/End Whining

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Apologies for the temper tantrum in the last post. Lately a lot of the MFA stuff has come back to haunt me. That's the thing about returning being a full-time writer. You get to live the dream, but you get all the nightmares along with it.

Speaking of nightmares, I may go silent for the rest of the week as I'm working on revising the last story I wrote. There are some major overhauls ahead and I have a feeling I should be concentrating on that and not buying and selling my friends on Facebook. (Thank you, hujhax.)

In other addiction news, Hubs brought home SingStar Rocks last night. We got SingStar 80s on a whim a couple of weeks ago and I feel a new addiction being born. I can totally rock 99 Red Balloons. Maybe if the writing thing doesn't work out I can be an 80s pop star. . .

Scenes From the Coffee Shop

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

We interrupt this (surprisingly productive) writing time to bring you breaking news. Virgin Galactic's second space port is being built right outside my adopted hometown of Las Cruces, New Mexico. It is! Really! I looked on the internets.

I'm sure this is old news to everyone but me. I was just sitting here at my little coffeeshop table, minding my own business when I heard the guy at the table next to me say something about Las Cruces. Now, I always tune in a little more closely when I hear Texans talking about Las Cruces or New Mexico. There are some pretty wild ideas floating around about my dear state. Most notable is the idea that the Organ Mountains are hollow and home to super-secret military underground bases. I once went on a blind date with a Dallas boy who had the inside scoop on these bases. Apparently they were infiltrated years ago and the military is keeping it all hush hush for fear of causing world-wide panic. Who were they infiltrated by you might ask? Spies? Terrorists? Nope, aliens. Snake aliens!

How happy am I to be married now?

But anyway, at least half the time I hear someone mention Las Cruces it's usually to repeat a conspiracy theory about the government covering up aliens or nuclear waste or lizard people or whatever. After all, my fine state is home to Roswell and people get confused, you know? And while I don't fault anyone their beliefs, I am a little more Scully than Mulder. So when I heard him mention Las Cruces and spaceship in the same breath, I had a moment of discreet eyerolling. But then I googled. And it's true, New Mexico is getting its very own space port.

The whole thing makes me kind of proud, but also I kind of wonder what this does to nostalgic view of the desert southwest and, weirdly, what it does to the stories that I have set in New Mexico. If there's a friggin' spaceport being built 45 minutes from where your protagonist resides, you can't just ignore that. This could lead to some pretty cool opportunities.

Or some big headaches. We shall see.

Ravelry, Chuck Woolery Ain't Got Nothing On You

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The new fad in the knitting community is a nifty site called Ravelry. I put my name on the waiting list for membership a month ago and, as of yesterday, there were still approximately a gazillion knitters and crocheters in queue ahead of me. (This is what you get for being the last to know everything.) But then my very awesome coworker and fellow knitter got a second invitation and turned it over to me, and today... Ravelry!

So here's a little confession: I love organizing, cataloging, and recording. It may go beyond love into a slight psychotic obsession. As a child, I made a game out of trying tocatalog our family books, photos, and videos on index cards. When I was ten, I actually created a template so I could record results of (sigh)... Love Connection. Yep. For at least a week I could tell you who went out with who. Who went out with who again. Who the audience thought the best match would be. And possibly even what tie Chuck Woolery was wearing. I was a weird kid. I was a born librarian. Only, you know, I'm not.

So of course, I was spastic when I realized the possibilities with Ravelry. The opportunity to categorize my yarn? To keep track of my stash. I can actually show progress on my knitting!

Except I haven't actually done any knitting since the wedding whirlwind began.

My knitting basket? Luckily, not quite empty, but as I look at it, I have to wonder am I really going to finish that 2x2 ribbed sweater... on size five needles... with fingering weight yarn? (To my credit, I managed a full twelve inches around thanks to the Alamo's Firefly marathon.) But I refuse to let Ravelry be wasted on a knitter like me! I will perservere! I will knit again. I will knit lots of little things from Weekend Knits!

I may not be the best knitter. I may not have the most complex projects, but Ravelry, I promise you I will be the most organized.

Toy!

Thursday, September 20, 2007

I may have made a little bit of an impulse buy tonight.

Hubs and I were at the mall to pick up the suit he bought for this weekend's wedding. Unfortunately, the jacket sleeves were too short and the pants were too long so the salesperson sent us off to kill 45 minutes in the mall. Naturally, we went to the Apple store.

Now, I've been rationalizing the idea of getting a new iPod for quite some time. For one thing, Hubs nixed the idea of an iPhone until the second generation (yay for geeky husbands). But even then, I'm not sure I want an iPhone. They're all kinds of shiny, but the touch screen and I just cannot get along. My fingers are too fat or something.

Also, my iPod mini is pink and the headphones are tearing. That totally justifies it. Totally.

So, just in time for our trip, I have a new toy. We've spent the evening ripping CDs and making shameless new additions to the music queue. Also, we found a nifty program that allows you to convert your DVDs to MPEG-4 files.

This is, of course, what we've been doing instead of packing or, say, locating our passports amid the moving boxes. That's okay. We may not make the plane, but at least we'll have something to play with.