rummaging for answers in the pages

2008-11-16T18:34:00.000-08:00

November is halfway over, so in theory I should be halfway through writing a 50,000-word novel. Unfortunately, that is not the case. I have a Word document with words in it. Word. But. The measly quantity of words I have created is discouraging at this halfway point. Maybe in a few days I will surge forward in a rush of panic, and churn out thousands of words of rubbish very quickly, setting an uncomfortable pace for the rest of the month that guarantees both quantity and lack of quality.

I am a perfectionist/procrastinator. It's one of my biggest problems. I've always been a procrastinator, but it was a long time before I realized that not wanting to settle for crap was at least part of it (in addition to the laziness factor). This is why I sit in front of blank screens, continually typing and deleting. I want to see my product fully formed on the page; I want to edit it word by word as I go. This is the kind of approach that doesn't work for NaNoWriMo.

Somehow I managed to write a novel last year that you could maybe call a novel. It's a story. There's a progression. I didn't have a grand master plan when I started; what I had was a ton of enthusiasm and a night-owl nature. I did procrastinate. But in the last two weeks I plowed through it and basically wrote the whole thing. I was utterly focused on it. The novel was my focus. It was nice to have a focus removed from real-life problems. NaNoWriMo lets you do that--say fuck everything else, for this month. I'm going to be in my own head and get these words out and share the experience with some other people, maybe.

This month I have been very distracted by all kinds of other things; I haven't been able to release my problems and sink into the comfort of the novel.

I hereby decide that my poor neglected novel--the novel I have bragged for months that I was going to write, the novel in whose company are lots of other novels by my dedicated friends who are really pursuing this crazy project--will become my focus for the rest of the month, till it's done. The guitar calluses forming on my left hand fingertips will have to languish and be rebuilt again.

Snow is here. Dark comes early. Lots of writing time.

2008-11-08T14:59:00.001-08:00

My novel is languishing in total lame-osity. It's freezing. I need to get some hunting gloves. Not to hunt. But because apparently regular gloves aren't enough for my skinny fingers.

It's barely 5 on Saturday and it's dark. Dark, cold. Maybe I will just hibernate. I have plenty of movies I haven't watched . . . lots of coffee . . . and a really gassy canine companion. And of course a novel to painfully wrench out of me, one word at a time.

decreasing temperatures and increasing word counts

2008-11-07T17:30:00.000-08:00

I recently remembered that I started a blog some time back, and I bragged about it a lot, and coerced people to look at it and bookmark it. I spewed some useless musings and complaints onto it, then forgot about it in mid-July. So, you might think that life either got so busy and exciting or I got so listless and despondent that updates were no longer possible. Well, neither. Stuff has changed since July, that’s for sure. But really, I’ve just been doing that whole starting-a-project-and-then-abandoning-it thing that has proved so successful over the years.

A good motivator for writing an update is the fact that I really should be writing something else, so this is actually a form of procrastination. But! Useful procrastination. I’ll explain. On November first, I embarked on the thirty-day journey known as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. My novel is in its infancy, and it’s a really ugly little bastard, but the lovely thing is that anything I write this month is fair game for cramming into my novel. So, if I feel pressed, I can take something unrelated, like this here little blog entry, and paste it into my novel. I could write it in as a blog post written or being read by my protagonist, or . . . anything, really. Maybe she's hearing voices. It’s my novel. It could become a piece of mass propaganda that incites entire nations to bloodshed. Or to embracing peace. The novel doesn’t have to make sense, you know--it just has to be 50,000 words by November 30.

I feel like last year I was much more conscientious about writing my novel, but you know what, no. I totally slacked off, and then wrote most of it in the last two weeks. It was a sweaty, insane feat that took a lot of sleep time away. But was totally worth it when I was done and somehow ended up with a somewhat cohesive chunk of words. I remember, Maria called me at some ridiculous early hour on the 30th saying she was done, and I freaked out because I still had a ways to go. I basically finished within the hour of the deadline, uploaded my document, then went out to Norm's with Kristine, Chris, and Kenny and celebrated with bottomless hot chocolate and decadent breakfast food.

Overall, last year’s novel is pretty shallow, with bland, poorly developed characters, but I really like parts of it anyway. NaNoWriMo is giving us folks who won last year (you’re termed a winner if you make it to the 50,000 word point and upload your novel by midnight on the last day) a chance to have our novel printed and bound like a real book, with cover art of our own design. But there’s six months for us to redeem this prize, so some people I know (Kristine) are holding out to have this year’s novel bound instead of last year’s. I dunno--so far I like last year’s better. But we’ll see. I’m actually considering starting over entirely, not deleting anything I’ve written but just sticking it in at the end for word count.

Last year was fun; Kristine and I would oftentimes go eat soup at Corner Bakery and then go to Peet’s and write until they closed. Toward the end, I got in the habit of going by myself to Barnes & Noble and writing until 11 pm when they closed. I remember it being so cold when I would head to my car to drive home--sheesh, how cold could it really have been? It was freaking Aliso Viejo, California, for gosh sakes. I would talk to Maria on my phone on the five-minute drive home, then keep talking to her after I parked (plans of moving to Chicago had yet to be made but would be made during lots of similar phone calls in the spring). I don’t have a routine yet this year, even though Maria and I live together and we’re both noveling . . . we’re both still trying to get it together.

Aside from noveling, the major development I’ve undergone in the past few months (from a grown-up, responsibility and tax-paying perspective) is scoring a job at the University of Chicago Press. The position is entry-level--I’m an editorial assistant, like I was at BowTie--but I get to edit and I am now in at probably the most prestigious university press in the country. I couldn’t be more pleased, and it doesn’t hurt that my parents are incredibly proud of me and fully approve my moving to Chicago for this outcome. Book publishing is not a lucrative industry for most in its ranks, but there are not that many positions to be filled, so I have to consider myself incredibly lucky to have found such a prime spot for myself. It’s also the sort of career that will give me room (and keep me in the right mindset) for writing someday as well as taking on freelance editorial projects.

My writing aspirations this summer--comedy writing classes at Second City--fizzled out a little bit, but I’m hoping to reenroll some term soon. I have so many creative goals and am always disappointed in myself for not fulfilling them. I recently joined forces with a small group of Chicago girls who play musical instruments but who, like me, find themselves stuck at beginner’s status--we’re trying to meet occasionally to play together and hopefully get better and who knows, maybe becoming a performing act someday.

It’s getting cold in Chicago. If you’re from SoCal, you should gather up some warm wooly clothing items and come visit me soon--we can enjoy the snow together as a novelty. I’m actually kind of excited, but I’m told that the novelty will wear off very quickly.

Alright, I’ll leave you with a little excerpt from last year’s novel, to inspire me to get going on this year’s:

“Mia Ann, Mia Ann.” It was Robert, columnist and copyeditor extraordinaire. I didn’t dare ask him about my comma conundrum. I would end up having to listen to a tedious half-hour-long explanation that went way beyond my actual question and ventured into either impossibly inapplicable information that I would never remember let alone use, or veered back to square one and into the negative, patronizing me with things that I already knew.
“Hey, Robert.” I poised my hand over my mouse and looked up at his rotund figure standing above me. He had the stomach-hanging-over-the-belt look going on, and the view from my chair was almost entirely dominated by said stomach.
“Mia Ann, you were an English major,” he stated. It was true, so I just looked at him, having no response to this. “Okay, so what is it called when you substitute a word for another, similar sounding, word? It’s cute and catchy, like, this: Paws and Reflect. Paws as in P-A-W-S.” He spelled out the word. I looked at him and said nothing. “It’s a book that my wife bought,” he added.
“Hmm,” I said. “A pun?”
“No, no, that is not it,” Robert said derisively, already turning to walk away.
“You know,” I said, “I learned about so many obscure rhetorical devices in high school and college, I can’t remember them all. But I’ll figure it out.”
“Don’t spend your afternoon on it,” he said.
I actually did want a break from mentally wrestling with a hypothetical comma, so I Googled “rhetorical devices” and came up with a page on some university’s Web site listing every literary trick known to the world. I scanned them all. I found this:
Paronomasia: use of similar sounding words; often etymological word play.
That seemed to describe what Robert had asked me about. So I Googled the term paronomasia, and what did I find out? It’s a fancy word for pun.
Well, it may have been said by many literary greats that a pun is the lowest form of humor, and I’m sure Robert liked to think that his interest in language was based on the most sophisticated of tastes. But it was just a plain old pun. I sent him an e mail:
Robert,
Turns out it is a pun. From Wikipedia: “A pun (or paronomasia) is a phrase that deliberately exploits confusion between similar words for rhetorical effect, whether humorous or serious. For example, the sentence ‘the world is perspiring against me’ is a pun on the paranoid's motto ‘the world is conspiring against me’, that exploits the similarity between ‘conspiring’ and ‘perspiring’.”
Mia Ann
I knew I would come off as a brat who had to get the last word, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to feel stupid, because he had tried to make me feel stupid when I was right. I was tired of him and his self importance. And I could send the message under the innocent guise of delivering information he had requested and I had promised.

2008-07-17T21:38:00.001-07:00

OMG! The US Postal Service strikes again. (With "again" I allude to my previous scuffles with this organization of scoundrels.) I ordered some stuff from Amazon. Strangers with Candy and Mr. Show DVDs. The estimated arrival date was yesterday. Okay, fine. Well, according to the tracking, the package spent two days in Forest Park, IL (which is a suburb of Chicago that I could get to on the Blue Line if I wanted to), was "scanned for arrival" twice, and then went to....LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY.

Awesome!!!!

Today was nuts; I was out n about for fourteen hours or something like that, and my backpack kept getting heavier throughout the day. I ended up ditching my bike (well, locking it up of course) and taking a cab home because I felt like my spinal column was about to collapse into itself.

That's it, really, just checking in. Many days of working ahead of me. Tomorrow I will have to go pick up my bike. Maybe I'll get a wireless router. Maybe I won't!! You'll just have to stay tuned.

2008-07-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

OK, so I may have said recently that I was going to write every day. May have? Did. Well, see, that was like a self-intimidation device to encourage me to write. Compare this, me posting every few days, to the old pattern of me posting every few months, and wouldn't you say that my self-intimidation tactics have been a success? It's like when a little kid won't eat what's on her plate and her parents ask her to take five bites of peas, then lower the minimum to two bites, then to two peas, then push away any extraneous bread or side dishes and say "just eat the meat." See, I'm sparing you the dispensable calories and just giving you the lean protein.

Today was a long, sweaty day. I woke my ass up early (actually, my ass woke itself up without an alarm somehow) to go to the dentist to be evaluated for braces. I rode my bike and arrived ten minutes late and very sweaty. The dentist himself was incredulous at my mention of braces, I guess because my teeth are pretty darn straight. Indeed, I have something of a reputation for my straight teeth; my dad claims hereditary responsibility. The thing is, though, literally two days before I left California, my last dentist in Irvine dropped the ridiculous bomb on me that I may need braces. The reason being that I have a misaligned bite that causes my upper and lower teeth to smack into one another, whereas a healthy bite would have more of a space in between.

So, I am going to have another appointment at which they will "take pictures" and "do a workup" to see if I need the braces. We'll see. I liked the dentist a lot, Dr. Siegal. Normally I am wary of dental offices with catchy names, but I didn't have much to go on other than Yelp reviews, and I got a good impression at the office. The practice is called Big Smile Dental, and not only does it have a catchy name, but it also has an over-the-top ridiculous sign. See my photo above. (Yay my first photo-within-blog; I am so excited. Sorry I don't yet know how to align it properly. Help.) How freaking awesome is that. It's a giant row of teeth, a dentist-looking mannequin dude, and the, um, I don't know, tooth fairy? In the questionnaire I filled out, one of the questions was, "If you had a magic wand that could instantly fix any problems with your teeth, what would you change?" or something to that effect, so maybe the tooth fairy actually does more than just sneak into your house to steal your teeth and leave a paltry tip. Anyway, I was amused by the sign, and I guess my new rule to dentists is, if you're gonna have a silly name, you better have a bizarre, campy storefront to back it up.

So while I am getting used to posting photos, here is another photo I took today, right after my dental appointment. It's my bike, posing alone in all its glory. It's kind of a tall bike for me, but the seat is lowered all the way, so it works OK. I feel pretty comfortable on it. Today, though, it has been squeaking when I pedal--something to get looked at. Though I guess this way I don't need a bell to alert passers-by that I'm coming...I'm pretty conspicuous.

So, after my appointment I biked over to a Panera Bread, which was one of my So-Cal lunchtime haunts. I ordered the same Mediterranean Veggie sandwich that I always ordered at the Panera on Rockfield and Lake Forest, and I pined for the Mediterranean climate that I left behind.

After scribbling out my comedy writing homework, I biked to Second City (at North and Wells, in the Old Town area of the city). It's the second-to-last class of the term, so we presented pitches for our very first real comedy sketch, which we will write this week to read in class next week. I need to sign up for the next level, Writing I. I like having these semi-educational, semi-recreational hobbies; because I don't have any friends, it's important that I find something to do.

So, this week I must apply myself to both my comedy writing and (more importantly) my manuscript editing class, as they are both ending soon. And then little Kailee has to figure out what the heck she is doing in Chicago...

2008-07-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

I made it through Saturday brunch unscathed, minus the coffee smudge that was on my arm all day, which I kept mistaking for a bruise. Sunday threatens to come ever so soon. So I sleep. And tomorrow hope to write something of substance.

2008-07-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

Previously on Kailee's Blog: In a moment of foolish optimism, Kailee made a public commitment to post something every day.

To avoid disappointing the three people who might read this, I am here the following day, doing what I said I would.

I am stupid tired (I have a coworker who uses the word stupid like that; like she says we get stupid busy during brunch) because I went to a coworker's karaoke bash last night, went to sleep really late, and then went to work at 9. Karaoke was one crazy time. Karaoke is one of the anomalies of my otherwise shy demeanor (I mean around folks I don't know well or strangers). The other anomalies are dancing and talking about Wheaten Terriers. (I accost people when I see them walking Wheatens. It's like seeing my own Dusty dog but usually a bigger, healthier, less insane version.) For some reason I require only minimal encouragement and/or arm-twisting before I'm up on stage with Larry the "KJ" belting out "Borderline."

So, I went to work and it was a mercifully slow day so I got out of early (or rather, on time, but I usually get out late) and had plenty of time before my editing class. And tomorrow I have a lovely, wonderful, much appreciated day off. I plan to sleep in. I don't know what else I am doing. Everything else is irrelevant when compared with the grand task of sleeping in. Remember, people, I am a sleeping-in kind of person.

So I want to write about my class(es) but right now, as stated earlier, I am too tired. So I'm gonna wash my face and get ready to sleep. First, though, I will give you some brief lists.

Things I am looking forward to:

Trip to San Diego (I will also visit peeps in OC and/or LA) the first week of August for my grandma's 80th birthday party
Starting guitar lessons (frickin' finally) next Wednesday at Avenue N Guitars
Writing my first real comedy sketch for my class at Second City
Earlimart show at the Hideout on July 26
Regan and David visiting us in Chicago in August
Getting contacts
Getting our apartment cute and comfy

Things I am not looking forward to:
Probably getting braces
Eye exam
Saturday and Sunday brunch "coffee crises" and "barista moments"

Things that are weird (to me) about Chicago:
Ridiculous weather
Ridiculous widespread affinity for patio seating

Things I miss about CA:
Thai Bite (Yellow curry with tofu and vegetables. It's called Gaeng Pak. Go there. Order it.)
Wahoo's Fish Taco
The Neighborhood Cup
Ridiculously awesome weather (so it's true. I had never given it much thought.)
My peeps, including the wee ones (nieces & nephews), the not-so-wee-anymore one (Morrie, who just turned 14. WTF!) and the adorable crazy dog
My car

2008-07-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

Right now I am enjoying my precious afternoon-at-home time after a day at work. I guess it’s evening. When it’s still totally bright outside, I neglect to notice that it’s past normal people’s dinnertime. And to further solidify the illusion, my computer’s clock keeps going back to Pacific time, tricking me into thinking it’s two hours earlier than it is. I just moved my computer’s clock back to the correct time. Does anyone know how I can get my computer to accept the fact that it is in another region of the country? I never knew it was so loyal to the west coast.

Lately we have been somewhat focused on home improvement. Seems like when I moved in, Maria hadn’t totally settled into the apartment herself. So now we are nesting. Yesterday, Tuesday, which is always my day off (the restaurant is closed), we stained wood planks that are going to become bookshelves mounted on the walls in our front room. When the project is finished (which honestly I have little to do with; I just do what limited things I’m told to do), we will each have a desk built into the wall, with shelves above for books and other items. So, once I have a desk, and once we can get our shit together and figure out how to set up our wireless network (we are taking turns with the LAN cable), I should have a nice, productive little workstation at which to do my editing and comedy writing homework as well as keep in touch with my cronies via e-mail, instant messaging, and dedicated blogging (ha).

The “front room” is my own name for the room that is getting the bookshelves. I’m not sure what it really is, because the apartment’s design is unlike anything I’m used to. That’s one of the things I like about Chicago; there is a historical aspect to the neighborhoods and many of the buildings that I’m just not used to, coming from Southern California. I grew up in neighborhoods that didn’t exist before the 1960s, and the new Wal-Marts and Targets that sprouted in San Diego’s East County during my teenage years were built on previously undeveloped land.

Here, I live in a house that was built in the mid-1800s and probably first inhabited by Ukranian immigrants. My room is tiny—about 8’ x 9’—and Maria’s is only somewhat bigger. The kitchen is huge, though, and there is not one “living room,” but two spacious ones; one I call the front room, and the other I call the room with the TV. And that’s just upstairs; the house has been divided into two, so the downstairs flat is rented to another tenant. Obviously, the building was built with an entirely different lifestyle in mind than the one I’m used to today. Perhaps multiple families occupied the building, and the bedrooms are so small because they were strictly for sleeping; any other at-home time was spent in the common areas. It’s kind of cool to imagine who lived here and what went on over the years and generations, in this very building. I guess coming from an apartment in Aliso Viejo, California, that was built in 1997 (the city itself has probably only been incorporated that long), I’m fascinated by the whole old-city thing.

Tomorrow I go to work again at 9 am. So far I have mostly been taking the train to work, the Blue Line. When I first got here I assumed there was just one train system, “the El,” and that I could just mosey up to any train stop anywhere and travel to any other stop. Well, that’s not the case (as anyone who has lived in an urban environment with functional public transport would have already known). So by now I have thoroughly familiarized myself with the Blue and Red Lines. So far the others have not been important to me, though I will need to use the Orange Line to get to the airport (Midway) when I go to California in August. But see, there are certain stations that are transfer stations, so I have to use the Blue Line, which is closest to me, and get to one of the stations in the Loop to transfer. Details, details. But important ones when you’re trying to get somewhere and don’t want to be a little lost puppy.

So, I had been taking the Blue Line to work, but when I got confident enough with my bike (I swear, I had hardly ridden a bike since the time I ate it on my purple mountain bike in 1991), I started biking to work. Logan Square is just about three miles or so from where I live, so it’s manageable; it takes a half hour or so. Problem is that when it gets hot here, it gets hot early, and the humidity doesn’t care what time it is. So I’ve showed up to work pink-faced and sweaty. But I’m saving money and I’m saving the environment, right?? Right.

OK, so here’s a blog-related goal. I want to post something every day. I can just see you smirking; yes, I can see you over the internets with your little sideways smile, scoffing at my ridiculous pipe dream. No, I want to post something every day, even if it’s something menial and short and lame. I want to start taking photos and posting those as well. I’m totally screwing myself over by announcing this intention, which I will undoubtedly fail to follow through with. But we’ll see. Maybe I can be something else besides a lazy, introverted procrastinator. Only time will tell.

still alive and still in chicago

2008-06-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

(fyi: this was written last night, Saturday, when I did not have Internet access and could not post until Sunday.)

In the past almost two months (yes, it has really been that long), I have let this blog become stale, then moldy, then a fossilized relic. Like many good intentions of mine (usually of the creative or health-and-exercise-related variety), I have let it languish into obscurity and have conveniently forgotten about it. But like a workout buddy keeping me accountable, Kristine, my Orange County homegirl (I wonder if she will shudder when she reads that description of herself…it so paints the wrong picture) has recently prodded me to write something. I think she refueses to talk to me until I do so. And because a blog is inherently public, as well as because I announced its inception so grandly to a bunch of people, it does look pretty ridiculous that I have let it sit untouched for so long.

So, I am back! At least for another installment. (At this rate, I can just put out a quarterly newsletter.) OK, enough banter about “sorry I haven’t written anything.”

The last time I wrote, my biggest challenge was how to find American Apparel and the neighborhood gelato shop on foot. Ah, such a difficult life is the life of leisure. So many hours to fill. Well, after a few weeks of sleeping in till ten, eating toast with goat cheese and raspberries, and then going for a latte and some recreational shopping, I noticed that my wallet was starting to seem a little flimsy. Pretty much within the week that I got here I was hired on at the restaurant my Chicagoan confidante Maria works at. A few weeks after that, I got a second job at another restaurant.

The first job was as a hostess (they started me off training to be a server, but it was a little, um, much for me, so I volunteered to be a hostess instead…too bad, the money would have been good), and the second job was as a barista. The hosting job was at a restaurant in the South Loop, in the evenings, with shifts starting at four or five pm and ending anywhere from ten pm and midnight, depending on whether it was during the week or on the weekend. The barista job began at nine am during the week and eight am on weekends. So, here is what my schedule looked like for a few weeks. Go to work at the hosting job, get home at midnight. Be at work at the barista job at eight or nine the next day, then go straight over to the hosting job to work another evening shift. It was just a little much. So I guess I compensated, money-wise, for being so leisurely when I first got to Chicago. But when the barista job started scheduling me five shifts a week, it became apparent that I could quit the other job, so I did.

So, now I am working five days a week at this restaurant, which is in Logan Square. I’m responsible for coffee and espresso drinks and also for all other nonalcoholic drinks (juices, iced tea, sodas, smoothies, lemonades, etc.). The servers enter in their orders and tickets print out at my station, telling me what to make. It’s been quite a while since I have been a barista, so it was kind of like learning all over again. And one of the biggest challenges (aside from getting up so freaking early, which just goes against my nature) is the manual labor involved. Seriously! I hurt my back and knees one day when I carried a milk crate containing four full gallons of juice up some stairs. Now I am smart and take lighter, quicker trips. But it’s still taxing being on my feet all day and constantly bending to reach stuff in the fridge, and my wrist gets sore from doing all the espresso drinks.

During the week the pace is very comfortable. Saturdays get very busy. But Sundays. Wow, Sundays. See, we have a brunch menu that was apparently written up in a bunch of local magazines somewhat recently, plus the food is incredible, plus it’s a very hip, cute place. All this equals insane Sunday brunch. Last Sunday was the first one that was really, really busy. I guess as we get more into summer that’s just how it’s gonna be.

Last Sunday I made a big faux pas and actually ran out of coffee. It was Coffee Crisis 2008. One of the things that is crucial to the job is constantly being aware of the big coffee pots and keeping them full (in addition to all of the smaller carafes, which I fill from the pots). This is usually easy to do, because I’m aware of how much coffee is being used and I generally have some spare seconds to check the levels, stick new filters and coffee into the machine, and start the pots a brewin’. But when my printer has a long-ass piece of paper that has folded up all over itself because all the servers have put in drink orders and there are extra-dry cappuccinos, smoothies, and half-caf soy lattes being ordered simultaneously in astonishing quantities, sometimes I am too overwhelmed to look back at the coffee pots for awhile.

Tomorrow’s Sunday, so I guess after last Sunday I should know what the typical pitfalls are to be avoided. We’ll see.

So, the service industry has been an interesting change for me, but I’ve definitely felt a bit like a fish out of water. I’m very much looking forward to my editing class, which (finally!) will begin on Monday. This, of course, is the reason I came to Chicago. The class is Introduction to Manuscript Editing, offered by the University of Chicago’s Graham School of General Studies (a university extension program). It’s funny, if I tell anyone here in Chicago that I’m taking that class, they usually say, “Wow, congratulations; that’s a really good school.” That makes me feel very smart and prestigious until I drop the charade and say, “Oh, anyone can take the class; you just have to pay for it.”

Before I came to Chicago, I ordered my Chicago Manual of Style 15th Edition from Amazon (excellent price, btw—the book retails for $55 and I got it for thirty-something). The hefty, bright orange tome has been sitting on a shelf, pristine and untouched. Monday I will begin, with the guidance of an instructor and the camaraderie of classmates, to mine the dense book for gems of editorial knowledge that will help me secure a livelihood of meager financial earnings but vast personal fulfillment. And as my dad keeps reminding me, I have to try to network and meet publishing peeps (well, he phrases it differently). As difficult as networking is for me (shy, lazy), it is probably a good idea. I also may end up signing up for the entire certificate program in manuscript editing, if the first class goes well (and if I can come up with the cash to pay for classes). Then I’ll buy a cushy little condo somewhere without humidity (oh Southern California, I miss you already) and edit from home. I guess that’s the ultimate “someday” goal. For now, I want to find a really cool editorial job at a publishing company that publishes stuff I like.

Well, this entry has been almost totally employment-related. I would love to continue but, ah, you know, beauty sleep beckons. How do you expect me to make perfect cappuccino foam if I’m not adequately rested?

More later. I promise! If I don’t blog again soon, I give you permission to come to Chicago to make sure I still exist, then smack me (sneaky ploy to get people to come visit me).

tired from walking in triangles

2008-05-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here with a blazing headache. Blazing like a fire, I tell you. Nah, that doesn't work. It's more of a dull pressure. I'm just incredibly worn out from a day of being a Chicagoan. Ha. I wasn't even out for that long, but it definitely takes more stamina to get around when you are without a vehicle. I went shopping in the Wicker Park area, and the walk there was OK. When I started to try to walk back, I ran into some problems.

Problem #1: Nowhere to use the bathroom. I suppose I will have to overcome both my fear of public germs and waltzing into restaurants and asking to use (or sneakily using) the bathroom without being a customer. It's just that everyone-is-staring-at-me feeling. Social anxiety, anyone?

Problem #2: Making a wrong turn. I was walking (thinking, hmm, maybe I should take the bus back) and began to see the same establishments I had walked by maybe thirty minutes before. Oh, I made a big circle! Awesome. Turns out it was a triangle. But whatever; basically it sucked. Luckily there was a bus stop nearby and I decided, screw it, I'm taking the bus. Which was a brilliant decision and got me home quickly for two bucks.

My shopping mission has been to buy work- or interview-suitable black pants. I've already gotten shoes. I packed without thinking very much, and I put those types of items in a box that I shipped to myself. That ordeal is a whole other (fascinating) story and will have to wait for another time.

first "real" blog entry, coming to you from Durham, NC

2008-04-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to contradict myself and leave the "trial post" for all to see. I figure it's the inaugural post of what I hope will be an earnest effort at blogging, so I may as well leave it there as evidence of the process. Anyway, being polished and perfect is not going to be my focus here, nor in my life in general going forward. I learned from NaNoWriMo last year (www.nanowrimo.org) that doing something, albeit imperfect, is better than doing nothing because you're holding out for perfection.

Right now I am at a friend's house in Durham, North Carolina. I drove here four days ago in a rental car from Columbia, South Carolina. I traveled by plane from San Diego to Columbia. And before that, by car (my own) from Orange County, California. That's where this whole thing started.

My preparation for this move was less than perfect, and though I just stated that perfection isn't my goal, I'm disappointed at some of the loose ends I left behind. I packed up my stuff in my Orange County apartment over a period of weeks, bringing carloads home to my parents' house in San Diego. Books, clothes, toiletries, kitchen items, bedding, computer, wall decor (mostly band posters and polite Ikea art) guitar, desk stuff, and all the assorted knick-knacks that materialize in our homes over time.

Once I had assembled all of this stuff in my parents' house, I had the erroneous sense of being done. Definitely not done. I still had to arrange everything that I was not taking into neat containers that could be stored at my parents' house without creating the unsightly look of stuff being stored. I also had to actually pack for the trip (move? sojourn?), including packing boxes of what would not fit in my suitcase, so I could send said boxes by US mail or other courier service to myself at my new residence.

The weekend right before I had to leave was Passover, and it was a nice Passover spent with relatives in Los Angeles. Problem was, this crunched the time I had to get ready. Coupled with a dentist appointment in Orange County on Monday, my time shrank even more. Monday night I felt like I had done enough and spent some time perusing www.perezhilton.com (which is always time you can never get back) and crashed. This left a truly insane Tuesday ahead of me. I packed. I shipped boxes. I organized. I packed more. I cleaned. I worried. The result of all of this was that I did not sleep a single wink of zzz's that night and proceeded to board a plane with my family, carrying on my acoustic guitar, laptop computer, and LeSportSac travel purse (given to me by my Aunt K. in LA; I love it).

After a grueling day of travel made more grueling by the fact that I was delirious from no sleep, my family and I arrived in Columbia, South Carolina, and my adventure had begun.

trial post

2008-04-02T23:59:00.001-07:00

This posting will undoubtedly be removed by me at a later date, when I decide that I have written something of substance. This is just the temporary place holder, to prevent my so-called blog from being utterly bereft of anything besides a splashy template.

Things to consider.
Why do I behave as though I do not value sleep, while in actuality, I value it a lot?
I named this blog after a line in a Regina Spektor song. Though I'm tempted to change the name to "reading time with pickle."