Reflection

Just about this time last year, I was with my sister, scarfing down 12 grapes as the clock struck midnight in a jam-packed Madrid square.

And now, I sit alone at home, in front of the TV, and reflect.

Don't worry. This isn't a complaining post. Due to work and traveling and general Advent business, today I've had only my second get-things-done-at-home day of the entire month and that is cause for celebration.

Besides, there was no possible way I was going to top Nochevieja in the Plaza del Sol, so I didn't make any plans. It's kind of nice to give my introverted self a break from people this New Year's.

I started 2014 off with abounding optimism. I was traveling and hanging out with my family, two of my favorite things. I lived in Spain. I had a beautiful apartment, an easy job, and unlimited sightseeing potential.

My plans started to change pretty quickly, but it really wasn't until October that I lost that optimism. I think that's a new record.

You may know that I don't deal well with change, or with feeling a lack of control. I started working at a day care in August, a place with a fabulous Assistant Director and friendly teachers and a class I adored. And then, seven weeks into my new job, suddenly I was being moved to a different center. I was devastated. It's taken me this long to get over that [and I'm still not 100% there, to be honest].

So looking back, I'm glad for another "fresh" start. I've got some exciting traveling things to look forward to, further in the year. This new class of mine should be staying the same after this month. I have lots of good days and lots of things to be thankful for.

It's not the same as it was 12 months ago, but then again, I don't want the same. I don't want to be in grad school right now, or starting a career at a company I could see myself committing to forever. If I had wanted that, I probably would have had it already. And that, I think, is why I keep beating myself up about being a college graduate still living at home and working an hourly wage job, temporary as that all may be. That "American Dream" is still so prevalent that I have trouble seeing my own dreams underneath it.

[Okay, I'm going to complain a little bit here. Working 40 hours a week, plus 1 hour for lunch and 1 hour of driving each day, does not leave much down time for figuring out what, precisely, my own dreams are. There's not a lot of room for any kind of creative pursuits or higher-order thinking, really. Hence the no blog posts since August. How do people do this their entire adult lives?]

I don't really make New Year's resolutions, because I know myself well enough to know that I won't keep them, but I want to start 2015 off with a promise that I think I've made to myself, consciously or not, for quite some time: I promise to try a little harder to do things that are rewarding. To blog. To meet up with friends. To read. To go on walks. To travel. To create.

It's a New Year, y'all. Anything is possible.

Home Sweet Home

Today concluded a whirlwind 11 days of traveling through Spain, the first half with my wonderful family and the second by myself. I've accumulated a lot of pictures [definitely ran out of memory on my camera] and stories and receipts, some of which I'll share with the Internet soon. [Not the receipts. That would be boring.]

But I'm a wee bit tired at the moment. Unfortunately for me, I rarely manage to sleep in buses or cars or trains so I missed out on several prime napping opportunities. So the actual this-is-what-I-did-on-vacation posts will be written...later.

As much as I lovelovelove traveling, it was verrrrry nice to walk down familiar streets and through the door of my apartment. I'm actually glad to be getting back into my routine of work and relaxation. Don't get me wrong - in two weeks I will be eagerly anticipating our next long weekend and the possibility of going somewhere new. But now I just want to be home.

And not just "home" in Spain. Walking through my apartment, I saw the shampoo bottle one of my sisters left in the bathroom. I saw the Christmas presents that my family brought me [they brought the most perfect gifts]. I saw the homemade paper Christmas tree that I had set on the table as a centerpiece for our family meals.

Feeling sentimental, I grabbed my computer and my hymnal - that my family brought for me from home because it didn't fit in my suitcase in September - and settled down on the couch to check email, upload pictures, etc.

I was doing all right with all my emotions until I decided to open my hymnal.

Number 280

[Gosh, even just writing about it an hour later makes me tear up...]

I have just a few hymn numbers memorized after years of hymn sings and church services. Amazing Grace is one of them, and one of maybe two songs that I have entirely memorized.

So naturally, when I saw which page I had randomly turned to, I started bawling.

[I'm glad that I came back a day early so my roommate isn't here to witness my crying because I would have a bit of trouble right now explaining it in Spanish.]

I have wanted to leave home for years. I cannot even pinpoint when exactly this urge to travel and live somewhere else began. I never, ever felt homesick at camps or church trips; I didn't really miss home during the six weeks that I was in Peru.

But now that I've been gone for over 3 months, and just had a fabulous visit from my family, I can't stop thinking about all the things I do love about home - all the things I'm missing.

• Christmas carols and hymns
• Spending time with my grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles
• Being at my church, where I know the structure and the people and the songs
• King Cake [I'm not even joking. I've been craving a legit New Orleans style King Cake for a whole month, since I hear/see stuff about the Three Kings everywhere.]
• Driving my car
• Petting my cat
• Seeing friends at our 5 year high school reunion [And oh my goodness I can't believe we graduated four and a half years ago.]

I will finally admit to it. I am homesick. I'm glad to be back in Soria - I absolutely love it here - but I desperately want to be home as well. I feel like I've been cut in half, and I can only keep one half satisfied at a time. No matter where I am, no matter what I do, I'm going to be missing out on something. I'm going to be wishing I were somewhere else.

And when I'm not boo-hooing about it, I'm really annoyed. Annoyed that I have to pick between two things I love, annoyed that I'm sad right after a fantastic trip, and mostly annoyed that teleportation hasn't been invented yet because that would solve all my problems.

So if someone wants to go ahead and make me a teleportation device, I would be super grateful. I might even share my Poptarts, because I have two whole boxes of them now :)

Feliz 2014! Happy New Year, everyone.

What I'm Doing for Lent

On Monday, I painted my toenails purple, yellow, and green.

Another teacher and I were talking about what we were doing for Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday and I had the brilliant idea to show my colorful nails to the kids we work with. Of course, then they all started taking off their own shoes. Not the best plan.

On Tuesday, I ate pancakes at my church, surrounded by Mardi Gras masks and balloon centerpieces.

We didn't have any King Cake which I was sad about at first because I've been craving it for ages. But then I got Valentine's candy and cookies and even ice cream sandwiches from work and now I'm really sick of sugar.

On Wednesday, I had ashes smudged on my forehead and sang with a sore throat.

Spiritually, I think Lent and Easter are my favorite times of year. They're a lot quieter and less commercial than Christmas, which I really appreciate. Mardi Gras pancakes and Easter egg hunts are certainly a lot more low-key than standing in long lines buying last-minute gifts.

And so begin the 40 days of waiting for the party of Easter.

Easter is my favorite holiday, I think mostly because that means I get to sing the Hallelujah Chorus with the full orchestration and all that. I also really like the waiting [after all, that's when the Hallelujah Chorus gets practiced!]. You can imagine that the world's moving a little slower, that time is pushing Easter just a little farther away and then it arrives with a bang! Or maybe I'm just overtired and a little crazy. But I do love the idea of giving things up for Lent, the idea that Lent is different and simpler than the rest of the year.

Even when I do remember to make them, I seem to only inadvertently keep my New Year's resolutions. I don't know if it's because I can't handle the year-long commitment or because I have too many goals. But Lent, I have always been able to follow through on.

This year, though, I had a really hard time thinking of anything meaningful to give up. I have been trying very hard over the past couple of years to cut out all of the mindless excesses that I would normally pick to go without for forty days. I could always give up something like chocolate, that I enjoy but don't overindulge in, but it wouldn't be the same as the year I gave up reading celebrity gossip. And I feel uncomfortable with the idea of giving something up just because.

So instead, I'm doing the opposite. I've made a list of things to take on for Lent, some of which will replace the time I spend meandering thoughtlessly around the Internet. I'll probably be adding things to it even through Holy Week, but for now, it's got things like exercising and practicing Spanish and cleaning my room. I'm going to make sure I do at least one of them every day; hopefully, this will help me get back into some habits that I lost after graduating from the structure of college.

The biggest thing I want to get done is decluttering. While I was in Perú, I was struck by how little stuff I really wanted with me. For six weeks, I didn't miss much of anything. I have always been a collector, so there are a lot of things in my room, and I realized for the first time just how much I didn't need most of this junk. So those things - plenty of which live in our messy gameroom because I ran out of room a long time ago - are going to get sorted and passed down and donated and thrown away and recycled.

Everything I brought with me fit into that dresser and a nightstand.

I am so looking forward to not feeling so crowded in my own space. After spending the past six months surrounded by ALL my stuff in one place - for the first time in 3 years, really - I feel like it's drowning me, just crashing away in my skull and not leaving me any room to breathe. I used to collect all these things [trinkets, coins, dreamcatchers] because I needed the noise around me, but now I think I'm ready to let my self back out, to tone down all the other distractions and figure out how to be an adult and how to survive living in a culture that thrives on excess. To figure out how to start being alive now instead of waiting to do that when my next goal, or the next one, is reached.

So that's what I have in store for myself for Lent, both physically and mentally. In a way, it seems like a lot to do. But when I compare my "crisis of self" [for lack of a better term] to the "real" crises faced by people all over the world, every day, I realize again how privileged I am to be doing any of this at all.

Christmas Thanksgiving

Clearly I am really bad about remembering that I have a blog. Hopefully [really, hopefully] I can successfully pull off a New Year's resolution to write more. We shall see.

But anyway, what I wanted to do really quickly since it's almost Christmas and therefore the happiest, and busiest, time of year, is sum up the last month where I have been Internet blog silent. And seeing as that month included Thanksgiving...

MY TOP TEN LIST OF THINGS I'M THANKFUL FOR AT CHRISTMAS:

1. This is the 100th post on my blog! 100! It's crazy.
2. I have a job now! Hooray!
3. I did not run out of fantastic TV shows to watch while I waited to get a job! As of today, I am completely caught up on Doctor Who.
4. I have a bunch of wonderful friends.
5. I got to see a ton of my family at our Thanksgiving reunion and there were adorable babies everywhere. We spent a lovely couple of days on the beach in Mississippi. There was tons of tasty food, of course. I also technically went to New Orleans again. We celebrated my great-uncle's 90th birthday at the WWII museum, which was a pretty fantastic place. One day, though, I'll go to NOLA to be a tourist...one day.
6. My sister is home from college!
7. Shiny wrapping paper. I love it.
8. Movies! This has been an almost perfect year in terms of movies. The Hunger Games, Prometheus, The Avengers, Anna Karenina, The Hobbit, Les Miserables [if it lives up to my expectations]. If there had been an Angelina Jolie movie out, then it would have been the Movie Year to End All Movie Years. So, so close.
9. Christmas music! Somehow, I've managed to avoid getting bombarded with Christmas music this year. I haven't filled my quota of it yet.
10. Hot tea.

There are plenty of other things I'm grateful for, but they're not coming to mind at the moment. So we'll leave it at ten. I wouldn't want this list-post to get too long. Especially considering it's the end of the year, which also means the month of people making best-of-2012 lists. It's like OCD heaven! So stay tuned for more list-making, including the best books I've read this year.

Merry Christmas, universe!

Email! Disability Update! Romania?

I have had a super fabulous week and I'm not going to gush on and on about how nice it was, but it was very nice and finally kind of busy. Which I LOVE. I need to be busy busy busy because I get bored really easily.

[While typing that, one of the busies almost became busty...erm, not quite the same thing.]

I'm still getting that last bit of summer mode out of my system and settling back into sort of a routine of job searching - which I will not talk about much here because I talk about that with everyone in real life - so this is not going to be too meaningful or soul-searching.My brain is quite obviously too spastic for that at this moment.

First, after a couple of comments, I made an email that I don't mind making public and where I can be reached if anyone wants to contact me. If all I get is spam, I'll be deleting it, but I'm hoping that this will both make me more accountable in actually getting posts written AND make me some new friends. I'm trying to figure out how to add this in its own line to my profile description, but I am decidedly not blog-layout-savvy. Also, I am having trouble deciding what I really want this email name to be.

For now, you can contact me at: corinne.rambles@hotmail.com

[Side note: I always wanted a pen pal and finally got my parents to sign me up for an international one. I got matched with a girl from Romania, oddly enough, and wrote her this long, detailed letter about my life. Which I never mailed. Thus ended my only pen pal experience.]

This is totally relevant because having Internet friends is kind of like having a Romanian pen pal, right?

Secondly, there is this petition that so closely relates to my last post on disabilities. Apparently, and sadly I must say it doesn't surprise me too much, the state of Florida is sending kids with special needs to nursing homes instead of providing the assistance their families need to care for the kids in-home. So the kids, who have loving and non-abusive families, are being taken away so the state doesn't have to pay for services. Even though the state does have to pay a lot for the kids to be institutionalized.

You would've thought that institutionalization would be universally recognized as NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE KIDS by now.

[Today is apparently a Romania sort of day. Too bad this didn't happen a couple of weeks ago when I realized my church attire was the Romanian flag. Not even on purpose! Red shoes, yellow dress, blue sweater.]

So even though this might not actually get much accomplished, Stacie Lewis [writer of the Amazing Half-Brained Baby blog I linked last time] started a petition to get these kids back with their families and receiving services because she realized how little media attention the issue was getting.

You can read more about it and please take the time to SIGN HERE.

Who wouldn't want to live somewhere that looks like this?

[For one final bit of Romania tying-in, the book I've been thinking about lately is primarily set in an alternate-world version of Romania so yesterday I was reading about Bucharest. Coincidences are my favorite things ever.]

Brain Dump

I had my first job interview yesterday! Hopefully, the first of not too many before I actually get a job. Plus, my sister got dropped off at college today! But since that meant I actually had to get up before noon for two days in a row AND do lots of driving, I am completely exhausted. So I've just been moseying around the Internet and I want to share some of the things I've enjoyed reading in the past couple of weeks. There's lots of disturbing and inspirational and intriguing stuff out there.

[Okay, and I want to get to post something without having to do any work. That's how I roll. I was going to say that but upon further reflection, it just sounds stupid coming from me.]

VICTIM OUTS RAPISTS ON TWITTER:  A teenage sexual assault victim took to Twitter to out her assailants and now faces jail time. "The public humiliation culminated this June, when her assailants struck a plea deal on charges of felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism that Dietrich felt amounted to a “slap on the wrist.” And the court had an order for Dietrich, too: Don’t talk about it, or risk 180 days in prison and a $500 fine."

ELEGANT REMINDER OF OLYMPIC HISTORY: Larisa Latynina won 18 Olympic medals in gymnastics for the Soviet Union, but she attended swimming Tuesday night. Michael Phelps was racing. He was trying to beat everyone in the pool and Latynina’s record as well. And when the moment came, she knew exactly what a great champion should do. She put on her lipstick. 

I still think her medals are way more impressive, but I am a bit biased.

EVERYDAY SEXISM PROJECT: The Everyday Sexism Project exists to catalogue instances of sexism experienced by women on a day to day basis. They might be serious or minor, outrageously offensive or so niggling and normalised that you don’t even feel able to protest. By sharing your story you’re showing the world that sexism does exist, it is faced by women everyday and it is a valid problem to discuss.

PUSSY RIOT CLOSING STATEMENTS: Charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were first arrested in March. Five members of the Russian feminist punk band staged a guerrilla performance on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. For less than a minute, the women danced, singing “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out!” and crossing themselves until they were apprehended.

PATERNITY LEAVE IN SWEDEN: In Sweden, men must take two months' paternity leave to receive generous paternity benefits offered by the government. Some men are now pushing for a third month. It has given rise to a culture of "latte dads" who hang out in Stockholm's plentiful coffee bars.

MANATEES!!!: Sea cows help mow local backyard after flooding.

You cannot tell me that this isn't the cutest thing ever.

Singing Without Accent

I've written before about how much I love the Eurovision Song Contest. Today, thankfully, I was reminded of this when Evgeni Plushenko posted a link to the finale scoreboard for this year's competition.

In listening to all the finalists, I was reminded of a draft that I started writing months ago. All it contained was the one sentence that I couldn't quite find words to go with.

Has anyone else ever noticed how people's accents tend to fade away when they're singing?

This isn't always the case - I think specifically of the Spanish singing accents in West Side Story and the fabulous Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in Once and their Swell Season albums. For the most part, though, people sound very similar while singing. I feel like this goes for other languages too - I've sung in at least 3 foreign languages, only one of which I can actually speak, and it has never seemed difficult [for me, at least] to pick up the correct inflections and pronunciations.

I imagine this has something to do with how you have to sing differently than you talk, but I do music for fun and so can't give any technical explanation of why this is. That makes sense though, right?

Quite a few of the best [in my opinion] songs this year were in the home country's language, so posting them doesn't help my argument. I'll have to work them into some other rambling. But here are a couple of lovely songs to enjoy, more or less accent free.

The entry from Iceland. The violin playing reminds me of Alexander Rybak's win.

The entry from Hungary. I think this is the best video in the contest.

The entry from Ireland. These guys are so ridiculous.

The entry from Azerbaijan. They won last year with another great song.

The entry from Germany. So much better than the last couple of years.

 The entry from Slovakia. They didn't make it to the finals but they deserved to.

One Year Later

I really have to keep reminding myself that yes, it is actually basically May. Yes, it is already 2012. Yes, I will be graduating in less than 4 months. Yes, I did start this blog over a year ago.
I'm having a hard time keeping track of time right now. It's quite bizarre.

But anyway, this is a belated yay-I've-managed-to-stay-interested-in-this-blog-writing-thing-for-12-months only slightly self-congratulatory post.

[More congratulations, me. I managed to spell self-congratulatory right on my first try.]

I've been kind of bummed about the whole no computer thing, for some of the obvious reasons of course, but also because I don't get to blog anymore. It's been weird. I think about things that I want to blog about and then have no outlet for them. Unless I write them down for future reference. However, I have gotten to do tons and tons of reading in all this spare time that I've discovered. At least, what spare time wasn't consumed by papers and papers and papers that I've had to write.

So honestly, I don't think I would have been blogging much anyway since all my writing energies were going towards school. But I digress.

Well, it's been a month since my last post, and a year since my first post. Lots of stuff has happened in the between times.

For example, in the past month I:

• Watched some fabulous movies, namely The Hunger Games.
• Got to hang out with my sister for her birthday, which included me taking her to see The Hunger Games, bawling because she looks kind of like Prim, and then sharing cinnamon and salty pretzels with her.
• Read 18 books, most of which were very wonderful.
• Sang two of my absolute favorite anthems/songs with the youth choir at Easter.
• Got a fabulous Easter dress.
• Spent a lot of time at my internship.
• Wrote a resume that might actually get me hired.
• Cleaned and cleaned and organized and organized.
• Spent very little time on computers, unless it was a Saturday afternoon and I was at the library.

Also happening this month: lots of episodes of this show.

And over the past year, I:

• Read 63 books in 4 months. I feel pretty confident in my goal of 150 for the year.
• Watched some fabulous movies, like The Hunger Games and Vicky Christina Barcelona and Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter [well, it had its moments].
• Took a bunch of classes, some of which I really liked.
• Made some progress in figuring out what I want to do with myself when I'm finally done with school.
• Slept. A lot.
• Went to Peru!!!
• Was adventurous in trying new foods.
• Watched a lot of figure skating. And read a lot about figure skating. And wished I could go see figure skating competitions live.
• Gained three new baby cousins. Plus one more in May. I also got to hang out with the first one when she was one week old. Basically, nothing beats a one-week old baby.

I feel silly and sentimental talking about all this, kind of like it's New Years, except in April. Which I guess could be construed as the same concept as Christmas in July, right? That's what I'm going with.

Now I suppose since I'm at the library, I should actually try and get some homework done. Otherwise this rambling would just keep going and going and going...

Or I could just catch up on my TV. That sounds like more fun.

Happy International Women's Day

This isn't a very widely celebrated holiday in the States. I guess we have Mother's Day to half make up for that. But I always try to remember it since it's kind of important for 1917 Russian Revolution #1. Just a smidge.

Save the women from their second class status!

And that would explain why it's virtually nonexistent here. That's also why I think of the date being February 28th instead of March 8th, since most of the research I did [for my Extended Essay, thankfully long, long ago] used the Julian calendar and not the Gregorian calendar. Of course, I didn't remember it a week ago either, but I didn't have lovely Google to remind me.

Or just give them flowers. Same thing, right?

It's too bad that our enduring Red Scares make a vocal segment of our country freak out about anything with a Communist/Socialist/leftish history. We could use a holiday that celebrates and remind us of women's rights, especially with all the ridiculous political hoopla going on right now.

I have more to say on this, but it'll have to wait for another, not-so-sleepy time.

I'm Still Here

I have several long-delayed posts sitting in my drafts folder, but haven't cared enough recently to write them.

I've been meaning to write this post for ages, and haven't found the time.

[Part of this I can blame on my Lenten resolution to spend less time on the Internet, but before that...I don't know. I was busy reading or watching TV or doing homework or sleeping, I guess.]

I'm hoping this month I'll remember to update, but I can't promise that'll happen. I can promise those posts will be, overall, shorter and filled more with pictures than insightful writing. Which I'm perfectly okay with, because pictures are worth a thousand words, right?

I'm hoping that I'll get more writing done. I'm having fun writing scenes from any and all of my story ideas as they occur to me. One of those was actually for More Blessed [although it was a rewrite of a scene and I still don't like it] but the rest are from a couple of other stories. Other worlds, actually, which means I have also spent a lot of time playing with maps and ancestry trees. Anything to cheat on the dreaded, upcoming middle of the novel.

I'm also hoping to finish tons of homework and get tons of sleep and read tons of books and spend tons of time hanging out with friends. Why not dream big, you know?

Totally unnecessary picture to congratulate anyone who got my obscure pop culture reference.

I don't know what function this post serves, other than to assure everyone that I haven't fallen off the face of the planet. I'm just...rearranging my priorities, figuring out what I actually want to do with my life when I graduate, trying to find my sister a totally awesome birthday present...right now, my brain's not really into blogging and I haven't wanted to force the issue. This month, maybe, I'll get that fixed :)

Why I Hate Chick Flicks

So I've been thinking about something a lot.

I am not a big fan of inspirational movies. Or stupid comedies. Or chick flicks, clearly.

This is a shocker, I know.

[I must admit that although I do own several movies that fit into at least one of these categories, I haven't even touched them in years. Thank goodness I got past my sappy middle school phase.]

I'm the kind of person who vehemently ridicules the Twilight movie trailers and snorts with derision at "love-at-first-sight-conquers-all" stories.

However, I absolutely LOVE a select number of films that are definitely aimed towards a female audience. Some of my favorites: Tangled, Once and Pride and Prejudice [I need to catch up on other classic-books-made-into-films]. I also have a soft spot for goofy telenovelas [umm, hello, they feature hot foreign boys!].

Why would you not watch this movie?

So because I need to be weird and analytical about these things, I thought up a few reasons for this seeming contradiction.

First, I can't stand bad acting. What can I say, I'm a film snob. [Well, okay, I'm generally fine with campy bad acting when it's done with a purpose. But the average rom-com movie is chalk full of really bland actors and I'm not paying money or wasting time watching their run-of-the-mill performances.]

Especially when you can watch performances like this. From people who aren't actors.

Secondly, I hate the normalcy these movies portray. Chick-flicks are typically set in some modern day city and feature some sort of plot premise that people can relate to - dating, miscommunication, kids, blah blah blah. Even the ones with an interesting hook are so formulaic. There's a limited number of ways to tell a love story and still make money. That's why the majority of books I read are not contemporary.

The exception: modern day somewhere else with really crazy story arcs.

Also, I think my own modern life is boring enough, so why would someone else's similar life be any more captivating? If I'm going to watch something set present-day, it has to involve the spies or musical numbers or explosions that I don't get to hang out with in real life.

Love stories are better with frying pans, thieves, singing and pretty lanterns.

Also, I'm a cynic. So maybe that's the reason and these other explanation are just me overthinking things.

This I Believe... Food

This title has been sitting, lonely, for the past two months, just waiting for me to finally get around to articulating my thoughts on our nation's food practices.

And they aren't very positive thoughts.

I decided to write this post, way back in November, after watching the documentary Food, Inc. in my nutrition class. [Interestingly enough, some of the GM/Monsanto stuff I had learned in my sustainable textiles class last spring.] I've talked to a lot of people who've already seen it, but for the lucky ones who haven't, this is what you're missing out on:

I, honestly, don't want to know this kind of stuff about what I'm eating. I'd rather be blissfully unaware of animal mistreatment, the use of hormones and pesticides, unsanitary practices, etc. It's always easier not to know, and therefore not to care.

But now that I do understand just how messed up our food industries are, what am I doing different?

Not much.

The problem, as brought up at the end of the film, is that better food costs more. I certainly try to avoid fast food and actually eat healthy, but with a college-student budget I can't be buying organic food all the time. I try to avoid overly processed food, although I can't resist the temptation to eat junk food when someone else offers it to me.

If I could afford it, I would shop exclusively at places like Whole Foods and Central Market. How ironic it is that the people at the top of the corporations selling us cheap [in quality and in cost] food don't have to eat their own products.

It would be really nice if government agencies and policy ignored the industry giants and decided to really promote healthy eating. You wouldn't think the obesity epidemic would need to get worse for this to happen. If they subsidized fresh fruits and vegetables and organic or sustainable farms. If they supported farmer's markets and locally grown food. [When we were in Wisconsin, we toured a sustainable dairy farm. It was pretty cool and profitable. They even gave us free ice cream sandwiches.]

Of course, that would mean the government would have to care more about consumers [the 99%] than giant corporations and their lobbyists. I wish I could be optimistic about this - I mean, Obama is sort of a consumer-issues president, with the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - but I can't see the situation changing any time soon.

And besides, I won't be living here much longer. I suppose I should find out what the food practices are like in Eastern Europe and South America...

Big Brother is Already Watching

It's already the 11th? Yeah, still not turning on my laptop much. On the plus side, I've been reading and sleeping more than getting on the Internet.

Speaking of which - I think it's really creepy that these are the kinds of ads that show up on Facebook.

Even the game says "Beware."

The vaccine one I don't understand, but all the others are directly related to pages I like, my stated religion, and even this blog. Linking to my blog posts has tipped Facebook off to my publication aspirations (although they are several years ahead of themselves in advertising book publishing when I haven't even written one book).

Facebook should not know these things about me! Advertisers should not know these things about me! If I didn't rely on it so much to communicate and keep up with other people, I'd delete my Facebook in an instant. I've thought about it many times but never followed through.

I know the whole personalized ads thing is really old news, but it still bothers me.

There are a lot of things that I love about the Internet, things I say I can't live without. However, there's a big tradeoff to these - privacy. It terrifies me to think that people can easily find my address, phone number, hometown, school, social security number with just a little digging and clever hacking. Contemporary America is a scary, scary place.

Yet another reason I love reading (specifically fantasy) so much: people in books have an easier time reinventing themselves or disappearing without a trace.

More Blessed Word Count: 17,599

A Monkey Could Write a Book, Except...

I'll be back to book reviewing tomorrow - I'll actually be writing the rest of my reviews and hopefully set it up so they can post automatically over Christmas. But I've had a busy weekend and my laptop (which contains my super helpful master list) has been sitting blissfully unused today, so you get this rambling instead.

I've heard or read a few times that joke/saying that if a monkey sits down with a computer, eventually it'll hit the right combination of letters and spaces to write an entire book.

He's writing the Complete Works of Shakespeare, according to the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

I knew when I started writing that it wasn't going to be that easy.

(Actually, when I first decided "Hey, writing a book would be really cool!" I thought I would be writing masterpieces in a matter of months and become the next Christopher Paolini. So much for that idea.)

But anyway, by the time I finally started working on More Blessed, I had read enough author/aspiring author blogs that I had a pretty good idea of how difficult it is to get published. I've never had any false hopes about publishing this book, if and when it gets finished, and I wouldn't dream of querying until I had several more practice novels under my belt. The whole business aspect of writing, I have no illusions about.

The part that, strangely enough, I didn't consider being difficult was the actual sitting-down-and-writing-sixty-something-thousand-words part. I should have. In 7ish years of "writing," I managed to get a couple chapters written on a couple of ideas. Clearly, I have issues with focusing and motivating myself. I am proud of the 15,000 words I have written in the past few months, but I wish I was further along.

I seem to keep hitting all these blocks. Not writer's block, really, but a lack of interest in the current section. This is partially due to some issues in the beginning section, which I'm hoping to fix by adding in a character (which also makes some tweaking necessary, further distracting me from the part I'm not liking right now). The rest of it may be due to the fact that I have the middle chunk all plotted out. I've already visualized how it plays out so the actual putting scenes on paper seems so long and laborious. The end is still up for grabs, depending on how long the rest of the book is.

What I probably should do is force myself to make deadlines. As a recovering IB student and current college student, I have a love-hate relationship with procrastination. I hate doing it, but I love how quickly things get done at the last minute. I don't know exactly how I should go about doing this with book writing, but it seems to work well for other authors. I should probably set an end date, but even that would be too far away to be helpful. I have a feeling I'll be tying word count minimums to things like:

Going to see Sherlock Holmes. Multiple times.

For some reason I couldn't get these to not be blurry.

Finding a theater near me that's playing In the Land of Blood and Honey. And then seeing it several times.

I'm not even sure if it's being released in the indie theaters nearby.

Reading lots and lots of celebrity gossip. Especially about babies.

Especially when it concerns Angelina Jolie's babies.

What other bribes/motivations could I use?

More Blessed Word Count: whatever I said on the last post

I WON A BOOK!!

I am currently freaking out. I am probably freaking out my friends right now.

The reason I'm so excited? There are two, actually. One is that I won a book in a SUPER AWESOME CONTEST from one of my favorite authors, Maria V. Snyder. My librarian aunt had me read her brilliant debut Poison Study several years ago and now I own all of her other books. All 8 of them. Soon to be nine.

This is my favorite cover, but they're all pretty awesome.

The second is that I never win things. NEVER. Sometimes I tell myself that my rooting for a team makes them lose (like this year with the Rangers...that was a sad day). But then things like this happen, or my favorite figure skaters win gold medals or something, and my faith in the universe is restored.

More Blessed Word Count: 13,962

I know that hasn't changed much recently. I'll write a bunch this weekend, I promise! And I'll write those posts about my favorite books of this year too, I promise! But first, let me shout, "I WON A BOOK!" again, because I don't think it's sufficiently sunk in for my apartment-mates.

When Two Lesbians Raise A Baby

I'm not going to preach, but I do want to comment on this video that's been popping up all over Facebook and the rest of the Internet.

 

I know there are a lot of reasons for people to be opposed to gay marriage,  but this shouldn't be one of them. Research has consistently shown that homosexual couples are equally, if not better, able to raise families, despite facing a lot of pressure due to society's prejudice against them.

Still, there are states that ban them from adopting just as they ban them from marrying. Someday, I suppose, people will look back on this and other minorities' struggles for their rights and shake their heads at our misplaced concern. But for now, there are so many children going to bed alone that could be living with loving moms or dads. For me, those families-that-could-be are the most tragic part of this whole fight.

More Blessed Word Count: 13,864

Occupy Black Friday

How appropriate is it that this picture popped up on my Facebook newsfeed this morning?

 

I didn't even notice the (because television says so) comment on the bottom until just now, but how appropriate is that? The media has such an encompassing influence on our lives from the moment we're born - promoting Black Friday, which wasn't even a big deal until a few years ago; glorifying one political party while tearing down another; stalking celebrities like hawks (I'm definitely guilty of this one).

Take a moment to think about what you base your behavior on - politically, commercially, socially. Is it because it makes you happy or you want to do it or you've though about it? Or is it because the television, or Internet, said so?

More Blessed Word Count: 13,359

Unbitten by the Black Friday Bug

I hope everyone's had a happy Thanksgiving! I sure have. It's lovely to be around family, especially when you don't get to see them that often. And eat yummy food, of course. But mostly the family :)

But after the joys of Thanksgiving come the menacing hours of Black Friday. I'm not a fan of consumerism to begin with, but today's craziness is just too much. I feel like a lot of people feel the same way - especially the ones that have to work ridiculously long hours. I understand that spending is good for the economy, but I don't think the economy cares whether you buy stuff at 4 a.m. or 2 p.m. Or whether you buy it in one mad dash or spread the same purchases out over a few days. It's Commercial Christmastime, everyone's buying stuff.

Still, I wish we were buying more of the right things - fair trade, organic, items that support various charities and causes. I don't know if I'm more cynical or just practical, but I find myself wanting less and less of the stuff I used to love. Trinkets and figurines? I have more than enough, thanks. Clothes? I have too many. Electronics? I'll wait until something breaks before I buy a new one. Too bad our American culture wants new, better, more, even in the middle of a recession.

One thing I can never have too many of? Dream catchers.

What is so inherently wrong with having less? I can tell you, after spending six weeks in Peru, that it's not necessary to have McMansions and department stores and Hummers. We all did just fine cramming into the vans that serve as city buses or the crowded stalls of vendors in los mercados. My room there was probably half the size of the one I have here, but I don't know what I would've done with more space. (It did help that I brought only a tiny portion of my possessions with me, but that's just another symptom of the same problem.)

I admit to being a packrat. I make myself sort through all the junk I've accumulated every summer so that I throw at least some of it away. It's easier now that I can keep so much nicely divided into folders on my computer, but I still manage to collect an odd assortment of papers that I "might one day need." The thing is, I never look at any of them again, they just gather dust underneath my bed.

So this year, as with all of the years before it, I did not stay up late or wake up early to find mountains of stuff on Black Friday. I don't need any of the things that are going to be on sale. (I did go discount store shopping with my sister, but we left at 8:30 and I spent less than $9.) What I would rather have? More of the same - food, movie watching, family, writing, singing, friends, etc.

And something no one can ever have too much of: BOOKS!

Official More Blessed Word Count: 13,000!

Wanted: Properly Functioning Brain

So it's taken me this long to realize I hadn't updated my word count on that last post! Agh. It shot up this weekend and then has stagnated during the week. Majorly. I am so looking forward to some relaxing writing time over Thanksgiving. I only have to get through two tests first :)

Make that three. I have to take the English CLEP exam tomorrow so that I don't have to sit through a painfully repetitive college English class. Given my college physics lab experience, there is no way I'm putting my poor head through that nonsense.

I took the time to make this. Evidence of my brain's inability to function? I think yes.

School has been turning my brain to mush, even when I skip physics. This semester has just been rough - a lack of focus combined with increased time spent online (reading other people's blogs) and trying to write has made me very sleepy and not thinking cohesively all the time. I'm capable of reading fun books, but my attention span goes down the drain when I start homework or writing. I've already given up on any hopes I had for finishing NaNoWriMo (which I'm totally fine with). I don't think the write a lot of words every day method is going to work for me just yet.

On a much more positive note, I did just finish my new favorite scene in my book! I've finally gotten past introducing the characters and mysteries and got to have a bit of Delaney running for her life. My favorite part of books, or movies or plays or anything with a plot: ACTION! That's probably why I got so much done this past weekend, now that I think about it.

Official More Blessed Word Count: 11,008

This I Believe...Technology

Me and technology do not always get along.

Part of this is because I lack an understanding about how things work. I don't even have the slightest amount of curiosity for the subject. This isn't such a big deal when your dad has an engineering degree - although living away from home makes it harder to get help when things won't work. I'm glad that someone cares about this stuff, otherwise our society would be hurtling even farther down the drain.

Most of the time, I like having technology around, even if the mechanics of it confuse me. After years of living with all this nonsense, I can't imagine surviving, permanently, without my computer, fast Internet access (something I missed dearly in Peru), T.V., fridge, microwave, etc. I must admit to loving automatic sinks and paper towel dispensers. Less germs!

On the other hand, I hate the automization of everything possible - toilets, doors, staplers (terrifying). I do, of course, make an exception to the doors thing for people with physical disabilities. But other than that, why do we waste our finite resources on this stuff? Electric can openers confuse and annoy me - they take the same amount of time as hand-crank ones, but don't leave the lid ever-so-slightly attached so you can drain the can. Electric mixers are the stuff of nightmares. I prefer using whisks. Again, same amount of time with a lot less worry.

Interestingly enough, Google image searches using such phrases as "evil electric mixer," "electric mixer menace" and "electric mixer DANGER" did not yield any helpful pictures. In fact, a good portion of the mixing devices shown were NOT electric. I did find this though:

I don't really know what the point of all this is. I guess I want to say that while some aspects of technology are good, some of them I'm either really ambivalent about or totally dislike. I may be very separate from American culture in my longing for a more tech-free life. I'd like to see us be more connected to nature/books/ spirituality/each other than to machines.

But who am I kidding? I spend most of my day inside using the technology that I complain about. Sure, sometimes I read or clean house or do non-computer related homework, but I doubt that makes up the majority of my time. The worst part is I know how bad being glued to a computer makes me feel.

Not today, though. Actually, this whole week I've been pretty good about leaving my computer off. I wasn't online at all on Wednesday, hardly got on this weekend and spent a lot of time reading books instead. I need to do this more often. Not relying on technology for constant entertainment makes me a much happier and headache free person. So, while I'm glad you're using technology to listen to me rant about it, I'd feel better (and you would too) if you turned your computer off and went on an adventure in a new book (because I admit to not being as in love with nature as I'd like).