Deviant Dispatches

Hi! It's been a while. Consider this my attempt at getting back to it. Um. Again. I didn't post it here, but at the beginning of 2017, I made a list of 21 goals for myself. 1. Reread The Happiness Project 's chapter on clutter - done 2. Complete at least three home improvement tasks - done Replace front window with a bay window Get tools (jigsaw and sander, not that I used them) Get rid of stuff we don't use, including a lot of clothes Fix the driveway ... kind of. It still needs new asphalt. Paint house Get/make a file cabinet/bench 3. Do an activity with Tickle once a month over the year - done, including an awesome family vacation 4. Exercise more - nope 5. Play mandolin more - I broke one of the strings; does that count? 6. Create craft corner - done, and I love it! 7. Send Grandpa lefse - hand delivered, along with cookies made from his grandma's recipe 8. Make krumkake - nope 9. Start food/garden share with neighbors - sure, I'll ...

Dear Henry Vilas Zoo, I have made a personal goal in my life to pet a penguin sometime before my next birthday, in October. I'm sure you are all familiar with the drive that comes with a personal goal like that - after all, you did have to save up for a giraffe, and those guys can't be cheap. Allow me to describe to you in detail why allowing me to pet one of your poofy Antarctic critters is in everyone's best interests. (I would go for four-part harmonies here, but this is not Alice's Restaurant and I am definitely not Arlo Guthrie. Sorry to disappoint.) 1. There's a rumor going around that penguins are not soft creatures - they are actually so sharp and solid that you could cut your hand on their dagger-like feathers. I cannot abide this kind of slander and intend to prove to the world that penguins are less like rocks and more like hot water bottles. This is first-rate journalism, I tell you. 2. Remember the movie Madagascar? I believe that having wa...

I've been making some progress on my goals for the coming year already, particularly number 14: making yeast-based bread more often. I've already made three different recipes in the last month. One was by Real Simple - you know, the Martha Stewart thing. This Foolproof Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread apparently had me fooled - it was only about two inches high when it came out of the oven. Still, it was tasty. Sandwich bread, my butt. The others have come from my Pillsbury Healthy Baking book. (I've shared this with you before , but it's really amazing. I've loved everything that's come out of it.) The first recipe was for braided loaves, made from no-knead refrigerator dough. I've used that recipe for rolls, but the bread was so good that I can't not make it again. It was sweeter than I wanted, despite cutting back on the sugar, which is fine; it's a sweeter recipe, dotted with almonds. But I bet I could take out all (or almost all) of t...

Holy carp. I'm going to turn 30 on my next birthday. Which means I'm 29 right now. It seems odd, but I haven't directly thought about that until now. Anyway. In the spirit of cutting myself some slack, I've decided some of my goals for this year need to be easier to achieve. Hopefully I'll get higher than a technically failing grade this year - I'd be satisfied with at least a D. 1. Pet a penguin (or at least have fun writing letters to zoos about why I should be allowed to). 2. Get three rejection letters for my novel. 3. Read at least 15 books during the year (my reading pace this year was pathetic, but that was due to the novel). Five should be from my to-read list on Goodreads, and one should be Isaac Asimov . 4. Read six books from six continents, plus something about Antarctica. 5. Make cannoli. 6. Make something Norwegian that I don't often make, like fruit soup or sandbakkels. 7. Make applesauce. 8. Get serious about house hunting a...

Yesterday continued to be the most wonderful birthday in the world even after breakfast. I finished draft 4 of the book, got a massage, had a great bath, and went to The Melting Pot for dinner with Spousal Unit, where he showed that he really does listen when I talk about things, even if I feel stupid for wanting jewelry for my birthday (because it's so not me). A blue opal necklace! (October's birthstone) Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk about. I came to talk about my 25 things that I did in the last year (or tried to do). Lately, I've been trying to cut myself some slack, because things have been rough and my standards are always so high that they're asking me, "Dude, where are all the snacks?!" So I will go easy on myself when interpreting whether something was accomplished or not. 1. Take a creative class - painting, writing, etc. - I'm counting this even though the "class" I took was free - I still created a pendant ...

On Sunday night, my friends Joey and Kaelin took me to see The National  at the Orpheum in Madison, with opening act Frightened Rabbit . I was excited for the opener because Joey was excited for the opener - he and I have very similar musical tastes, and I trust his opinion because he knows what he's talking about . He described them as very similar to U2, and lead singer Scott Hutchison said at the concert that they built their band with The National as a role model. I don't remember what songs they played that night, but here's one I've enjoyed since then: Living in Colour, from their album The Winter of Mixed Drinks . The National themselves were excellent. (Oddly comforting side note: the lead singer, Matt Berninger, wore glasses for the concert.) They had excellent sound throughout, with Berninger throwing in some interesting heavy-metal screams for certain songs (for example, at the end of Squalor Victoria  - I hadn't thought about it, but their songs...

My novel is complete. I have completely finished the most recent draft, meaning I have a book that can be read from beginning to end. It's still not pretty and still needs a lot of work, but this step is complete. For about two months, I worked on it nearly every day, writing about 400 words (a little more than one page) during my lunch hour at work. This is goal 7 of my 25 things . This has resulted in a total of 331 pages and 91,848 words. I'm very impressed with me. The next step is to reread the whole thing, then start draft 4. There are one or two sections that need to be added, several scenes to rewrite, and continuity to check for. I also want to revamp some characters. So much work to be done, but after about 30 pages, I can already see what the main problems are, so that's kind of nice. The main thing I'm worried about is my writing overall. I've improved so much while finishing the ending, and I'm afraid that by writing so much less righ...

Ages ago, I found this picture. From this place . I immediately knew I wanted to make it for my friend Kaelin's birthday. So this weekend, I set to it. I made my melted ice cream cake (from the Cake Mix Doctor cookbook): a pint of Chocolate Explosion Ben and Jerry's, a chocolate fudge cake mix, and three eggs, baked at 350 for about 40 minutes. Unfortunately, this was the weekend in which I learned exactly why  you don't put a whole cake mix into an 8-inch round pan. The cake ended up with a muffin top. No problem; once it cooled, I needed to cut part of the top off to frost it, anyway. So while it cooled, I made fondant piggies. I've never worked with fondant, before, but it was a lot like clay. Except if the fondant is perfect and your hands are slightly moist, you end up with glop in your hands. But the piggies turned out well. (There is a little pig-butt in the upper left corner.) Next, I sliced the top off of the cake, so I could work o...

Ladies and gents: the Neverending Quilt, in its almost-full glory. It's a whopping 49 squares in size, and covers our queen-size bed with ease. It's a good extra blanket in winter, and will make a solo appearance in summer as a more lightweight covering. I'm quite pleased to have the worst of it over with, especially since I've been working on it for more than two years now. But alas, there is still more work to do: an edging all the way around. It will be black, but other than that, I have no clue what I'm going to do. Seeing as the quilt is now functional, I think it will take me a while to get around to that. I'll still aim for having this thing completely finished by the end of summer, but in the meantime, I have something else to worry about. Socks.

The coming year will provide many things for me. The Mayan apocalypse may or may not be among them; personally, I'm rooting in favor of the four horsemen deciding they're just not up to destroying the world this year, and would rather stay in Valhalla and comb their ridiculous green-tentacled beards. I like where my life is going, and I'd like it to get there - wherever there  may happen to be. It's that time of year when I like to at least pretend I have some control over my life and make wise and ridiculous goals as I gallop off into the sunset of another anniversary. Here's what I'm hoping to accomplish in the next year. The first six are uncompleted items from last year - ones that I still hope to check off my list. 1. Take a creative class - painting, writing, etc. 2. Bake something extra-difficult. Then make other people eat it. Because I'm evil. 3. Get a bike - if not for myself, for Spousal Unit. 4. Volunteer somewhere - like a children's m...

Another year has come and gone for me, birthday-wise. (Though it hardly feels like it - I think I'm in emotional shut-down mode for the new job and upcoming move.) I've tried to do 25 things before this birthday happened. Some of those goals were met; some, I had no reason not to meet, but they fell by the wayside. Here's the recap of the last year: 1. Take a creative class - painting, writing, etc. - Not completed. I'm hoping it will happen this year, now that I have a regular schedule I can adhere to. Still not sure what kind of class, but it will be full of creating. 2. Take kendo lessons, at least one class - Accomplished , and I was surprised by how much I was not interested in it. 3. Start sewing afghan squares together (this is the third year that damn afghan is on my list...) - Accomplished . The afghan is now 7x5 squares, and I've almost finished making all the squares. Awesome. 4. Make another shawl for myself, in a fiber I don't have a shawl of yet...

I've at last completed number 13 on my list of 25 things to do before my birthday in October: finish a crossword puzzle. The proof is in the... picture... My original goal was to complete one entirely alone, without outside help from any persons or internets. But I realized most people get at least a little help from someone while completing these, so I gave myself some slack and accepted Spousal Unit's help when I needed it. He may tell you that he completed up to half of the crossword for me. This is what we call lying,  kids, and it's a very bad thing to do. I finished half the crossword before I even asked for his help, and even then, I didn't really need it. As we all know, I don't really  need help. I just like the strangulatory hug a strait jacket gives me. Anyway. Most of the reason I was able to finish this was because of the theme: Beatles songs turned into horrible insect puns, such as Ant Buy Me Love, I Bee Mine, and Cricket to Ride. Us...

Ladies and gentlemen: I present to you... the last page of my novel. Some part of me thought I'd never see it again. I can tell that part of me to shove it, because I've finished my second draft. Now comes the hard stuff. All those little yellow post-its? Those are things I need to address in the next edit. All these pages and pages of notes? According to my  editing instructions  for this book, the next edit will be one of the most difficult: correcting all of the major faults. I addressed some of them in the most recent edit (such as changing my main character's age), but I've discovered many more problems. Maybe I should have done the really hard stuff on my first edit, but I'm glad I didn't. One of the huge problems I unveiled was a certain character who could have solved two hundred pages of problems  thirty years ago - now, I need a reason that he didn't. I also added important elements to the world I created - things that may ...

Awesome things that have happened lately: I finished my bamboo shawl.  I love how the colors turned out – I was especially worried about the bind off, because I’d wanted to do it in all blue. Unfortunately, I ran out and had to resort to orange. But it ended up just fine that way. I got a gorgeous, almost brand-new jacket for $3.62 while hanging out in Milwaukee.  It’s exactly my style and exactly my size – the arms are even long enough, which is pretty unusual for me to find. It’s slightly padded, which means I’ll wear the hell out of it this fall. In the meantime, I’ve been prancing about in it at home, when the A/C is on, and being giddy over the cute little knots and the tiny guys in fishing boats. We visited Spousal Unit's family in Chicagoland for Father's Day. Everyone who's ever met Spousal Unit's dad says, "Oh. So that's  where he gets it from." So true. (In a good way, of course.) Last night, we w...

Spousal Unit and I are getting antsy about choosing and buying a teapot, so we at last have a savings plan underway. This will be part of goal #11 for me: getting a tea set. The pots we're interested in are rather expensive, so if I only get the pot before my birthday, I'll count that as a goal accomplished, as it's the larger part anyway. Our plan goes like this: when we save money on something (such as the $10 we saved on groceries last week via coupons), it will go into our savings jar for the teapot. We will not, of course, count up every penny saved, but when it's a significant amount, the cash (or a piece of paper with a number on it) will go into the jar. By itself, that may save enough for a teapot in a few months - I'm pretty frugal. But as I mentioned, we're really eager for this. So we've added another stipulation: we'll add $5 to the jar for each person when friends or family come to visit us. Considering that Spousal Unit's famil...

Way back in the day, I posted my goals for the year (my birth year, not the calendar year), and I couldn’t find my goals from the previous year to do a recap of those accomplishments. At long last, the list is located. Here are the goals I detailed in 2010-2011: 25 things to do before I turned 27. 1.       Participate in NaNoWriMo 2.       Submit novel to Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest 3.       Finish The Neverending Quilt by August 2011 4.       Write weekly* 5.       Learn some Korean 6.       Keep running/belly dancing 7.       Take a creative class 8.       Finish Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susannah Clarke 9.       Get paid for something I wrote/made* 10.    Find a wedding dress by Thanksgiving* 11.  ...