Perpetual projects and daily obsessions.
By which I mean this:
Tomorrow, we’re heading down south for my first ever visit to our nation’s capitol. (And Kaylee’s, but whatever.)
I’m warming up a rant on the subject of TSA stupidity for Thursday, just in case I need it. (I have no proof I will need said rant, beyond the evidence of my senses and an overwhelming sense of dread. We’ll see how it goes.)
Home’s a funny thing for me. My home’s in Denver, Colorado, thanks very much. It’s also in the middle of South Dakota, and maybe a little bit in Sioux Falls.
And it’s in New York. God, but I love this place.
Kate and I started dating awhile back, and for two years we did the long distance thing. Phone calls. Online MMO play-dates. And a trip back and forth from Denver to NYC (or vice versa) every three weeks or so. Frontier airlines declared bankruptcy the same weekend we got married. No joke.
Thing is, I haven’t been back since the wedding. 20 months (not counting 48 hours last holiday season, because I don’t).
This year, we’re taking more time. Family Christmas at the in-laws. A day or two in the city to see friends I haven’t seen in almost two years. In The City, which thrills me; GOD I miss that town. I had no idea how much until I emerged from the terminal last night and took a deep breath.
And coughed in the taxi fumes, but whatever. Shut up.
I fell in love with New York as I fell in love with Kate, is what I’m saying (which is good, as she will always and forever be a New York Girl). It, too, is my home, if it will have me.
Merry Christmas, happy fools.
I hope, today, you’re home too.
You remember how the networks used to just broadcast a looping video of a yule log so everyone at the station could go home?
Well…
We’ll be on a plane most of the day, heading to NYC, D.C., and other parts of the east cost that aren’t acronyms. There will be posting, but for now, Happy Holidays and a really heartfelt thank you for hanging out here from time to time; you’ve made writing stuff on the site a real pleasure.
… and my background: with the exception of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning, I’ve seen all of James Cameron’s movies at least three times. Yeah, even Titanic (though the third time was against my will). Understand that simple fact about me first: I’m pretty much the guy’s target audience.
Kate and I went to see Avatar last night. As I told some folks afterwards, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable, fun movie, and I didn’t remotely mind the nearly three hour length, even wearing the Real-3D glasses. (In fact, there was no point in there where I so much as shifted in my seat and thought “Okay, you could have edited this bit out, Jim.” I enjoyed it all, even the Diaspora-esque ship the protag comes to Pandora in.
Those of you who know me know that I do not consider “in 3-D” a selling point for a movie: I’ve never once walked out of a show thinking “man, if only that had been 3-D, they might have had something.” However, thanks to an observation from Chuck, we chose to go to to the 3-D version, and I’m very very glad we did. Like Coraline, this movie uses 3-D intelligently.
Even those of you who don’t know me might suspect I enjoy a good story. Much has been said about the simple, damned familiar story of Avatar — I’ll admit that I’ve repeated the Dances with Smurfs joke more than once — but the movie reminded me that old, simple stories are a lot like old, simple words: they resonate.
Is it a great movie? I don’t know. It’s certainly good. There are no major plot holes I could see. The technology is brilliant and used well, and the setting itself is gorgeous. Kate and I talked about the different parts we liked for a solid half hour after we left.
And here’s what I realized this morning when I woke up — the thing that made me write this post: I want to go see it again. In the theatre. In the 3-D. I will, in fact, be a little sad if I don’t manage it. Take that for what it’s worth.
I was going to make a nice little list of all the various kinds of people who might like this movie, and suggest they see it, but here’s the bottom line: If you like movies, even a little, I think you should see it.
Like it or hate it, I think you should see it.
In the theatre.
Probably even in 3-D.
Man, those are some words I never thought I’d say again, after Coraline. Way to go, Cameron.
Damn.
Tonight marks the conclusion of the fall season of the bowling league in which I, my wife, and several of my game-geek friends participate.
It’s fun. Shut up.
In a way, it’s a weird return to my childhood. While bowling continues to grow in popularity in the U.S., bowling league participation dwindles, but such was not the case when I was a little kid. Both my parents bowl (and bowled), and I can remember many Saturday nights when my folks couldn’t get a sitter and my sister and I spent the evening running around the alley, screwing up someone’s game of pool, or mastering a sliding tile game that I only got to mess with during league play.
So about a year ago, one of our gamer friends asked if we’d be interested, and my wife thought it’d be a good way to meet people in her new home town, and I thought “sure, I’m a pretty decent bowler, why not?” (Funny thing: being around bowling doesn’t actually make you a good bowler. Who knew?)
So we dove in. We got shoes. (Those of you who know my wife know she needs very little provocation or encouragement to buy shoes.) I bought her a bowling ball for Christmas. We didn’t do that great that season, but we had a pretty good time.
The next season started up, and we decided to keep playing.
And the next…
And the next…
And now it’s eighteen months later. Tonight is the last week of play for the fall league. The team that Kate and I are on (Crazy Bowling Monkeys) is in first place. Kate’s the #1 Most Improved women’s bowler. I’m #1 Most Improved men’s. Between us and the other gamer-geek team (White and Nerdy, with Ninja Pin Action), there is not a “leader” category we don’t pretty much dominate. It’s kind of awesome.
Obviously, with the big showdown tonight, it’s on my mind, so I thought I’d write down some stuff I’ve learned about Bowling in the last year and a half.
1. You gotta show up.
It’s a hassle. Sometimes you have to bring your kids along and keep them distracted (and in turn be distracted by them). But the only way to enjoy the game is to play the game, and (if you’re me) try to get better.
2. Getting better takes time. And lots of repetition.
I was never a horrible bowler. Sure, I’ve had horrible games, but I don’t know that I was ever really super-bad (and the nice thing about bowling is that you can still help your team out even if you kinda suck).
But I’ve always wanted to do well. I may not have learned a ton about the technical bits of bowling as a kid, but I did learn what good bowling looked like. I saw a lot of it. Hell, I heard a lot of it. I wanted my ball to do this, and the pins to do that, and the noise they all make to go cracka-boom.
So I keep working at it, and what used to be a 120 average is now a 160 average, and for all that that’s pretty respectable, not a game goes by that I can’t name a dozen things I did wrong, even on the strikes.
3. Don’t aim at the pins.
It seems counter-intuitive, but aiming at the pins you want to knock down is a pretty good way to ensure you’ll hit fuck-all when you throw the ball. There are these great little arrows on the lane that are about a third to half-way down, and you aim at those. They’re close enough to hit with some accuracy, for one thing, so you use them as your front-sight (shooting reference). Basically, it’s not the end result you think about, it’s the beginning and the middle that you work to get right, and the cracka-boom will follow.
4. Be consistent.
Generally speaking, if you start from the same spot every time, and you hit the right arrow, the end result is assured considerably more likely. That’s why you do the repetition — you figure out what works and what doesn’t, then you do the ‘what works’ thing over and over again until it’s hard not to.
5. Don’t be consistent when it’s not working…
Lanes dry out and suddenly the ball hooks too much. Or the lane-monkeys greased the damn thing up and nothing hooks at all. Or your pants are too tight. Or you shouldn’t have had a beer. Or you should have had a beer. Or you’re distracted from work, or family, or your kid with the tile-sliding game. Whatever the reason, The Thing You Do to Make the Pins Go Boom ain’t working: not by a little, but by a lot.
See when that’s happening, and try something else. If that doesn’t work either, sometimes you just have to laugh a little at the whole stupid game and have a good time while you rack up a terrible, terrible score.
6. … but don’t freak out when it’s almost working.
The hardest thing to deal with in bowling is a split — when you leave a couple pins behind, and they’re physically separated from one another by a great and terrible distance. And here’s a hard fact: the difference between a strike and a split is fractions of an inch. Or the exact same throw, but at a different speed. A spare is usually a strike that just didn’t quite strike.
So what do you do if you’re throwing a bunch of splits?
Nothing. The errors are small. Sometimes they aren’t even visible, and you’re left looking at the lane saying “are you kidding me?” In those situations, you just suck it up, go get your ball, and try to clean the mess up as best as you can with the second roll. You’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just not quite working, so keep throwing the ball the same way you have been, and eventually – probably – the kinks will work out.
7. Have fun. Don’t look at the scoreboard.
Is it a sport or is it a game? Could you go pro if you get good enough? Are we going to place this season?
These are all silly questions.
It’s something you enjoy, so do it. If you get really really good at it, maybe you’ll get back a little prize money when the season’s over. Maybe you’ll get a patch for your shirt, or a fridge magnet.
But seriously, who cares? If you can’t remember that it’s supposed to be something you like doing — maybe even love doing — why waste the time?
Yeah, you gotta show up, and you have to play a lot (a LOT) to get better (and take some other player’s advice, and maybe a few lessons, and, again, lots of practice). All good play is also good work, I think, and vice-versa.
But the fact is this: You will never be good if you forget how to enjoy it. Never ever.
There. I’m all done talking about bowling now. Too bad none of this applies to any other activity. Ahh well.
Maybe tomorrow.
So there’s this thing Floy-Jean makes around the holidays. It’s generally called “Grandma’s Special Squash”, because
Here’s how it goes.
1. Start with 3 lbs butternut squash, peeled, seeded. and cubed. (Not everyone skins them. Grandma does. Grandma’s version is better. Draw your own conclusions.)
2. Cook the squash in water until the cubes are tender enough to mash.
3. Drain the squash pieces, drop em in mixing bowl, and beat em until they’re smooth. Smooooth. No. Smoother.
4. Add milk, butter, eggs, and vanilla; mix well.
5. Combine these dry ingredients, add them to squash, and mix well.
6. Transfer everything in the mixing bowl to a (greased) 2-qt baking dish. Cover it and bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
7. While the squash-ness is baking, make the Topping. THE TOPPING IS NOT OPTIONAL.
In a small bowl, combine these topping ingredients until crumbly.
8. When the squash is done baking, pull it out, and sprinkle the Topping over it.
9. Stick the whole thing back in the oven again, uncovered, for about 12 to 15 minutes.
10. Mouthgasm.
Okay, so Grandma Floy (she of the dusting-of-furniture-while-we-move-it) has a pretty rad white chili recipe. I had it a couple-five holidays ago and followed up my third bowl by begging for the recipe on my hands and knees.
(To which she was like: “Here’s the recipe, you didn’t have to beg. Food isn’t a secret.” Which is one reason she’s awesome.)
I had trouble finding the recipe last year. When I did find it, I posted it on my blog to make it more readily accessible to me.
Anyway, it’s getting cold out again, and when it gets cold my thoughts turn to this yummy chili. I dug the posted recipe up and, in reading it, realized that I actually don’t make the recipe as written by Floy-Jean anymore.
So here’s my version.
Step One: double the following ingredient portions, unless you’re in a real hurry.
2. You will need, in this order:
(Note on the seasonings. I’m not sure exactly HOW much I put in. I know it’s more than the original recipe, and sometimes a lot more. Season til it smells good; I trust you.)
3. First cooking bit
In a large saucepan, cook the chicken chunks, chopped onion and garlic in the oil, until the chicken’s not pink. (Sometimes I throw a few of the chopped chilis in at this point, but not all. Some.)
4a. If you Did Not Double the Recipe (or if you did double it and your saucepan is muy macho):
Add the beans, broth, chopped chilis & seasonings to the pan. Bring the whole thing to a boil. Reduce your heat & simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Doubling the recipe is one of the few situations in which I’ll get out our deep-dish electric skillet.
4b. If you Doubled the Recipe and your Saucepan is not Huge, or you have loads of time and want your house to smell like Awesome:
Dump the cooked chicken stuff and everything but the whipping cream into a crock pot and run it for a couple hours on high, or all day on low.
5. Finally:
Remove from the heat, add the whipping & sour cream, and serve immediately. (With some shredded cheese and crackers and such: you know, chili stuff. Basic recipe feeds about six or seven people.
If you are very good, I will share her amazing squash recipe in a few days. It’s a Holiday Miracle, people.
I’m writing from the Home Office today, rather than a booth at Panera or the front seat of my parked car over lunch hour. I have this lovely wingback chair (secretly also a recliner) in the corner of my office, and it’s in that chair that I’ve tapped out about two-thirds of this month’s project (with my trusty EeePC resting on the Logitech Portable Lapdesk that makes in-chair typing not just possible by actually enjoyable).1
This unfamiliar comfort comes to me as the primary benefit of burning some of my precious vacation time to extend the Thanksgiving holiday a little bit. Tomorrow, Kate and I will be spending ten hours of quality time together – with our dogs – driving to (and through) the barren wastelands that birthed me, but I took the extra day to both prep for the trip and write.
That’s right: a whole glorious day of writing – an actual day away from work, and not some crappy Saturday or Sunday, where your writing time is polluted by pointless interruptions like “family activities” and “feeding children” and “things I absolutely promised I’d do, even though it’s NaNoWriMo”. There are no family activities or children to do them with — the kids are at school, and my wife is working. Likewise, I have no weekend home improvement/maintenance obligations, because it is not the weekend.
Do you see the loophole I have discovered? Can you conceive the power that rests within my hands?
Who wants to touch me?
I said WHO WANTS TO TOUCH ME?
I’m sure you’re asking yourself how I’ll be spending the day — with Thanksgiving coming, there’s even a small chance you’ll be able to enjoy a luxury similar (albeit inferior) to mine, so let me lay out the means with which I maximize my writing productivity on a day like today.
[But first, a brief pause in the writing while kick my daughter out of the house drive my darling child off to participate in the physical and mental enrichment so necessary to ensuring that she can take care of me financially in my old age. ]
*Returns, windblown, toting a mocha with double espresso shot.*
Ahh, evil corporate caffeine goodness. *sips* Ahh.
Okay, now then, where was I. Oh yes.
The Day.
A writer is working when he’s staring out of the window. – Burton Rascoe
6 am: Get up.
I know this isn’t how most people roll. Hell, it’s not how I’d choose to, if I didn’t have a day job and (more significantly) a four year old to get ready before I can go to said day job. However, I do have those things, so 6 am is what happens, even when I could theoretically sleep in — my brain wakes me up at 5:45 and I start thinking about stuff, at which point I might as well get up.
Breakfast.
I eat immediately upon rising, because otherwise I forget, and if you get up and stay active for about an hour or so in the morning without feeding yourself, your body starts worrying it’s not going to GET any food, and goes into fat-storage mode, which means that when you DO eat, it’ll all get stored as… well. Yeah. So I eat right away, check email, catch up on my must-reads out on the internets, et cetera.
Blog Post.
I start putting together the daily blog post.
Daughter.
She slept in a bit, which is fine since we’re in no rush today. She piles into the office and sits with me for a bit, then demands breakfast, which I provide. After, she is given instructions to get dressed for school (and oh how I love that she’s able to do that semi-autonomously these days), and I poke at the blog post a bit more.
Wife arises.
There may be some kissing here. I ain’t sayin’.
Kate also, at Kaylee’s request, is in charge of Doing Hair. Apparently, I suck at it.
School Delivery.
Goodbyes take awhile, since I won’t see Kaylee until Friday and I need to store up as many hugs and kisses as I can.
Drop-off is followed by Ambulatory Caffeine Tropism (run to Starbucks).
More Blog Post.
That would be me, writing this.
Start Next Blog Posts.
I’m going to be on the road all day, so I’m writing a pre-scheduled post for tomorrow (probably built around a comment Nathan Fillion made about the cancellation of Dollhouse) and for Thanksgiving (on the secret practices of Ninja Story Writing). The Thanksgiving one will be scheduled to drop EARLY, peeps, so you can implement the secrets within THAT VERY DAY.
Exercise.
Kate is off to Nia, where she is working on getting her White Belt (first tier of Instructor, I gather). In the meantime, I go downstairs and do about five miles on the elliptical (30 minutes). Say what you will about gym-vs-outside-vs-whatever, this is the deal: with a kid around, it is emm-effing hard to get to the gym regularly (unless the kid’s scheduled to be in a class there themselves), and frankly it’s a pain in the ass to take an hour to get ready, go, and come back from a 30 minute workout. It is not a pain in the ass to walk downstairs and hop on the elliptical – therefore, I actually do it, which is really that part that makes exercise… you know… effective.
Why does exercise make it into the Day of Writing schedule? Because mind and body are all one thing, peeps. They call it muscle memory for a reason; I’m not just a squishy harddrive being carrying around by the meat-zombie – the whole body is the harddrive, and it needs refreshment and exercise as much as your brain to work well. Also, the workout gets some blood going to the brain, which ain’t bad.
(Not to mention Thanksgiving’s coming, and I just had a Venti Mocha — the fact is, I just need to work out.)
The elliptical faces a blank wall, which encourages my mind to wander to things I need to write today. This is on purpose.
Maybe you don’t have a home gym, or a gym-gym? Then go for a walk or something. I highly recommend it.
Shower.
Another great idea machine. My best ideas come in the shower. I wish I could find a waterproof whiteboard to mount on the wall in there.
Finish Blog Posts.
Hopefully by about 11am, but given that I’m already behind a bit on my schedule AS I WRITE THIS, more like noon.
Lunch! (And Stare out the Window)
Ham and cheese on toast. Coke Zero. Some almonds. I want to keep it light so I don’t get sleepy in the afternoon.
Also, probably dump some of the leftovers that are going to go bad while we’re gone.
Also also, get caught back up on email and Twitter and suchlike.
Write Story.
One keypress disables the wifi in my netbook (I had no idea how often I’d use that feature); another disables the touchpad. Off we go.
I’m shooting for a big chunk of words today: four or five scenes, hopefully.
Scene One done.
Go get another soda. Let the dogs outside. Rotate the laundry, if Kate hasn’t already.
Scene Two done.
Stare out the window for awhile. Think about building an addition onto the house. Finally remember to check to see if the hotel for this weekend has wifi.
Get another Soda.
Err. Wait. Is that an actually bold-faced thing? Probably.
Scene Three, done.
Walk the dogs around the block, pick up the mail. Get outside, let your brain chew on local flora and fauna. Let your dogs sniff local flora and fauna.
Dump all the mail into the recycling bin when you get home. Saves the trouble of sorting it.
Poke around the Internet. Stare out the Window.
Twitter. My own blog if there’s comments. Play the new Adrift podcast back while I’m browsing. Twitter again. Newsreader, and probably Burning Wheel’s forums, just cuz.
Also, log into Lord of the Rings Online on the Main Machine, so that it can download updates, cuz December 1 is coming soon, and there’s a new expansion dropping that day. It’s like they KNOW about NaNoWriMo.
Scene Four… kinda halfway.
I started it too late, and it’s time for…
Supper.
Which is going to be Chuck’s Stuffed Squash Thing tonight. It SHOULD be a leftovers night, but dammit I want to try the recipe.
Also, we’ll probably watch some TV. Castle and Fringe are on the DVR, so figure we blow at least 85 minutes on both of those, not counting cooking time, so figure it’s dark by the time we’re all done.
Also also, we’ll fold and put away laundry while we watch TV. Hell, I might even pack my part of the suitcase. Watching TV is one of those (very rare) things where I don’t mind multi-tasking.
… Finish Scene Four
This will take awhile. I will get up and get another soda at least once in here.
Browse More Internets.
Kiss at least 30 minutes goodbye here.
Start Scene Five
There is going to be a LOT of window-gazing in this one, because it’s been quite a day. My goal is to get about halfway in, then leave it so I can jump into that on the long-ass drive tomorrow. (Bless the 7 to 9 hour battery life on my netbook. Bless it, I say.)
And that’s the Day.
What to take away from all of this? It ain’t all writing. Breaks are necessary. (Honestly, I’m sure I severely downplayed the number of times I’ll check the internet today.) Refresh your brain often, and spend time with the people in your life because while writing is awesome, having someone to share it with when you’re done is so much better.
That’s it.
Get back to work.
Have fun.
1 – I could actually talk at some length about why I write in the chair/lapdesk on my netbook and not at the nice big desk all of four feet away — the one with the lovely ergnomic keyboard hooked up to the Big Fancy PC and Big Fancy Monitor — but that’s probably a post for another day. Specifically, for a day closer to the start of the month, not the end. Opportunity missed, I’ll come back to it another time.