the middle thing

Catchy and cheesy Youtube pop music for charity? HELLS YEAH.

2009-11-11T09:08:00Z

So, there are REALLY AWESOME THINGS happening on Youtube right now. And I don't mean the giant squids of anger who're always being stupid in the comments. Because, if you didn't know about it, there is a blossoming community of highly talented young musicians on Youtube! (As a matter of fact, I have been novelling to this guy's album and also his other Timelord Rock project, and it is AWESOME.)

But that's not what I wanna talk about right now. I want to talk about Chartjackers! Basically, a bunch of guys in the UK produced a single, gave it to Children in Need so that absolutely 100% of the proceeds go to the charity, and now they're trying to get it into the UK charts. Just to see if they can, and and to raise money for charity.

The best part? It is a really catchy song. Check it out:

You guys, I bought this song in the library about ten hours ago, and it is already at the top of my "25 Most Played" list in iTunes. (Granted, that probably says more about my obsessive tendencies than anything else, but hey. Also, this is a pretty new computer, so I haven't racked up lots of plays. STILL.)

Now, the thing is, if you're not in the UK, you can't help them get into the charts. But all of the money will still go to Children in Need, and you get a great song!

And I know that at least one of you actually is in the UK! thirteenthend, I know I don't know you super well, but, hey, if you wanted to pop over into iTunes and buy the song, you could be part of the extreme awesomeness that the Internet is generating!

And of course, you should all tell your friends! This is our Internet now, and we can actually make good things happen with viral videos. How freaking awesome is that?

Pwnage!

2009-11-10T18:30:26Z

I'm gonna brag, guys--I totally pwned at NaNo yesterday. I woke up early and dragged my computer over into bed with me and wrote 1000 words before I'd even stepped out of bed. Wrote another 800 works between visiting the coffee shop and my lunch break at Walmart. (I'm especially proud of successfully writing about 500 words during my Walmart shift.)

I also found time to run a Peace Corps-related errand in there. And I worked until 11:30. And when I got home, our Internet wasn't working (I suspect it still isn't), so I couldn't get on and brag! Very sad.

The problem is, I have to do the same thing today. Also, I am still behind, if you're figuring things at 1667 words a day--but my spreadsheet tells me that if I write 1722 words a day, I'll be fine. And I'll give it another big push on my next day off, which is Thursday. This month is anything but a sure thing, since I'm all over the place, productivity-wise, but I'm basically too damn stubborn NOT to win.

Now my lunch break is ending. Time to get back to the proofreading!

NaNo! YAY!

2009-11-05T06:59:40Z

I'm doing NaNoWriMo again! I missed it a lot while I was in college, so this is VERY EXCITING for me. Unfortunately, since I have Twitter now, it's led me to neglect the LJ (whereas, before Twitter, NaNo would have sparked Much Posting here). Ah well.

Anyway, I just wanted to stop in pat myself on the back for everything I did today. I got out of bed by 9, and I had a marathon and wrote 1000 words in an hour, which at least twice as fast as I normally write, and then I hurried down to Montrose, got a polio vaccination, and ran three other errands all in time to show up at work by 2pm. Also, I wrote a couple hundred words on my lunch break.

So, my wordcount is behind, but I don't really feel bad. It was a full day. Trouble is, tomorrow I have to get up do it again--I need to get 2000 words at least before I go to work at 2. I think I will sleep now!

Snow (blech)

2009-10-29T06:01:34Z

Today was snow!

I have never understood why people get excited about snow. Really. It's pretty, yeah, so if you get to stay inside all day, it can be kind of nice, but if you have to go anywhere it's a royal pain.

Despite living in Colorado my entire life, I've never driven in snow before. I almost didn't get out of the driveway, because the snow was at least seven inches deep, and more where the plow had piled it up, and my dear little Corolla couldn't handle it. Much wheel-spinning But I had learned from getting stuck in the sand at Lake Powell (the experience had a use, mizujada!) and backed the car up a good way and then picked up a little speed, and prayed no one was coming up the road, and made it out.

And on the way home, the roads were dry and the most dangerous thing I saw was a bunch of deer. And that was really good, because one of my coworkers had said that it was whiteout conditions up here, and that scared me. (The weather changes pretty quickly around here, though.)

The weird thing about this part of Colorado (especially this time of year), is that it'll snow, but the temperature won't stay down quite below freezing, so it'll snow, then melt, then snow, then melt, which makes everything very soggy and icy. (Now that I think of it, Virginia was the same way. Maybe it's just a temperate climate thing.) The icy-ness is dangerous, and the soggy-ness is just gross. Maybe that's why I don't like snow?

Well, that, and I don't ski.

(I know. What kind of Coloradan am I?)

Housesitting

2009-10-21T16:03:30Z

So, I found out this morning that I need to go do some emergency housesitting for a friend of the family. (Her original sitter flaked out at the last minute.) So, that's starting tonight. They're trying to set me up with Internet from their Verizon card this time, but I'm not sure if it'll work out or not, so I may be a little scarce for the next . . . uh, three weeks.

Hopefully I'll get some writing done. Although, last time I went up there, I pretty much spent the whole time watching HBO. I think I'm gonna have to invoke a no-television rule from the very beginning to avoid that. After all, I need to get ready for NaNo, and what better way to do that than with limited Internet access?

Clinging to my will to live at Walmart

2009-10-18T01:45:34Z

Walmart publishes this newsletter for its employees. There are a bunch of copies in the breakroom, and the other night, I was really bored, because the book I've been reading at work (The Gangster We Are All Looking For, by lê thi diem thúy*) was boring and pretentious. And, on the cover of this particular newsletter, there was a photograph of a store manager, standing with his hands on his hips and his head held high in a field of solar panels. The article was supposed to be about Walmart and green energy, but I didn't bother opening the newsletter to read it.

Instead, I took out a ballpoint pen (all I had) and drew big feathery wings on the guy, and added the headline, "THE X-FACTOR: Mutants among us!"** I giggled, and went back to work.

Two hours later when I came back for my break, somebody had filled in my scribblings with a Sharpie, which made them look much better. They also drew over the guy's body to give him a big muscle-y chest and glowing eyes (and horns? I don't remember), and had added the headline, "We da mutants!"

I can't even tell you how happy this made me. Seriously, it was the ONE bright point of work that evening, to see that somebody else was somewhere near my own state of mind. From now on, I'm carrying a Sharpie in my purse so that I can more effectively graffiti the asinine newsletters in the break room.

I'm also sort of playing this game where I see how long I can keep talking openly about Walmart on my blogs and Twitter before I get in trouble. It's fun!***

* Who apparently is too good for capital letters in her name. And yes, I did just copy it from Wikipedia; I don't like the book well enough to figure out how to type Vietnamese diacritical marks. Even though the software I use to type in Greek can probably do it pretty easily.

** Earlier that evening, I'd been amusing myself by trying to read the French parts of a flier about pomegranates, even though I don't know French. So, this was a step up as far as entertainment went.

*** I have lots of games I play to keep myself from going crazy at Walmart. Like, I make up sordid backstories for my customers. Also, when we change watch batteries, we set them on the base of the lamp at the changing station, and then drop them into the recycling box later. So, I wait until things are really slow to put the batteries away, and then I have to recite a line of poetry for every battery I drop into the box. (It was going to be a line of Shakespeare, but I didn't like being limited to just one poet.) Also, when things are REALLY slow, I play the alphabet game. I have to find every letter in the alphabet consecutively on signs without moving around. ("Quartz" really saves my butt in this game. Also, "Timex".)

. . . yeah, basically, it's only been a month and my job is already destroying my will to live. It's gonna be a long couple of months.

I really don't like myself some days.

2009-10-09T05:40:47Z

I was going to come home and tell you guys a story about the old man from Texas I helped this afternoon, and how he wanted a small watch but his wife told him that when he wears women's watches he looks "like a homosexual", and how he also told me that he doesn't want to wear a gold band because he "sweats like a negro". And about how it's funny, because he was very clearly the sort of person who has a strong set of values--for example, I could tell he'd never have dreamed of swearing in front of me, since I'm a lady, even if he would casually drop the phrase "sweat like a negro". And about how weird it is to encounter someone whose value system is so jarringly different than mine.

I was going to, but the last hour or so at work was incredibly stressful. I had a customer who had to wait on me for the LONGEST time because first I couldn't quite help her right, so she's going to have to come back so somebody else can sort out the mess, and second, it took me FOREVER to finish taking a link out of the band of her watch (which she only bought because of the first thing I couldn't fix), and she had people waiting; and that took so long that I couldn't finish the other major project I was supposed to get done this evening, and I'm a little worried my supervisor will think I slacked off (which I didn't!), and I still had to rush to clock out in time (you get in trouble if you go over your time), and by the time I left the store, I was a big bundle of stress and run-on sentences.

Also, I yelled at my mom earlier (in public) because she said she'd go pick up my Peace Corps paperwork at my doctors for me, and didn't because she thought they wouldn't let her (because she didn't know I'd called them). Came home to find the paperwork on my desk because she went back to get it--which is a pretty significant inconvenience for her. Only, she couldn't have known but the office didn't give her the most important form, so I'm going to have to go back and get it anyway, which drives home the point that I should have just gone myself, and makes me feel like even more of a cad.

. . . so, basically, I'm ending the day feeling like a pretty horrible person. It's a terrible way to be going to bed.

Lack of Attentiveness: Why American food sucks so much

2009-10-07T03:43:56Z

When I was in Vietnam two summers ago, I kicked around a little with this Chinese girl who was dating somebody else in our group. We sort of shared the experience of being the only non-Vietnamese people in the group (though apart from that, our experience couldn't have been much different). Anyway, at one point, she confided in me that she really missed Chinese food. "You must miss American food to," she said.

And I said, "No, not really. American food kind of sucks."

And I'm sorry, but it's true. I just stumbled across this fascinating photo essay from MSN about what families around the world consume in a week (thanks, sparrow1029!), and it really drove the point home for me. I've been meaning to make a post about food all summer, so I guess this is my chance.

America--especially suburban, and, to a lesser extent, small-town, America--is a convenience culture. The American family in that slideshow is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen. 90% of the food in it is prepackaged, convenience food. Even the applesauce is packaged in individual cups. We're looking at the Hamburger Helper brand of cooking--empty the box into a pan (or straight into the microwave) and walk away.

When I rant about this, my mom is quick to point out that if both parents are working all day--a necessity for many families in the U.S.--nobody has time to cook real food, from scratch. But . . . I'm still not convinced. With a little planning, and more importantly, a little knowledge, even working people can cook.

Ever since I got home from college, I've been working on an aggressive campaign to start making things from scratch. I started with noodles for chicken noodle soup, then bread (that no-knead stuff that's been going around; easy enough to work into a busy schedule if you time it right). Slowly, we've been weeding out expensive stir-fry and spaghetti sauces, replacing them with homemade versions that taste better. I finally went straight for two of the holdouts of prepackaged food in our house--refried beans and flour tortillas.

Now, granted, my refried bean process requires attention on three separate days (soaking, slow-cooking, and finishing), but the actual time spent in the kitchen is only around thirty minutes, thanks to the wonder of crock pots. The tortillas are sort of labor-intensive, but they are a) much better-tasting than the ones from the store, and b) cost literally a fraction of what store-bought tortillas do. (Tortillas around here run about $3 for twelve. I can make 16 for about 75 cents, not counting the energy to cook them.)

Around here, cost is the primary factor that's making me press the from-scratch style of cooking. But the benefits go far beyond that. Cooking things myself allows me to control the amounts of fat and sodium that go into my food. Sodium is an especially important one--prepackaged foods are lousy with it, and it's really so simple to make delicious foods with entirely reasonable amounts of salt. Canned soup is an especially bad offender, and soup is so easy to make! Ditto for broths--I routinely make chicken broth, and I save all my veggie scraps to put together a delicious vegetable broth, which I use in soups and whatnot--all much lower sodium than what you'd get in a can. (As a bonus, the veggie broth is essentially free!)

(Digression! One other thing about our diet, which isn't so much tied to the from-scratch ethic as it is to the "living below the poverty line" ethic is that our meals are very heavy on dried beans and rice. Dried pinto beans, for example, are pretty much the cheapest form of protein you'll come across. I picked up a 25 lb. bag of pintos at Safeway for $14--and that's without going to any sort of bulk food supplier! In addition to protein, beans are also packed with fiber and vitamins, and can be cooked in a bazillion different ways. This summer, I was heavy on vegetarian curries and chilis, but as winter approaches, I'm moving more towards refried beans and casseroles with green chili sauces that contain more animal fat--which I process myself by cooking whole chickens and making broth from the carcass, rather than buying bags of breasts. If you HAVE to eat meat, at least use every bit of it.)

The other thing that depresses me so much about the American food photo is the appalling shortage of fresh foods in the photo. I see one little bag of grapes, and a few tomatoes, and a couple bags of salad greens. (Yes, even our GREENS are prepackaged!) Compare that to the photos from India, Mexico, and Turkey, which are just packed with fresh fruits and veggies. I mean, even the U.K., birthplace of toad in the hole, for God's sake, has more fresh food in the photo than we do! Is it any wonder we're fat? God.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you can trace almost all of the problems with America's diet back to a fundamental lack of involvement with our food. When you're cooking for yourself--especially under budget constraints--you naturally pay more attention to things like fat and sodium, because you can control them. (You may also learn, as I did, that it is possible to make dishes that are utter powerhouses of flavor without using very much fat, and often no animal products at all.) We're simultaneously busy and lazy, and between those two, we just don't pay attention to our food.

It's not easy. Sometimes, it means giving up a little bit of precious spare time; my days off turn into cooking days, and often the first thing I do when I get home from work is throw together some tortillas or set some beans to soak. But it's worth it. My family is eating healthier, for less money, and producing less waste (environmental bonus!). Win, win, win!

can you talk

2009-10-06T05:33:10Z

Thesis: Customers are assholes.

Evidence: This afternoon, I was concentrating on some inventory task, when a very fat man in one of those motorized carts whistled at me to get my attention. (This already flustered and irritated me: I am not a dog.) I asked if I could help him, and he started gesturing, making a squeezing motion with his hands, then pointing at his ears and shaking his head.

At first I assumed he couldn't speak English (he was dark enough to be Hispanic), but it gradually dawned on me that he must be deaf, and I grew steadily more flustered as I tried to understand his sign language. I even asked him if he could fingerspell, since I have sort of an understanding of the ASL alphabet. He just kept pointing at his ears and gesturing.

Finally, he mimed writing. Lightbulb! I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and watched, very earnestly attentive, as he painstakingly began to write--veeeery sloooowly. "C a n . . . y o u . . . t a l k."

"Uh . . . yes, I can talk." He points at his ears. Maybe he needs to find hearing aid batteries? Louder--and more confused--I say, "Yes, I can talk!"

And then he bursts out laughing. "So can I! I was just kidding with ya." And he continued to ask me where he might find a ketchup squeeze bottle.

So, I ask you, Livejournal: Where does confusing and embarrassing someone who is trying to help you, and wasting her time and energy, get funny? I was humiliated, and furious, and frustrated, and when he showed up later to pay for his damn ketchup bottle, I wanted to refuse to speak to him.

He pissed me off so much, I thought it would be worth the time to write a LJ post about it before collapsing into bed after an unexpected 16 hour workday. (Not Walmart's fault, for the record.)

Find your name, and buried treasure

2009-09-30T04:15:30Z

I changed the quotes in my LJ profile. It's always weird to change my LJ profile. Every time I turn around, I realize the person it describes isn't the person I am anymore. It's very nearly to the point where I'd like to do away with it altogether, but I do like sharing a couple quotes that describe my state of mind at this point in my life. (Apparently, my state of mind post-college has a lot to do with children's books.)

I also took out a bunch of really dated interests, and added new ones. I actually really like that 'interests' feature on LJ. Interest lists make such an interesting collage of a person, you know? They're always the first thing I look at when I look at someone's LJ profile.

Anyway, there's that. LJ is a sort of weird place, these days, isn't it? You have all these big name social networking sites out there, and what with Facebook and MySpace and Twitter getting so huge, LJ has sort of fallen back into the shadows a little bit. I was talking to mizujada about it once, and we concluded it has something to do with the fact that LJ is aimed at relatively long-form posts, not the little snippets employed by Twitter and Facebook. It takes a lot more energy to write up a LJ post than to drop something in Twitter. Also, now that I have a Twitter (middlemuse, if anyone's forgotten), I feel like my LJ posts have to actually have substance, because if I just want to whine about work, or gush about some link I found, isn't that what Twitter's for?

(Oddly enough, back when I first started blogging, when I was a teenager, I used my blog as an outlet for anything I thought might be too tedious to share with my friends on instant messenger. As blogging philosophies go, this one is not a winner. Just sayin'.)

Don't you want to be like us?

2009-09-29T02:46:09Z

In honor of Banned Book Week, I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye at work this week. I wasn't forced to read it in high school the way a lot of people my age were, and now that I'm out of college, I'm sort of trying to catch up on some of the important works of fiction that I somehow missed during my formal education.

Anyway, today one of the men who works in maintenance told me that after I read it, I can go shoot somebody, because loads of assassins have been obsessed with it. "The guy who killed Kennedy was really into it, and the guy who killed Lennon was really into it, and . . ."

. . . sigh. I was hoping that by reading it in the break room, I could explain to people about Banned Book Week and the importance of avoiding censorship . . . but he was too interested in what he had to say about the association between the book and murderers to hear anything I said about censorship.

Ah well.

Actually, I guess I'm not much better. I associate The Catcher in the Rye with the Five Iron Frenzy song "Superpowers" (which has the line, "I sometimes feel like Holden Caulfield").*

* This song has even more complex associations, because a month or two ago, I was in Goodwill, and was shocked to hear it on the radio. Usually the Goodwill radio plays oldies--lots of Beach Boys and Elvis, that sort of thing. So, it was really damned weird to hear FIF in there. REALLY.

Dead tired.

2009-09-28T02:43:54Z

Last night I went to bed at 8:00, and got up at 6:00, and I was STILL exhausted. Family drama REALLY takes it out of you. I hope I feel better rested tomorrow, but if I don't, at least I know it's my last Walmart day until Thursday.

I'm going to try drinking green tea at work tomorrow instead of coffee. We'll see how THAT works out. Possibly it's an experiment that's not well suited to my fifth consecutive day of work, but, eh.

Work!

2009-09-20T04:04:34Z

Walmart finally has me working again. This is good, because I need the money very badly, and because I was kind of getting bored and crabby sitting at home with nothing do do*. This is bad, because . . . well, when was the last time YOU spent eight hours inside a Walmart?

It's led to a strange realization, though: even though I traditionally hate getting up early, I would much rather work the 7-4 opening shift than the 2-11 closing shift. Sure, I have to get up at six in the morning, but I get home by dinner time and I can spend the evening doing whatever I want. If I started work at 2, I wouldn't really be able to relax the same way. There would certainly be less wine involved.

* My definition of 'nothing' includes: learning how to sew; failing TWICE at making meringues; cooking shitloads of meals, including the world's best refried beans and some homemade tortillas; plus the usual knitting, spinning, and reading. I do not do 'idle' very well.

Writing Meme!

2009-09-15T04:10:17Z

Stolen from deadvole!

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

My life at present

2009-09-07T06:54:44Z

I'm not very good about posting here anymore, am I? You should probably blame my awesome friends, who hear most of the ideas and stories I have to tell via instant messenger, which means I'm not left with a strong urge to write about them here on my LJ. Also, when I'm not stressed out, I have less to process here.

Anyway, I feel like I should record the information that I am now officially a Sales Associate at Walmart in the Jewelry Department. I have . . . mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I need the money very badly. (Living on $200 a month all summer was . . . interesting.) And my coworkers in the Jewelry Department are all quite pleasant and fun. In fact, the work atmosphere is surprisingly pleasant, at least on the human end.

But then, you've got the corporate end. And that's not so fun. I've had to sit through hours and hours of what they call CBLs (computer-based learning)--it's basically a Powerpoint slide narrated by a very bored voice actor, with a quiz at the end. Some of them are to convey important information (like how to pierce ears or operate a cash register), but a lot of them are just corporate policies for convincing the employees that Walmart cares about them. For example, they REQUIRED me to go in and work up a 'career plan' for my time at Walmart. Sam Walton said, "You don't have to leave Walmart to change careers." . . . seriously, the rest of my life at Walmart? I would rather stab my eyes out.

Then there's the obvious downsides, like spending eight hours inside of a Walmart. Brr.

Also, now that college is over and the rest of my life is beginning, I'm trying to write again. I'm find it very difficult to write every day, even though I have this conviction that I should. I'm trying not to stress too much about it, because I was stressing about it, and that made me even less productive. Instead, I'm setting a few goals. My writing plans for the rest of this year are pretty non-demanding. I have two projects:

1) I plan to submit a story based on the Bacchae to this anthology. Several of my college friends are also submitting. The rough draft of that story needs to be done by October 31.

2) I'm doing NaNoWriMo again! I know what novel I'll be writing--it's one that's been lurking in my mind for . . . gosh, something like seven years now. It's time to get it OUT of there. So, November will be devoted to that novel, which is codenamed Project Cassie, although none of the characters are named Cassie.

I also have a few fiber-related goals and deadlines for the rest of the year:

1) Baby blanket for afghans for Afghans, which I hope to send off by the end of October.

2) Gloves for bootheeling (Leslie, would you like to drop me an e-mail? I'm museofastronomy on gmail. I'd like to get the yarn ordered!)

3) Spinning for and knitting a sweater for my mom by Christmas. (I have about a quarter of the spinning done at this point, so I may be stretching to meet this deadline, but . . . it's going to be a really nice sweater, anyway.)

4) Small Christmas presents for my brother and dad (only immediate family members are getting knitted presents this year)

5) Need to keep my Etsy store stocked, especially as the holidays draw nearer (see, if you're a knitter, basically everything after August is time to worry about Christmas)

I'm also working on a sweater for myself, but it's not really high on my priority list right now. It'll get done when it gets done.

Other things I have going on:

1) Volunteering with Meth Free Delta County (although I'm still in training)

2) Still proofreading the local newspaper one day a week; I appreciate the job all the more now that I'm also working at Walmart.

3) Still working on my Peace Corps application. I have dentist and doctor appointments right now to get my medical clearance started. (I had to wait until I had a job, or I wouldn't be able to pay. No insurance.) I also need to get in touch with the counselor at Sweet Briar, because I said on my application I'd seen a therapist, so now I have to go through all this rigamorole to prove I'm not crazy or disturbed or anything. They're making me write an essay, no joke. Grumble.

4) Occasionally trying to drop in and proofread a few pages at Distributed Proofreaders. It's such a low-stress way to volunteer, and I'm good at proofreading.

Five books I loved this summer

2009-09-06T05:26:21Z

Despite the fact that I was very intellectually exhausted after that honors degree of mine, this summer's reading efforts were actually fairly productive. I don't read as fast as most people in my peer group (intelligent young nerds), and I'm very bad about rereading things instead of finding new books. (I've read Ender's Game and all the sequels about eight times since I discovered them early in high school. And that's a lot of sequels.)

So, all things considered, the fact that I have five books to share with you guys at the end of the summer is doing pretty well. I read a few other things, including a reread of the last three Harry Potter books, but here's the good stuff. Since I'm in the process of refining my worldview, and since I'm falling back into my homeschooler habits (reading to edify as much as to entertain) now that college is over, I'm going to try to give a sense of what I got from each book, as well as just offering my recommendation.

(Books are in the order I read them.)

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

Probably most of you have already read this one, but if you haven't, you're really missing out. It's a masterpiece. (There's a reason it's won a Newbery, a Hugo, and is up for several other awards.) This book is exactly everything I love about children's literature; it's imaginative and engaging, but it also makes you think, and it culminates in one of the most beautiful embodiments of what Pullman calls the Republic of Heaven that I've ever seen.

Bod said, "I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want," he said, and then he paused and he thought. "I want everything."

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery

I've already made a very lengthy post on this one, so all I'll say is that I'm glad I sat through it to the end, and it's also going on my list of literary works that helped me refine my understanding of how I want to look at the world as I move through it. This book is a reminder that happy people are the ones who glory in the simplicity and complexity of every facet of the world around them, people who can find, "Beauty, in this world."

Paper Towns, by John Green

I spent far too many hours when I should have been working on my Honors Thesis watching the Green bros. videos on Youtube (any other Nerdfighters on my friendslist?), but this is the first of John Green's books I've ever read. I read it in one long sitting one beautiful August afternoon, and since I'm such a slow reader, that's very unusual for me. It's all about the power of our perceptions, and how we can create things and people that don't exist just by thinking about them existing. It also convinced me to start reading Walt Whitman (but he doesn't make it onto my summer reading list because I'm still working on him).

The Anvil of the World, by Kage Baker

I read this, and thought, "Why have I never heard of this woman before? She's freaking awesome!" The book wasn't a big life-changing moment for me, but not every book can be. It was mercilessly clever and irreverent. Kage Baker writes very much in the spirit of Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland. This book is everything I want in a fantasy book. I loved it. I'll be tracking down more of her books for sure.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman

Scraping into the "summer reading" category by just a hair is this book I finished the other day, and the fact that I happily read a full nonfiction book should prove that I'm already recovering from college, I think. The book is about a young Hmong girl with severe epilepsy, and the cultural conflict between her family and her American doctors. Fadiman's goal in the book is to try to explain how the conflict arose by exploring the cultural background and assumptions on both sides. She alternates chapters telling the story about the individual family with chapters that tell the story of the Hmong as a people, and since I knew very little about the Hmong or their history, this was really wonderful for me.

One of the most important things she does is try to get her English-speaking readers to understand that the American doctors should be viewed as bringing their own idiosyncratic set of beliefs to the table, just as much as their Hmong patients; readers need to put away the idea that American doctors are inherently 'right' (anyone who's talked to me about rationality versus religious reasoning should know that I love this sort of thing). Fadiman challenges readers to see the Hmong beliefs as a legitimate worldview, rather than a set of crazy and occasionally dangerous superstitions. I recommend this book for anyone who's interested in multiculturalism.

(By the way, fishlanterns, if you didn't get it, my answer to your reservations about this book is that you have nothing to worry about; it's nothing like that one review on Amazon.)

What's the best book that each of you read this summer?

Clouds

2009-08-24T03:47:18Z

Plato was a fool.

Today, I spent my afternoon reading Paper Towns, by John Green (it was excellent). At some point, I moved out into the front yard and laid down on the grass. I read half the book that way, on the cool grass, with the breeze and the shade. It was beautiful.

At one point, I rolled over, and caught a glimpse of the clouds up in the sky, and I had to stop and stare, even though the sky was so bright it dazzled my eyes. It was so perfect, with the wispy, fluffy white clouds moving slowly against the blue, blue sky, behind the dead branches of a cottonwood tree that our neighbors should have trimmed. They looked like towers of a castle on a hill.

As I kept watching, some large bird made a dark shape very high up, and I watched as it grew smaller and smaller, a little black speck against the white of the clouds, until it disappeared behind the leaves of an elm tree.

And I thought, Plato was a fool.

Every one of those clouds was perfect, all on its own. They weren't echoes of some perfect Form of 'Cloud'. The very concept of such a Form is an insult to real clouds. There's no such thing as a bad cloud, or an imperfect cloud; every cloud functions exactly the way that it should. They don't need to aspire to an idea, they just exist. They're just being clouds.

I feel the same way about almost everything. I looked up into the branches of the cottonwood tree, and it was perfect, too, it was being a cottonwood, and doing the cottonwoodiest job of it that it could. Don't try to tell me there's a perfect Idea Cottonwood that this cottonwood is a mere shadow of; it's your Idea that's a shadow.

And it's the same with beauty. Lying there on the grass and listening to the wind in the trees, and watching the birds fly past, and smelling the grass--that is Beauty. Not a reflection of something transcendent; Beauty itself, literally in the flesh, right there in my front yard. What a tragedy to experience something beautiful and think, "Well, that was a nice glimpse of something I will never truly experience until I manage to transcend this mortal realm."

Stop looking for the forest when you're already surrounded by the trees!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog and the Republic of Heaven

2009-08-22T04:24:10Z

Today, I finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, on the (very enthusiastic) recommendation of kaykopelli. I find I have a lot to say about it, mostly reading it was very much a journey.

Here's the thing: I was rather wary going into it. Despite everything that kaykopelli said about what an amazing--essentially life-changing--book it was, I was a little put off by my initial impression. The book is the story of a concierge in an upscale Paris apartment building, who hides how well-read and intelligent she is, in order to seem like an ordinary concierge, and an intelligent twelve year old girl (one of the tenants), who has decided to commit suicide, because the world is such an ugly place.

I couldn't get it. I kept asking things like, "Why does the concierge have to hide who she is?" and, "Is this little girl utterly blind not to see the beauty of the world?" In fact, I spend the first half of the book wanting to smack them both. But, when I finally lowered my defenses and let the book talk, I realized that it is a book about the beauty of the world. And that is something I can certainly get behind.

I don't believe I've ever posted about it, but I spent a lot of time in college developing my worldview and articulating my beliefs about the way the world works. And I discovered that one of the cornerstones of my thinking is that the world is a beautiful, magnificent place, and that the beauty--and the duty--of being human is to glory in it.

It was Philip Pullman's essay, The Republic of Heaven, that made all the difference. The realization that this world counts, that the physical world isn't an ugly thing, it's the only thing, and we need to love it and live in it. I mean really live, not move through it as if we're on the way to someplace else all the time--always thinking about the next world, and what will come after, instead of experiencing the world right here and now, in all its physical splendour.

That essay is the closest thing to a religious experience I've had in my adult life, because it gave me that sense of truth that, I think, religious people experience--when you read something, or hear it, and know that you believe it, not because of the person who said it, but because it was down deep in your heart the whole time, waiting to be articulated.

And now, I try to live that way--rejoicing in the glory of living in the physical world, in the squishy feeling of a ball of wool yarn, or lying on the grass in the shade reading a book. Or peaches! In my opinion, any world that has peaches in it is worth living in for that simple fact alone.

And that, at its heart, is the subject of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. This is a book that will dwell for pages about the beauty of a rosebud falling onto the counter, or the taste of sushi, or tea. So, I finally realized that when I wanted to shake the little girl and tell her what a fool she was being for thinking the world wasn't worth living in, I was meant to feel that way.

The book's last line is about as perfect a statement of the idea of the Republic of Heaven as you could hope to find. It says, "Beauty, in this world." Yes, yes, yes.

This is the first time in a while that I've actually been challenged by a book. It challenged me because my initial impression was that here was a book that was going to try too hard to be Deep and Meaningful and it will Take Itself Seriously. And that presumption very nearly kept me from getting at the heart of the book.

I mean . . . (forgive me, Kayla) . . . it is a little pretentious. It is trying to be Deep and Meaningful. But it doesn't--as I initially thought--sacrifice character development for that. It's all incorporated. I am wary of any book that self-consciously sets out to attain soaring prose and deep thoughts, even though I think that good books should have both. And yet, there is something of real value there in what Muriel Barbery is trying to say, and by the end of the book, you're deeply attached to these two characters (I nearly cried for them), which is far more important than any philosophizing.

So, it's a good book. A great one? I don't know; perhaps it's too soon to say. Not as great, I think, as Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, which is another beautifully Republican work, and accomplishes something very similar to The Elegance of the Hedgehog, but with simplicity and not a trace of pretentiousness. But certainly a good book, and a valuable one.

In fact, I would rather like to learn French so that I could read it in the original language--I get the distinct impression that a lot of the discussion of grammatical morsels is lost in translation, and you all know how dearly I love grammar. And, after all, if I read it in French, I could skip the more tedious bits that dwell on things like the nature of the human race, and jump straight to the good parts about pastries and camellias.

Birds!

2009-08-17T03:32:51Z

I'm finally getting started on birdwatching!

I did it for a biology class sophomore year of college, and LOVED it, but never found the time to start doing it in the long term. But! Yesterday I finally broke down and bought a field guide (Sibley, the Western North America version; I figure if I go back East, I'll get the Eastern one). And today, I rose at 6:30 in the morning, gulped down a cup of coffee, and headed off to the reservoir up the road.

(I didn't get there until 7:15, which I'm pretty sure is way later than hard core birders would be out there, but . . . it was my first time! And I don't do mornings!)

Anyway, the cool thing about being BRAND NEW at birdwatching is that even really, really common birds are new and exciting. I saw a buttload of Western Grebes, some Double-crested Cormorants, which are really funny because they wave their wings up over their heads to dry them out, and, best of all, a Belted Kingfisher! (And a bunch of Blue Herons, which aren't new and exciting, but are still really damn impressive birds.)

Hopefully I'll be able to make myself continue to get up this early, because I had a TON of fun out there.

Still whining about feeling sick.

2009-08-09T00:53:30Z

(That's what I do, you know. Whine.)

I've concluded that the chills I was experiencing last night were definitely the result of a fever. I sat around shaking uncontrollably for several hours, even after I crawled into bed and put on a sweatshirt. I finally gave up and turned in early--pretty soon after I curled up under the covers, I warmed up considerably--maybe too much.

The night was pretty dreadful. I spent the whole thing dozing fitfully and dreaming about zucchini. Seriously--all night long, my dreams were about this world piled high with zucchini that I was dutifully scooping the insides out of (the way I did for the stuffed zucchini I made yesterday). This seems to confirm my suspicion that I was running a respectable fever last night. (Unfortunately, I no longer own a working thermometer.) Also, my body was aching all over.

Anyway, I hauled myself out of bed at 7am and decided I was well enough to go to volunteer training. I basically always feel like crap in the morning, and at least my body temperature seemed to have regulated itself. (Those chills last night were, oddly, one of the most unpleasant sensations I've had in a long time.) The first hour or so was kind of grueling, but I felt better once I'd eaten some yogurt and had some coffee.

But, I've been feeling worse and worse all afternoon, and now I'm experiencing some pretty intense nausea. And that sore spot in my jaw I think is actually a swollen gland of some kind--there's a raised, tender spot on my throat there. And I'm still achy.

I'm hungry, but I'm too queasy to eat--if I can bring myself to get up, I might try to hunt down some crackers or something, because I know from experience how awful I feel if I skip a meal.

Mainly, though, I'm just bummed, because there's Shakespeare in the park tomorrow, and I was very much looking forward to going. I'm gonna hope I'll feel better by then. If nothing else, I need to get to the fairgrounds by noon to pick up the socks I entered in the county fair. (They won a blue ribbon!)

Rotten day.

2009-08-08T03:50:36Z

This evening has been one big pile of AWFUL, mitigated only by the stuffed zucchini I made for dinner.

I spent the day working on cleaning out the trailer where most of my non-essential junk has been stored for the last five years. That was fine for the first couple of hours, until this afternoon, when I realized that something--I'm thinking mold or mildew--was aggravating my lungs something fierce. We're talking coughing and phlegm, the whole nine yards. That left me feeling crappy for the rest of the day.

Then, while I was cooking my (delicious) dinner, some major family drama went down. (This may be the subject of a friendslocked post later, if I don't find a friend to talk to first.) Suffice it to say that it was very unpleasant, and now I'm trying to decide whether to move out or what.

And now, I'm freezing. I'm so cold, I can't stop shaking. It can't be less than 70F in here--probably a little more. So, that's got me worried that the irritation from earlier has already triggered a bout of bronchitis. I seem to get it from air irritants more than actual infections, and it can crop up a surprisingly short time after exposure. One time our neighbor burnt a coat full of dry-cleaning chemicals in his back yard, and I was down flat within a couple of hours. When it happens, it almost always puts me in bed for a week, and I don't want that!

Of course, I don't usually get chills with bronchitis, so probably I'm just cold and being a hypochondriac--I do have that tendency. On the other hand, I also have this mysterious ache in my lower right jaw. Maybe an allergic reaction to something in the trailer?

And on top of everything else, I have to be in town at 8:00 tomorrow morning for training for my volunteer work. I'll just hope that whatever's going on, it's cleared up by morning.

Peace Corps update: nomination!

2009-08-05T05:40:53Z

Received an online notification today that I've been nominated! The website doesn't seem to say what region I've been nominated to, so I'm assuming there'll be something in the mail with that information, but I'm excited anyway that things are moving forward! The next step is to get medical and legal clearance, which will involve doctor and dentist visits (not looking forward to paying for the dental stuff), and lots and lots of paperwork. I'll continue to stalk the Peace Corps website, and the Peace Corps wiki, which has loads of good information.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to get involved here in Delta County--I'm starting to volunteer a little (more on that soon, when I have details), and just doing some other community things. Today I entered a pair of socks in the county fair. It makes me feel good to do that--like I'm joining in a tradition that's often neglected these days. Feels like the best kind of old-fashioned.

And on Sunday I'm hoping to go see a Shakespeare production up in Paonia! (The Merry Wives of Windsor.) I'm pretty excited about that--it's really cool that there are opportunities to see Shakespeare even out here. I've always said that the free plays are one thing I'll miss the most about college. (This play isn't free, but the tickets are ten bucks, which is nothing for a play.)

Ugh. Government.

2009-08-04T04:08:59Z

I'm working on getting certified as a substitute teacher for this school year. Today I spent 3+ hours running errands in town trying to get all the paperwork filled out. It's as bad as the Peace Corps, which made me wonder why I decided to apply to two government positions at once.

It's also bloody expensive to become a substitute teacher!

Printing forms at the library: $1.30
Getting the copy of my driver's license notarized: $3.00
Getting fingerprints done at the sheriff's office (AGAIN, since I had to do it for the Peace Corps as well): $5.00
Colorado Dept. of Education Licensing Fee: $30.00
Colorado Bureau of Investigation fingerprint processing fee: $39.50
Mailing fingerprints to CBI: $3.00

It totals at more than $80. My mom pointed out that I'll make that back my first day of work, but still!

It also looks like I'll be living at home for a while longer, because my brother's attempt at getting an apartment fell through. It's probably for the best, since neither of us could afford it, but I was kind of looking forward to living on my own and in town. I've been kind of vaguely frustrated ever since I got back from college, and I think I just need space to work it out. Oh well.

My hands are growing up too.

2009-08-01T05:14:28Z

I've decided to start drawing again. It's been years--it kind of faded out somewhere around my sophomore year of high school (barring doodles in class and the one studio art class I took freshman year of college) when I realized I wasn't getting any better. But I still have loads of supplies, and I'm wondering if now that I'm more mature, I might be able to get them to do the things that I couldn't back then.

Anyway, at work last Tuesday, while I was waiting for pages (there's always lags towards the end of the day as we wait for the last few pages to get written and laid out), I sketched my left hand. I always used to like sketching hands, especially since my own are always there. So I was sketching it (crudely; I'm very rusty), and I had the shocking realization that these were not the same hands I used to sketch. I mean, the structure is the same--short fingers on normal-sized palms, the same as my mom's hands--but somewhere between high school and now, my hands have begun to wrinkle. You don't notice unless you look closely, but there are quite a few more fine lines there than there were when I drew my hands back in high school.

I remember back when I was first learning to draw, being aware of how drawing changed the way I saw the world, made me see things I wouldn't see otherwise. I wonder what other surprises I'll discover if I start doing it again.

Peace Corps update, and new contact info

2009-07-31T02:15:43Z

I'm out on the Eastern Slope visiting my dad. I drove out here yesterday because I had my interview for the Peace Corps in Denver today. It seemed to go quite well! I'm pretty sure didn't do anything too stupid, although I did end a handful of sentences with, "But, um . . ." I also got a much better idea of what I might end up doing, and where. My recruiter is looking at English teaching positions in a bunch of regions--she had me pick a few preferences, and after some deliberation, I chose Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and North Africa.

With a Peace Corps application, after your interview, you get a nomination to a program and region. Then you have to go through medical clearance (my impression is that this is the longest/most frustrating part), and finally you get an invitation to a specific assignment in a specific country. (My recruiter said that about 65 or 70% of the time, it's the same region as the nomination, but not always.)

Anyway, my recruiter said she's doing nominations on Monday, so I might know something by the end of next week. Fingers crossed!

Also, now that I'm out of college and have time to chat, I'm gonna try to start using AIM again, provided I can find an IM client I like. I'm middlemuse on AIM, and, as always, I'm museofastronomy on Gmail/Google chat (that's the most reliable way to reach me).