Things I've Always Wanted to Do: Running

Some people have goals. Others have a bucket list. Others make resolutions. I don't really have or make any of these. I just have vague ideas of things I'd like to do some day. (Maybe I'd get more done if I made a list of some kind.)

I've always wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write a novel. As of this year, thanks to NaNoWriMo, I've done it. Twice (including last year's). Something else I've always wanted to do is run. A marathon would be nice...I think, but really I just want to put on some tennis shoes and walk out of my house and run. Fact: I live one mile from Memorial Park. Fact: I see runners EVERY day running past my house. Fact: I have driven to Memorial Park and walked the three miles around once...maybe twice, but you get my point. So to give me some motivation, I went to my local library and checked out several books on running, which leads me to my one amazing thing for the day. I am sorely out of shape. I am amazed at just how out of shape I have become in just a few months. Just climbing one flight of stairs winded me. I'm not saying I was in terrific shape to begin with, but I trekked all over Europe walking for miles each day, climbing who knows how many stairs. And that was just in May! Goodness.

Goal set ('cause maybe I do need to set goals): Train for a marathon in 2013 ('cause I'm that out of shape).

Frushi

My amazing thing for today is frushi. Imagine sushi but sweet. Imagine not fish but fruit. I say imagine because I can't take a picture. They were all eaten. Sorry. But in case you would like to try to make it, the recipe is as follows (Not strictly since I usually do it to taste having lost the actual recipe years ago).

2 cups of short grain rice or sushi rice
2 1/2 cups of water
Berries, like strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and other fruits like mango and/or kiwi
sugar
1 can of coconut milk

1 cup of sugar

Either follow the steps on the bag of rice you buy (only adding water and rice--nothing else) or dump it all in a rice cooker to do it for you, which I highly recommend. Rice cookers are amazing--and you absolutely do not have to go with the top of the line. Mine is the cheapest one I could find at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and it works great. The only issue I have with it is it will burn the rice if I let it sit too long after the cooking is done.

Once it is cooked mix all of the rice with one can of coconut milk (not the tiny one) and about one cup of sugar. Stir it all together really well. It will be pretty liquidy. Cover the bowl of rice with saran wrap making sure to lay the wrap directly onto the rice mixture. Let is sit for about an hour or so.

Next, slice some strawberries and kiwi and mango. You can even use blueberries and raspberries for the fruit part.

Next, with your very clean hands, scoop a bit of the mixture into one hand and form a nice rectangular lump of sweet rice with the first two fingers of your other hand. (I really do need pictures, huh?)

Place the neatly formed rectangles of rice onto a platter. Once you have all the rice formed, you can then add the fruit on top so it looks kind of like sushi. You can serve it immediately or put it in the fridge and serve the next day, but I would not expect it to last longer than two days. It kind of dries out a bit and is not as tasty. I guess I really should add some pictures. Guess I need to make some more. Yea!

One Amazing Thing

A few months ago I read a book called OneAmazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni. It was very good and was about this group of people who are trapped and try to keep from going crazy by telling stories. Each person has to tell a story about one amazing thing from their lives. This post is not about that book, but I was thinking wouldn't it be nice if I could find one amazing thing every day and write about it or take pictures of them.

My one amazing thing for today is probably the colors the trees are displaying this fall. I remember several years ago I was living in North Carolina and I saw trees change in the fall. The colors were glorious, but all I could think was "Oh, my. What's wrong with the trees?" I thought something was terribly wrong with the trees because I had never seen fall colors in real life. I understood what was going on, but somehow, my brain did not seem to make the connection and not think there was something wrong. My brain is very silly sometimes, but I digress.

Houston has two seasons: summer and two weeks of "winter" where it sometimes freezes for one night. The trees typically turn green and then brown and then green again. There are a lot of oak trees and pine trees and magnolia trees, so there is often still quite a bit of green to see, but this year, all the other trees are really showing off the colors they are capable of making. I'll have to take some pictures.

And Research

As I was saying, my post-NaNo resolution this year is to write more--daily. I plan to spend at least an hour per day writing...and/or doing research for my novel. I'm really excited about this one. It's an idea I came up with five or six years ago. Today I spent time learning about making swords and the difference between European swords and Japanese katana. I also learned that swords were a weapon of last resort and not one of primary use. My next novel includes quite a bit of sword making and sword fighting, so I need all the books I can find on sword play and swordsmanship and blacksmithing. Movies might also be nice. I know I was watching quite a bit of Inuyasha when I had the dream that gave me the idea for the trilogy. Oh, yeah, did I mention this was going to be a trilogy? Yep. It'll be my first. Today I found a few good sources online that have a recommended reading list. I checked out my local library and discovered that the search functionality is not quite what I had hoped it would be, which is a shame. I'll have to bring that up to the right person at the right time.

Speaking of which, I have a job interview next Tuesday. Wish me luck!

What I Learned from NaNo This Year

I learned that I can spend more time writing. My post-NaNo resolution is to spend at least one hour a night writing--writing anything.

If I Had Any Spare Time with Books That Would Like to Live in Another Form

I came across this blog post and thought it was amazing. I thought it was even better when I found out that no one knows who the artist is as s/he leaves the artwork behind with a little note to the organization or about the piece. It makes me want to read these books, which may have been the point behind making the pieces. I especially want to read the one about the dragon if it exists, which I think it might not yet.

The Help

I am in a book club, and the pick for last month was The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I liked it well enough, but what I found annoying was the fact that she needed a better editor. The character descriptions were inconsistent and some of the story left me feeling short changed. Instead of investing a little more on the outcome of a certain character, that character was just killed off. It's not that I particularly loved the character or anything, but it was a pretty decent part of what motivated the main character. I think that character deserved a little more than "oh, she died." The story was good, though. What I found I could take away from this book, though, was the need for me to work hard to maintain consistency in my own writing. I saw a few tricks other people did when I was reading the review for a book I was thinking about purchasing. The author was talking about author rituals and how she used to have one and had heard of other rituals other authors do. One I found interesting was making a collage for each of the characters to incorporate what they look like, their likes, etc. I think I may try this. I don't really have much room to display them while I'm working on my novel, but I think it would be better to keep it small enough to put in a file that I can carry around with me. Maybe I should put Photoshop on this laptop and create digital versions or I could scan the physical ones I create. So many options...oh, dear, could this turn into a procrastination method?

TLA

I've just returned from two days at the Texas Library Association Conference in Austin. For the first time I must say I had a really good time there. My previous trips to Austin had left me with the feeling that Austin felt like the least Texan town I had ever been in. This time I didn't really have that feeling. People were friendly and warm. Maybe it was the influence of hundreds of librarians being in the city...

I presented for the first time on the rights research I've been doing for Houston Public Library. I was on a panel of three, the other two being the Vice President of Digital Services at Baylor University and the other being the Copyright Librarian at University of Michigan. When I first was invited to be on the panel and I found out who the others were, my thoughts were, "Oh my God! Who am I to be on this panel. I'm just a student...!" Then my good friend Nicole set me straight saying I'd be fine because I'm the one in the trenches, so to speak, doing the actual work. Well, after hearing the presentations of the others, I realized she may have been a little off on that assessment, but it did what I needed: a little self-esteem boost, a little encouragement. I must say I think I did en excellent job on my presentation. I wasn't nervous at all. I got some laughs in the right places and people asking good questions that I knew the answers to. The best part was afterward, the VP from Baylor handed me his card and said to give him a call when I graduated. I think that was a pretty nice compliment.

At this conference I also go to meet Karen Coyle. How big a nerd am I that I'm still bouncing a little inside when I think about having met her? She gave a great talk about the future of the semantic web. Once I finish my school work, I plan to think more about the ideas I had while listening to her presentation and to read more about the current developments. I agree with her that while the computer nerds, as she put it, have done a lot, it really is up to librarians to help push this forward in the direction it needs to go since we have the experience thinking about how users search and what a useful interface would look like for them and, really, for all of us.

Another Spot

I've been following a writing blog called The Red Dress Club, and every week they post a writing prompt and if I write it then I link up on Friday to show what I've written. This week's prompt has to do with writing a story using mainly dialogue to move the story, which reminded me of something I wrote a while back ago. It's called "Another Spot". Here it is.

“Well, I’m off,” the young one said.

“Where are you going tonight, Darling?” She said.

“I don’t really know. Some place where I’ll smoke and drink and have sex with anyone who asks nicely or at least tells me I’m the most beautiful thing they’ve seen in the past hour,” the young one said.

“But you’re not twenty-one yet. Do you know a place that will let you drink despite your age?” She said.

“Doesn’t matter. I have a fake ID. Says I’m twenty-three,” the young one said.

“Brilliant. Simply brilliant,” he said. “What if someone asks your sign?”

“Darling, I don’t think that’s really appropriate. ‘What’s you’re sign’ went out with the seventies,” she said.

“Well, I was just trying to prepare her, Love,” he said.

“Well, I really need to get going,” the young one said and left.

“You know, Love, I like her the best out of all the others. The others were just so boring…not quite real like this one…What’s her name again? Love isn’t it?” he said.

“No, I think it’s Darling,” she said.

“Well, whatever her name is, I really like her. She’s great…How is it she got here?” he said.

“Oh you remember, that stork brought her and dropped her sown the chimney,” she said.

“No, that was the first one. Remember? The one with the weird chemically reactive skin. When we first took her out of the chimney she was black but whenever water hit her skin she would start turning white,” he said.

“Oh yes, now I remember, Darling,” she said. “We had to keep dropping her down the chimney to keep her skin from changing too much. Poor dear, to be born with such an affliction…”

“As I recall that one didn’t stay here too long. Whatever happened to that one?” he said.

“She got herself stuck in the middle of the chimney stack somehow and wouldn’t come out…even when we tried to smoke her out. She was so stubborn,” she said.

“And messy, too,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“I know. Maybe she was the one you digested. You know, the one that came out of your stomach,” he said.

“Oooooh. I really didn’t like that one. She was so ugly. No, definitely not this one. Remember? We left that one with all those others with those people dressed in white. I mean they did have all those others. What could one more hurt?” she said.

“Oh yeah. That one was ugly,” he said.

“I remember!” She said, “that one morning…the doorbell rang and woke us up really early. We opened the door and there she was in the basket—“

“Crying. No, I remember that one. The noisy one. Definitely not our…our…ours.” I especially hated that one. She was so noisy. I remember petting her, letting her play with the dogs, everything, but to no avail. She just kept crying and yelling. Oh! How I hated her,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Sorry to bring up such an awful memory, Darling,” she said.

“So how did this one—this wonderful one get here to be our joy and happiness?” he said.

“Hmmm…let me see. Okay. Think back to right before she was here. When was that?” she said.

“Ah…yes. It was ten years ago. I saw her at the county fair looking so lost and sad so I decided to go and talk to her, buy her some cotton candy or something. She was such a dear. So adorable, I just had to have her. I just had to bring her home to meet you. And I did and you loved her, too. And now ten years later we’re still happy. The three of us living happily ever after,” he said.

“That’s us. You, me, and…and…Alice?” she said.

“You really think it’s Alice?” he said.

“I’m not sure. Remind me to ask her the next time we see her,” she said.

“Of course, Love,” he said.