A Taste of Margaritaville

My uncle once told me that if I only went to one concert in my entire life, to make it a Jimmy Buffett concert. Well, I've already seen more than one concert in my life and expect to make it to more, but Tuesday night I finally took my uncle's advice. And for the price of a lawn seat and an hour's drive after work, I was transported to the Jimmy Buffett brand of island living.

My first exposure to Jimmy Buffett's music was actually through my grandmother. She's responsible for my taste in show tunes when I would spend summer days with her watching Oklahoma, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, etc. One day, she asked me to put in a new tape (that's cassette for the younger generation) in the stereo that she wanted to listen to. I knew I liked it as soon as the steel drums started and songs of margaritas and cheeseburgers came out of the speakers. I was happily bopping to the beat, helping my grandmother prepare veggies for dinner when after a long, spoken intro, the next song came on. To my abject horror, I heard Jimmy sing, "Why don't we get drunk and screw?" over the speakers accompanied by a large crowd. I listen specifically to lyrics of songs, but I wasn't sure how widely among my family that was known. With a quick glance at my grandmother, certain that I would be in trouble if I seemed to enjoy the topic of a song that was strictly taboo with children of my age. I furrowed my brow and pretended to focus intently on the carrots I was chopping just in time for my grandmother to look over at me. She said, "Ooh, turn the volume up, will you? I like this song. I think it's funny." Then she went back to her task and missed the shocked pause it took me to register her words and go turn the music up.

Years later, sitting on a grass on rented chairs, with a barbecue sandwich dinner in my stomach, I stood up and cheered with a vast, multi-colored, pot-smoking, drunk and festive crowd as Jimmy took the stage with the Coral Reefer band. Whether he sang gleefully of parties, sailing and surfing or poignantly of lost loves and past accomplishments, the crowd danced, sang along, and cheered enthusiastically. On the jumbo-tron video screens (we were too far away from the stage to see the actual band) he showed videos of his travels both around the world and around the Bay Area and other Parrotheads he's played for in between live shots of the current concert. He wore a t-shirt, flower-printed shorts and went barefoot on the stage - clearly a man who has made a life of doing things he enjoys. That's not a bad thing to accomplish in your life, I thought.

And for about four hours in the middle of a work week, I got to escape to a little island town called Margaritaville. I know I want to be back again someday.

Read More...

Summary only...

Respect. Empower. Include

These are the guidelines Barack Obama has given his campaign as they strive to get him elected the next President of the United States.

It's a tall order. In the face of mistrust - is he Muslim? does he pal around with terrorists? will he raise my taxes? will he turn over the US to the hands of those who wish us harm? In the face of heated, passionate disagreements. In the face of fear. But it's what Obama requires of his campaign staff and volunteers. And it makes a difference in the thousands and millions who have volunteered, worked, called, fundraised, hoped. Hope has become contagious.

It makes a difference for me. Seven years ago, an entire world reached out to America in the wake of tragedy. But ever since then, all I've heard from my leaders was to fear, to hate, to distrust. To disrespect, disempower, exclude. I heard that I should pay attention to the worst of people in case they decide to wield that against me. That I should protect myself from harm. But it was isolating and tiring, looking at everyone warily, with suspicion. It certainly didn't make me feel good about the world I lived in and limited the life I could live and still feel safe.

Then in 2004, I heard a skinny guy with a funny name give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. And he told me that there are just as many things we have in common with one another than we have differences. That we want to provide for our families with decent wages. That we want our children to grow up healthy and strong with a bright future ahead. That we just want to be heard, respected and loved. And I thought to myself that I would be voting for that man for president one day. I just didn't know it would come a scant four years later. He has appealed to the good in all of us. To trust that as a whole, we are greater than the sum of our individual strengths. That to accomplish the great things that Americans have done in the past and can do in the future, we would have to put aside the fear and distrust and work together. And that it wouldn't necessarily be easy, but that we could be surprised at what we could do.

I have never been one to care that much about politics. Ten years ago, you couldn't have paid me to know who our elected officials were and what they stood for. This year, this historic election year, I AM paying attention with all my obsessive tendencies on display. Not only did I donate to a campaign for the first time, I donated multiple times. As I watched the primaries turn into the general election period, I paid attention not just to the policies but to the people and their expressions of hope. Those faces, those eyes - they keep me daring to believe that we can shed the atrocities of the past eight years and go back to the America I once thought I lived in.

In two weeks, we will know. And I hope that we will know a brighter future.

Read More...

Summary only...

Cat Juggling + Ninja Cat

Tonight's obession was YouTube videos of cats. I didn't even know they had hamster wheels for cats, let alone that cats could self-juggle.
The second video requires some patience with the beginning (about 17 seconds in) until the camera starts playing peek-a-boo with the cat.

Read More...

Summary only...

Impressions of a First-Time NaNoWriMo-er

Cheating a bit here. I wrote this the day after NaNoWriMo ended last year, Dec. 2, 2007. I hadn't quite gotten out of the habit of writing everyday yet (but it didn't take much longer) and I figured I might as well capture my first impressions while they were still fresh. As another November approaches, it's worth reminding myself what it was like that first time...


When I first heard of NaNoWriMo, I thought to myself that it was a crazy goal I’d never be able to achieve. “That’s for people who are more experienced/talented/serious in writing than I am,” I said to myself. “Maybe one day, I’ll be able to take on that challenge.” I wish I could remember exactly when that first thought first popped into my head, but I think it was about July or August of 2007.

I should have known better than to apply ‘Maybe one day’ to a challenge like this appearing in my life. You see, I have these obsessive, stubborn tendencies. Sometimes, it’s a fleeting concept in my day where I suddenly remember than I haven’t had any Filipino food in quite a while only I don’t know any good places nearby to get Filipino food. And so I’m off to the wonders of technology that is Google and the next thing you know, I’m going slightly out of my way on the way home so I can have take out for dinner. Sometimes it lasts several weeks or months when I get hold of a new video game so that I have to come home every day and play the latest Final Fantasy installment so that I can find out what happens in the story. So if I get an idea in my head, no matter how nonchalant I pretend I can be about it, I’ll still fixate enough so that the only cure is to actually do something about it.

And that’s not even engaging my competitive nature. I’ve tried to scale back on the urgency of my response to the idea of competition - I’ve actually used that tendency for evil, to the detriment of personal relationships and my happiness in the past and I’ve learned to be leery of its power. But as soon as my inner competitor whispered, “I bet you can’t do it.”, my knee jerk reaction was “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

All I needed was someone I knew who had done it to tell me it’s not as bad and scary as it appeared to be. That came in the form of a friend in my writing group who, without my prompting, announced that she had just completed her own novel writing month in August ahead of the official November event. And that it wasn’t that bad. So I did what any rational, obsessive, competitive planner would do: I researched the project, bought the No Plot, No Problem book and researched what tools and resources I would need to have in place in order to succeed at it. I decided that I would need a laptop despite previously decrying their use for ergonomic reasons so that I would be able to transport myself and my creativity to various points of inspiration and interest aside from my home office. Once I gave myself permission to do research, I went on to research Mac laptops (which I’ve never previously owned) because they seemed to be more creative than the PC desktops I’ve owned in the past. I didn’t have the wherewithal to justify buying a brand new top of the line Mac laptop so off I went to Ebay, which I’ve never used, so I could get a better deal and still have an out. That if I didn’t actually do NaNoWriMo, I didn’t spend full price so it would be okay. Of course I still had to support my physical health so I had to research accessories that would enable me to move around with a laptop without killing my wrists and hands as I wrote my 1667 words a day for an entire month. And I did this all before October so that I would have time to teach myself how to use a Mac and the new novel-writing software (also researched) so it wouldn’t slow me down.

Yet in October, I was still telling people that I was only considering NaNoWriMo, but not really committed to it. Even as I tried to convince other friends with writing tendencies, I still sidled up to the idea, stating only that I was considering doing it. I finally gave up pretending on October 5th when I signed up on the official NaNoWriMo.org website and joined the community of largely younger and very enthusiastic writers from all around the world waiting for the commencement of November. I was and still am enamored of the concept that community can provide powerful momentum to accomplish more than the individual, even with such a typically solitary endeavor as writing. And as I found out more about the organization and founder that started NaNoWriMo, I was inspired by the example of one man starting a movement and event that essentially encouraged, challenged and supported anyone who had ever dreamed and wanted to follow that dream. And what an extra bonus that the birth of NaNoWriMo happened just down the road from my house! I took that to mean that I should go ahead and go for it.

As instructed by the No Plot, No Problem book, I wasn’t supposed to start with a plot or work too extensively on my novel until a week prior to November 1st. Have I mentioned yet that I have a planner mindset? I think I managed to last until a week and a half before November. I had a pair of characters, a general conflict and sat down to write 59 phrases that was my plot outline. I vowed to set my daily goal to 2000 words, rounding up the 1667 so that I would have a buffer if I had some bad writing days.

I almost didn’t go to the pre-November kickoff party in San Francisco. But it was there that I made some key writing buddy friends that I would see through the month of November at write-ins or through NaNoMails, who kept me going. I also took the opportunity to thank Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo’s founder for creating and living such an inspiring vision. I’m sure he hears it every day, but I wanted to add my voice to the numerous others whose lives he has touched and made for the better.

To borrow from the NaNoWriMo Forums, Things I Learned from NaNoWrimo in November:

- I’m goal oriented. Actually, it’s not so much that I didn’t know I was goal oriented. It was that I had to negotiate my goals with myself ahead of time. For example, I gave myself 2000 words per day. On the first weekend, I hit 2000 and stopped even though I still had time during the day to get ahead of the schedule. The following weekend, I made sure to give myself notice that I would do double word count days on weekends so I could keep going.

- I can keep writing what happens next in the story even if I don’t actually know what happens next. This started kicking in about mid-way through the story when I started deviating significantly from my outline and I thought I would have to take a break and restructure the rest of the outline. Turns out, I still wrote 2000 words during those days. My goal-reaching fu is stronger than my path-finding fu.

- Fingerless gloves help keep my typing longer because my hands are nice and toasty. If they’re pirate fingerless gloves, my hands can go ’arrr!’ at the keyboard and intimidate the keys into submission.

- I will never win a word war in IM chats, but in four 15 minute wars with appropriate breaks, I can make my daily word count. Also, I can do self word wars, but it’s only slightly less effective because my in between breaks tend to go longer than the IM chat rooms.

- Figuring out plots and characters is a lot like puzzle solving, only I’m the one making the pieces and seeing where they fit. This is trickier than it sounds and is also a lot of fun.

- I like writing dialogue more than I like writing descriptions of people, places and things.

- I often wonder how little justice I’m doing to the dramatic scenes in my story when I’m writing for quantity.

- I don’t snack or drink nearly as much as I expected while writing.

- Singing along with my iPod is a great mini-writing break activity. This works better when I’m not out writing in public.

- 50,000 words is a stronger goal than finishing the story. My momentum went down as soon as I hit 50k even though I’d already negotiated with myself that I wanted to finish the actual story in November.

- I’m afraid of writing endings. This may be because I don’t want stories to end but if I attach a goal to it, I’ll probably end up doing it anyway.

- My inner editor likes to tell me how cliche my plot ideas, word choices, character quirks are. It’s liberating to write anyway, and let them yammer away in the corner. It does help that I let it correct spelling mistakes as I wrote. Kept ‘em happy.

- I need to put more dysfunctional traits in my characters. Otherwise, they’re boring.

- Backup my work. Back it up redundantly. Assigning my obsessive trait to the job of watching over the backing up process is good delegation.

It’s now December 2nd and I’m wandering around trying to find something to do, which is what led me to write this piece to begin with. I suppose with one of my favorite holidays coming up, I should get into the spirit. But before I let go, I’ve started making a list of changes I want to put into the editing when I pick up this year’s story again. And I already have something in mind for next year’s novel.
PS: I just noticed that I didn’t make minimum daily 1667 word count with this piece and that should be okay. Right? (1666, argh!)

Read More...

Summary only...

Neil Gaiman

We went to see Neil Gaiman ('gay-mun' instead of 'guy-mun'. People kept thinking I was saying 'Neil Diamond' when I mispronounced his name) this past weekend. The author of Stardust, the Sandman comics and Good Omens, with Terry Pratchett was in town to do a reading of his latest children's book, The Graveyard Book.


I'd never seen him before aside from his book jacket pictures and he was a very funny, engaging public speaker. We also received signed copies of The Graveyard Book with our tickets which was nice. He read Chapter 6 to us and now I'll have his accent in my head as I read the rest of the story. I envy him his imaginative story ideas. I wish my brain worked more like that. The Graveyard Book tells the story of a boy being brought up by dead people/ghosts/etc. in a graveyard. His family was killed by someone and is looking to kill him too. The chapter we got to hear was about the boy, Nobody Owens, aka, Bod, dealing with a couple of school bullies at school with his graveyard training ways. It was a pretty long chapter, especially read aloud like that, but it never felt boring. I was just worried he would leave us with a cliff-hanger and I would have to read the rest of the book on the way home. Thankfully, he did end the chapter with a mini-conclusion with only hints at the larger conflict ahead.

He's a very good public speaker. I'm sure the British accent helps. We got to preview clips of his next film from one of his books due out in February, Coraline. It's being done in stop motion animation by the same director that did Nightmare Before Christmas. I hadn't even heard about the book/film before then but I'm looking forward to it.

Then he answered some audience submitted questions. My favorite response he did was when he described the best advice someone had given him on the writing process. I don't remember who it was that had written it, but the suggestion was to have a room/place/mindset where you had a choice of either writing or doing absolutely nothing. That way you would still have a choice and avoid the automatic procrastination that comes with 'YOU MUST WRITE OR YOU FAIL' but if you do choose to do absolutely nothing, you'll get bored enough to start writing again. I think I'll have to adopt that mindset in our hobby room upstairs for this coming November.

Read More...

Summary only...

Bloggishness

Seems this blog thing is the new hotness (and no, I'm not an early adopter, why do you ask?). It's no coincidence whatsoever that I'm trying out blogging again roughly a month before I tackle my second year at National Novel Writing Month. Something about writing practice. I've tried blogging before and either let it languish or it was project specific and the project's done. So I'm trying again and seeing if this is a habit I can maintain. My previous failures at consistent blogging probably has more to do with my attention span with new shiny things (minimal) as well as my internet hermit tendencies (do I really have to post this?). So I gave myself a broader umbrella of topics that I could write about so that I can be as distracted as I want to be. I should also give myself a goal/schedule when I should post things if I really wanted this to work, but I'll have to think on that some more.

Read More...

Summary only...