Choose Your Own Adventure

Yesterday I took a walk in my neighborhood. I've taken walks before, but I decided to find new paths, so I first took this path I found, from a small entrance on the side of the street into a little wooded area. I followed the path for awhile, but soon found the path seemed to have been covered over. I thought it might pick up again, especially since I thought it might connect to another path I'd been on before. I kept going, and indeed found evidences of a path. But eventually, the shrubbery came up to high and I had no choice but to turn around.

Back on the road, though a little further down the road from where I entered, I continued on my way. I hadn't been gone very long, after all.

Soon enough, I found the little wooded park (and I mean little) with the path I'd taken before. It forked right at the entrance. And since I knew, from taking it before, that going left led me quite a ways from home, I decided to take the path to the right and see how close it got me, also curious to see if it connected to the other wooded area.

They might have. But I didn't find out. A chain link fence ran along the middle of the woods on my left as I walked the whole way. And before long, another chain link fence came up on the right, separating the woods from people's yards and homes. That was fine. The pathed area got smaller. That was fine. But eventually, I got to a place where it looked like the fences merged. I kept walking though, maybe out of curiosity or maybe determination. Curiously, the fences didn't merge, and the path continued between them. The path was the whole width of the space between the fences, just a few feet, like a typical path, but it was enough. Kind of fun to explore, I thought. Kind of fun. As i continued, quite a few branches from trees hung over

But well, eventually, the path on the left folded over onto the fence on the right. I could have fit and crawled along the path below the folded over area. It didn't seem too long. But it looked as if the path narrowed significantly afterward. I stopped for a few minutes, wondering if I should try, if it was worth it. Finally I turned around and went all the way back.

But I don't regret going. It kind of felt like a Choose Your Own Adventure book I used to read when I was a kid. Of course I never gave up and stopped reading when I died: got bitten by a snake, sank in quick sand, poisoned by a comrade, or ran into a dead end. I just turned around and picked up where I left off. Perhaps, I thought as I was turning around yesterday, reading those books even gave me some courage to try new things for curiosity. If all else failed, I could just turn around and try something else.

Of course, sometimes I'm not courageous enough, but it's one example of good things books have done.

National Book Festival

I have a few things I want to blog about, including some tags/memes, but I promised my personal journal on Sunday when I didn't spend much with it that I'd blog about the book festival then copy and paste into it.

So! I've attended the national book festival for the past three years, but for the first time this year I had a friend to go with! Yeah! My temporary roommate Kim. I'm so glad she came with me, too. We had a great time.

We left our apartment around 10:30ish and arrived 11:15, early for the first speaker I wanted to see, Neil Gaiman, so we wandered around the Pavilion of States for a little while. This is one place where it was good to have a friend with me because in years past I've gone to every single state booth with lofty ambitions about seeing where great books were coming from, find great new titles, and uh, getting the freebies. My first year I went late enough in the day that I actually got a free book from Alabama? Toning the Sweep by Angela Johnson--a really good book, too, that I'd read a few years previously and liked. Actually, this year we got free books, too, between the Metro stop and the festival a few girls were handing out books, but I don't know the author. Nice catch, though. I'll never complain about free books! At the Pavilion of States, though no free books, I did get this fancy-schmancy bracelet from Colorado! My first ever of these popular plastic/rubber things and from my home state. Yeah!

And thanks to Kim for not getting us caught up in the states, we made it to Gaiman's talk on time. Not in time to get good seats, but I'm not sure we would even have had seats if we'd tried sitting down half an hour early, when we arrived at the festival. He had a packed audience. We were in the back, as evidenced in my shot. I tried doing a zoom, but I couldn't angle the camera well enough, so that result was only a dark spot of canvas. Oh well. I was there, I promise!

One of the blogs I follow described his performance pretty well, so I won't try to top her: Read Write Believe . I will say that I'm pretty intrigued by The Graveyard Book, though. And it seems everyone else in attendance was as well, because it was sold out at the book sales tent. Oh well. I need to curb my book spending anyway, and although it was nice for him to cut some red tape to get the book sold at the festival a few days before it's release, I probably wouldn't have read it in those two days anyway, and even if I do buy it, I'm sure I can get a better price than full anyway--thank you Borders for your many coupons, and Amazon for "used and new" independent sellers.

After Gaiman, we went over to see Doreen Kronin and Betsy Lewin, the collaborating team who produced the Click, Clack, Moo! series. But we arrived early and saw the last bit of David Shannon's presentation, author of No David! series. He was pretty funny. He drew a picture of David, explaining the reasoning for the shapes and attributes of all of his facial features. Jagged teeth because he doesn't brush and eats too much candy, triangle nose because it's been broken too many times, and a naughty eyebrow and an "I didn't mean to" eyebrow. Very clever. It was no surprise, seeing the real David, that the pictures were drawn of himself by himself when he was little. Definitely some resemblance.

So, we didn't have seats for Shannon, but hoped some people would clear out. No such luck. Only a small handful moved. We did sit though, insistent upon it after standing for the past hour or so, on the grass with the kiddies. Pretty good seat for me, got some good shots, but I guess some of the kiddos were a little too wiggly for Kim. Woops.

So about Kronin and Lewin--

Although they indicated they see each other once a year, their performance made it clear to me they weren't accustomed to working with each other. This didn't surprise me too much-- typically authors just send their manuscripts to the publisher and the publisher then to the illustrator and the author rarely has anything to say about the illustrations. But the odd thing about their show was that they seemed to be trying to work together, but they weren't. Kronin was taking the lead and seeming to forget that she had a partner, so Lewin would step in to remind the kids that illustrators were important too, and that just like they were all writers (as was the platform of many of the children's authors), they were also all illustrators.

I'm glad Lewin did step in to say this, though--it's very important for kids and everyone to realize all of their talents are worth developing. But as for the "everyone" thing, the jury is still out on this one. It came across a little trite to me, and while I would encourage all children and people to write, I'm not sure it's really doing them a service to tell them they are something if they really aren't. Will they live a life feeling like a failure because they just can't muster very good creative stories? Well, not too likely, but still, the fact that some people never will muster a very good creative story is evidence enough that the line is just a gimick. Come on. It's just bad rhetoric. But I guess in this world of bad rhetoric all over the political landscape, it's not surprising to find it in all fields. Okay, so there's my platform for you. They did a few things well, however. They involved the audience in helping to create afun story about a pig and a tiger. It was funny to hear the kids' responses.

After that, we were pretty ready for lunch, and well, hadn't though about planning in advance so got the over-priced mall food, a 3$ hot dog for me. Sheesh! And 6$ chicken and fries for Kim. Hers was a little more reasonable, and more filling, but I only had 4$ cash on me. She shared her fries. So nice.

The next speaker I wanted to see was good ol' Jon Scieszka, but he wasn't speaking until 2:45, so we had about an hour to kill. Fortunately, Doreen Rappaport and Kadir Nelson were slotted in that time frame and for about that long. And they were pretty good. Rappaport repeated that "everyone's a writer" thing, but otherwise, she did fine--lots of enthusiasm, and I loved how she explained all the research she did to find the story of Abraham Lincoln, showing how research and "homework" can be fun, which Nelson reiterated when he took the mike, making a nice unified presentation, though they hadn't apparently planned that. That is, curiously, unlike the previous author-illustrator duo, they made no pretense about working together. First she spoke, ending with her gratitude for a great illustrator to help tell the story, and then let him take over.

His part was really fun, too. He started off a little dry, telling about the research --dry sounding voice that is, but he actually did intrigue me about the research and homework needed for illustrating. Made me think more about that as a fun continuing-education job, that I would appreciate. But then he got fun, calling for volunteer children to come forward to be his models--one as the horse and one as Abraham Lincoln. The kid who played Abe made comments and corrections the whole time, telling him the head was too big, or Abe Lincoln didn't really look like that. It was pretty funny.

Then, finally, the highlight of the day! Jon Scieszka, recently chosen as the first ambassador of children's literature by the librarian of Congress. Sara also wrote about his: Read Write Believe . But I'll add that he also pushed his book about Trucks, still presenting himself as a versatile writer of many genres. And he was indeed, as funny in person as on the page. You'll have to go to the Library of Congress webcasts when they're up.

A Few of My Favorite Things

My Favorites Right Now Are:

Food: cookies

Drink: water

Fruit: bananas

Ice cream: moose tracks

Candy bar: Twix

Music: MoTab

TV Show: The Cosby Show

Movie:

Book: The Goose Girl

Sound: friends talking to me

Smell: vanilla and cotton

Sight: pretty things, natural

Touch: the pages of a book, friends' hands

Taste: brushed teeth

PB Follow-up, Floppy Transferral

Okay, so I actually wrote that pb post yesterday, but I was going to edit it last night and didn't. (So the yesterday's and today's make sense in it)

But the story continues. So, I was going to post that old poem into that post, thinking it was an old file I'd emailed to myself when I cleared out my last computer. But alas, the poem hadn't made it into that computer--only to an old floppy. I was almost devastated.

I have a number of files on old floppies, and some of them I've even wanted to find in the past year or so, but have been unable to retrieve them because so few computers have floppy drives any more. But wonder of wonders, I noticed the computer I'm on now--this temp assignment's computer--has a floppy drive! Hallelujah! And good timing too, because today is my last day here.

I brought in my bag of floppies this morning, not quite sure how to secure all those many files, but figuring emailing if nothing else. But then, great joy, I remembered I had a stick in my purse, a relatively new one with lots of free space. More Hallelujahs! And, transferring files from floppy to stick is something you can do while slapping stickers on folders. And yes, that's important. (I'm interspersing sticker slapping now, as I write in fact, as well--just in case you were interested.)

So this morning in no time I transferred the files from 6 floppies to my stick, and I still have tons of room on the stick. Amazing, technology is. I just hope sticks don't go out of fashion.

Anyway, so here's the poem:
Peanut Butter Biscuits Oct. 1993
PB biscuits brightened my hard day
When I cam home from class in the usual way
PB biscuits were so sweet to eat
I would like to have them for my afternoon treat
PB biscuits surprised me so much
When nothing but them could I eat for lunch
PB biscuits left my stomach full
After only a few--and that ain’t no bull.
PB biscuits can be your friend, too
When you feel so sad that your fingers turn blue
PB biscuits will warm you up nice
When you’re desperate enough to heed my advice.

Wow--I even call pb a friend back then, too. It must be true.

Missing Peanut Butter

I like peanut butter. I mean, I'm not in love with it, not going to marry it, probably not even date it. Honestly, it's just a friend! But I do like it, a lot. I like the taste and smell and texture, particularly crunchy. I like it in cookies and cakes and brownies and ice cream and yes, even sandwiches. I also like it on crackers and celery and pancakes. In college, many years ago, I wrote a poem about the peace and joy I received from eating peanut buttered biscuits. But oh! with all of these, the joy is doubled when you add chocolate to the mix. mmm MMM. Okay, so since there was some lip-smacking action, maybe we were really good friends.

But it doesn't matter, because it's all over anyway. See, unfortunately, a couple years ago I noticed my head start to tighten up when I'd eat certain things with peanuts, and eventually, eating peanuty things produced full-on migraines. No fun at all. Every once in awhile I'll be unable to resist and eat some peanut M&Ms are some small peanut thing, but I don't own any peanut butter any more.

For the most part, I've gotten by just fine without it. Dessert tables usually include plenty of non-peanuty treats, and I manage to avoid buying such for myself. My sandwiches have ham and cheese, which is probably better anyway, to help me with the calcium. Though peanut butter and cheese isn't really that bad, ham is probably a little less fattening.

Last night, however, I was rummaging for a snack and found the best option was some freezer waffles--low fat, I'll add, and with strawberries. They're pretty good. But I found what I really, really wanted to put on them was peanut butter. It was an interesting feeling, not a craving like I sometimes get for chocolate, that anxious feeling of needing chocolate like you see depicted in commercials all over the place. It was more of this melancholy feeling you get when you look at pictures of old friends. And as for a friend, I might have risked a migraine for it. But well, I couldn't really justify going to buy a whole tub. Still, last night, I was really missing my old friend peanut butter.

I settled for jam.

Wink, wink

So it’s the last day of summer, officially. Did I get my goals done? Nope. Well, I mean not the critical draft I’d hoped to get done. The writing is no further along than when I last wrote about it, but at least I did make progress on it this summer. However, I have continued reading. The books took a little longer to arrive than I'd expected, though still on time. But I have them all now and have started reading all three of them.

One of them I’d thought wasn’t worth it after a few pages, partly because there were about 10 winks per page and obnoxious dialog tags on a few pages, and the description of the campus and the new roommates meeting each other took over the plot, leaving no room for movement to the conflict—other than to repeat a few more times what continues to be repeated, and was already iterated from the beginning a few times, that the main female character had her heart broken and wants nothing to do with men. Kind of cliché in the first place.

But something told me to keep going, so I did, and I’ve actually found she’s done some things really well, with some reminders to me on things in my own story that I could stand to pump up a bit, like a physical description of the bishop and his counselors. Woops.

I also still don’t have much of a physical description of Dinah, my main female character. But this didn't require reminding. I knew that. I'm just not really sure what she looks like. But more than that, I’m not highly convinced that it’s significant. Somewhat, I suppose, but not the specifics. And maybe even her not being described has the significance I want. That is, I don’t want her to be incredibly beautiful, contributing to the myth that you have to be pretty to get a good guy. In fact, I actually did indicate, by comparison to the Melanie character, that she’s not overwhelmingly beautiful. But on the other hand, for the number of guys who consider her toward the end, reality dictates that she can’t really be a dog either. Is there anything wrong with letting the reader’s imagination take over completely there? Everyone has different ideas about what beautiful is, anyway. And frankly, with these romances that I’m reading, okay particularly this one I'm writing about now, the author describes the main female character's looks quite a bit--and quite a bit too often. It kind of makes me gag every time I hear about her beautiful hair cascading over her shoulders, and sunlight catching a sparkle in it. Maybe I’m not cut out for this romance crap, writing genre.

But I was talking about the good things the author’s done. She does have plenty of good descriptions of the surrounding area that 1. don’t mask the plot, and 2. keep her from having talking heads. Those are good things. And she does get over, to a certain degree, the need to reiterate the main female character’s worry about more heartaches. After the bombardment of winks, the plot does moves forward, too, with the characters getting to know each other and thereby revealing other significant aspects of their personalities to the reading audience. They do keep winking at each other, which gets really annoying, but otherwise she uses good verbs and good language. I don’t recall too many metaphors, or images like that, but the story moves along okay anyway.

So in the end, I might even say I'd recommend it to some young LDS people. I still need to finish it to be sure. As I've kind of indicated, I still have some issues with it, and even some I haven't mentioned. So, yes, I am all the more convinced that the LDS-romance-genre publishers could use some improvement in the editing department. However, I should also end saying I've got some issues with my own writing as well. It's not easy to write a novel, especially without the help of editors who know that people don't really wink at each other that much. Wink, wink.

Old book storage project

This post probably should have been written quite awhile ago, but I haven't been taking too many photos lately so these were sitting in my camera until today. But alas, here they are--from that project I mentioned awhile ago about my book storage improvement--I painted these crates that I received from a former co-worker back in 2004 when she downsized from a house to a condo, and I was living by myself and grateful for furniture. But they were just old crates, with some jagged splinters. So, having some free time when I came back from Roanoke before starting my first temp assignment, I sanded them down and painted them with some paint I bought back in 2002 when I was going to paint a room I changed my mind about moving into.
The weather was beautiful at that time, late July. I mean, as long as I didn't have to wear a suit that is :)--actually, it was nicer these days than that day, but i also wore shorts and a T-shirt.

And good thing the weather was good because I ended up needing to spend more time than expected outside the following day or two since I made a big mess on the patio. I probably should have looked harder for some plastic or newspaper or something I could lay down, but I was on half-brain mode or something. Instead, I ended up running to Home Depot where they laughed at my predicament and suggested some concrete cleaner, which I happily bought, along with some gloves and sponges. But when I got home and read the instructions, I realized this was stuff you needed a big machine for, like street cleaners. Uh-uh. Not buying or renting one of those. It said you could also try using a mop, so I ran across the street thinking I could buy one of those at the grocery store rather than running down to Home Depot again, but then surprised myself to realize we have a Lowe's right there. So I went in there, looking for a mop or something, and found this other, cheaper and easier paint cleaner thing, took it home and got to work. Most of the paint came off that afternoon. There are still a few peachish speckles, I think, but not too bad.

Now to add to the story, my book collection has also dwindled since this project, though I don't regret it by any means. But I happily remembered during the right season (August-September, text-book buying season) to list some old books on Amazon to sell. Net loss, of course, but at least I got some money back for books I haven't needed and don't care to keep. I love Amazon

Photoshop Phun

Sometimes on Sunday, tired of writing from the rest of the week, I like to mess around with photos I've taken in days past. That's something I did today. Here are a few images I'm pretty pleased with that I made today. Aren't they fun?

Due Date, Progress Report

Though the weather is cooling and school is in session, technically, summer still has just less than two weeks left. However, I gave myself a slightly earlier deadline for my summer goals, didn't I? Actually, looking at it now, I realize I was off a little. I'd been thinking it was today, but it was two days ago! Aaah! I'm further behind than I realized.

1. Finish creative draft of thesis (I'm giving myself til Sept 7)
--I'm close. Really. As we speak I'm on p. 172 of 251 in the final editing revision before I hand it back to my advisor.

2. Have a draft of my critical part
--I have 9 pages written and I've read most of the books I'm going to incorporate. I've ordered a couple more that I'm curious about, but they may or may not get included. I also have some quotes found. It's progress. Maybe a real sketchy draft by the end of the actual summer.

3. Exercise 2x a week
--I might have missed a couple weeks, only exercise once, but I did go out at least once a week all summer. And since I've been working again, I've gone out at least four times a week. So that should make up for those other weeks, right? :}

4. Attend the temple each month
--Missed July by a hair. I planned to go the day I drove back from Roanoke, but I got a later start than I'd planned. Then I was going to go the following Tuesday, but they closed for the cleaning! Argh.

5. Get a job
--At least I didn't say "full-time direct-hire" because I don't have that. But I have a temp job, and am still applying for the other.

Something about Pizza

When I was in that two-jobs situation a couple weeks ago, I had this certain craving for pizza when I came home Monday night, the first night. I think it might have been a growing desire from the atmosphere in the evening job. But I gave in on Monday night and for the first time in several years actually ordered myself some pizza. (Don't worry, I didn't eat it all in one day.)

I was thinking then that it had to have something to do with the work atmosphere. Working late hours, staring at a computer, perhaps, I thought, reminded me of my high school days of working on the newspaper. When we had layout nights (These were old-school days. We had a light board on which we laid regular newspaper-page sized pieces of tagboard with the article/photo layout sketched on them in pencil. Layout nights came toward the end when the articles were copy-edited (by me), some writers finished writing theirs, and the section editors cut and glued the articles and photos in place.) Sometimes it took a few nights, depending on how far behind we were, in order to reach our deadlines. Ideally, it was only supposed to take one night. In any case, we stayed late hours sometimes and always ordered pizza.

The data entry evening job I had a couple weeks ago wasn't as stimulating as working on the newspaper, but it was working late, as I already described.

Well, then last night I had this craving again to order pizza. I didn't this time. Neither my body nor my wallet can budget that. I contented myself with tuna and chips. But where was the craving coming from? I hadn't worked late, and I definitely wasn't doing stimulating work. But I had worked all day--slapping sticker on envelopes. Actually something I've done too much of in the past week--data entry, slapping stickers and stuffing envelopes. It's mind numbing. Seriously. And that made me think that yes, pizza ordering is also associated with brainless work--something to add comfort to long hours of nothingness. It probably doesn't help either that there's a pizza place walking distance from here--like on the same block walking distance.

And there I have one more reason that I really need to find more stimulating employment. I can't be craving pizza all the time.