Pulling a Fast One

I checked a book of short stories out of the library, primarily because it contains one of Neil Gaiman’s stories, but also because I was attracted to the cover.  The book is called “McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales” and it’s edited by Michael Chabon.  The cover is designed to look like an old-fashioned comic book and features an illustration from the cover of the October 1940 edition of Red Star Mystery Magazine.

“Closing Time” is the name of the story by Neil Gaiman that is contained within the book.  When I got part way into the story, I realized that I had read the story before, probably in one of Neil’s short story collections.  As I read it a second time, I was conscious of the fact that Neil pulls a fast one on the reader.  The story starts in first-person in one scene and then the story shifts to another scene and it’s still in the first person, only it’s a different person than the one from the beginning, which is not immediately obvious.  It’s an interesting effect and the sort of thing I like to try to pull off in my own writing.  It’s a good way to set up a surprise for the reader, but you have to use some careful slight of hand in order to manage it successfully.

Four Meme

Reeva tagged me with a meme that seems to take the number 4 as its theme, hence the title of this post.  Here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had: Museum manager, mural painter, assistant in tourism office, waitress

Four movies I’ve watched more than once: Contact, Down with Love, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, The Hudsucker Proxy

Four places I’ve lived: Central Minnesota, Central Minnesota, Central Minnesota, with a brief stint (6 weeks) in the Twin Cities area

Four TV shows I watch: Project Runway, CSI, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Mythbusters

Four places I’ve been: Portland, Oregon; Siren, Wisconsin; Grand Marais, Minnesota (many, many places in MN); Fort Frances, Canada

Four places I’d like to visit: Stonehenge; Seattle, Washington, Santa Fe, New Mexico; India — this list could be much longer!)

Four people who email me regularly: Jody, Cindy, the Dave Matthews Band announcement list, do blog commenters count?

Four of my favorite foods: Raspberry anything, lasagna, cottage cheese, green peppers

Four things I’m looking forward to this year: Publishing my Greenville series (that in itself is worth about 4 things!)

Four people I’m tagging to make their own lists: Rob, LKWinter (if you’ve got some time after dealing with stats), Manoj, and Soloist (if’n you got the time).

Waiting to Teach

Neil Gaiman wrote something last week that is niggling the bejeezlebugs out of me.

He said:

“I’m fairly nervous about teaching at Clarion this year. I said no when asked for years, because I wasn’t sure what I had to teach anyone about writing. Mostly I figure I’m still figuring it out myself. I finally said yes, and I still don’t think I know enough to dare to actually teach anyone.“

While this statement certainly reflects Neil humility, it’s flabbergasting to me.  If you ever get a chance to read his online journal or hear him speak in an interview, you’ll immediately sense that Neil is a natural teacher.  What more is teaching than imparting what you know to someone else?  And if you’re an interesting and memorable person, as Neil is, much of what you impart will stick with your students.  I think that if you wait to teach until you know all you’re ever going to know about a particular topic, you’ll be in your grave, regretting the fact that you didn’t pass along what you could when you weren’t being a tasty meal for maggots.

And, if you still don’t believe you have enough knowledge to be a teacher, watch an infant and a toddler interact for a while.  What you’ll notice is that the infant will continually keep his eyes on the toddler, soaking up whatever that toddler is doing with great intensity.  The toddler doesn’t even know she’s teaching, but it’s happening nonetheless.

Share what you know.  You don’t have to know it all.

The Well-Hosted Party

Daughter had her party yesterday and invited a bunch of kids, around twenty.  About half of them made it.  The theme of the party was lime green and silver.  Daughter made a contest of the colors and gave a Dairy Queen gift card to the person who brought the best item to match the theme.  She also planned a scavenger hunt that was a little wonky because of the snow.  Half of the hunt was for items in the house, half for outside.  The brave kids tiptoed around in the snow while looking for the answers.  The winner of the scavenger hunt also got a DQ gift card.

Of course, part of the theme was in the decorating.  There were lime green and silver-ish balloons.  Well, actually, the silver-ish balloons were more pearlescent and contain green and silver confetti.  Daughter found lime green paper plates and napkins and streamers.  Her friends brought her gifts of lime green and silver, wrapped in lime green and silver.  Two of her friends brought her a two-tiered homemade cake, which was decorated in lime green and . . . turquoise (and you thought I’d say silver, but where do you get silver food coloring?).  Two other friends made homemade peanut butter cups and cookies, both colored lime green.

From our end the food had to match the theme, too – at least the cake did.  Daughter chose white cake and white frosting and green food coloring.  The cake mix was left white, but we did put it into silver cupcake papers for baking.  Daughter mixed the food coloring into the frosting.  Here is the result:

Daughter’s friends have a thing for gummy bears, so she wanted to add those, even though they didn’t strictly follow the theme.

Here are the ingredients we used, sans the food coloring.  Go easy on the green and add a little yellow in order to get close to lime green.

As for drinks, at least two of the boxes of pop we bought fit right in – Twist Up (which is like Seven-Up or Sprite) and Canada Dry ginger ale, which the kids kept calling Canada Dry, even though Canada Dry makes more than just ginger ale.

Everyone seemed to have a rousing good time.  Hubby and I basically lurked around, not trying to get in anyone’s way.  We did watch their game of Charades, which was humorous because the kids chose a lot of potty-themed things to act out, which made some of the kids a little embarrassed.

A houseful of teenagers is a joy to behold.

Hubby Meme

I was tagged for a meme by Erin at A Posse . . . Ad Esse. This is the Hubby Meme, which gives me a chance to say all kinds of wonderful things about my Hubby, and throw in a little bit of our history, as well. Here goes.

Where did you meet? Hubby and I knew each other in elementary school on up through high school. We were in the same grade. Hubby was my brother’s best friend during high school, but the unwritten rule was that you couldn’t ever date your brother’s best friend. When I was in my second year of college, I broke the rule in a round-about way. I told my brother to have Hubby ask me out. (He didn’t know that I had done this until after we were married.)

How long did you date? We dated about 6 months, at which point Hubby asked me to marry him. Actually, he had unofficially asked me a month prior, saying something like, “If I asked you to marry me, would you?” When he officially proposed, he enlisted my brother in helping to pick out an engagement ring (a sapphire) and in painting a message on the roof of my dad’s house. Hubby hired a pilot to take us up in his small plane so I could read the message. It said, “Marry me, Mary.”

How old is he? I married a younger man, but not by much. We’re both 40; our birthdays are only a couple of months apart.

Who eats more? Hubby eats more, but he’s also a foot taller than I am and has a Nordic frame with wide shoulders. That said, on occasion, I can sometimes out-eat him.

Who said “I love you” first? I think that was Hubby.

Who is taller? Definitely Hubby – by a foot.

Who sings better? Also, definitely Hubby. He has a gorgeous voice. He’s incredibly musical, comes from a musical family, in fact. He can play the guitar by ear and it doesn’t take him long to figure out a song. Hubby once had a solo in an operetta. He didn’t bother to tell his parents ahead of time, so they had no idea until he actually got up to sing. Unfortunately, even though he’s musically gifted, he can’t stand performing in front of an audience, so I get the rare treat of being pretty much the only one to hear him (except for the kids and the cats, of course).

Who is smarter? If you ask me, Hubby. If you ask Hubby, he’ll say me. We’ve actually scored within a couple of points of each other on IQ tests, for what that’s worth. Hands down, Hubby is much, much better at coming up with logical arguments for debatable issues. He’s brilliant at it and very quick. It’s a skill I wish I had.

Whose temper is worse? Hubby and I have different ways of showing our tempers. Hubby is typically louder and quicker to swear, while I tend to nurse my temper and get quiet and snippy.

Who does the laundry? Mostly me. Hubby pitches in when needed. Even though I do more laundry, Hubby is waaaaaay better at folding clothes than I am. I tend to slap things together, while his folded stuff looks so good that it could have come from the dry cleaners.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I do.

Who pays the bills? I do. And if you ask Hubby, he’ll say it’s a darn good thing I do because if it were left up to him, we’d be broke by now.

Who cooks dinner? I’d say we split this task 50/50. He’s better at it than I am. He’s been cooking since he was a little kid and has a certificate in the chefly arts. He can take the plainest food and transform it into fancy food.

Who drives when you are together? Mostly Hubby. When we were younger, he always drove when we were together because I was more timid at driving and he was a professional driver. Now we switch off, but it depends on where we are going and whether it’s dark and rainy out. If it’s dark and rainy, he definitely drives.

Who is more stubborn? I don’t think either one of us is stubborn, certainly not with each other. We’re pretty good at compromise.

Who kissed whom first? Hubby kissed me first. I was too shy to be that forward (although I certainly wasn’t too shy about arranging to be asked out, was I?)

Who is the first to admit to being wrong? We typically come to this conclusion at about the same time after we’ve been short with each other.

Whose parents do you see the most? His, without a doubt. We have many interests in common and his parents enjoy family visits more than mine do.

Who proposed? See the answer to the second question above.

What’s his best physical attribute? What can I say on a blog without embarrassing him? His eyes and his shoulders. Really, it’s hard to break him down into individual parts because I fell in love with the entire package.

Who has more friends? We tend to share friends, so that means we have an equal amount.

What are you most proud of him for? Being a great dad, quitting a job that he was scared to quit because he was afraid to put the family in jeopardy, and for returning to school (he’s pulling all A’s).

Who has more siblings? I do. Three brothers and a sister to his three sisters.

Who wears the pants in the family? We share the pants in the family. We hate the term “Head of Household” because we discuss all major issues and come to a decision together. There isn’t one head of household, but two. True story: When we first signed up for insurance, we went into the insurance company together. I was under the assumption that both of us would be listed on the insurance, but only my husband was. This ticked me off royally because for most bill paying accounts, the company will only discuss things with the listed account holder. I finally wrote a letter to the company and said that I wanted my name on the account because they wouldn’t be getting paid if I wasn’t writing out the bills every month. They put my name on the account.

There we go – the Hubby Meme. Now it’s time to tag. How about Joanne, Kim, Ali, and Joy? (Joy, if you haven’t done a meme before, leave me a comment and I’ll explain it.)

Day of Silence

Eldest Son told me that he and some friends are taking part in tomorrow’s Day of Silence, which “brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This year’s event will be held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate because of his sexual orientation and gender expression.”

Hubby, who’s studying the sociology of human sexuality in college, hadn’t heard of this day and neither had I.  We couldn’t be more proud of our boy for standing up for his beliefs.

They’re at It Again

Nine Inch Nails has just released another free song.  It’s called “Discipline” and you can get it at their website now.  Here’s the link.  Unlike the recently released Ghosts, this one has lyrics.

If NIN’s official blog post disappears, you can find the link at Dori Doreau’s NIN Blog Archive.  (Dori, you’re a godsend. )

The Silence of Sweeping

I did some cleaning in the house tonight.  Daughter is having a birthday party Saturday and inviting a raft full of friends.  She doesn’t like the house to be messy when her friends come over, so we have to give our offerings to the Goddess of Cleanliness.  I swept our wood and tile floors (we have no other kind).  Hubby prefers to vacuum the floors because the dirt and giant cat hair tumbleweeds are sucked directly away, whereas with sweeping, you have to chase the cat hair tumbleweeds across the floor.  There’s a benefit to sweeping though and it’s the reason I’ll choose a broom over a vacuum cleaner 85 percent of the time.  The broom is quiet, zen-like.

Happy Earth Day!

I feel guilty about the items I have to throw away that can’t be recycled.  So guilty, in fact, that I’m making notes for a story using this as a topic.  I find myself staring at the toothpaste tube and wondering what it looks like on the inside and how it could be repurposed.  When the one on our bathroom counter is empty, I swear I’m going to cut it open.

Media Consumed

I’ve consumed a fair amount of media over the past few days. Honestly, who can’t say that about their experience in the U.S. of A. today? We’re saturated, but this was media I was thoroughly focused on, not using as background noise.

On Friday morning, I heard Kerri Miller’s Midmorning program on MPR about independent record stores and how music on vinyl is making a comeback. I complained about the lack of album art now that music is going digital waaaaay back in January 2007. Turns out that the album art is one of the drawing points for vinyl. Duh!

For the last 15 minutes of Midmorning on Friday, the discussion turned to none other than my favorite mogul of music industry reconstruction, Trent Reznor and all of the crazy things he’s doing to sell his music now that he’s free of a record company contract. None of this was news to me, of course, not even the mention of Kevin Kelly’s Thousand True Fans (even though the commentator, Greg Kot, didn’t mention Kevin Kelly’s name). I just thought it was super cool that MPR was discussing the topic because we simply can’t discuss creative genius enough imho.

On Saturday evening, during a visit with Soloist, my media consumption included watching the movie “Juno,” which we had looked for at the video store, but was out. Soloist rented the last available copy at a different video store thinking we’d like to watch it. Great minds think alike, no? Instead, we rented “Death at a Funeral,” which we watched after “Juno.” Both movies were hilarious and quirky and worth watching more than once. I wish my parents had been the loving smart asses that Juno had for parents. I think our kids might agree that Hubby and I can be quite the smart asses ourselves, but we have a quieter form of smart-assedness (acidness!?!) than Juno’s parents displayed.

Yesterday, while Hubby and I were driving Daughter to Ikea to purchase a new bed and wardrobe, we listened to Kid Kelly’s Backtrax U.S.A., which featured music from the ’80s. Daughter astutely noted that “our” music had more synthesizer than today’s music. Hubby and I were treated to such favorites as Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone,” Duran Duran’s (Duran-squared, if you were a die-hard fan) “The Reflex – flec, flec, flec, flec, flex), and the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra.” This last song was considered quite risque when we were kids. Now it barely raises an eyebrow.

The rest of my media consumption included reading the new Wired magazine and finishing Giles (pronounced jai-elz) Slade’s book “Made to Break.” This guy knows how to do some serious research. He covers a multitude of products in the book and how they were designed to become obsolete quickly. Each product could have a book of its own to discuss its history, which means that Giles had to do a lot of reading in order to write this book. It’s scholarly, but not dull, so don’t let my yammering about all the research scare you away.

Remember my post on Planned Reclamation? How I was asking by page 34 of the book why we couldn’t design things with disassembly and reuse in mind? Giles gets to that in the book and says that this is called “green design” or “design for disassembly.” (pg. 182) As I was reading, the other thought that came to mind during the discussion of toxic e-waste was . . . If it’s so toxic to take apart things like computers and cellphones, what about the production end? Isn’t it toxic to collect the materials needed to put into these gadgets? It is.

Giles touches on the mining of one ingredient needed for digital technology on page 278 – colombo-tantalum ore, a.k.a. coltan. I’m not sure whether coltan itself is toxic, but its mining practices “produce social and geopolitical chaos in West Africa.” (pg. 278 ) And, of course, there’s environmental degradation from the act of mining. Our quest for more and more and more digital stuff has to be tempered by the effects our excessive consumption is causing world-wide – from both the production end through the disposal process.

So then, what interesting media have you consumed lately?

Life Never Ceases to Amaze Me

I have a small set of round Philips speakers for my iPod, which makes my music “system” incredibly portable.  I was using said iPod and speakers while writing in bed this morning and happened to pick up one of the speakers.  Stuck to the bottom was a paper clip and I was amazed.  I wondered why the speakers were magnetic and I went to show my husband.  He said, “All speakers are magnets.  That’s how they work.”  I was like, “Really?  Really?”  How come I didn’t know this?  Hubby also wondered why I didn’t know this.

Time for the rationalization.  A) I didn’t have a physics class in either high school or college, except for the basic physics lessons I got in ninth grade science.  We didn’t cover speakers.  B) I didn’t take speakers apart as a kid, like my husband did, so I have no practical experience with their inner workings.  C) We can’t possibly know everything there is to know about the world, which I think is as good as a rationalization as you’re ever going to get.  At least I found out about the magnetic property of speakers within my lifetime.

Lurkers

I ran into one of my writing group compatriots yesterday at the library – RK.  She knows who she is because she reads this blog.  That’s what she told me when we talked yesterday (that she reads this blog, not that she knows who she is).  What’s even more important is that she likes this blog, which warms my heart no end.

She told me that she used to blog, but stopped because she got addicted to blogging and checking in on her blog, which, coupled with a tendency to want perfectly polished blog posts and keeping up with and commenting on other people’s blogs, ate a lot of time, more than she was comfortable with.  So, she deleted her blog.  A drastic measure to be sure, but one that saved her sanity.  Now, she’s taken on the role of lurker.  She reads blogs, but she doesn’t leave comments.

I told her that I’ve noticed a lot of my time evaporating while blogging, but more than blogging itself, which doesn’t take very long, I find that I’m spending even more time keeping up with the blogs of others and with making sure to comment on them.   I like comments, heck, I love comments, and I leave them because I want bloggers to know that someone is reading, but I’m beginning to see how excessive commenting is getting away from me.

Along with the Blogging Without Obligation movement, I think we need to celebrate the humble lurker, the reader who reads, but doesn’t comment.  Like RK, I lurk around several blogs, with nary a comment left.  I’ve been known to leave comments often on a bunch of other blogs and I still will leave comments if so moved, but I have to scale back a bit on the commenting so that I can keep my sanity.  Rest assured, if I don’t leave a comment in a while, it’s not that I’m not reading.  Rather, I’m lurking.  And, of course, I don’t expect others to play by rules that I’m not willing to follow, so, if you want to lurk on Woo Woo Teacup, feel free.  Let’s call it Lurking Without Obligation, shall we?

Btw, I have had people, like RK, tell me in ways besides leaving a comment that they are reading.  In person is nice, but I’ve also had people track me down via email to tell me they’re reading.   Feedback, no matter what channel it comes through is fabulous.  As writers, it’s good to know that our words matter to someone.