Bowl O'Cheese

At Barbacoa they have an appetizer that is pretty much a bowl of good melted cheese with chorizo mixed in it. What could be better than that? Oh, but then you see your plate afterwards and you think, I've had this three or four times in the last two years, how many years has that taken off my life?

Oh My God Nubbin Update

The Nubbin is so huge! I looked at the exact shooting dates and discovered that the first picture was taken on the 17th and the new picture today is just 10 days later. I hope it gets HUGE!

New Link

I just put a link on the side to my Flickr Site. I've been playing with it WAY more than I should (but starting tonight I am only doing it in the evening when I have already done my writing for the day so I will stop getting in trouble with myself). Anyway, I'm slowly putting my whole trip to France on there, and lately I put together a tour of my walk to work. One hint about Flickr, though - their slide show SUCKS. You can't see the comments and it's all better with the comments, so just click through instead.

10 Line June Beetle

This is the bug we found outside of work a few days ago. It's just a cell phone picture, but you can see it was really cool. I should have put my hand next to it for scale, but it made hissing noises when we disturbed it, so I was being a scaredy-cat. It was at least an inch long. The best thing about the bug though, was that it changed our entire day. We showed it to customers and co-workers, we looked up where it was from. It made me think partly about how urban even our small city is, that we were all fascinated by this bug. But it also made me think of simple pleasures - if only I could find a bug every day.

Nubbin

This is a picture of our cactus nubbin. It grows just a little bit each year and this nubbin always appears like magic. It's very startling when it happens because it's just poking out of the side one day. It's growing so fast it makes me want to set up time-lapse photography around it. I will update the nubbin's growth later.

Double Sunset

Okay, this is obviously a crappy cell phone picture, but it shows a little bit of what a beautiful sunset I saw last night at my Dad's. The clouds were so thick that the sun was completely blocked until it reached the sliver of space along the horizon. It looked almost like two sunsets - first as the sun appeared from behind those dark clouds, then again when it finally dipped behind the Olympics. A beautiful finish to a very nice Father's Day.

Thinking

Ever feel like your brain is on the edge of something? I can feel it shaping itself in the corners of my thoughts. I'm pretty sure I had the whole idea as I was falling asleep last night reading The Position by Meg Wolitzer (so good!). There's been a missing something in my novel for so long, I'm afraid to think I may be on the edge of figuring it out, but something H said the other night is still tickling me. It's right in line with what that weird Andy said to me years ago and what Binnie said to everyone... something about the missing part of the story being personality (mine or Netta's?). But I don't want every story I ever tell to sound like me, I want it to sound like the character... still thinking

Editing

Is it a matter of focus or inspiration? I can'’t tell anymore. When I'’m feeling inspired but I don'’t get anything done then it'’s a focus problem, and vice versa. Today I spent my morning posting pictures and reading a mystery. Then I sat down to write for real and my brain was all over the place - wanting to stop to clip my toenails, to check the weather report, to blow my nose, to see if the earwigs are still hiding in my poppies. I had to force myself not to do the dishes (and I hate doing dishes).

I know where I want the story to go. I think I can feel a worthwhile first draft of the new stuff in me, but I'’m having so much trouble lately actually getting the words on the page. Netta and Seth are trapped in a state of arrival. If I can just let them arrive, then it picks up again with the scenes that I like -– searching for frogs, falling in the mud, the boat on the rocks, all of it.

H suggested working on something else so that I wouldn'’t feel bogged down in the novel and I agreed. But part of me wonders if it'’s actually the opposite problem. I'’ve been letting myself multi-task too much, not forcing myself to really focus on Netta. It'’s like working out, like playing an instrument, like any skill -– you have to practice, but not so much that you get burned out.

So, is it a matter of lack of focus or lack of inspiration?

Reading Recommendations

I've already wasted most of my morning finishing a mystery/thriller I started yesterday morning and posting photos to my blog. Yes, this is going to be a great distraction from writing. Every time I read a good mystery (and Barry Eisler's Rain Fall is a good mystery) I decide I'm going to write my own. I can think up the characters, the location, some of the tension, but I just can't think of the plot, the all-important mystery to drive the Mystery. Of course, a lot of mediocre mysteries forget to put any mystery in and instead just rely on tension - which isn't really the same thing - but I don't want to write a mediocre mystery.

Also, in the last 2 weeks I read The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier, which was so strange and good. The kind of story that would have been maybe terrible except Brockmeier is a great great writer, so it was a great book. And I read a really short, intense novel about child soldiers in Africa called, Beasts of No Nation. Wow, talk about being completely transported to another place and way of living. There, 3 great books to think about, all very different, and now I will go work on my own great book.

Chocolate Cupcake Tower

Chocolate Cupcake Tower, originally uploaded by johnnyblegs.

Yumm, cupcakes are delicious. I would like a cupcake tower please. Oh, I am just loving posting pictures on my blog. It means I don't have to think about what to write about this morning.

Lazy Luna

Lazy Luna, originally uploaded by talldrinkawater3000.

I just had to put this on my blog. First, it's just a cute picture of my sister's dog, but second, I think it almost looks like a professional took it, like maybe she hired someone to come take portraits of Luna. What a little princess sleeping on the couch.

Too tired

Too tired, originally uploaded by Perfect Princess.

oops, I deleted this post on accident, but I really liked having it on my blog.

Earwigs

I am having major earwig problems in my garden. I am usually pretty good about not freaking out about bugs (after a childhood of spider phobia brought on by finding them - at different moments - in my hair, ear, underwear, bed, and sleeping bag), but earwigs give me the serious willies. I am tempted to rip out all my plants and start from scratch. Good thing I'm broke and can't afford to do that. They hide inside the flowers and I'm sure that one of these days I'm going to sniff something beautiful and inhale an earwig into my sinuses. No one gets cut flowers from me this summer until the outbreak is under control.

Clarification

Just to clarify, I am not smoking a joint in the previous picture. It says right in the post that I'm a good girl, for cryin' out loud (at least good enough to not post of picture of myself smoking a joint on my new blog!)

Gina's Graduation

Oops, had too much to drink, but I am a good girl. I am brushing my teeth before I fall asleep. I think this is the funniest picture I have of myself as an adult.

You're

You're, originally uploaded by talldrinkawater3000.

This is my cute sister. She likes taking pictures of herself.

Loans

I can't write today. I look at my story and all I feel is bitterness. I am so angry at myself right now, so angry about the choices I made at Columbia, I can hardly think. My loan payments are going up in July and up again in March. That will take them from being one third of my monthly income to being almost half my monthly income. It's ridiculous.

And I wasn't even that young when I decided to take out these loans! I wish I could say that I was so young I didn't know what a bad decision I was making, but that isn't really the case. I just thought there was no way I'd make it as far as 2007 without having my book out, without having some sort of advance to sink into the loans and lower the payments. I didn't think I'd be a famous bestseller, but I was positive I'd have a book published. Now the date for the final, brutal increase is getting closer and the book isn't done and I'm going to have to quit the job I love (the job that inspires me) so that I can find a better paying job (that will probably be awful) to pay off the loans I took out to learn about writing.

So I think I'm going to watch Montel Williams or that Regis show because I can't stand to look at this unfinished novel today. And I promise that if I ever have enough money I'm going to start a grant that helps out foolish MFA students like myself by covering their loan payments for a couple years. Better yet, if I'm ever out there on a book tour or something I'm going to tell everyone who asks me about MFA programs that they're great - BUT ONLY IF you don't have to take out a loan to pay for it.

Want

Today I am wanting everything. I want to understand HTML because my post yesterday turned into gobbly-gook when I tried to change something. I want to be able to walk to work without sweating. I want a haircut, but my stylist seems to have disappeared. And I want silly things like a new set of fluffy towels, new jeans and new running shoes.
What's with all the wanting?
I also sort of want to throw out all my house plants and 50% of all my clothes and shoes. I'll regret it later, so I'm not letting myself do. But the plants just clutter up the window ledges and are constantly needing to be watered. Would people think I was crazy if they came over and I didn't have any house plants anymore. Everyone has house plants. No spider plant drooping from the bookcase might make it look like I'm losing it. And, inevitably, it will seem like a judgment on my friends who have far too many houseplants.
It's similar to me not liking dogs. I don't hate dogs, I just think they stink and take a lot of work, and I'm really just too lazy for that. But sometimes when a dog person hears that I don't like dogs, I see them registering the judgment. She doesn't like dogs, so she doesn't like me, or she thinks I shouldn't like dogs either. Really it's just that I know myself enough to know that even if I had a dog that I thought was cute and fun, the mess and poop-picking-up would drive me crazy.
I want a cat.

Corned Beef

Here's a food picture (because I don't have one of risotto). This is my St. Patrick's Day feast. Huge! Yumm!

Feral Chef

Last night I had dinner at Dad's. He made a great bell pepper and shallot risotto. I felt like maybe I was in a foreign country - the way he made risotto, the ingredients, and most of all his bizarre cutting prepping techniques. I name him The Feral Chef. Being a surgeon he knows how to handle a knife, being also a carpenter he knows how to be efficient, but since he's a self-taught cook, he doesn't know the "normal" way you cut an onion. He cuts off the rooty ends first, then cuts it into rings like onions rings, then makes a tower of the rings, then cuts that into rough pieces. And maybe the strangest to me was that they don't refrigerate their Parmesan cheese. Instead they have a "Parmesan Cheese Cover" on the counter (can you say Williams Sonoma?), so the cheese was so rock hard even with a fancy grater all I could make was cheese dust that seemed to disperse around the room from our breathing.

And he wasn't stirring his risotto constantly! What would Marcella say?

But I am dedicating today to the Feral Chef's risotto that turned out great and wasn't made in anyway like how I would make it.