Last Saturday, my husband and I hit up the Portland Farmer’s Market at Portland State University for the first time. Even though the weather turned out to be drizzly at best, we still had a great time shopping for farm fresh produce with dirt still clinging to its surface.
Before we left the house, we promised ourselves that we would buy some things we don’t usually cook. And that’s why we made our way home with a bundle of radishes (something I had never eaten until this year) and a bundle of kale (a particular variety of greens that I loathe).
“What do you suggest we do with this?” we asked the man totaling up our purchase.
“Oh, right now I really love to make kale chips,” he said. Then he proceeded to explain how to make them and several other market patrons chimed in tips. Spurred on by their excitement and their reassurances that baked kale is super tasty, we decided to go for it.
Several days later, the kale still sat in my produce drawer, staring me down. I had used a few of the radishes in a salad, but a neat pile still sat next to the kale. After a quick Google search, I found out I could make radish chips as well. I would just have to cook them longer than the kale. I pulled both of them out, dared to turn on my oven in the summer heat, and resolved to cook those suckers. Continue reading Farmer’s Market Find: Kale Chips…
Ah, how students love summer. It’s the proverbial oasis at the end of the desert of all nighters and essay writing marathons. We write songs about summer. We reminisce about summers. Beaches, ice cream, napping, T.V., sunbathing, road trips, music, fireworks, bonfires, burgers, sunglasses, sweat, and freedom. That’s what every student longs for at the end of a long semester of being a slave to the syllabus.
Even though we all crave a super lazy summer, it never seems to work out like that. Having nothing to do gets boring pretty quickly, especially when you’re a student who keeps wondering what assignments need to be done even weeks after the end of the semester. Personally, all I wanted this summer was a job. A summer of money making would certainly be nice. But with only eight weeks of summer left for me and no job yet lined up, it looks like I might not get one. So now I am looking at the prospect of potentially having a lazy summer and finding it pretty dull sounding. What in the world am I going to do with myself for eight weeks?
If you’re like me, and you can’t stand the thought of spending an entire summer laying on the couch watching reruns of reality television, taking naps, cleaning your apartment for the 20th time this week just to do something, checking Facebook repeatedly, and waiting for the next time your friends can all get together to do something fun, here are some ways to take a summer on—not a summer off.
Continue reading Taking Summer On…
“If I take one more step… it’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.” — Samwise Gamgee, The Fellowship of the Ring
I am proverbially kicking myself for missing out on my opportunity to quote that line when I finally traveled outside of the United States this past month. My husband and I had the amazing experience of going to Asia in May. Phew. How is that for your first trip out of the country? We went with a small group of people from my college.
Above is a photo of some members of our group and some of the gracious people who hosted us during our stay in the country. It’s strange to be back home again after spending three weeks in a land where everything is covered in gold. I saw a little journal in Powell’s on Hawthorne a week ago with a golden Buddha statue on the cover and it struck me that I hadn’t seen one of those since getting home. Yet there they are everywhere.
Another weird experience reminded me of The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. In that book, one of her characters refers to the United States as being devoid of smells in comparison to the Congo. Now I understand what she meant. This part of Asia has a particular smell and while walking through the Portland Farmer’s Market at PSU on Saturday I caught a whiff of something very similar for just a moment. I probably whacked my husband on the arm and I said, “Did you smell that? It smelled like Asia!”
Asia may be a land of golden pagodas, but this picture shows what I think is probably a more accurate representation of life for many people. We saw homes perched on stilts over dirty, mosquito-ridden standing water. Throughout the trip, we only drank bottled water because the tap water is not safe. Our hosts assured us that bottled water is cheap there, but I wondered if it was accessible to everyone in the country, even in the most rural areas. There is great poverty in this beautiful country. Continue reading There and Back Again: Asia…
Don’t get me wrong. I love the fact that I can churn out essays in a handful of hours and novels in a single month. There is almost nothing in the world like suddenly having a eureka moment in which a plot or a character just descends upon you as if from heaven. But there is a downside, and it’s a major one: you act like a crazy person. For instance…
Writers are always thinking of unexpected ways to kill people (and hide the body)
Just today I went onto the NaNoWriMo forums to find out if my character would die if he was shot in a particular place. The terrible thing is that I didn’t have to go far to find what I was looking for: the answer was in a topic on the first page!
If you look just a little further, you will find plenty of information on poisons that kill, non-lethal arrow wounds, and whether or not a bottle of Pinot Noir to the back of the head would render a person unconscious (note to self: yes it would, but they would also be dead).
See, we writers don’t just want to kill. We want to be original and accurate killers. I could kill someone with a paper cut in my book if I wanted to, but it would be so improbable that my reader would likely disown me (but what if it was a thousand million paper cuts?). So I have to learn how to actually kill people, which could be a disconcerting thought to some people.
Beware. This is the face of a true killer (my friend Daisy).
The good news is that I married the right person. In the fall, a large pile of leaves accumulated next to the staircase leading from the parking lot to the library at my college. The first day I walked by it, I immediately thought, “Someone could hide a body there.” Of course, it might not be the safest place to hide a body, but it’s possible. A few weeks later, I walked past it with my husband. “Hey!” I said to him. “You know what I thought when I saw that the first time?”
“Someone could hide a body there,” he said, interrupting me. Yup, I married a keeper.
People live in my head and I don’t control them
Before you write me off as needing immediate psychiatric help, I am only referring to my characters. The thing that non-writers don’t understand is the fact that characters sure know how to assert themselves. It would be a lot easier to write a novel if they didn’t.
For example, sometimes I write my character into a situation and I’m not exactly sure how to get him out of it. Maybe he could get away from the bad guy if he shot someone, but he won’t. (Or a more likely scenario: he won’t be killed if he shuts up, but he has to keep babbling on, so if the story is to be continued he needs immediate rescuing… /sigh.)
Other times, characters just up and decide to do exactly what you told them not to. Like marry the wrong guy. Or jump six chapters ahead. You can’t do anything about it; it’s what they had to do at that moment.
The weirdest thing is that most of these characters—if they’re good ones—seem to simply show up one day in the mind of a writer, mostly cemented and ready to go. The only thing the writer must do is get to know them.
When writers get together, they have weird conversations
Conversations between writers usually involve endless debates over killing characters in which we often refer to them by name, describing how the character leaped off a building (and survived), and asking other writers seemingly random questions, such as, “What would you do if I told you I was an alien?”
No, seriously. How would you react? I need to know.
My 2011 resolutions in a nutshell? Improve my spiritual, marital, financial, physical, and academic health, and enjoy life more.
- Pray every day. The importance of prayer has become very real to me in the past week or so since a friend of mine was in a terrible car accident. But I know I should pray during the good times as well as the bad times, so I want to make this a habit.
- Read the Bible in 90 Days. I managed to make it through a few weeks last time. This time I will not be moving in the middle of the 90-day period, so hopefully that will help me stay on track.
- Have one date night a week. We’ve had date nights since we moved, but we need to make them sacred. It’s too easy for date nights to get canceled or to turn into “hanging out with friends night.”
- Read Love and Respect. I’ve been meaning to finish this book for a long time and I just haven’t done it yet. But I know this book will be good for my marriage, so I’m making it a priority.
- Create a monthly budget and use it. Matthew and I intend to make a new budget every month at the beginning of the month and review it weekly. My ultimate goal is to pay off our debt (except student loans) and establish an emergency fund.
- Log 8,000 fitness minutes. I will be using SparkPeople to track this goal. This breaks down to a little more than 30 minutes of exercise five times a week. I can break it down even more—15 minutes twice a day, or 10 minutes three times a day—if I need to make it more manageable to me.
- Plan meals weekly. Planning ahead saves so much trouble and ensures that we’re always eating something good rather than having crackers for dinner or having a pizza delivered. I might try Once a Month Mom.
- Get homework done early. After way too many stressful Sundays and all-nighters, I have resolved to get my homework done earlier than the day before it’s due so that I don’t give myself an ulcer next semester.
- Rest on Sundays. Last semester, I felt tired and burnt out all the time. Every day of the week was a work day for me, and I know I need more rest than that. So this year, I’m going to relax on Sunday.
- Take a photo every day. I attempted to do Project 365 last year and quit after a month or so, but I think it will be really cool to finish the entire project this year if I can.
- Write every day. Getting into this habit will definitely develop my skills as a writer and will help me when NaNoWriMo rolls around. Even if all I write is a haiku, it’s still something.
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