none that really excited me.

Option #2
Someone at work suggested I write about pirates. I dismissed the idea as silly at first, but then thought it could be interesting to write about someone who is thrown into piracy in the modern day.

I'm thinking some kind of disaster happens that drives the MC (I'm leaning toward a girl, but it could be a guy) to the sea where she joins up with a fishing boat or something. They end up being forced to turn to piracy because of this major (as yet undefined) disaster.

Of course, there would be mixed feelings among the crew about the whole piracy thing. Some would be against it, except for the fact that they really have no other means of survival. Others would think it was fun and start acting like the crew of the Black Pearl. And then, of course, there would be the mixed feelings about the intruder (the MC) who had joined them. Is she really legitimate? Maybe she's a spy sent to ... um ... spy on them. Is there something more to this fishing boat than meets the eye? Hmmmm.

Pros: It's pirates! That has to be fun to write, right? Possibilities for conspiracy and mystery abound.

Cons: I know nothing about boats or sailing, and my knowledge of pirates is pretty much limited to what I saw in "Pirates of the Caribbean". It would take quite a bit of research to be able to write about the inner workings of a boat, and NaNo isn't really research-friendly due to the time limitations.

Option #3
You have to promise not to laugh at this one. Okay, you can laugh, but only a little. It's a chick-lit type romance (but squeaky clean) about BLTs. That's right, the sandwich.

The MC is talking with friends over lunch one day when she mentions how much she loves BLTs. One of them dares her to eat a BLT every day for the next year and offers her 50 bucks if she does it. A guy she knows (co-worker? neighbor?) hears about this and also (unbeknownst to her) overheard a conversation about her needing money for a car. He offers her a ridiculous amount of money (enough to help her get a car) if she will eat 101 BLTs in the next year. But there are three rules.

1) She has to eat two BLTs a week for the next year with the option of backing out of 3 of them, which leaves her with 101 for the year.
2) Every sandwich has to be a different variation on the BLT. No two can be the same.
3) She has to share them with him.

She agrees to the challenge despite the fact that it's a little creepy because she really needs the money and can't see any other way to get it.

Does he turn out to be a creep or a good guy? Will she give up and give him the money back? Can she really stand to eat lunch with this guy twice a week for an entire year?

Pros: It's pure light-hearted fun. It's got bacon in it. (Yum!) I may have to try at least some of the sandwiches that she makes – you know, just to make sure they're good. (Oh, darn.) And it's a great match for NaNoWriMo since there's no time-consuming research involved.

Cons: It's a novel about sandwiches. I mean really – that can't be good – can it? It might be a little too influenced by the fact that I saw "Julie and Julia" recently. I've never written romance before. Do I want to write romance? I don't know. And has this story been written before – except without the BLTs? It's seems a little cliche, but then aren't most romances a little cliche?

So what do you think? Any thoughts? Votes? Hilarious laughter at the ridiculousness of them all? I've got two weeks to make my final decision. And less if I want time to outline. And I still have to sew clothes for our cruise before October's out since November is kind of taken. Help!

Beautiful in Brown

2009-10-07T16:05:00.011-05:00

It's autumn, and the world is turning brown. For the moment, the trees are golden, chartreuse, crimson, lemon, and any number of other gorgeous colors, but I know they'll be turning brown soon. A brown landscape can look a little dreary, but I love it in my wardrobe and in my home. Really, brown is a pretty wonderful color. I mean, look what it can do.

The red vintage buttons alone would be cute,
but add a little brown and they look like a box of candy.
(PaperPumpkin on Etsy)

Brown and blue used to be reserved for baby boys, but why?
This is one of my favorite color combinations. Just go to Etsy
and search for "brown blue" and see if you don't come up with a
plethora of beauties.
(augustnine on Etsy)

Who says brown can't be girly?

How cute is this pink and brown bag?
(daphnenen on Etsy)

See? Now tell me. Does brown not rock?

Where Is That Pesky Button?

2009-10-03T11:39:00.003-05:00

It's the beginning of October. Do you know what that means?

NaNoWriMo is coming soon, baby! In less than one month the Geek and I will be putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and forcing out 50,000 words in one month's time.

And I have no idea whatsoever what I am going to write. In the past four years I've done the following:

2005 - I wrote a novel based loosely on my Grandmother's life. I've since started editing that and made some pretty major changes to the plot and structure of the story. I have a long way to go on it yet.

2006 - I wrote a fairytale-like story that was utterly destroyed when my computer's hard drive died in a fit of drama at the beginning of December. I've always wondered if it wasn't having a temper tantrum because of the abuse I submitted it to in November.

2007 - The year we moved from one state to another - in November of all times - I started to write a sort of futuristic story about a guy who found an illegal book (apparently future people aren't so excited about freedom of speech) and got arrested for it. This was the one time since I started doing NaNoWriMo that I didn't finish my 50,000 words.

2008 - I decided to take it easy and write something light-hearted and fun, so I wrote a novel about three women friends who got stuck in and solved a mystery together. Campy, cheesy, fun.

2009 - This year, as stated earlier, I have no idea what to write. I think my creative button has been inadvertently switched to "off". Anyone know where to find it so I can switch it back?

The Joy of Flying

2009-09-24T05:31:00.003-05:00

I flew to another state to visit a good friend last week. I used to love flying. So why did they have to ruin it? – "they" being the terrorists, I suppose. They're like the kids back in school who misbehaved and resigned us all to the fate of recesses spent inside with our heads on our desks. I mean, really – it's humiliating, taking off your shoes and shuffling along stocking-footed in a public place; taking off your belt and holding your jeans up so they don't fall down. Thank goodness they didn't want to frisk me. That would probably have been the last straw; I might have turned around and gone home and never made it to her place.

I remember the time when your loved ones could walk right up to the gate with you, and watch through the window as your plane left. If you were lucky enough to have a window seat on the appropriate side, you might even see them waving. And perhaps it's just movie-induced romanticization, but catching up with someone at baggage claim just doesn't have the same effect as seeing them waiting for you at the gate as you step off the plane.

There is one part of flying, however, that they can't ruin for me. It's that moment – especially on a cloudy day – when the airplane breaks through the clouds into the blue sky and you find an entirely new world above. It can be cloudy, rainy, ugly weather on the ground, but above the clouds it's eternally sunny. On a thickly overcast day (like the one on which I flew home this week) the clouds below look like a vast expanse of snowy fields, forever unmarred by human footsteps, gleaming in the sunlight. That moment is my favorite part of flying, and it is the one reason that I still love to fly.

How Much Do I Love These Socks!?

2009-09-15T20:12:00.005-05:00

Are these not just the greatest? I'm not usually much of a novelty sock person – they never match my clothes – but these are just too stinkin' cute!

(I saw them on Daily Candy. If you like them, they're available at Ashi Dashi.)

I Totally Got An iPhone

2009-09-06T07:40:00.003-05:00

The Geek's company recently changed their mobile phone service to AT&T, and with that got an employee discount on mobile phone plans. So, since we have noticed that we get better reception now (usually about 2 bars, sometimes more) than we used to (0 bars on a good day), we decided it might be time to get me a mobile phone again. I wanted to get one soon since I'll be traveling in a couple weeks (that's right, Blond Girl, I'm coming to see you in less than 2 weeks!), so we headed into the city yesterday and found ourselves an AT&T store.

On the way there, we discussed what I wanted. I had owned a PDA before and wanted a phone with the organizational capabilities I had with that device, which meant we were probably going to be looking at a smart phone. Having had a "regular" phone before, I knew that I would most likely not get what I wanted from another one.

Of course when we got there, the very perky, cheerful sales girl took us directly to the iPhones because "once you've seen them you won't want anything else!" That's exactly what I was afraid of.

After listening to her rave for about 10 minutes about the wonders of this magnificent device (which really are a little mesmerizing), I forced myself to be practical and explained what I needed (as opposed to what I wanted, which was now definitely an iPhone) in a phone hoping that I might somehow be able to get out of this store without committing myself to a data plan.

Well, as I have already given away in my title, I ended up with the iPhone because the regular phones all look like rotary dial phones after one glimpse of an iPhone, because it was only $99 when you set up new service, and because she was right – once you've seen an iPhone you don't want anything else.

No Animals, Humans, or Cars Were Injured In The Making Of This Blog Post

2009-08-25T15:45:00.004-05:00

You know your morning isn't going so well when it includes, not one, not two, but all of the following:

A cat, waking you at an ungodly hour by smacking you in the face with his tail repeatedly
Rain, the gushing, pouring, oh dear lord it's Noah's ark all over again kind of rain, that starts just moments before you walk out the door
A spider web which hits you in the face on the way through the door - the same door, where there has recently been spotted a spider of a size to rival Shelob, thus triggering your fear of spiders and convincing you that the spider is either stuck in your hair or crawling on your feet
Forgetting the badge that is your only access to the building in which you work - and not realizing it until after you pulled into one of the best parking spots in the lot
Watching someone wait to take that lovely spot while you pull out in order to go back home and get your badge
Realizing on the way home that you also forgot to brush your teeth - how do you forget to brush your teeth??!!
Poor visibility due to rain and an old, funky windshield that reflects all light from oncoming vehicles, leaving you essentially blind
Fresh gravel on the road, having been poured on much too thickly, making driving on said road like driving in a sandbox
A deer running out in front of you on that sandbox road, at the same moment when you are blinded by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, nearly giving you a heart attack after missing it (and the tree-lined road side) by mere inches

The way I see it, tomorrow morning is destined to be absolutely perfect in order to make up for this morning - right?

Garden Update

2009-08-23T16:25:00.006-05:00

I haven't blogged about gardening for quite a while, and since the garden is doing quite well this year, I thought it was about time for an update. We had a little trouble last year, being in a new place. The spot we chose had been dug up during construction, leaving the soil very thick, heavy clay. The tomatoes died within hours of planting. I tried another spot and it did a little better, but by that time it was too late in the year to get a good garden.

This year, the deer have been doing some serious munching – beans, cucumbers, blueberries have all been damaged to varying degrees. But much of the garden is actually doing quite well. Here are some photos I snapped today while out working in the garden.

The herb garden clockwise from bottom left - chives, thyme, parsley, more chives, basil, and dill. I have so many herbs I'm not sure what to do with them all. The chives and dill will be great with potatoes which I'm just starting to harvest (as you'll see soon). The basil might get made into frozen pesto cubes, or dried for winter use. The parsley though - there's a ton of it, and I don't really use much parsley. I just like to grow it because it's pretty and it grows so well it makes a gardener feel really good about her gardening abilities. Anyone have any good recipes that use parsley?

Aren't these cosmos just so pretty! I love them. They are towering over my peppers though! I didn't realize when I planted those itty bitty seeds just how tall cosmos get. The peppers (see the tiny little plants at the feet of the flowers?) are doing well though despite their gigantic neighbors.

Closeup! Can you spot the peppers? There's one on the left and one on the right hiding in the leaves. These will be beautiful yellow bell peppers when they ripen.

The tomatoes are doing great. They're not tall, but they are definitely bushy and there are tons of tomatoes in there. The only problem is that it's been so cool this summer that they're not ripening. I've heard several people with the same problem. Other than that though, they look great. Hopefully we'll get enough warm, sunny weather before fall to ripen them up.

Here's one of my tomatoes hiding among all those beautiful leaves.

The best reward of veggie gardening. Dinner!

Wednesday Nights Are For Writing

2009-08-14T15:33:00.003-05:00

For the past four years, the Geek and I have participated in NaNoWriMo each November. (Just 2 1/2 months until the next one!!) We both love the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in a month, even though we are fully aware that anything we manage to pry out of our minds in that short of a time period will be total crap (thus our pet name of CraNoWriMo). On the other hand, whatever we write is bound to be editable, and with a little (or a lot of) work, we have the potential of ending up with a palatable, and maybe even good, novel.

So here lies the problem. What happens after NaNoWriMo? They set the stage for you in as perfect a way as is possible for something so random as writing a novel. If you choose to take their challenge, they tell you the day you will start and the day you will stop. They tell you your goal – 50,000 original words. They give helpful advice for keeping on task and forums for sharing the experience with others who have also taken the challenge. And, perhaps best of all, they give you an excuse to tell your friends and family that as much as you adore them, you really need to stay home and catch up on your word count.

The nice people at NaNoWriMo even try to give you some help after the fact in case you choose to continue the process by editing your novel. The problem is this: if most people are anything like me (and as unique as I like to think I am, I have no doubt there are a lot of people just like me in this regard) their novel goes into hibernation the minute the clock strikes midnight on November 30th or they type the 50,000th word – which ever comes first.

Of course we all have good intentions. We all want to take the pile of words we just spent a month tossing onto a page and form them into something wonderful. But it's hard to find the time to do so, especially when there are so many other ways to squander your time, like reading blogs, or playing computer games, or shopping.

Well, I can't say I've resolved this issue entirely, but the Geek and I both want to find a way to break out of this this cycle of perpetual procrastination. So, we've instituted a new weekly event in our lives. We will be going out to a coffee shop after dinner each Wednesday night to work on our novels. By setting aside this time and taking us away from the distractions at home, we are much more likely to concentrate on our writing. Plus, by doing this together, we add accountability to each other.

We just started last week, but I'm excited about this. I know that if we really want to go anywhere with our writing, we will need to dedicate more than a couple hours one night a week to it, but I think this is a good start. I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes us.

A New Design

2009-08-11T00:30:00.002-05:00

I'm gearing up to come back. Our lives have been shifting and changing with our move to the country, and it's about time my blog shifted accordingly. The design is a little simpler and also reflects the direction I want to go with this blog. I intend to write more about reading, writing, and other beautiful things that inspire me.

See you back here soon!

I Have A Confession To Make

2009-02-11T16:01:00.003-06:00

I love Super Bowl commercials. I have never watched a Super Bowl in my life. In fact, I've never watched a football game in my life. I have no clue how the game is played except that some guy tries to get the ball to the end of the field before the other guys knock him over. That's it. That is the extent of my knowledge of football.

Anyway, despite my ignorance of the game, I do love the commercials, which I watch most years after they've been released online. This year, my favorite was the ETrade baby commercial. So you can imagine my delight when I found out that ETrade put alternate baby commercials and outtakes on their website.

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. You have to go see them. And watch all of them, because if you miss one it will probably be the funniest and that would be a tragedy. You can find them at http://etrade.com/baby.

Enjoy!!

Dang, That's Cold

2009-01-15T19:07:00.004-06:00

Has anyone seen any of that global warming lying around lately? 'Cause we could really use some up here in the frigid north.

We woke up this morning to discover this:
So please, if you have some extra heat, feel free to send it our way, because global warming seems to have missed us around here.

Happy Birthday To My Favorite Person!

2009-01-14T20:33:00.005-06:00

Guess who turned 40 today!

No, not the dog.

My Favorite Geek has officially been around for 40 years, and he's just as cute as ever. See that boyish grin? The book in his hand? The gigantic puppy in his lap? The comfy sweats? Yeah, they pretty much represent what I adore about him. He's funny, smart, affectionate, and casual, and I love him more every day we're together.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie! I hope your 40s totally rock!

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T08:52:00.000-06:00

Things That Make Me Happy...

2008-12-23T20:54:00.001-06:00

...in no particular order.

a high of 22 degrees when yesterday was zero
this joke - the alternate version totally outdoes the original
bacon
cheese
fresh untouched snow
puppy and kitty kisses
this monkey
fresh-cut Christmas trees, softly lit and covered in nostalgia-inducing ornaments
the sound of my Geek's voice when he gets home from work each night
soft kitty bellies begging for rubbing
a box full yarn waiting to be used
home-made vanilla pudding, still warm, topped with real whipped cream
a day off
the distinct rhyming and rhythm patterns of old fashioned poetry
clever children's poetry like poems by Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein
picking out gifts for friends and family and wrapping them up pretty
being at home
sunbeams pouring through my living room windows

Christmas is Coming!

2008-12-22T19:12:00.004-06:00

I picked up this Christmas Meme from Yellojkt over at Foma. Can you believe Christmas is this week already?

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
I prefer wrapping paper, but a bag will do in a crunch.

2. Real tree or Artificial?
Real. We cut down our own just about every year. This year we misjudged just a little bit and the tree we thought was only about 7 feet turned out to be 9 feet. We had to tie it up with twine because it's too big for our tree stand to handle. And the top 2 feet have no ornaments because neither of us could reach, even with the ladder. Yup. We're fancy.

3. When do you put up the tree?
Whenever we get around to it. This year it was the 2nd weekend of December.

4. When do you take the tree down?
Whenever we get around to it. Usually right around New Year's Day.

5. Do you like eggnog?
Yes, but only in very small doses.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
Hmmm. I don't think I had a single favorite. The doll that cried actual tears was pretty cool. I remember being really, really excited about the Cabbage Patch Doll, Larissa. (So what if she was the off-brand version. She was great.) And I would have worn that purple wool sweater with the lavender oxford shirt every single day in 7th grade if I could have gotten away with it. It was the coolest outfit I ever owned.

7. Hardest person to buy for?
My dad. Actually, I think most guys are hard to buy for.

8. Easiest person to buy for?
My mother-in-law. I think I just understand her taste. Hopefully she doesn't disagree. That would be embarassing.

9. Do you have a nativity scene?
Yes. It's a Fontanini set and I absolutely love it. My parents bought us one piece a year for several years. By the way, has anyone ever come up with a great way of dealing with those hanging angels in nativity sets? I just never know what to do with her.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards?
Email. Definitely email. I should really email our Christmas card....

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
Even if I remembered a really bad one, I wouldn't be so rude as to tell.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
The Grinch. I have always loved Dr. Seuss, and the Grinch is one of his best. Not only is it a great story, the rhyme and meter just make me really happy.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Every year I think that I'll start picking things up as I see them throughout the year. And every year I start to panic around the end of November when I don't have a single gift yet.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
Not to my recollection.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Lefse! Forget the turkey, ham, oyster stew, cookies, etc. Just give me a heaping plate of warm lefse and a stick of soft butter and I am in heaven.

16. Lights on the tree?
Of course! I like white lights best. Our lovely mish-mash of ornaments provide enough color without adding colored lights. And please don't make them blink. That just makes my head ache.

17. Favorite Christmas song?
It was "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" for a long time, but this year I've been jonesing on "Sweet Little Jesus Boy".

18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home?
Either one, as long as we're with family.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer's?
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer....
(Quick fact about me: I can remember just about anything if you set it to music.)

20...
...seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
It was always Christmas Eve when I was a kid, but since we got married it's a little of each.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year?
The fact that retail "Christmas" starts before Halloween now, and the ultra-commercialization of a religious holiday.

23. What theme or color are you using?
I have no idea what this question means.

24. Favorite for Christmas dinner?
See #15.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year?
One less house and two less mortgages.

I'm A Winner!

2008-11-30T17:58:00.003-06:00

Woo hoo! I sprinted to victory today. It took me all day – literally all day. I sat at my laptop, typing from about 8:00 this morning until 5:15 tonight, with a short break for breakfast and one for lunch. But it was so worth it. I now have another 50,000+ word NaNo novel under my belt and another award to display on my blog.

Now it's time to get back to real life. I have a website to finish and an Etsy store to stock. But first, I think I'll have a little dinner and a victory evening off.

It's Crunch Time, Big Time!

2008-11-28T05:16:00.003-06:00

NaNoWriMo is over in about 2 days and I have 10,000 words to write by midnight on Sunday – technically 9,999, but who's counting. That plus I have to work today, drive into the city to see a cousin I haven't seen in years this evening, make Thanksgiving dinner for my family tomorrow, and finish a website I'm redesigning for a friend by December 1st.

Yikes. December's going to feel downright lackadaisical after this!

Geekwif Crafts News

2008-11-13T19:03:00.004-06:00

Great news! I sold my first bookmark! It actually wasn't on Etsy. I had told a few people at work about my Etsy shop and one of them came to my desk yesterday, plopped some money down in front of me and asked me to make her a bookmark. Yay!

Then, when I got home today, I had an email waiting for me from a fellow Etsy seller who had featured one of my bookmarks on her blog. I checked, and while I haven't had any sales yet, I did have quite a lot of people viewing my items today.

What happened is this: I did an Etsy Treasury this weekend, which is essentially a gallery of 12 Etsy items that you like. Any Etsy member can make a Treasury (the limit is 333 treasuries at a time) and generally they are collections of items that are alike in some way. Mine was made up of items that were made of pewter or pewter in color.

One of the items in it was a pretty gray peyote cuff bracelet by SandFibers. In return, she posted a screen shot of my Treasury and my bookmark photo on her blog. You can find them both in this blog post. Just do a find on the word "pewter" or scroll down until you find the Treasury called "Pretty in Pewter".

By the way, I added another Austen bookmark to the shop. This one is in a pretty pale green with ivory trim. I have more items to add – something other than Austen bookmarks this time! – just need to get the photos ready to list them.

But right now, I need to get back to NaNoWriMo. I'm a few thousand words behind on my word count, so it's time to go catch up!

Lessons in Procrastination

2008-11-10T18:32:00.005-06:00

You would think that at the core of NaNoWriMo would be hard work, dedication, and insanity, and you would be right. But there is another value at the core of NaNo that is dear to the hearts of it's followers:

Procrastination.

There's even a category in the forums which is dedicated to those who are willing to share their most beloved (and often creative) forms of procrastination. (It currently has 18181 posts in it!) Heck, there's even a Procrastination Station on the front page of the website!

So, today, I would like to introduce you to my very own favorite form of procrastination. It's called Elouai, and it's just so darn cool. It's kind of like paper dolls for the new millennium. The site lets you choose a head shape, eyes, nose, mouth, clothes, hair, shoes, etc. So very cool.

I figured out a couple of years ago that it was a great way to visualize my characters, and I did it again this year. So, today I'm going to introduce you to the darlings of my (yet unnamed) novel. (If you remember me doing this 2 years ago, or followed that link, don't worry. The format is different this time so there will be no danger of these characters losing their heads or their clothes.)

Pru

Pru is a no-nonsense, single (widowed) quadragenarian (soon to be quintagenarian) who owns a cooking store in NYC – a thousand miles away from her closest friends. She has pewtery hair and striking blue eyes (though they are not nearly as big as that picture makes them look). And her glasses are not green. They're pewter, to match her hair, of course! Her favorite color is purple, which is reflected in her clothing and in her store where the walls are all painted in shades of purple.

Charity

Charity is a brilliant 23 year-old from Minneapolis who hates her name – Charity Love. She has been in Bible College for five years and is still no closer to her goal of an MRS degree (or any other degree for that matter) than when she started. In the meantime she works at an Italian restaurant where she hopes to find a dishy Italian guy who'll change her name for her since she can't seem to find anyone acceptable at school.

Evie (who you'll meet next) was her youth group leader when she was in high-school and Charity absolutely adores her. She loves her kids too, but don't tell Evie that; Charity needs her social time and when Evie asks her to babysit, she can never say no.

Evie

Evie tends to dress for ease and comfort since she has eight kids to chase after every day. Yeah, that's right – eight – and only one set of twins. They range from 14 years down to 6 months and all have pretty normal names, except for the last one, who for some reason (she can't really remember why now) ended up with the name Ocean. They call him Jack.

She once had a dream of being a fashion designer, but now that she's a mom, the only models to wear her creations are her kids. Despite her typical look of whatever clean clothes she can find to throw on, she cleans up pretty nicely when she has the occasion to do so – like this...Ahh. Much better. She told me that she would really rather that skirt was a nice robin's egg blue (her favorite color), but the store only had it in this bronzy color, which is okay, since it goes with just about anything and it's the only dressy skirt she owns.

So there you have it. Despite my valiant efforts at procrastination, I'm actually doing pretty well. I have written 15,816 words so far, and as long as I can write another 800 or so tonight, I'll still be on track for the 50,000-word goal. Guess I better get busy!

Worst. Novel. Ever?

2008-11-02T07:27:00.003-06:00

In the first pep-talk email of the month, written by the guy who founded NaNoWriMo 10 years ago, he said this:

I still get an excited stomach-flutter at the start of November. I can't help but feel giddy as I ponder questions like: Will this be the best novel I've ever written? And, secretly: Will this be the best novel ever written in the history of humankind?
Because it really could be.

Then the writing starts, and by the second sentence, two new questions have occurred to me. Namely: What am I doing? And: Could this be the worst novel ever written in the history of humankind?
And you know what? It really could be.

I know exactly what he means. This could just be the worst novel ever written in the history of mankind. But you know what? I'm having fun! And I've written 4188 words so far! That means I'm up by more than 800 words. I can handle that, even if it is 4188 of the silliest words ever written.

And They're Off!

2008-11-01T21:23:00.004-05:00

NaNoWriMo's servers must be seriously overloaded tonight, which is no big surprise considering it's the first day and everyone and their cousin is trying to get themselves signed up at the last minute for 2008.

So I managed to upload my word count, but I'm too impatient to try to get one of those fancy dancy little word counters for my sidebar. I did get off to a good start though with 1758 words – just over 1/30th of the way to 50,000!

19 Hours and Counting!

2008-10-31T04:55:00.002-05:00

It's almost here! NaNoWriMo is about to begin. November is going to be a crazy busy month, but I must WriMo!

50,000 words, here we come!

An Unintentional Review of Reviews

2008-10-18T06:49:00.000-05:00

I always hated writing book reports back in my school days. I never knew what they were supposed to be – a summary? – a review? – nothing more than proof that you read the book?

As an adult, I have no teachers to make me write book reports anymore, but a book review seems to be the grown-up version of a book report in some ways. The problem is that I really don't like book reviews either – at least not what I think of as book reviews.

In my (possibly warped) mind, book reviews are written by well-educated, hyper-literary people who could medal in the MENSA Mind Olympics in the literary category if there was one. They know all the rules, have read every book ever written, and remember everything they read. Their reviews are riddled with facts I don't care to know (like how many awards the author has won and what lists the book is on) and never really tell me whether or not I would like the book or not.

What I do like is reading what my friends think. Since these are the people I like to hang out with (or whose blogs I like to hang out at), chances are if they like it, I might like it too. I don't necessarily want to know if its the most brilliant piece of literature of the century. (Okay, if it really was the most brilliant, I might want to know that, but the truth is that brilliance is just so subjective.)

I guess you could say what I want is a friendly opinion of the book you read. The really nice thing about friendly opinions of books (as opposed to reviews) is that you find out the stuff you really want to know, like whether or not you fell in love with the characters; if you got so immersed in the story that you forgot to make dinner; if you would buy the book because you know that you'll read it a dozen more times in your lifetime – or in the next 6 months.

I guess this is what most bloggers write when they post a review on their blog, but for some reason whenever I see that someone is posting a "book review", I think of that warped, MENSA-member-written version of a review instead of the nice friendly version.

Anyway, I was planning to sit down and write my friendly opinion of a book I just read, but the moment I typed the word "review" I choked and wrote this instead. I guess the actually opinion-giving will have to wait.

Good What?

2008-10-14T15:41:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I wonder about strange things - not necessarily things that are actually strange, but rather things that are strange to wonder about. It's a quirk, I suppose, and hopefully one that is endearing rather than off-putting.

Lately I've been wondering about greetings that are specifically time-based, like good night or good day. It started when I realized that as I left work at 2:30 in the afternoon, I say to my co-workers, "good night," even though it's only mid-afternoon. They say the same back to me and no one seems to think it strange that we are saying "good night" in the middle of the afternoon.

Then I started wondering about people who work night shifts and what greetings they use. For instance, if a person starts their workday at 10:00 pm, they would not say "good night" to greet their co-workers as they arrived. Similarly, as they left the next morning, they would not say "good morning". It seems that good night is synonymous with good bye and good morning is synonymous with hello, except that you can not use good night in the morning or good morning at night.

And then there is the phrase, good afternoon. Pure common sense would dictate that I could use this phrase when leaving work at 2:30 pm, and yet it would sound horribly strange to say "good afternoon" when I leave. Good afternoon seems to be another phrase that means the same as hello.

So there you have it – just one of the many weird things that occupies my mind in quiet moments. I suppose there might be a perfectly good explanation for this phenomenon, but I doubt it. More than likely it just is what it is and isn't worth wondering about. And yet, I still wonder.

It Doesn't Take Much To Entertain Me

2008-10-08T16:52:00.005-05:00

Here are a couple of funny things that had me ROFLing this week.

Generally I don't approve of Christians fighting over trivial things, but this made me laugh...
...out loud...
...at work. Now that is quite the feat.

These churches face each other across a busy street.

Yeah, I'm not Catholic myself, but I gotta say that the Catholics totally kicked some Presbyterian tushy on this one.

And then there's this gem...

The Geek and I have been walking around the house randomly shouting, "MOOOOOOOOO!!" "TRACTOOOOOOOORRRRRR!!"

Of course, we think yelling anything in a heavy metal voice is funny. Really. Is that weird?

My (Not So?) Hare-Brained Scheme

2008-10-07T19:15:00.000-05:00

(In my previous post, I mentioned that I was up to a hare-brained scheme. I'd like to apologize to the scheme for calling it hare-brained. Apparently it was a little hurt by that statement, so I just want to go on record as saying that it really is a brilliant scheme. It will be even more brilliant if I continue to follow through on that "working really hard and being happy" thing.

So, I would like to introduce you to my new Etsy store – Geekwif Crafts!

I'm really excited about this. It gives me a chance to do lots of my favorite crafty things and (hopefully) make money doing it.

Geekwif Crafts will feature handmade items that are related to reading and books. All items will be original designs. So far I only have bookmarks in the shop, but I will be adding many more reading-related items soon. (Keep an eye on my shop to find out what they are.)

The first bookmark in the shop is called the "Austen Bookmark", after Jane Austen (of course). It's actually a design I created several months ago and liked so much that I adapted the pattern to make a baby blanket for a friend. You can click on the image to the left to see the item in my shop and find out more about it.

As I add more items, I'll be posting about them here. If you love to read and need a pretty bookmark or maybe a gift for a friend who loves to read; or if you are just curious, please come and visit me at Etsy!

Working Hard and Being Happy

2008-10-03T18:58:00.005-05:00

Last night I was browsing my RSS feed reader. I clicked on a link and as the page loaded, my eye passed over it. At a glance, I misread the first line to say, "I like the idea of working really hard and being happy..." Do you ever read something and an immediate "YES" goes off in your head with flashing lights and sirens blaring? This was just such a moment. I want to work really hard and be happy.

That is certainly not to say that I am not happy with my life. My Geek is the most wonderful man I've ever known. I am incredibly blessed to have him as my husband and I love him more every day I spend with him. I have a lovely home in a beautiful peaceful setting. I have supportive friends and family. Despite a few frustrations, I really am quite happy with my life.

But one of the biggest frustrations I have (and I know I share this frustration with many, many people) is that I am not happy with my work, and for the most part have not been for the past 20 years. I go from job to job to horrible job and every time I feel like I fall further and further into an inescapable sinkhole. I have to work so we can pay the bills, but the only work for which I am qualified and which pays enough, tends to make me unhappy.

So this mistaken quote struck a chord with me, to put it mildly. A resounding "YES" still reverberates through me every time I think of that sentence. "I like the idea of working really hard and being happy..."

I used to think I was lazy; that I hated my work because I didn't really want to work at all. But I know that's not true. There is a deep satisfaction to be found in working really hard, in exerting yourself whether physically or mentally with the result of accomplishing something productive and rewarding. I want that to be at the core of my working life.

I'm tired of going day after day to a job where I do work that has no lasting significance. No one's life will ever be made more beautiful or richer or more fulfilled, because of the work I do there. If I left, no one would even remember me a month from now and my work there would have no lasting impression on the company or any of the individuals there. My leaving would not impact the office either positively or negatively.

I want to work really hard and be happy. I've wanted this all my life, but never put it into quite those words. I've been searching all my adult life for a way to combine these two things – working really hard and being happy. Some people seem to find this elusive balance early on in life, and some spend their entire lives searching unsuccessfully. I'm certainly not one of the former, but I desperately hope I am able to achieve this goal before I become the latter.

So I'm working on a hare-brained scheme, something that makes me happy, and something I've been thinking of for a while, but I thought I could not accomplish while working a full-time job. Now I think, maybe I just have to push that phrase "really hard" a little further. Maybe I need to be willing to give up a little more in order to make this happen. So I'm going to push myself a little harder, work a few more hours in the day, and maybe if I work "really hard" enough at the thing that makes me happy, I can become one of those people who are fortunate enough to "work really hard and be happy".

It's Coming!!

2008-10-01T17:30:00.003-05:00

NaNoWriMo starts exactly one month from today! This month we won't be in the midst of moving, so the Geek and I are both planning to write like madmen and cross the finish line of 50,000 words before midnight on November 30th.

I have no idea yet what I'm going to write about, but that's okay. If inspiration doesn't hit me by the 1st of November, I'll just randomly pick something. I can't wait to get started.

NaNoWriMo, Baby! Woo hoo!!

Free Handbags! Woo hoo!!

2008-09-27T22:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've never really admitted it here but it's time I did so. I'm kind of a closet handbag freak. Granted I have never bought a designer handbag in my life and I would never spend thousands of dollars on handbags thus plunging my husband and myself into financial ruin in order to feed my obsession. But I do have quite a few bags hanging in my closet. I'm not picky about brand names; I just like cute bags.

I also like to visit websites where they sell handbags and just admire the pretty pictures, dreaming of buying them but resisting because my frugal self always wins out no matter how much my shoulder longs to carry that adorable bag on my computer screen.

But I just found out tonight that there's a new website launching on October 15th called Handbag Planet. Normally they'll be selling cute handbags for great prices, but on the 15th they'll be giving away one handbag an hour for 24 hours! That's 24 FREE handbags, people!

It's easy to sign up, and they even let you choose which style you want to be entered for so you don't end up with something that's just not your style.

FREE handbags! You gotta check it out.

Geek.Farm.Life

2008-09-27T14:14:00.003-05:00

Almost a year ago, my sweet geek of a husband and I finally realized our long-time dream when we built our home on a six-acre lot in the country. Now we are dreaming of what we will do with all this glorious space that surrounds us. He wants a volleyball court, a swimming pool, a hot tub, a waterfall and a stream; I want a gigantic garden, flowers and paths and trees, and I very much want some animals – maybe a cow, or some sheep, or maybe goats. We’re still working out the details.

Well, Misty and Andrew, a geek couple who traded in their city life in California for a farm in rural Indiana, have gotten a lot of those details worked out already. On their farm they have a huge garden with veggies of so many kinds I haven’t even heard of some of them; and animals including goats for milk, sheep for wool, ducks for eggs, bees for honey, and rabbits and turkeys for meat – if I’m not missing anything.

Basically, they are living the life I want to live, and they do it all while still working full-time “geek jobs”. Oh yeah – and they podcast it.

Geek.Farm.Life is the first podcast I ever downloaded onto my iPod Nano. I would set iTunes to download as many episodes as possible every Friday night while we sat and ate dinner at the local wi-fi equipped restaurant. It took a while, but eventually I got through them all, and I have loved every minute of it.

Misty and Andrew cover a wide variety of topics from harvesting honey to making soap from scratch; from using goat’s milk and keeping it fresh to making mead (or was it beer? – maybe both); the equipment they use for recording their podcast to their vacation in New Zealand and the wool spinners they met there. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

And then there’s the Farm Phone. The Farm Phone is more than just a listener call-in line. It’s an icon. The Farm Phone – well, it rocks. Every week they play listener’s calls, answer questions, and comment on anecdotes submitted in the calls. The Farm Phone turns what would otherwise be a one-way show into a delightful conversation between the podcasters and the listeners.

I love Geek.Farm.Life, and if you enjoy animals, gardening, fiber arts, country living, beekeeping, or geek stuff – either directly or vicariously through others’ experiences – I think you’d enjoy this podcast too.

You can find the Geek.Farm.Life podcast at iTunes by typing in "geek.farm.life", or on their own website at http://geekfarmlife.com/archives/category/podcast/

Eavesdropping Over the Cubical Walls

2008-09-14T14:35:00.004-05:00

Nancy*: I'm looking for a mason.

Linda: A cooking one or a cleaning one?

(At this point there was about a 2 minute pause. I thought the conversation was over – unfortunately it was not.)

Nancy: No, I'm looking for a mason.

Linda: Oh, a real live one?

Nancy: Yeah, a live one is better than a dead one.

Linda: One of those guys with the funny hats?

(A short pause followed in which Nancy apparently decided to give up and start over.)

Nancy: I'm looking for a mason.

Linda: Oh, a guy who pours cement.

*Names changed to protect the innocent.

Scruples! Free For The Taking!

2008-09-09T15:28:00.001-05:00

There seems to be an imbalance of scruples among my co-workers. Most of us carry with us an average amount of scruples; a few have stuffed every pocket full of them like gophers hoarding nuts; and then there are those who seem to have lost every scruple they ever had.

I used to think I was in the first category of those with a medium amount of scruples – enough to keep the boss happy and avoid the need for discipline, but not so many as to be troublesome. But I have recently discovered that I have way too many scruples for my own good. I think someone has been stuffing them in my pockets and up my sleeves when I wasn’t looking – either that or they’re multiplying like tribbles – because I am being suffocated by scruples.

I have one co-worker in particular who seems to have a lack of scruples. I don’t know if she leaves them in a pile at the door every day as she walks in the building, or if she lost them all in a gambling spree at the casino up the road, but I’m seriously considering offering her some of mine. Unfortunately, I suspect she would be offended by my offer, and then I’m sure that the management would come after me since they don’t seem to approve of the distribution of scruples among co-workers, even though they are perfectly alright with distributing the work of the scruple-deficient workers among those workers who are more abundant in scruples.

So, if anyone is interested, I am desperate enough to empty my pockets of scruples that I am giving them away for free, because these scruples are killing me.

Why Ibuprofen Is My Friend Today

2008-08-23T07:40:00.003-05:00

Before I get on with the podcast series, I just have to jump in here with a bit of a news break. I have finally done something that it seems everyone else in the world had done before me. Something painful but necessary, scary but it had to be done. Yesterday, I had my first tooth pulled.

It started about 2 months ago I think, when I stuck my finger in the back of my mouth to get out a bit of food that got stuck between my cheek and my tooth (oh c'mon, don't tell me you don't do that when you're alone), and thought, "Hmmmm. I don't think that edge is supposed to be jagged."

Thus began Operation Putting off the Search for a Dentist, since I didn't have a dentist yet in this new town. I'll skip all the long boring stuff that led to me yesterday's adventure and just say that the dentist who told me when I was seventeen that I had a big mouth?

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

My new dentist – who by the way is a woman, which surprised me at first because I had never met a woman dentist, until the surprise turned into relief because there's something about a woman dentist that is more comfortable even though I don't know why exactly – kept telling me how small my mouth was, how difficult it was to get in there to reach the wisdom tooth that had broken in half, and kept apologizing for having to stretch my mouth open so far in order to reach it.

Before it started, I really didn't think I was scared, but at the moment she told me she was about to start and explained to me calmly just what she was going to do, I just about jumped out of the chair and ran home bawling and screaming, "Don't do it!"

But I didn't. I stayed in my chair, not crying, and saying the alphabet over and over in my head in order to distract myself because the TV hanging over my head wasn't good enough. And soon (after about 10 shots of novacaine) it was over.

Now, I'm home, with a slightly puffy mouth, but mostly okay with ibuprofen as my friend. And hoping I never have to do that again.

Sharing My Addiction

2008-08-19T15:15:00.000-05:00

A while ago, I wrote about my new obsession with podcasts. I am still enamoured with them and I am continuously updating them, adding new ones, deleting the boring ones, and listening to them whenever possible: at work, while I walk the dog, while I clean the house, etc. It's a sickness, really.

For those of you who may not yet have contracted this auditory ailment, I’ll attempt to explain it. It’s hard to capture in words what exactly is the allure of podcasts. In a way they are like old-time radio shows, or current radio shows for that matter. In fact, some of the podcasts I listen to are actually radio shows that are offered on iTunes as podcasts as well. But while not everyone can get (or even wants) their own radio show, anyone can have their own podcast. I suppose in that way it’s like a blog; it’s not easy to get your own newspaper column for example, but the wonder of the WWW makes it simple for anyone to publish their thoughts for the world to see on their very own blog.

That still does not tell you why I have fallen head over heels for podcasts, does it? Maybe it’s the freedom they offer to absorb information and entertainment at my leisure. With my iPod I can listen to a podcast of my choice anytime I want. I don’t have to wait until the scheduled time and make sure that I have a radio available in order to listen to a podcast. My iPod goes with me almost everywhere, so, for instance, if I get bored while executing a particularly mundane task at work, I can pop in my earbuds and ~~feed my addiction~~ be entertained while my fingers keep working apart from my brain.

Anyway, I thought I would share with you a few of my favorite podcasts. As I mentioned above, I listen to some radio shows that are “podcasted” as well as broadcasted, and some independent podcasts by plain old folks just like you and me. I’m fairly picky about the quality of the podcasts I listen to, so if you are interested in finding some for yourself, I would say you are probably safe in trying out the ones I’ll be recommending.

That said, this post is getting a bit lengthy, and I want to give each podcast the recognition it deserves, so expect a short series coming up with reviews of my favorite podcasts. They range from gardening and general DIYing, to grammar obsessions and writing tips. In the meantime, if you have a favorite podcast (or 2 or 3) to recommend, drop me a line in the comments or write a review on your own blog and leave me a link. I’d love to hear about your favorite podcasts too. Because if this is a sickness, I just don't want to get well.

Back In The 21st Century

2008-08-14T19:36:00.001-05:00

I have news of epic proportions. This is big, people. Really, really big. There are only a handful of things that could possibly happen in my life right now that could be bigger than this.

If you’ve read my blog in the past 10 months or so, you may have picked up on the fact that we have only had dial-up access to the internet since we moved out to the boonies. It was an acceptable sacrifice in exchange for the glorious benefits of leaving the hood to live in the country, but it was so hard to live without it.

Even as I type those words, I cringe a little. Shouldn’t I be able to live without high-speed internet? Didn’t I live quite well for the first 20+ years of my life without any access to the internet at all?

Wait a minute. Breathe.

Okay, I’m better now. Kindly ignore that moment of insanity. Really, I’m okay. And do you know why I’m okay? Because we now have broadband internet again! Did you hear that? I’ll repeat it just in case you missed it.

We have broadband internet!!! Woo hoo!!!

I feel like I’ve been trying to breathe under water since November and I finally got my head above the water and am taking a deep, satisfying breath of fresh clean air. Ah, dear me, it’s good to be back.

First Kiss

2008-08-08T20:05:00.001-05:00

This is my submission to Scribbit's August Write-Away contest. I've been searching unsuccessfully for blogging inspiration, but when I saw her topic for this month's contest I knew I had found it. The story is true, but the names have been changed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was ten years old and standing in a closet with a boy. It was dark; so dark I couldn’t see his face, or the clothes that hung by my head, or even the door. I stood there waiting, but for what I didn’t know. After all, I was only ten.

“Did you do it yet?” His little sister’s voice carried excitedly from the other side of the closet door in a world where light still shone and one could see the clothes – or the boy – before them.

“Geez, Jenny!” Kevin replied. We stood there silent for a few more seconds that seemed like hours. He didn’t seem to be moving toward me, not that I would know in the dark. Did I want him to kiss me? I wasn’t sure. He was a boy after all, and even though he was a nice boy, every ten-year-old girl knows that boys are icky.

A sliver of light appeared where Jenny cracked open the sliding door, immediately followed by her left eye peering into the darkness. Apparently she couldn’t see well enough to satisfy her impatient curiosity, so she slid the door open wide. “I thought you two were going to kiss,” she said. She was irritated. We had failed to live up to her expectation.

Kevin exited and I was right behind him. People called us “boyfriend and girlfriend” – mostly our moms with winks and goofy grins – but I wasn’t sure why. I mean, I liked him and all, and it was nice to hang out with him sometimes, like the time I got invited to go horseback riding with him and his mom and her friend on his birthday. It was fun. Was that what being a boy’s girlfriend was all about? Jenny seemed to think it involved kissing too, which kind of made sense, but was still icky.

We never did kiss. Kevin and Jenny went home with their parents that night and I quickly forgot about the whole kissing thing; a favorite book was a quick and easy distraction. It wasn’t long after that night that Kevin and I “broke up”, which I figured out meant that we didn’t get to hang out together anymore. Apparently I said something that made him mad. I still got to be friends with Jenny though, which was nice because with her no one used silly words like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” and no one expected any kissing.

It was over ten years before the kissing issue came up again. Boys never paid much attention to me in that time since my best friend was gorgeous and vivacious – oh yeah, and blonde. That was fine with me – mostly – because it meant I didn’t have to talk much and risk making a fool of myself which I invariably did whenever I opened my mouth. On the other hand, I was sometimes jealous of her because she always had a boyfriend and I never did. Boys didn’t seem so icky as they used to.

And then I met him. He was just past being a boy, at least on the outside. He was playful and silly, a little geeky and still a bit boyish, but just serious and smart enough to be attractive to the young woman I had become. He asked me to marry him, and though we had never been on a date I knew I would be happy with him for the rest of my life. We could sit and talk for hours on end, and I hardly ever made a fool of myself, and if I did, for the first time in my life it didn’t really matter – because he loved me. He loved me. Maybe it was time to finally kiss a boy.

He wanted to wait until our wedding day. We were going to be married in about four months, but he wanted to play it safe, to not take any chances by doing things that might “lead us into temptation”, like kissing. So we didn’t kiss, even though he loved me and I loved him back. We smiled and laughed and talked and planned and loved each other, but we did not kiss.

As our wedding day approached, I began to get nervous. Soon we would be standing in front of two hundred of our friends and family, and I, who had never kissed anyone before, would have my first kiss on display before them all. My heart pounded in trepidation at the thought of it.

So, not having any superstitions about my groom seeing me before the wedding, I requested one practice kiss. Shortly before the ceremony, when all the preparations were complete and we were both dressed in our wedding day finery, he, at my request, came to my dressing room. We chased out bridesmaids and mothers and attendants for just a few minutes.

He came close to me, put his hands on my shoulders and drew me toward him. I closed my eyes and let all the world fade away. It was our wedding day and for this moment all that remained were the two of us. “Tilt your head like this,” he said quietly, and the man I loved, who would soon call me his “wif”, gently tilted my head to the side, and kissed me.

Circular Illogic

2008-07-11T20:09:00.003-05:00

Have you ever had one of those days (or weeks, or months, or years!) when your head is just so full to overflowing with information and confusion and decisions to be made and icky stuff you'd like to get out of your head, and stuff you need to do but keep forgetting to do that your brain just shuts down on you and won't let you pick out any one thing from the crowd of stuff that is threatening to overthrow you as Queen of your own head and you can barely form a decently sensible thought much less an entire blog post so you just sit down and fill the page with nonsense because you haven't blogged in nearly a month and you figure you better do something or people will stop coming to visit and you really don't want that because you really do like blogging and the people who read your blog, but it's just been one of those days (or weeks, or months, or years!) when your head is just so full to overflowing with....

The Truth about Friday the 13th (according to me)

2008-06-13T18:44:00.004-05:00

After 37 years of existence in this crazy world, I think I've figured out the mystery of Friday the 13th. I don't know what its true origins are – something ancient and pagan I would guess – but I'm too lazy to go Google it. Okay, actually I'm not too lazy; I'm just not going to waste precious minutes of free wi-fi to go find it.

Anyway, today, as I was working diligently (and simultaneously eavesdropping on my co-workers' conversation) I finally figured it out. The true mystery of Friday the 13th is not in the strange events that happen. Nope. The true mystery of F13* is the strange people.

Now, granted, people are strange 365 days of the year (366 this year), but it seems to me that people get even weirder on F13, as evidenced by the following conversation I overheard today.

Jean** (after a loud clatter): What was that!!???

Susan: Oh! That was my calendar falling off the wall.

Nancy: Really? Wow! My calendar fell off the wall today too! Holy cow! That is so weird!

Jean: Well, it is Friday the 13th. (By the way, I had heard this exact sentence from at least 3 other people today.)

Susan: Woah! That is so weird!

Jean: Spooky!

Okay, do you see it? The only thing weird and spooky here is the fact that my co-workers find it weird and spooky that their calendars would both fall off the wall on the same day. If this had happened yesterday, on Thursday the 12th, they would not have thought anything of it.

People are so weird....and spooky.

*Friday the 13th: because free wi-fi or not, I am lazy.

**All names have been changed to protect the identity of my co-workers...and to protect my job security.

They Say It's My Birthday....Happy Birthday To Me

2008-06-06T08:02:00.003-05:00

I'm not usually one for making a big deal about my own birthday, but you know what? – this is shaping up to be a really great birthday, plus I'm actually home this morning which means I have a few minutes to sit down a type a blog post! Amazing!

A couple days ago, the Geek's parents came over for a few minutes in the evening and brought a giant basket full of beautiful plants they had dug up from a friend's garden (with her permission, of course). She is a prolific gardener whose back yard has no lawn – the entire thing is a garden of perennials. I've been invited back tomorrow to dig some more of my own if I want!

Yesterday my co-workers put on a great little party for me. It was lovely. We ate Bed & Breakfast-themed food all day (biscuits and gravy, crunchy caramel puffs, coffee cake, donut holes, and much more - yummy!), they decorated my desk, they sang Happy Birthday to me, and they all wore mis-matched socks.

That's a story for another time.

A few co-workers gave me gifts too – Skittles (enough to last me a lifetime!), Red Bull (to which I am whole-heartedly addicted), and my favorite of all? A bunch of plants! One of them actually bought me 6 herb plants and brought 2 small trees from her own yard for me! Yay! I need plants so badly to make this bare lot look like home, and with the help of several different people I have gotten a lot of things for free.

And the best of all? My Geek is taking me to a nearby town to stay in a bed & breakfast for the night. It's one of those awesome, quaint little towns with TONS of antique shops and book stores. We're dropping the dog off with his parents this morning and then heading out there.

It's going to be a great birthday! Happy Birthday to me! :)

Ugggghhh.

2008-05-29T19:36:00.004-05:00

Warning: Rant ahead!

In the last week or two...

...the drama at my workplace has increased exponentially, putting many of my co-workers into really stinky moods...

...all of the plants I transplanted to the garden died within a day of planting due to nasty, solid clay soil which I cannot afford to amend right now...

...I have found no less than 7 ticks crawling on me (no other member of the household, furry or otherwise, has had more than 1 – most have had none)...

...we have still not sold our house...

...I've been so stressed out (and consequently tired) at work that I've been falling asleep every day on my breaks and occasionally fighting the same state at my desk...

...my in-laws' dog (who was 2nd only to my own dog in sweetness) went to doggy heaven.

Ugggghhh.

Six-Word Memoir

2008-05-22T19:15:00.003-05:00

Holy Mama tagged me for this one. It's been a while since I've been tagged for anything, so it was kind of fun to be tagged now. And this is a fun one too.

The rules are simple. Write a memoir in a blog post, but it must be exactly 6 words.

After ~~thinking about it for a minute or so~~ much consideration I came up with this.

One dog. Five cats. Swiffer good.

Yup, that's my furry life in a nutshell.

Now it's your turn! Comment with a link if you do this one. I'd love to read your six-word memoir!

Hi, My Name Is Geekwif...

2008-05-07T20:04:00.005-05:00

...and I'm a podcast-aholic. Yes, it's true. I have discovered the wonderful world of podcasts.

And they are a-w-e-s-o-m-e.

Some time ago, I had heard of podcasts from a few people out there, mostly people I didn't really know. They sounded to me like radio bits or something and I didn't really understand what was so appealing about them.

Then, maybe a year or so ago, I got curious enough to go looking on iTunes and see what was out there in the world of podcasts. And whaddya know – there were podcasts for just about any topic you could want, and they were almost all free. I subscribed to a few just to try them out, but never really got into it. It wasn't long before I forgot I had ever downloaded anything.

And then ...

My Geek mentioned one day, a month or two ago, that he really would like to get an iPod. He had heard you could get used ones in good condition on eBay for great prices. We agreed we would both like to have one, so he found two that looked good, bid on them, and won. Within a week we both had our slightly-less-than-new, shiny iPods.

I plugged mine in (it's a totally cool limey green color!) and began loading the music from my iTunes playlists. While I was doing so I noticed a button at the top of the screen that said "podcasts". It had been waiting there all along for this moment, knowing its time would come, patiently waiting for this fateful day.

I clicked, and there were the forgotten podcasts. With no thought of any possible harm, I added them to the list of items to sync with my new iPod. Once the sync was complete, I queued one up and started listening.

That moment, my friends, was my downfall, and because of it my life will never be the same. It wasn't long before I was listening to and watching podcasts about gardening, crocheting, crafting, eBaying, farming, do-it-yourself-ing, writing and so much more.

Since we have dial-up at home, it can take several hours to download a single podcast, so on Friday nights when we go to dinner at the restaurant with free wi-fi, I immediately plug in my laptop when we are seated and start downloading more podcasts while we eat.

It's a sickness, I know, but for the time being it's a sickness of which I have no desire to be cured. In the past few weeks I have learned how to hill potatoes, rid my garden of Japanese beetles, cut down a tree, smoke a turkey, make beer, and a plethora of other skills that I would probably never have learned if I had not discovered the wonder of podcasts. (Never mind that I'm not growing potatoes this year, don't have Japanese beetles, don't own a chainsaw, don't have a smoker, and don't drink beer.)

So if I go AWOL; if you are unable to contact me by phone, email, blog comment or any other means of communication; if you knock on my door and I do not answer; if my blog posts are few and far between, you may safely assume that I am attending to my latest obsession.

And if you're interested in checking out some podcasts yourself, I'd be happy to point you in the direction of a few of my favorites.

Just beware ... they are seriously addictive.

A Quote For The Workplace

2008-05-03T08:28:00.004-05:00

My husband emailed me this quote he found yesterday...

"When you walk in the door at your place of business and start
shooting your coworkers, it's safe to assume you've decided your job
isn't working out, and that you're ready to move on."

If I printed this out and hung it by my desk at work, do you think they would fire me?

My Life Is A Drama Queen

2008-05-01T16:36:00.001-05:00

My life right now could be a soap opera ... minus the “who’s sleeping with who” aspect, of course. There is drama, drama everywhere, and I’d be happy to spare some of it if you are lacking drama in your own life. I wouldn’t even charge you!

First, My Geek is sick. He stayed home from work one day, but otherwise he’s had to go, stuffy nose, pounding head, aches and chills and all. I have been slathering myself in Purell and keeping contact with him and his germs to a minimum in an attempt to prevent myself from catching his cold. I think he might think I’m a little paranoid, but I cannot afford to get sick.

And then there’s the weather. Ah, the weather. I’ve chronicled it quite extensively in my blog over the past months, and still it continues. After two brief bursts of spring, winter keeps coming back to us. It’s like the bully in junior high who would smack you on the right side of the head and then run to your left side while yelling, “Psych!!” Seriously annoying.

A co-worker told me that she heard a forecast for snow on Saturday. It’s MAY. Ugh. That’s all there is to say about that. Just Ugh.

And I would be remiss to leave out work. The drama there would out-shine any movie or TV show I’ve ever seen. Ever known a drama queen? She had nothing on my workplace. Holy cow. I’m not going to go into details at the moment. It’s just too crazy – I wouldn’t know where to start. But trust me when I say it’s nuts. I have never worked anywhere in my life where people would have gotten away with some of the things certain employees are getting away with at this place. Nuts, I tell you.

So, the drama continues. Perhaps someday I will look back on these days fondly, or at least be able to laugh at them. On the other hand, it might be better to get a partial lobotomy to remove the part of my brain that remembers them. I think that’s a more viable option.

A Little Lonely

2008-04-22T20:38:00.001-05:00

I’m a little lonely tonight. My Geek is out of town on business for a couple of days. How can you miss someone after only 14 hours? I guess it comes with having spent nearly every day with him for the past 15 years. My life is just not right without him here.

But he’ll be back soon, and of course he’ll call me each night he’s gone. Nonetheless, I miss him already and I’m counting the minutes until he’s home again.