Strangers in the Day

(This is post number 800. *throws confetti* But really, I just had post #700 the other day! What happened?)

A few days ago, there was an NCIS rerun of the episode "Cover Story". The story revolves around McGee's novel, which is a work in progress.

In the course of investigating a murder, McGee realises that the deceased petty officer is one of the characters in his novel-- or rather, the real-life person who McGee saw at the coffee shop & turned into a character. And before they can figure it out, another person turns up dead. So Gibbs forces a confession out of McGee that he bases all his characters on people he sees or knows, which means the entire team is in danger. Not only that, but the characters being killed are in the work in progress, so someone is getting their hands on McGee's draft without him knowing it. Which means all the team have to be protected while McGee scrambles to find his deranged fan.

1984

Caution: Spoilers ahead. (Although I'm not sure that you can call them "spoilers" for a book that's been out for 50 years.)

This book has been on my to-read list for years, and I finally moved it from "to-read" to "read". Since everyone talks about it so favourably, and since I read The Hunger Games trilogy and Matched all in the same week and really enjoyed them, I was looking forward to reading the grandfather of dystopia, 1984.

And I was disappointed.

In My Mailbox

My understanding of the In My Mailbox meme is that one posts books recently received. This month my mailbox has been unusually prolific:

These two came from JEFritz, as a result of her giveaway!


I've begun How Fiction Works, but haven't gotten very far because I'm currently reading about four other books. I don't think I'll be reading Roget's Thesaurus straight through regardless, though.

And look how cute they were when they arrived!

The Art of Non-Conformity didn't
technically come this month, but I finally finished it after finals.

Bloom Where You Are came from a resident
at the retirement villa where my husband works;
 several of the ladies were cleaning out,
heard that I like to read, and loaded Chad up
with a miniature library. Thus far, this is the only
book so received that I have read.

I ordered No Impact Man after I
checked it out at the library & loved it. 

I got sleeping naked is green on a
whim when ordering No Impact Man;
it was under the "People who ordered
this also liked" section at the bottom
of the Amazon page. (So if anyone from
Amazon is reading, you can be happy
that your ads are working.)

A Texas Legacy Christmas was also a
whim; our local library has a continuous
booksale & I picked this one up.

I ordered Harmonic Feedback after
stumbling across Tara Kelly's blog.
(Note to blogging authors:
It really does happen! Keep blogging!)

Since I follow Dave Bruno's blog, I
always intended to buy this one.
But this time I did something new (or at
least, something previously reserved for
Harry Potter); I pre-ordered it!

So, that's my mailbox for December & January! I'm also expecting some textbooks any day now, but don't expect to see a post about those. What's in your mailbox?

Holiday's End

Five weeks is too long for a holiday break.

It's too long to be sitting around, but too short for getting a job. It's long enough to forget what it was like to go to class every day and then come home and do homework. It's long enough to get used to this rhythm of deciding what I want to do whenever I want to do it, because I have oceans of free time.

It's long enough to really mess with my sleep schedule. Grrr. On the upside, it's long enough to get myself off caffeine and resume my decaffeinated ways.

It's long enough that although I've had a question about a required book for one course since the day after I took my last final for the fall semester, I had to wait until instructors resumed their normal lives, too, so that I could ask without interrupting her Christmas holiday.

It was long enough for reading a stack of books (35 and counting), watching TV, catching up on everyone's blogs, and goofing off on Facebook.

In other words, the new semester starts tomorrow, and I am almost as unaccustomed to academic life today, after this crazy-long 5-week break, as I was at the beginning of summer school six months ago.

So, it's been fun reading your blog entries as soon as you posted them and leaving random comments. I've loved reading through books that my blogging buddies recommended and giving my reviews on Goodreads. And reading about everyone's adventures in writing has helped me in plotting and starting over on my own WiP. This break has been nice, but I've gotten into all these habits that now have to be stopped, and it's a bummer. It's been too long.

Okay, I know none of you feel sorry for me because you've been back in real life for two weeks now. So, today's question is: How's your weather? ;)

Just Put the Rock Down!

Last week I wrote about forgiveness and how it's not quite the forget-about-it-and-move-on verb that we might like it to be. Today, I'm thinking more about my response to someone who has offended me.

Glasgow

When I lived in Scotland, I was under the tutelage of Billy Wilson. One day our group was discussing the passage in which Jesus instructs his followers to forgive one another seventy times seven, and he asked us how often that was. So that you don't have to do the math, 24 hours/490 transgressions = Once every three minutes. As Billy pointed out to us, even on my worst days I don't err against God or against people every three minutes. And yet Jesus asks us to be willing to extend that level of forgiveness to others. (And, if we follow the reasoning to its logical conclusion, God must be willing to forgive at least that often as well.)

Use Less

Since some time in May, I've been doing research. When on the internet or in a healthy-living section of a store, I often wander over to the personal care products just to see what is available. And it turns out: A bunch of stuff.

Making Things

A few days ago I dubbed myself an honorary Walton. I spent a few days making various things, a hobby I greatly enjoy, although I don't think I would enjoy a sudden reversal in time that would make it necessary for me to make things, instead of it being a mere hobby.

Remember my New Year resolution? To make my own yogurt? And my announcement last Saturday that I was going to do it? Well, it got delayed until Monday, but I am here to say that I have now joined the ranks of the yogurt-makers.

Being Inspired

When I read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years a few weeks ago, there was one bit with which I had a serious disagreement. Mr. Miller said that non-writers have this idea that writers are inspired by life-- I forget the exact wording of the sentence, but something along the lines that after a game of Ultimate Frisbee, writers are bursting with things to write about frisbee-playing. And, he says, that is not the case.

I guess for him it isn't.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

I was halfway through this book before I realised that the author is the Donald Miller, the one all the Christian bloggers are always going on about (either to praise every word he writes, or to ridicule the people who praise every word he writes). He does, I am compelled to say, have a knack for putting words together so that they make lovely ideas and for putting ideas together to make light bulbs shine brilliantly over the reader's head, so often that I went back and forth between "This is amazing!" and "Why didn't I think of that?" about every other paragraph.

Image from Mr. Miller's
blog.

So, I think you should absolutely read this book. If you are a reader, you should read it. If you are a writer, you should definitely read it. If you think your life is too boring, you should read it. It's a book written by a Christian, to be sure, but even if you aren't wild about Christian literature, you should read it. Honestly, you can easily skip the bits about God if that's what you want to do, and still be struck by the message of the book, which is this: We get to write our own life story.

Teaser Tuesday

Fireflies in December, by Jennifer Erin Valent. This is Ms. Valent's debut novel.

Image from goodreads

First line: "The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I'd killed a man."

"Being only nineteen himself, Luke didn't have the sense to quit the conversation."

This wasn't a book that kept me glued to it, having to know more, but it was enjoyable enough. It's a coming-of-age book, set during the Depression in the South.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Run This Way

Chad started mentioning in early December that he was in the market for new shoes. Now we are slow movers in the Cheeky house; a lot of time tends to go by between the realisation that we need to get/change something and the thing actually happening. So, as we discussed at length what his preferred shoe store was,  Fate intervened in the shape of a Groupon from The Running Company.

And we are so glad that she (Fate is a woman, right?) did.

Forgiveness

Chad and I got these t-shirts for our anniversary. They are actually pretty apt for the Cheeky house; people never seem to get tired of telling us that we are weird. The fact that we're being different on purpose never seems to stop anyone from listing all our strange attributes. So, why not announce it right off and let people know ahead of time that strangeness is coming their way, right?

I had a conversation with a teacher once that included the statement, "Forgiveness is separate from consequences." (As you may have guessed, it wasn't the happiest conversation of my young life.) This was quite a revelation to me, who had heard such sayings as "Forgive and forget" my whole life, and always thought that forgiveness meant that whatever had happened was now finished, never to be mentioned again. How wrong I was, firstly because humans aren't good at that sort of thing, and secondly because while "to free or pardon from penalty" is one definition of forgive, another is "to cease to feel resentment against". So in essence my teacher was saying, "I'm no longer angry with you, but that will not save you from the misery I spent half the night plotting for you."

You may have spotted where I'm going with this. God doesn't forgive like humans do; he really can (and does!) forgive and forget, for which I am very thankful. But he doesn't save us from our own poor choices, either. If I cause a car accident, my insurance rates will go up whether I love Jesus or not. If I refuse to pay taxes, God doesn't intervene to stop me from going to jail. If I jump off of the balcony of my apartment, I am in no way excused from the laws of physics that will result in broken bones once I hit the ground. As Stephen Covey expresses it in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "If you pick up one end of a stick, you pick up the other."

I might just wear that t-shirt to church today for my own amusement. But I think I'll walk down to the bus stop, instead of trying to fly there.

One Resolution Done. I Hope.

Chad and I have the same problem with our attempts to live in harmony with the earth as have many before us: We live on a budget.

Inside Whole Paycheck.

Not that I think earth-friendly living is necessarily costly, but in this era of free-range eggs, grass-fed beef, and organic produce, all of which are more costly than their more traditional counterparts, it's easy to believe that only those with disposable income can afford to love the earth. All it takes to "confirm" this suspicion is one trip to Whole Foods (also known as Whole Paycheck).

Battle of the Crime Shows

My current favourite TV shows are NCIS and Criminal Minds. I have a hard time deciding between them, so I decided to do a little head-to-head. Here goes:

NCIS


vs

(photos from
IMDB)

Criminal Minds

Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me.

I've spent most of my holiday break reading (and reading, and reading, and reading). Which has been glorious and fun. But you know the side effect of this much reading?

At some point, I'm bound to think, "I can't write like this," and go drown my sorrows in hot cocoa and Days of Our Lives reruns. Because while being in the presence of greatness is awe-inspiring, it's also a signal to my already-addled brain to give it up and quit while I'm ahead. Set myself up for a "I coulda been a contenda" moment in my distant future. Lose myself so much in other people's characters that I can forget, for a little while, about my own.

But, as I drain the dregs of my cocoa and drag myself from the pit of despair, I consider that surely I can write better that whoever is on the payroll at Days, and return to my computer. Well, my desk; I'm still plotting on my NaNo novel (I have to give it a different name now, I should think). Yes, there is still a lot of white space on there. I'm doing my best to remember all I've heard/read/learned in the past couple of months and give Natasha a lot more drama that I'm willing to have in my own life. But I'm also trying to remember to make her at least a little bit likeable, because as things stand right now, she may well be a complete jerk.

So. That's what I'm doing this week. How about you?

No Impact Man

I picked up No Impact Man, by Colin Beavan, at the library, vaguely thinking that I'd read a review and wanted to read it. And as is my practise, I started reading it on the bus.

Oh. My. Word. This book is crazy-amazing, inspiring, frustrating, funny, scary-- I think it hit all my emotions as I read through it. To begin with, I'm totally with Mr. Beavan on the frustration at seeing people make planet-destroying choices every day that could easily be fixed. (Just get a reusable travel mug for your Starbucks and a stainless steel water bottle for everything else, already! Enough with the styrofoam and plastic!) And like him, I have realised that the only cure to the irritation is to change myself and hope that other people will come to the same conclusion*.

Teaser Tuesday

Yay, my first-ever Teaser Tuesday! Today's book is the one I actually got on Christmas day:

Sleeping Naked is Green
Vanessa Farquharson

"He's probably my best friend, if you divide shared interests and opinions by soul-baring conversation, and multiply this by 15 years."

"Her message tonight was thus loud and clear: no deodorant = no babies."

I definitely recommend this book-- it's a memoir (which I love) and a lot of fun-- I giggled a lot in the course of reading it.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

New Running Gear

The short version of my running experience in 2010 is this: I ran a marathon.

And that's pretty much it. My training runs after that were sporadic at best, and non-existent once the fall semester started. Sigh... I had such high hopes.

However, I've picked it back up again these past couple of weeks, suddenly remembered how much I like running, and have a goal race in mind. Four goal races, actually; the Austin Runners Club has a spring Sprint Series-- two 5Ks and two 10Ks. In case you missed it, the 10K is my favourite distance EVER, and 5Ks are so short that they're over before anything has a chance to start hurting. Should be fun.

Putting My House in Order

This being Sunday and all, it's probably completely inappropriate for me to make this announcement:

I'm not wild about the "sermon" part of church.

Praise and worship? Great. Prayer? Yes, please. Fellowship? Absolutely. Sermon? Meh.  So, allow me to proclaim the following:

I, Su Elizabeth, Crown Princess of Cheekyness, could do without sermons for the rest of my life.

All Hail 2011!

No New Year-- at least, not in my lifetime-- will ever top 2000, when the news reports had rolling coverage of the new "millennium" arriving in each time zone. That. Was. So. Cool.

But, hey, 2011 is pretty good, too. Not as good as 2002, though, when I was doing this:

And clearly, I don't want to spend my anniversary writing a blog post. So I'm writing this a few days in advance, so you have something to read while I'm off eating cake and toasting another year with my Prince Charming.

I made a list of goals/resolutions/whatever for 2010, and I'm afraid to go look. I'm sure it's not pretty. But the nice thing about New Year is that it always comes round again! So, some goals for 2011:

1. I'm going vegetarian again. It's not because I'm overly concerned about the fate of the animals that I eat (I'm not that kind, unfortunately), it's that I just don't like cooking meat. I discarded my veggie-eating ways when I married Chad, because I didn't think it was fair to inflict my vegetarianism on him, but he has agreed to either go along the veggie path or cook his own food, depending on how he feels and what I'm eating.

2. I'd like to learn how to make my own yogurt.

3. I've been toying with the idea of the 100 Thing Challenge for a couple of years now. Every time we move, we get rid of stuff, to the point that we don't have a lot of major stuff any longer. We do, however, have a lot of odds and ends. I'd like to cut down on the odds and ends, organize the stuff we actually need into a sensible system, and get on with our lives.

4. Reading. I will keep reading. There are a lot of new books coming out this year that I'd like to get my eyes on.

5. I have two works in progress that I want to finish, with an eye toward querying by the end of the year. I don't have a specific timeline on this yet, but stay tuned.

6. I haven't yet set mileage goals for my running and cycling. I'm mulling them over. In the meantime, I have two time goals, one major and one incidental, for the year-- 1:00:00 for the 10K (major!) and 0:30:00 for the 5K (if I can meet the first one, I ought to be able to meet the second one, too).

So, there you go. Do you have any goals/resolutions/whatever for 2011?