qatesiurade

My first day in possession of my Kindle 2 I downloaded the complete works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the complete works of Joseph Conrad, the complete works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the complete works of Emile Zola and the complete works of Honore de Balzac. Now, I’ve already read all of Conrad, as he’s quite possibly my favorite writer of all time, and I’ve read most of Doyle, but the rest… wow that’s a lot of reading right there. Top it off with the other stuff I’ve snagged from feedbooks.com and Amazon, including all of Cory Doctorow’s novels that he’s made available there as Creative Commons product (and may I say hooray to that!), both of Phil Plait’s amusing books about popular astronomy and misconceptions of same, Tom Piccirilli’s new novel, and other random but cool stuff like Dumb Money and A Perfect Red and… I won’t be bored maybe ever again.

But I’m resolving here to read what I’ve got before I download more. Can I do it? Or will I yield again to temptation?

I am an extraordinarily fast reader. I’m already down to the penultimate Barsoom book of Edgar Rice Burroughs (and I’ll be sad to see it end—this series is a blast!) and I’ve only had my Kindle 2 for a month. And that’s while reading other stuff on Dead Tree, etc. So I think I can!

Making an offer on a nifty little house with a great yard for my dog, a brand new kitchen, new paint, going to have a new roof by the time I move in, and still cycling distance to everything I care about except the town of Saratoga!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m going through WCDA (Wyoming Community Development Authority) and rocking the Federal First-Time Homebuyer’s Tax Credit. Those of you working on this goal, get ‘er done by June 30, 2009 and you can do that, too! $7500 or 10% of the purchase price, whichever is lower. It works as a no-interest loan from the federal government you pay off with $500 on your income tax over the next 15 years.

www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com

It has taken my slumlords deciding to raise the rent again on the Vertical Trailer Park I’ve called home for the last five years - finding a house to rent that allows dogs in Cheyenne is close to impossible unless you want to pay more in rent than a mortgage costs, as it turns out - to finally get me off my bum to do this.

I’ve met with a Realtor who happens to be an old family friend, and with a mortgage specialist and prequalified for a WCDA loan (WCDA = Wyoming Community Development Association, a great, great outfit who helps Wyoming individuals and families buy their first homes) and I’ve started shopping.

I’ve found four houses I like - and this all in the space of a few days! - and am strongly considering putting in an offer on one soon. This is partly because I want to get out of the apartment before the new rent kicks in and they demand I sign a lease, and partly because now that I’ve picked a house (ok, houses) I’m eager to start making it/them my own.

That’s the problem—deciding!!!! I’m bringing over my parents to get a second opinion on all four horses in the race, and bugging all of my friends for thoughts as well. Especially my local friends who will be helping me move ^_

Sunday I work ten hours, come home at 8 p.m. and feed on leftovers from the fridge. BUT, since I’ve been working on a goal sort of like this for a while without stating it here, they’re pretty amazing leftovers.

Usually my big cooking night is Thursday. I’m not just experimenting with dishes; I’m experimenting with really trying to live by the advice of people like Russ Pollard and Michael Pollan (odd pairing of names, that, phoenetically speaking…) to eat seasonally and eat locally. Locally is limiting in Wyoming, especailly this time of year, but seasonally I can definitely do!

My first few go-arounds I experimented with ROOT VEGETABLES. Of course I like carrots and potatoes, but what about beets…turnips…parsnips…rutabega? I found a recipe for chicken stew with rutabega. The other ingredients – yams, dried figs, homemade chicken broth – really made it flavorful and interesting and I think I found a new favorite recipe that night. Next I found a recipe for roasted root vegetables with rosemary and balsamic vinegar. That turned out also, to be yummy – and I’ve always turned my nose up at beets especially – and went nicely with a very simple baked pork chop.

I’ve also finally tried recipes I’ve had around for years. I have rather an exotic cookbook collection for a Wyoming girl but have barely scratched the surface of what’s there. Yan Can Cook’s West Lake Beef Soup was a hit with my friend that came over for dinner. Added a dessert of homemade vanilla yogurt with a swirl of what was supposed to be pomegranate freezer jelly that turned out more like pomegranate syrup and it was a helluva meal.

I’m especially glad to be doing this now as I also find myself preparing to buy a house. It’s made me give a LOT more thought to what I want in a kitchen now that I get to choose.

Day 4 (since I started on New Year’s Eve) and I’ve managed to generate four sonnets. Still a little sloppy metrically, but I have a feeling that by day 365 I’ll have so internalized the sonnet form that I’ll be incapable of breaking the rules. Or I’ll have decided Shakespeare was just dumb with his constant iambic pentameter nonsense.

Or such is my hope. As such.

http://suppertimesonnets.blogspot.com/2008/12/chicken-soup-with-orzo.html

They will not always be about what I’m eating or cooking. That would grow very dull, very fast, for all of us. I’m just getting over the flu and slowly returning to real life so that’s all there was at hand, unless you want a sonnet on symptoms. Saving that for when I’m truly ill again.

It’s the (early) morning of Nov. 28 and I only have 4200 words to go. It’s NOT my weekend; I even worked yesterday for the holiday, but I have one of those jobs where if nothing is going on I can do as I please. I’ve achieved most of my word count on the job. In other words, I’m strong to hit the target in time, though I’m realizing the book itself is going to be a lot more than 50,000 words long. I know how it’s going to end, but, well, a lot still has to happen yet.

Just among my circle of friends in Cheyenne and Saratoga, WY, I’ve always had a pretty decent talent pool from which to draw, but my enthusiasm alone just never seemed to be enough.

Until I met Hero#1, one of the co-owners of our Friendly Local Gaming Store, Heroes Only, and an aspiring screenwriter.

Together we’re brainstorming a plot for a short black & white, possibly silent, slapstick horror movie. We have access to editing software and a trained editor, a high def camera, and lots of random crap. The film is more or less cast—our fellow gamers…

This is going to happen!! WooOOOoooOOO!

Of course, NaNoWriMo is going to get in the way, but obstacles are meant to be hurdled, no?

Because I work four-day weeks/weekends, effectively July is done for me as far as work days. Looking at my calendar I pretty much achieved this at a level of 50%. August, here I come!

I drafted pretty well—the judge whistled at what I pulled together (blue/green) but after two and a half days of play/work/play/work and maybe two and a half hours of sleep, I played pretty wretchedly, even for the beginner I still am. I still had fun, though, and got to witness a goofy marriage proposal to boot. Will keep after it, O yes!

...Have I finished the NaNovel I started within the allotted time. Each year since 2002 I’ve let other November events interfere. One year it was a law enforcement Spanish class, one year it was the flu, excuse excuse excuse…

This year, though, I’ve already lined up two NaNo buddies in my town. They’re both NaNewbies but enthusiastic and both much more disciplined writers than I am, so I feel good about my chances this year.

Well, it already WAS something of a family affair—my great-great grandfather is my main NPC Bosley and his wife, my great-great grandmother, is about to make an appearance as a shadowy figure from one of my player-characters’ past, but now…

Now I’m planning to get my own, real-life, personal mother involved, too!

She’s coming to visit me for about ten days and is going to make a special guest real-life appearance animating a muckracker (newspaper reporter) character who is going to interview the party about their exploits, inventions and theories about what the hell is going on within the story so far. She was a newspaper reporter/editor by profession for decades, so it won’t be a difficult role for her to inhabit. I just told her to be her nosy, pushy self ^_

My mother has always been curious about how RPGs really work (really, I think she’s a bit envious of me and my rich gaming life)(I come by my nerdery quite honestly) so here’s her big chance. But, as an acid buddy years ago always pointed out “you can do it too—it’s not a show!” Why spectate when you can participate?

Then, since I, too, am a recovering journalist type, we’re going to put together a prop version of the real, historical local newspaper for the town in which the campaign is set full of sensationalist yellow journalism about the party! The pot will be well and truly stirred.

A week from tomorrow. Very excited!

A new block comes out tonight/tomorrow and this coming Friday will be our first booster draft with the new block “Eventide.” While naturally we’ve all been perusing the spoiler sites for weeks now, we’ll still all be coming into this on something of an even footing. Huzzah!

I’ve always liked astronomy and stargazing, but recently I came across a neat old book from the 1960s at a benefit sale for the public library here. It’s called Naked Eye Astronomy and it’s inspired me to get back out there and do it again!

There is an astronomical society here in Cheyenne that meets once a month on a Friday night. Next step would be to go play with them, I think!

The new players are adding considerable variety and flavor to the game, plus sending the story just enough off the rails to a)Make it interesting for everyone and b)Keep me on my toes. We’re role-playing instead just roll playing and even the original two, who asked for more exciting fighting and less boring talking, have really gotten into the in-character debates and brainstorming. We’ve got character conflict, individual storylines within the larger narrative and still getting a whole lotta weird west monsters kilt durn good. Hooray!

I now play with a group of older gals (including my mother, my high school speech coach, my old girl scout leader and another former teacher of mine, among others)whenever I make it home for a visit. It’s a fun and sociable game that still keeps you sharp. We don’t play for money or bet, but it’s still interesting. I’d recommend it to absolutely anyone as an enjoyable pastime!

1. Giovanni Battista Fidanza, aka Nostromo, from Joseph Conrad’s novel of the same name.

He is popularly considered incorruptible by his fellow denizens of the ficitonal silver mining town of Sulaco, and incorruptible is always good. He turns out not to be so, for he’s incorruptible out of vanity rather than out of real nobility and this leads to his downfall (hello, he’s a Joseph Conrad character!) but he’s dashing and gets things done, is incredibly good at keeping secrets, and would be a good man to have in your corner—as long as you don’t trust him too far.

2. Avi from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon

Avi seems like another good one for my team. He’s tough and scrappy in the intellectual and technical sense, has a serious talent for making amazing things happen (like setting up a data haven for real, AND starting the HEAP aka Holocaust Education and Avoidance Project). He’s incredibly passionate about right and wrong and devoted to family and lots of other old-fashioned values, but he’s still a kickass hacker and post-modern businessman. Yeah!

3. Philoctetes—from mythology and Sophocles’ play

Poor Philoctetes: his story always made me cry when I was a teenage outcast nerdgirl, stranded on an island for having the bad luck to get snakebitten and becoming a buzzkill on the invasion fleet to Troy. He does whine about it later when the Greeks come back to get him (which they only do because they’ve learned they can only win with Hercules’ bow, which, d’oh! Philoctetes owns) but ultimately makes the manly, grown-up decision to suck it up, go help and save the day. Yes, I would prefer him on my team AFTER the festering stinky wound in his foot heals and he stops moaning, but if I already knew the kind of mettle and character he had, I’d find a way to put up with him before.

4. Godbody from Theodore Sturgeon’s novel of the same name

Godbody is basically a stand-in for Jesus, but he’s easier on the eyes and a whole lot nicer. He even teaches woman-hating would-be rapist Hobo Wellen how to simmer down and learn to love again. Imagine what he’d do for, I don’t know, the presidential campaign. Plus the whole semi-miracle thing.

5. Nevil Clavain from Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space trilogy

Clavain just kicks ass. He’s been kicking ass for hundreds, if not thousands of years, on behalf of good causes and his various loved ones in and out of the Conjoiners. He engages in a hyperspace chase, he does his best to rescue Galliana from the Wolves, he runs, he shoots, he plots, he plans, he builds a real community nan unknown planet out of a ragtag group of people he helped rescue from a doomed planet, he journeys beyond time and space… he raises a brain-damaged daughter to a kind of herodom of her own… well, I certainly wouldn’t want him in my foes’ corner!

6. Molly from William Gibson’s Neuromancer (and Johnny Mnemonic)

A razorgirl street samurai with retractable scalpels under her fingernails, jacked-up reflexes and street smarts for everywhere from the Sprawl to Chiba City to Istanbul to the orbitals. Smart and sorta bitchy, definitely another one you don’t want fighting for the other side if you don’t have to!

7. Joe Pickett from C.J. Box’s novels

I’m a Wyoming girl so I appreciate what a seasoned game warden has to offer. Sure, he has liabilities, like not having made a lot of friends in high places to balance out the enemies, but he knows the terrain (the mountains and river valleys of Wyoming), has a smart dog and a good pickup truck and lots of guns and ammo. Like Aragorn with modern technology and a lot less baggage, plus he’s a pretty good gumshoe. Hell yeah!

8. Prince Andrey Bolkonsky from Tolstoy’s War and Peace

A brave solider and veteran of several campaigns against Napoleon, he’s also brave enough to free his serfs (admittedly after Pierre gives him the idea). A combination of physical and moral courage is always good to have around, especially when backed by a certain means.

9. Hellboy – from Mike Mignola’s comic and two feature films

He’s fireproof. He’s funny. He’s got a huge gun that uses holy water/silver/garlic bullets. He’s slowly learning to appreciate a good cigar. He’s funny. He loves cats. He does the right thing eventually, no matter the cost. He’s got a certain emotional immaturity, but one can work with that.

10. Severian – from Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun

He’s handsome and slightly scary, which is always an appealing combination for us ladies. He is apparently immortal and darned near omnipotent in his bumbling way. He can bring people back from the dead, after a fashion, is good in a fight (especially while he has Terminus Est) and has a whole galaxy of guardian angel types looking out for him. How could he not be an asset? Well, the torturer thing aside…

I got to ride over my hometown and along the river I’ve floated (Upper North Platte in Wyoming) a few years ago with some very cool people. I took a fantastic photograph of the balloon’s shadow on the treetops that I really need to digitize and share—it’s beautiful.

The initiation ceremony for first-time aeronauts is pretty cool, too. The following year (this used to be an annual festival in Sartoga, WY) I played the part of one of the villagers who attacked the Montgolfiers’ first passengers and that was great, too.

Someday I’d love to have and run my very own balloon. But until then, I cherish the champagne cork with all our names on it and the date (July 14, 2000) and dream…

A few years ago I took a hard look at my finances and how I was spending my time and decided cable had to go. I went from bigtime digital cable (including BBCAmerica and Fox Sports World, aka the Soccer Channel) to not even free/broadcast (since I’m in a crap signal area) and never looked back.

Well, not NEVER never, as I still subscribe to Netflix, but I still don’t spend hours in front of the tube purposelessly watching just to watch. If I’m in front of the tube it’s to see a movie I really want to see and I pay attention and take it all in. Result, nothing but high-quality viewing experiences, no commercials, happiness all around.

Of course this was easy for me, in a household of one. If you’ve kids or roommates, it would be a lot tougher.

It’s still totally worth it, though. No more eating in front of the TV… a renewed love affair with/respect for public radio (and shortwave radio, which is very cool) and a lot more progress on all of my other goals.

Go you!!!!!

In reverse chronological order, I have read at least one thing by the following Nobel laureates for literature:

V.S. Naipul (2001)
Gunter Grass (1999)
Seamus Haney (1995)
William Golding (1983)
Gabriel Garcia Marques (1982)
Pablo Neruda (1971)
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)
Samuel Beckett (1969)
Jean-Paul Sarte (1964)
John Steinbeck (1962)
Boris Pasternak (1958)
Albert Camus (1957)
Halldor Laxness (1955)
Ernest Hemingway (1954)
Winston Churchill (1953)
Bertrand Russell (1950)
William Faulkner (1949)
T.S. Eliot (1948)
Hermann Hesse (1946)
Pearl S. Buck (1938)
Eugene O’Neill (1936)
John Galsworthy (1932)
Sinclair Lewis (1930)
Thomas Mann (1929)
Sigrid Undset (1928)
George Bernard Shaw (1925)
William Butler Yeats (1923)
Rudyard Kipling (1907)

I count 28 out of 104 so far. I’ve got a way to go!

Of these my favorites have been Yeats, Undset and Laxness. I don’t care if I ever read another word of Hemingway or Steinbeck. I want to read lots more Laxness and Shaw.