Deviant Dispatches

I've never read Jay Lake before, but I've heard a lot about him, and this book looks incredible. The writing in the first chapter is very deliberate, squeezing in tons of information without making it an overload. It's about a girl who doesn't remember her name, who is sold by her father to become a courtesan and an assassin. That right there is all I need to go holy crap I need to read this! There is also magic in this book, and gods who meddle with people (think Greek myth). I found this book on our sale table at work. We've been clearing out lots of used books and sometimes little gems like this pop up. I bought it right away. I haven't actually made any of the recipes yet, but it's good as a humor book too. There are recipes like With a Little Help From My Frankfurters, I've Just Stuffed a Steak, And I Love Herb, I Saw Her String Beans There, I Am the Eggplant, We Shall Shrimp and Save... You get the idea. There are little tidbits to go with each re

Today begs an entry of lighter heart than the last one, so I present you with a random list I discovered, made by myself nearly four years ago, when I was living and taking classes in Chicago. From beginning to end, the list says: 1. Postcard piece: "stay in touch" 2. McDonald's drink holder 3. translucent leaves 4. combination of postcards 5. painting over them 6. making new art from old art; making it original 7. What the hell was the idea in the rubber? 8. Site of former: a beacon easily overlooked 9. stages of a relationship: artists & personal 10. Even if this did make sense once upon a time, it's still likely the most bizarre thing I've ever written. At first, it seems to be either ideas for an art project or a description of someone else's "found art" project. But then number 7 comes along. I have no idea what the "idea in the rubber" is supposed to be. If it does have something to do with the rest of the list, it would suggest t

I am afraid of many things. I am afraid of change. I am afraid of sharp objects. I am afraid of things without shape and questions without answers. But I shouldn't have to be afraid of walking a block and a half across a nice campus on a Tuesday night. The bookstore held a poetry event on the local campus tonight. Spousal Unit and I also live on said campus, so it was a hop, skip, and a jump away for me to walk home - a much shorter walk than usual. Several coworkers inquired if I would like a ride, and I assured them I would be fine and went on my merry way. Two steps after leaving them, I called Spousal Unit, as I always do when walking home. Yes, I call him because I love him, but I also call him just in case someone who sees me should have mischief on his mind - something I learned while living in Chicago. My being on the phone sends an immediate signal that if you mess with this girl, someone will know right away. It says "pick a less obvious target" without my havin

A brief foray into my relationship with Spousal Unit: he had a desktop wallpaper up of the scene from Empire Strikes Back where Han and Leia are about to kiss onboard the Falcon. So I started reciting the scene. Me: "I happen to like nice men." SU: "I'm a nice man." Me: "No you're not, yoummph!" Silence on my part was not caused by him kissing me. It was caused by him shoving a chocolate bunny wrapper in my mouth. And now for your regularly scheduled sunset!

This weekend, Spousal Unit and I decided to climb Hermit's Peak and throw the ring into the fiery pit of the volcano at the summit. Er, wrong story. Let's try this again. We've been meaning to climb it together since we've been out here. Spousal Unit made it to the top with a friend before I moved out here, and we tried it once about a year ago with no success - a thunderstorm made us abandon our efforts, lest we get crispified by a lightning bolt. Our second attempt did not start off very well. For one thing, I was not terribly happy in the morning. Yeah, like that. Spousal Unit wanted brie and a baguette to munch at the top, and I would have none of it. We had a bottle of wine and regular cheese would do just fine. But according to Spousal Unit, "If it's not brie, it's not cheese." Considering where we live, he may be right. Things seemed to look up for us when we ran into The Donkey. He was a very friendly donkey, who told us his owners hadn't b

The craft fair at which I have a booth is now a week away. I'm nervous to have a booth, but I hope someone will think my items worth purchasing. For good merchandising, I've created tags with my logo. On the back, there will be information about each item for sale. So far, I've got 12 items to sell and am working on another. My goal was to have 10 to 15, so I'm doing well. Here's one of the scarves, in the same style as I made for Spousal Unit's mom last year. I love the super-colorful trim on the edge of this one. Trim is alpaca, and the body is acrylic. Remember the flowered wristlet I made? I made a few more of those in other colors, all in baby alpaca. The purple shawl with the gold coin-like edging is the crowning piece, but this one comes close, too. The orange is mostly merino, and the edging is wool. Close-up of edging. I've put a lot of work into this so far, and if I got this much made in a month, imagine what I could do with more notice. But I&#

Some random pictures taken throughout April. Spousal Unit with his newest weird facial hair. It's already changed. The area where the sun sets. Except in daylight. Creepy, creepy donkey in a restaurant. He stared at me from behind his giant corn cob - for the entire meal. Have you no shame, sir? Also in said restaurant, shortly before my haircut. Pay no attention to that lady behind me with her tongue sticking out. I think she would appreciate that.

And now for an announcement most of you are already aware of. We are moving very soon. We are saying goodbye to the Land of Enchantment and heading back to America's Dairyland, where the cows are actually happy and our families await us in clover-filled fields of awesomeness. Well, Spousal Unit's family is in Illinois, but you get the idea. Spousal Unit's thesis will be complete enough that he can finish most of it from afar. We love the friends we've made here, and I love my job, but it's time for us to move on. We've wanted for many years to end up back in the heart of Wisconsin, so that's where we're going. A couple of our friends are generous enough to host our corporeal ghosts in their basement until we find jobs and are able to stand on our own feet, rather than theirs. I was a cellar waif once before; I shall soon be one again. Ideally, here's how it will go: we'll both get good jobs within a month or so. Spousal Unit will head off to Fran

Sunset time! Enjoy and have a great Tuesday.

Ever since I was able to dress myself, I've liked to wear my favorite clothes on my birthday. The year I turned sixteen, my favorite shirt was a soft red faux turtleneck, made of rayon or acrylic or some other man-made fabric that can be really soft. The softness was my favorite part - that and it looked good on me, despite being a color I didn't usually wear. I'd only had it for a couple of weeks, so the exciting newness of it had yet to wear off. I went to school and actually had a marvellous day - a hard thing to achieve in high school. I don't remember what we had for my birthday dinner, but Mom has always been awesome about trying to feed us exactly what we want for our birthdays. Even when we had meager means, she found a way to give us steak for my sister's birthday dinner. For dessert, I had requested cream puffs, not exactly the easiest dessert in the world. But I had only recently discovered them, and it was a rare delicacy to me. Mom didn't even ba

It has been astoundingly dry here the last several... well, months. Dryer than an empty bottle of vodka in an alcoholic's liquor cabinet. Dryer than a pair of feet cracking at the heels without lotion. Dryer than a camel's floppy hump. This is what happens sometimes. The last precipitation we had was in February. There has been no rain. The "river" in town is pitifully small, and severe water restrictions have been put in place already. It's only mid-April - I can't imagine what the summer will be like if this continues. On top of the dryness, we've been getting the usual "windy season." There pretty much isn't a spring, fall or winter here. The seasons go windy, summer, windy, barren. And when it's been especially dry, like it has of late, the windy season is particularly obnoxious. Sometimes when I walk to work, a wall of sand roars toward me. I can close my eyes and mouth, but I still taste the sand afterward. It wasn't until mov

First off: I don't think poetry is pointless. Poetry draws out emotion in a world where many people prefer not to think about what's going on around them, prefer not to question their environment, the past, anything that might come up complicated or controversial. Poetry is the rule-breaker in literature: it doesn't have to follow any specific conventions to be poetry. It is the most finely crafted tool for questions, expression, rebellion, and almost any other situation you can think of. The catch? The above only applies to good poetry, and we all know there's lots of really awful verse out there. David Orr takes on all the crappy modern poets he can get his hands on in this book - starting with Jewel. I owned Jewel's poetry book when I was in high school. I loved it (I was in high school). Now that I'm more aware of what constitutes good poetry, I'm interested to see what Orr has to say about her and other modern poets who threw some words together an

You're going to start seeing more creative stuff from me. There's a creative writing program in Madison that has me very intrigued. It's a two-year program, and from what I can tell, many students have gone on to publish good books and become fairly important people. If you get in, tuition is basically free, you get a stipend for teaching one class each semester plus a scholarship for the first summer, and students get the same health care package as the faculty. Health care , people. I haven't had that for three years. All in all, this looks like an amazing program. I already know I love the Madison area, so that's no problem. The creative writing program is fairly new, but I've only heard great stuff about it (if you know otherwise, please tell me). If (and this is a big if, just because we haven't asked questions yet) Spousal Unit can also in at Madison for his PhD, we'll be set for pretty much forever. And then we'll skip down Lollipop Lane tog

Yes, that's what a group of sunsets is called, if you ever see one. (At least, that's what I'm calling 'em.) Enjoy, and don't forget to click to enlarge!

This weekend, Spousal Unit and I got a packet from Children International . We sponsor Roselle, a little girl who lives in the Philippines. The envelope was the same size and shape as our usual update packets from them, which usually include a new picture and info on her living situation. But for some reason, when I saw this one I freaked out a little. Maybe the writing on the outside ("Open immediately!") was a different color than usual. Whatever it was, I was right to freak out: Roselle and her family have disappeared, and all CI can tell us is that they've "unexpectedly moved out of our sponsorship area and can't be located." The letter said things like this happen fairly often to low-income families, that they have to pick up and move whenever the chance of better work comes up. I personally find it odd than no other families in the area knew where they went - maybe CI knows and, since the family is out of sponsorship range, just isn't telling us.

This is Sadie, the beautiful and talented bookstore kitty who keeps me company in the dungeons of the bookstore (aka the back). She comes and pesters me every morning to pay attention to her - she doesn't have to try very hard. When she first moved in at the bookstore, she was terrified (as all small kitties are in strange new surroundings). I had house-sat her before though, and I think having another familiar person around helped her adjust. Now she loves being petted by customers and even joins the older group of kids for story time. My devious plan was to post a video here of her enjoying her favorite pastime. Unfortunately, this blog host continues to be stupid and I had to create a youtube account just to post this video. Seriously, I tried twice to upload it here, and nothing happened. This makes me rather not pleased. I have a life too, evil blog-host. I guess that's one more point for The Universe. If this post looks sloppy, it's because I'm beyond the point

I used to think the Beatles were the N'Sync of the '60s. I had heard many of their vibrant tunes before, but without pinning their name to the sound. I liked them, certainly; I just didn't know their genius. To me it seemed each decade must have its own terrible pop music sung by talentless peons seeking wealth and fame. The Beatles, in my mind, had taken that lackadaisical effort to a new level and made a living of it. Then I met a certain Boy, later to become Boyfriend, later to become Spousal Unit. I liked Boy, and the Beatles, to him, were the best thing since sliced bread, since the wheel was invented, since we came down out of the trees and said, "Right-o, let's get a move on." The Beatles, in his mind, could do no wrong (except when it came to "Act Naturally"). Who are these bowl-haircut, guitar-plucking youth, that they hold such sway over so many? I thought. Boy was not an average hanger-on; he was intelligent, musically mature, creative.

Some of you may have been wondering what that beautiful fiery creature worked into the banner above has to do with my blog, and where it comes from, and why. Even if you haven't, you're going to find out now. That creature is Zozobra, or Old Man Gloom, in his death throes and screaming in his evil way for mercy. But he shall have no mercy. Zozobra is a festival held every year in Santa Fe. People write down terrible memories or events from the previous year and put them in the Gloom Box, which is dumped as a whole into Old Man Gloom's massive paper-mâché body (he is fifty feet tall). He leers at the crowd from his place on stage, still as death, until the sun begins to set and he starts roaring like a madman. And roar he should, because the whole crowd begins to shout, "Burn him! Burn him!" Zozobra is burned to send all those bad memories of the previous year up in smoke, to send the bad on its way in the past and make room for a new year ahead (and a chance to c

Sunset from last week. There have been high winds and lots of dust in the air, hence lots of good sunsets lately. View this one larger - it's gorgeous.

A few weeks ago, while grocery shopping, Spousal Unit and I encountered a package of egg roll wraps on sale for an exciting low price. We screamed with joy and threw them in our shopping cart with zeal. When we got home, we put them in our fridge and forgot about them. Until now. Their expiration date was drawing nigh, and we wanted to give them a proper send off, so we braced ourselves mentally and physically for the insanity of ingesting fabulous fried food. I was practically shaking in my boots over cooking these unassuming little rolls. After all, I've made tempura before, which resulted in oil burns on my armpit. (I was wearing a tank top, and the oil splattered when I lifted the lid.) Unless you've made some splatterrific fried goods before, you have no idea what a pain it is. The extra drops of tempura batter resulted in an extra splatter factor, along with condensation built up on the lid. The entire stove gets oily, and you can never quite get all the grease off the

At the end of April, in conjunction with what is unofficially "Earth Month," there will be a fest-thingy in town to recognize locally made items, energy conservation, natural living, and all things earthy. I might get myself a booth. I've been wanting to sell my knitted items for quite a while now, and it's a personal goal to sell something before my next birthday. I think this could be my best shot at that. Plus, I came up with a simple, fun pattern that's likely to sell at a spring event, where no one wants to buy sweaters. Tada! It's... What is it? Oh yeah. It's what I'm referring to as a wristlet. A springy wristlet that will come in many colors, made of alpaca yarn. I think I can sell these for $5. I also made an awesome "capelet" that will be my "crowning glory" item (the most expensive thing that I put the most work into). This will be about $40. I don't have any great pictures yet, but these give you an idea of the s