Video Numero Uno

The first video of I-don't-yet-know-how-many from my UK trip!  This covers the day after I landed in London--my time with Michelle and the night I arrived in Bangor, Wales.

Ahh, so that's why...

…I can’t type up text posts on my laptop.  Because I haven’t updated Firefox in forever and a day.  (Due to several reasons, most entirely silly and baseless.)  So instead I’ve taken over The Brother’s desktop while he’s off luxuriating in his freshman year up north.  

It’s been a very long day.  It’s been kind of a long couple of weeks.  

In early/mid October I was told I’d be let go due to budget cuts.  Then a week later I found out that didn’t mean what I thought it did.  (How hard is it to misunderstand “you’re being laid off”???)  I’m a freelancer for Scripps Health, which means I technically work for myself.  So the people who were giving me hours couldn’t actually fire me.  They could only not give me hours to work.  (Which, in the grand scheme of things, is basically the same thing.)  

BUT I can work for other departments.  Which is what I’m now doing.  And it’s working and they want me to work more than I actually want to work, but I’ll work because I want them to keep giving me projects when this one is over.  And because the money’s good and because I’m saving for grad school.  

(As I said earlier today, “I’ve got ambitions, man.  They’re bigger than ‘plans.’”)  

Aaaand today I went to the doc and realized my dad’s health insurance is awful and expensive and basically a pile of crap, but I’m still very grateful I only have to pay $50 for a copay instead of whatever I’d be paying the the ACA had been repealed.  

I’ve had a weird, circular rash on my wrist sort of where the face of my watch sits when it gets shoved up a bit (as it tends to happen when I’m typing or working at a desk) that won’t heal.  So they tested for nickel in my plastic kids’ watch (which is a common allergen/skin irritant) and then threw around the C-word (C-A-N-C-E-R) and biopsied it.  It hurt less than a flu shot, more than a big pinch.  

It’s probably nothing.  But they mentioned the C-word, and I kind of laughed sort of breathily and went, “Oh.  Okay.”  And then after I sat in my car and flailed a bit.  Apologies to anyone who got a text/FB message.  

What’s most interesting, though, is how brief and not a big deal the biopsy was.  I thought TV shows always downplayed it because it’s always in comparison to OHGOD THIS CHARACTER IS GOING TO DIE IF WE DON’T DO SOMETHING.  But it really is nbd.  

Clarion, Last Day

Move out is tomorrow.  I'll pack up my collection of too-much stuff and drive back to my parents' house, where I'll be living for the time being. 

The last six weeks have been brain-meltingly fantastic.  I can't remember the last time I was so sleep deprived and simultaneously caffeinated, but neither can I remember a time have ever worked harder in my life.  (The only possible exception would be during Latin on the second go-round.  I wanted to learn it then.)  My sense of constructing a story has grown to an unbelievable degree. 

I don't think I was expecting quite such extreme growth.  I've learned more about writing in six weeks than I did in the last four years (at a hugely successful and innovative university-level writing program).  It wouldn't have happened--or at least been so dramatic--if everyone who'd gotten in wasn't an incredible writer.  One woman's story (that was written while here), she got it critiqued, went home, revised it in two days, sent it off, and within the week Strange Horizons had emailed her saying they'd be pleased to publish it.  To my knowledge no one else has sent stories out, but I know in my bones that there are at minimum several more stories from these people that will be published in the not-so-distant future.  Everyone in this program is an incredible writer.  

All this to say: if you're a speculative fiction writer, apply to Clarion.  If you're worried about the price, apply for a scholarship.  The return is incredible.  Clarion is worth whatever you put into it and more. 

Dizzied whirling dervishes, i.e., my life

Graduated yesterday.  Sat up on the stage and tried not to laugh too obviously.  There were one hundred and one graduates in my program and my flatmate (codename: Kestrel) leaned forward from her seat almost directly behind me and whispered, "We're dalmatians."  And then the dean kept referencing The Hunger Games and Avengers movies in his speech. Shawarma and breathtaking anger management issues and such.


(It's generally agreed upon that he's our very own Dumbledore.  He even wore a wizard's hat, though I think it was actually Mickey Mouse's.)

Hung out afterward and spoke to a handful of people.  My mother went over to accost an old friend that I don't see much anymore, and a guy from one of my classes came over to chat.  I ate three chocolate chip cookies and then regretted the last one. 

We had lunch at an Indian place on State St.  I gorged and didn't regret it for a moment.  We packed up about half my stuff and jammed it into the back of the car, and then off my parents and brother went.  I spent the evening reading and rearranging my furniture a bit.  (Back to its original layout so I can move out this weekend.) 

Slept in today.  Feeling lazy and like my blood's moving slowly.  BUT I got an email from Virgogray Press about a poem I submitted back in November--they accepted it for publication!  It's going to be included in a collection called "Sing Now, America." 

(It's a "patriotic" collection, so I wrote about what it's like to be an American living abroad.) 
Published again!!!  And graduated!  It's been a rather good week, for all that I still have one final exam left on Thursday.

Graduation is Sunday

Hooooly cow.  Yes.  Graduation is Sunday.  I've got a couple other stories I've been meaning to write up, but honestly the last two weeks have been horrifyingly busy. Wrote my last academic paper.  Still trying to catch up with all the reading for my very very last final exam (which, disturbingly enough, is four days after graduation.  Argh!).  And I've got forty pages of a novel beginning due tomorrow.

I made struffoli today.  Yes, again.  There were two separate instances where I dropped the dough into the oil, it splashed a bit, landed on the burner, and flickered into an actual flame.  Oops.  Thankfully it burned out about as soon as it took me to blink at the flame and wonder what the hell I was supposed to do if water was out of the equation.  (Oddly enough, the proper way to put out a grease fire when one doesn't have access to a fire blanket never came up in the last year and a half.) 

I made two batches.  One was for the potluck-thing for our last prose writing workshop class, the other was a thank-you for the prof, who has agreed to write me a letter of rec.  I put them both into my bike basket (as I ran out the door six minutes after class had already started) and one of them shifted enough that the honey icing ended up dripping everywhere.  I didn't even notice at first, so I was walking through the CCS building leaving a dripping trail of honey icing and sprinkles behind me. 

And then it landed on my feet.  And my sandals.  And my legs.  And my shirt.  And I realized what was going on, jumped in surprise, and accidentally poured it all over a classmate's backpack, a nearby desk, and the floor.  Ran off to the bathroom to try to unwrap the struffoli without spilling more outside of a sink where it could be washed down and ended up using the one sink with terrible water pressure.

Oops.

It was just one of those days.  Everything tasted really good, though.

Just another day in the flat

Screaming over spiders when we smack them off the wall with the end of a Swiffer mop and they land on top of the trash bin, then jump somewhere.

Somewhere we can't see.

Loud, extended shrieking. 


I'm never going to finish my essay. 

Perhaps an epiphany?

I don't think guys realize how easily girls (in general, or maybe just me) startle.  It takes less than a quarter of a breath for me to go from genial and pleasantly minding my own business to suspicious and overflowing with "oh god what does he want." 

(And yes, there is no question mark at the end of that because by the time the thought finishes crossing my mind, I've already moved on to a possible list of answers.) 

I dropped by a Redbox today (not sure why I find the Underworld series so endearing, but I finally got around to seeing the third one) and on my way out I stood at the bike rack settling my bag and my jacket into my bike basket and this guy--quite a good looking guy, too, I should add--approached me with a rather hesitant but endearing smile.  He said hello, I was polite and answered.  He looked like he was gearing up for a question, so I looked up from my stuff and gave him about three-quarters of my attention in case he was lost or needed help or something.  He asked if I was a student at UCSB, and I could feel my expression freeze over.  I told him yes, but when he asked my name I gave him a fake one.  "S--Rachel." 

(Rachel is an old, old character of mine from a post-apocalyptic world.  She was a timid, frightened little slip of a thing and I've always felt that she wouldn't mind me using her name to make myself feel safer.) 

(She was also one of the Animorphs, which I'm pretty sure is where the name originally came from.  Originally in my lifetime, I mean.) 

So he says something very amicable in an unassuming, nonthreatening way along the lines of "oh, that's where I've seen you from." 

Which was a lie.  I'm observant and I'm sure I'd have noticed such a good-looking guy in one my lectures--and since I've only had a total of three lectures this year, all small(ish) upper division lectures, it cuts way down on the number of people around me. 

That and it was clearly just a line.  I almost played along, even, except that it was so clearly a line and I didn't actually know what he wanted out of me.  My number?  Not happening.  Not interested, not even for such a friendly, attractive (brave) guy.  So I said something along the lines of "oh, neat.  That's cool.  See you around, then." 

Part of it was that I'm really just not interested in general.  But a much bigger part was that he startled me and then I couldn't get over my initial suspicion.  And yes, stress and other recent situations have left me more on-guard and less chatty than usual, but I'm pretty certain I still would have reacted better if he hadn't been my age. 


So, (girls especially) help me out: am I the only one who startles like a goddamned rabbit over stuff and people that most likely are not dangerous? 

God, not another title. I'm out of ideas.

(NOTE: this post was originally entered on May 20, 2012.)

Fourteen class days left.  Four weeks to graduation.  Twenty-one days.  Twenty-five days until my last final exam.  An unfortunate biproduct of finishing off GEs at the last possible moment.

When I was thirteen I hurt my left knee playing soccer.  I did the whole physical therapy bit (and it sucked, of course) and ended up wearing a brace to bed every night until March 24, 2011 when I took a train from Edinburgh to London at the beginning of a three-week long trip through Greece and Romania and ended up forgetting my brace.  I left it under my pillow in Edinburgh.

But as it turns out, I didn’t need it those three weeks I was gone.  I just didn’t. 

I hadn’t worn my knee brace for 390 days. After leaving Edinburgh I put it inside my hollow purple ottoman and it stayed the ottoman at the foot of my bed all year after moving from San Diego back up to Santa Barbara.  I didn’t have to think about it often—the only other things I’ve got inside the ottoman are the serving spoons my grandmother gave me and extra mulled wine spices—but I always knew exactly where my knee brace was.

And last night I pulled it it out and put it on, and I hate myself a little bit for it.  I got up this morning (afternoon) and did the leg exercises I’m supposed to do something like three to five times a day, but I made this horrific, relieved noise when the brace closed over my knee last night before I could even stop myself and I can’t stop thinking about how much I hadn’t even realized it hurt until it suddenly only hurt half as much.

This is mostly just a melodramatic complaint about how difficult it is to take care of myself.  Food every five or so hours (it never ends!), laundry, exercise—the only enjoyable part of the upkeep are warm showers. 

Wibbly-wobbly

My last post didn’t show up on my Facebook newsfeed; I’m kind of hoping this one doesn’t, either. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday I’ve a class on Thoreau with possibly the biggest contemporary hippie in Santa Barbara (at least)—he’s a wonderful man and marvelous professor and I think he is most likely the kindest and most compassionate man I’ve ever meet and maybe will ever meet.  And for some reason last Thursday he mentioned that in one of his other classes he participated in his first class-wide group hug ever and wasn’t it a shame that was the first and that it hadn’t happened again and who knew how long it would take before it did happen again—

And my first thought was, 'Before it happens again?  I doubt anyone in this class would mind doing a group hug for Teddy.  We all adore him enough.'

And my second thought dawned with an awful kind of sinking feeling: 'I don’t want to hug anyone.'

But they’d already voted on it and I think I was the only one to not raise my hand—we trudged (well, I trudged) outside beyond the concrete patio and huddled together in a big group.

Then everyone lifted their arms and I was the last one out of the building so they made room for me and the guy who’d held the door for me and we squeezed in at different spots of the circle and I was suddenly surrounded by warm bodies.  Warm, breathing, kind bodies.  People.  On my left was a girl I knew solely because she submits beautiful poetry to the magazine I work for and on my right was a young guy who I’m not sure I’ve ever really even looked at before, let alone spoken to.  But my arm fit around the girl’s waist kind of perfectly and I fit slotted into the guy’s side with his arm over my shoulders kind of equally perfectly.

We stood out there with our arms around our classmates and our professor for what felt like a long time, but was probably only a minute or two, and for the most part we kept silent.  I wanted to say, "I’m glad I’m in this class.  Even if I haven’t been keeping up with the reading, it helps.  With everything."

But I didn’t.  I couldn’t make the words take on air and noise.

And then after a long moment we all went back inside and continued on with our discussion on Walden. 

Frost after midnight

"The only way out is through." --Robert Frost

Finally getting it, sort of

I remember once, not more than a few years ago, I complained to my parents that we were expected to go to school in the beginning of our lives, rather than the middle.  The middle would be better, because we would know enough to appreciate each moment of learning, but we'd not be so old to be unable to continue learning (if we wished to) or to use what we learned. 

It occurred to me that, finally, I'm learning to luxuriate in classes.  Not so much the classes themselves, I guess--my English 50 course this quarter is dull and predictable in its approach, but the material is both unnerving and somewhere between "pretty" and "beautiful."

The learning, though--I'm getting it.  It's nice to feel that stretch in my mind that happens right before something clicks, to listen to someone vocalize something I'd have never thought of and feel the new thought raise goosebumps as it settles into my skin.  It's nice to work hard, to really work hard and make one of my stories better than anything I could have written a few years ago and to know that it's better than anything I could have written a few years ago.

It's just a shame, you know?  I'm finally getting it--I'm understanding what's so great about school, but I've only eight weeks of it left. 

Maybe that's why we send people to school for so long, though.  It takes us a while to get why it can be so wonderful, but after that it's time to move along--like we shouldn't get too used to living with something wonderful, but we should know how to look for what's wonderful in whatever comes next. 

2:15 AM

Lying in bed at 2:15 reading an e-book for class (“The Marriage Plot”) and a train goes through the Goleta station. Probably only two or three miles away if you’re a bird. Possibly as many as four or five with roads.

The train whistles, which isn’t an unusual sound come nighttime, but then I hear it clatter through the station without stopping. Wheels on the tracks, thwacking away without fading for several long and quiet minutes. It’s quiet outside except for that noise.

Then the clatter starts to fade, and a gaggle of happy, screaming drunk girls bike by. I half wonder if they know it’s Tuesday. More importantly, though, do they remember any words beyond “oh my god?”

There is no such thing as writer's block.

Especially when it’s a personal (ish) blog.  And especially when there’s really quite a lot going on.
I’m teaching a class—excuse me, a “student-led colloquium.”  Not supposed to call it a regular class since I haven’t gotten my degree yet and since I’m not getting paid to do it, but I designed the class and the curriculum, everyone enrolled is getting two units (half of what a regular UCSB course will get you), and I have absolutely no oversight.  The advisor has already said she was willing to be my advisor on paper as long as she didn’t have to show up to the meetings (I’m disinclined to call them “lectures.”  “Discussions,” maybe). (Sssshhhhhhh!)

Which is just as well.  I’d be way more nervous if she was there, and there’s way too much pop culture and genre fiction floating around in our discussions for her to enjoy any of the sessions, anyway.  (Ssshhhh again!  Shame on us academics-in-training, enjoying discussions about genre fiction and popular villains! /sarcasm.)

There are way more first years than I was expecting.  There are even a couple of comp-sci and chemistry students, which just about floored me in the middle of class.  It might be silly, but I was expecting more third- and fourth-years, and no one but literature students.

This is better, though.  Definitely, definitely better.

SOPA changes name to CISPA

Ugh.

Nyquil turns me into a lump of useless flesh. I always forget that until it’s too late.

On the other hand, it’s never too early to go to bed when you’re sick.

There’s someone legitimately muahahaha-ing outside my window. It’s kind of entertaining.

The weather has lost its mind.

That's really the only explanation.  There is snow visible in the hills (when they're not obscured by massive grey clouds), the wind is literally whistling through the apartment, it's sunny with raindrops all over my windows, and there is a tumbleweed--an actual tumbleweed, guys--blowing across the parking lot. 

I'm kind of loving it.  Mostly because it's fun to watch while I'm snuggled up under my NHS blanket (the one the paramedics gave me when I blew up the kitchen) while I'm pretending to study for my exam.

Wow, scratch the sunshine bit.  It suddenly started pouring.  And there are people wearing shorts and hoodies sprinting across the parking lot.  hahahaha!

Monday (tomorrow) marks the official start of finals week, I think.  (If it didn't officially begin on Saturday, that is.  Dunno.)  I've got an exam on Tuesday, my last essay is due Wednesday, but hopefully it'll already (magically) be completed and I'll get to head home early.

It's sunny again, by the way.  And the rain has stopped.

Spring break is only a week this year, so by April 1 I'll be back up in Santa Barbara slogging through the first week of my last quarter (!!!!).  I'm teaching a writing class of my own creation on Friday afternoons called "Villains in Fiction," and I'm... sort of already freaking out a bit.  Mostly because when I'm supposed to do some kind of public speaking and I get nervous I talk too much.  Gaaaahhhh.

It'll be fine, though.  It's alllll going to be fiiine.

The sky is now completely clear.  I really don't understand how.

After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

futurejournalismproject:

From the NY Times:

After 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.
Those coolly authoritative, gold-lettered sets of reference books that were once sold door to door by a fleet of traveling salesmen and displayed as proud fixtures in American homes will be discontinued, the company is expected to announce on Wednesday.
In a nod to the realities of the digital age — and, in particular, the competition from the hugely popular Wikipedia — Encyclopaedia Britannica will focus primarily on its online encyclopedias and educational curriculum for schools, company executives said.
The last edition of the encyclopedia will be the 2010 edition, a 32-volume set that weighs in at 129 pounds and includes new entries on global warming and the Human Genome Project.
“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a Chicago-based company, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

244 years.  Wow.

...Can't remember anymore

It's been kind of a long day.  Week.  Quarter?  I'm ready for it to be over.  Finished an essay on the intrusive gaze of the viewer in Mary Cassatt's paintings this morning about fifteen minutes before it was due.  Eleven pages.  Printed it out, rushed off to class, turned it in.

There isn't much going on these days.  Not that's interesting, at least.  School.  Writing.  Trying to see how long I can go without actually making a trip to the grocery store.  Still trying to get published.  And make sure I'm going to graduate.

Although it occurred to me--not for the first time, but definitely with a degree of clarity that hadn't yet presented itself--that I shouldn't just settle down in whatever job I can find after graduation.  I should actually try to use my degree, my writing skills, because then I'd look better (on paper) for grad school.  Which is definitely going to happen, just not right (write) away.  (hardy-har-har.)

And now I get to worry about pictures for graduation announcements.  I keep getting flashbacks to all the useless hoops you jump through to graduate from high school.  Ugh.  Yes, I'm proud of myself, but I'm not sure I understand why on earth it's such a big deal.  I'm pretty sure I'd be quite pleased with a tasty and massive pig-out session at a nice restaurant with my family and--actually, I don't know what else I'd want.  Graduation's just in time for all the summer blockbusters.  Maybe a free movie ticket?

Clearly my standards are sufficiently low to get by on whatever. 

God, I need sleep.  I hate long essays.  I started the research for that paper almost a week ago, and I stillend up writing and fixing stuff up until the very last second.

I wish I had junk food.

It's all downhill from here.

The MLA has officially devised a standard format to cite tweets in an academic paper.
(via cmonstah:warbyparker)

The first thing that popped into my head was high schoolers learning MLA format and trying to reference Kanye or... I don't even know, some other irrelevant celebrity in an essay.  I find that mind-boggling and not a little unsettling.

Asked and answered

Croatoan asked: How do you get into the mindset to write?

Depends how blocked I'm feeling.  Sometimes in the evening I can sit down and jam out pages and pages of words for hours.  Other times, I need music.  A handful of specific songs or a short album set on repeat.  Sometimes I have to go and find new music before I can settle down to write.

At my most desperate, though, I have to stand up from my computer and go to my bookshelf.  Pull my most loved books off the shelf (only stand-alones or the first in a series, though) and read the first line.  Just the first sentence, then move on to the next book.  Anthologies or short story collections are good for that.  Lots of firsts in a relatively short amount of space.

I think looking at the first sentence or first paragraph of stories you really love is crucial to figuring out how an author did what you want to do, anyway.  It's a good starting point.  Once I've already read a story or book I can go back to the beginning and not get (as) caught up in the emotional journey.  I can take a (small) step back and look at what the author does in terms of world- or character-building, how fast they do it, whether they start with description or dialogue, etc.

Last night as I was battling the blank page, I turned to "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" by Holly Black. (I do own The Poison Eaters, but it's at my parents' house in San Diego at the moment.)