Kind have to love this

Ad of the Week

This one made me choke on my kick ass homemade salsa, perhaps because I was watching the history channel and thought it was an ad for an upcoming show.



Kick ass salsa:

Here's the secret: chopped cucumber.

Okay, if you're Mexican and/or from Texas, you probably disagree with me. But that's okay. Here's my Polish-German-American roots showing. Salsa in the bottles no longer cut it once I found "fresh salsa" in the deli case ... but that was expensive.  So I started thinking about how to make my own.

So I chop small one white onion, one clove of garlic, one tomato, one half-cup of pepper (red, green, orange -- whatever you have or fancy, mix and match), and at least one half-cup of cucumber.  Add a teaspoon of kosher salt and a table spoon of apple cider vinegar and you can chill or eat right away.  It's also great when you add black beans to the mix.  But really, it's all about whether or not you have the small chopped cucumber added to the mix.  The batches without just didn't add up.

Coffee sadness

Last night, in an attempted cleaning of the coffeemaker carafe, I washed, rinsed, and turned over the glass carafe onto a drying towel laid across the counter.  I rushed.  I was careless.  I smashed that carafe down and shattered it into many pieces.

And there was much sadness across the land.

I did some internet poking around and found that I could buy just another glass carafe.  But my coffee maker is old.  I've had it for three years, but it had been the "old" coffee maker at my father's house for several years before that.  I presume it has been purchased in the past 15 years, but that's just a guess.  No matter it's actual age, Krups thinks it's old: I can't find a replacement carafe.

There are some on Amazon that appear to be potentially the right shape/height to interact with my automatic drip machine, but a new carafe for an old machine will cost twice what a (low end) new machine will cost.

So it looks like I'm in the market for a new (cheap) coffeemaker.  This is not a purchase that can be put off, no matter what the economy looks like.  There are only so many days I can french press my coffee before I get sick of the sludginess.  Perhaps, I should just learn to make good french press coffee.  But that's as much art as science.  And I'm not up for either art or science before my first cup of coffee -- I need a machine for that.
Image credit: scadlo

Sent home from camp

Camp NaNoWriMo has sent me home early, with a note to my mother explaining that my inability to partake in the spirit of the Na-No-Wri-Mo way has left them with no alternative but to suggest I spend the remainder of camp someplace else.

I sort of knew this going in.  And yet I slathered on sunscreen, doused myself in bug spray, and headed for the trail with just an umbrella and a sandwich -- not exactly survival rations, or for that matter, something one can sleep under.

Better luck in August?  We'll see.

But what I did see of interest today is that Original Recipe NaNoWriMo starts in only 97 days!  Oh my!  Less than three months . . . where did the year go?

Come November I'll be working two, possibly three jobs.  So I feel that the time is now -- or, erm, the time is August -- to attempt a novel marathon, if I plan to attempt one at all this year.  One of my goals is a finished novel draft by the end of the year -- and I'll take that draft whatever way I can get it.  Hopefully Camp won't send me home with measles on my second attempt.

I want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit

Perhaps I am still an Obama-fangirl and that skews my take on things -- but how can you not love a truly great orator? -- but seriously people, com-pra-fricking-mise. This is serious. Stop the TEA party shenanigans for a moment and think.

Summer Writing Workshops

Summer Writing Workshops: good for the writing, bad for the blogging.

Last summer I chose to do the six week, intensive Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop.  This year I chose to return for the one week alumni workshop.  It was good to go back, meet new people and see old friends.  It was good to get a refresher of the kind of craft concerns Odyssey can ferret out and address.  I took three stories to workshop, two of which I felt were nearly done and one of which I thought needed a lot of work -- now I feel the exact opposite.  The first two need a lot more exploration and the last one I now have a clear path to traverse, one through which I can bring out the story with more ease than expected.

Getting ready for this workshop, I wondered if I had been smart to sign up.  I wondered if I was plain workshopped-out after three years of MFA, during each of which I participated in a summer workshop.  And in truth, I had many moments when I told myself -- and complained to my friends -- that I needed to get out of the classroom as a student.  At least for a while.

Having another workshop experience turned out to be fine. More than fine when you consider it altered my attitude about several pieces of fiction which I've been working on these past six months.  But I am more than happy to take a break from the workshop for a while.

Perhaps, in a year, I'll miss it.

Ad of the Week

Ad of the Week

For the love of the link

Some thoughts from the past few days, all mashed into one blog post.  Like a salad.  With croutons.

Kirk arm-wrestles Kirk -- yes, he's kicked the living shit out of himself in The Undiscovered Country, but never arm-wrestled before.

I spent the holiday weekend (yes, last weekend, not this weekend) in a book coma.  You know, read-it-all-night, can't-put-it-down, dawn-breaks-and-you-look-out-the-window-and-just-turn-off-the-lamp-and-keep-reading, book coma.

Decided that, someday, I really wanna go to Mythcon.

The book that kept me up all night was Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan.  The book had great bones.  I fell in love with the characters -- that sort of love is the only thing that can keep me up all night.  Indifference puts me to sleep.

Wicked & Tricksy totally amuses me.  Again.

What surprised me about Warprize is that it was originally published in 2005 (TOR), its sequels in 2006 and 2007, and all three are already out of print.  Warprize, the first book, was picked up by another publisher, Berkley, and reprinted.  But I couldn't get the sequels in book format.  I had to download them Nook-for-PC style.

Is this  the legacy of Amazon?  Not the deletion of legacy publishers as middleman or the ebook revolution, but the inability to get a "new" copy of a book that was only printed four years ago?

Camp NaNoWriMo = totally fallen by the wayside.  Maybe in August?  Maybe ... November?

Then again, maybe Warprize isn't the best example to use to start making claims about what anyone's "legacy" is.  While I fell in love with the characters, I should make note of the fact that after reading, I wanted to request edits.  The series had the stuff to be epic -- a thousand pages, easily, not three volumns of 200 pages each (650ish when all is said and done).  It needed to take its time, really delve into the world.  Take it out of first person, and let all the interesting things the author created really blossom.

Also of note: It was also published by TOR, who from all my research, is great to their big name authors and really miserable to all their other authors -- more so than other big publishers in the fantasy genre.  Also, this was a TOR Romance.  Romance has a high turn over.  It's bought faster and more frequently than any other genre (I think it still outpaces YA but by a shrinking margin).  And this means that publishing house want to keep a fresh supply of new books, new life blood, for all the romance genre junkies to come snack on.  It's the last true pulp jungle left in publishing.


Kansas City Public Library, I heart you.  Hey, and this dude, too -- I also heart you ... erm, your blog that is.

And while I was busy reading all night and into the day, my neighbors were busy setting off cheap, illegal fireworks.  You know the kind: big bang, little spark.

Perhaps firecrackers would be a better term.

In the evening, late at night and -- of all times -- mid-afternoon.  I don't get that one.

Now, I find fire as fascinating as the next person.  But that's why I play with candles.  I can't say that fire crackers have ever held any entertainment for me.  Although all the banging and popping had my cats on edge for 72 hours straight.  My irregular sleep pattern didn't work to sooth them either.

Wondrous and creepy thoughts on victimization and tarot cards.

You'd think that there would be better amateur fireworks this close to the state line.  Take any road into Indiana -- any road: expressway, country highway or two-track -- and the first thing you see beyond the Welcome to Indiana! America's Crossroads sign, is a cinder brick building selling fireworks.

One night, perhaps Monday, I got to see part of the city's fireworks display right from my desk.  It was a pleasant surprise but, let me put it this way, I'm glad I wasn't waiting around for it.

MFA Survivalist

In one of the more anticlimactic moments of my master's program, I have received the email informing me that my MFA in creative writing has been granted.  The diploma to follow shortly by mail.

That's it. I'm done. Really done. I've survived.

And now for others that have "survived": a great humorous vid that I've been forwarded (thanks MonkeyLOLogist).  This will likely be funnier for those who watch Mythbusters, but should provide a special type of glee for all geeks.


I decided not to walk during the summer commencement ceremony.  And maybe it would have been more momentous if I had.  Instead, on that day, I chose to do something more meaningful: I had coffee with my advisor and brunch with other fiction program students.  I walked at my undergrad commencement and that was momentous -- then again it was a more meaningful ceremony for me.  There were less than 700 students in my graduating class.  We had our names called individually, we walked across the stage, shook the university president's hand, and got our diplomas.  Here, at a large, state university, lumped in among thousands of undergrads and sundry grad students getting their degrees, I didn't feel like the pomp was worth the circumstances.

Yes, I made a pun.  Forgive me.

Instead, I received word of my degree completion while sitting at my computer, wearing gymshorts and a t-shirt, fighting off yet another heat wave.

But isn't this just exemplary of the writer's life?  Here, solitary, at the desk, at the computer, doing the writing until the writing can be done no more.  The friends, the cheers, the drinks and the toasts will come later.  For now, it's back to work.

Ad of the Week

Summer Camp

Camp starts today! (I almost forgot!) But this other camp of mine starts in two weeks ... so I'm kind of stuck preparing for the later while trying to do the former.

Yes, that's right, I've thrown my hat into the Camp NaNoWriMo ring. I have half a bad idea -- also known as the lifeblood of a good NaNo month -- so I'm going for it. Going to the Odyssey alumni week halfway through the month may mean that I don't "win" by hitting 50k in July, but ya know what, I'll be better for what I have written.

Who else is going for it (and have you hit your 1,613 daily word quota yet)?